Asking questions of your customers isn t only a way of identifying new business opportunities, but also a way to find out how to improve your current line-up of products and services. To get truthful and useful information, it may be worthwhile to hire an outside specialist to conduct these interviews in private. Employees are more likely to state their true feelings about HR if they are guaranteed anonymity, and don t have to share their opinions in front of peers and co-workers. It s important to start with this kind of gap analysis because, in today s companies, there are so many ideas about what HR is, explains David Redhill, executive director of global communications for Landor Associates, a global branding and design consultancy based in San Francisco. But this isn t an unusual branding problem.
Companies often start selling one product or service and then expand into other areas.
They acquire and divest other companies, get into new technology, converge into new product areas and pretty soon they ve outgrown their brand. Similarly, HR now encompasses so many different activities that it s hard for internal customers to know exactly what HR is all about. To begin to fix this, HR professionals must research their current brand to figure out where they stand. Craft an identity based on customer needs. Once you determine the needs and current perceptions of your existing customers, you can begin to decide how you would like the HR department to be perceived.