2. Introduction
⊳ When HR professionals talk about customers, they’re usually referring to internal
customers - employees.
⊳ Being ‘Business oriented' for HR in any organization means keeping the end
customer in mind while taking care of the employees who are the internal customers.
⊳ A new wave of savvy HR executives are working with external customers to inform
or create practices that help reward, train and retain employees (Internal customers).
⊳ Companies that push the envelope by building processes and polices that are
customer-centric give themselves a distinct competitive advantage in a competitive
market.
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3. Customer-centric HR: Putting Your
Employees First
⊳ Today, employees expect the same level of service, care and 'rights' as the
organization’s customers do.
⊳ Improve employee experience in a way that drives performance
⊳ Focus on what employees value: Don’t just ask employees what they want or
worse still, assume what they want. Rather, listen to what they need so you can
determine what they value. Create employee personas and use new technology
and tools to collect data on where employees work, who they work with, and
when they work to truly understand their work day and experiences. Supporting
what employees value, not just what they need, increases employee performance
by 20%.
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4. Customer-centric HR: Putting Your
Employees First
⊳ Focus on decreasing employee effort: Don’t think simply about improving
quality and functionality. Identify places where employees spend a lot of time and
effort, deconstruct those critical moments to determine how to make it easier for
them at moments that really count.
⊳ Develop short-term iterative projects: Don’t just target immediate pain points
by undertaking long-term projects meant to produce Big Bang one-and-done
solutions. Iteration is key. Notably, the most downloaded apps in the app store are
also the ones most frequently updated. The best apps stay modern and constantly
iterate the user experience. HR process and solutions need to do the same.
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5. Action Plan: Improving Human
Resources Outside-In
⊳ Before pursuing a customer-centric HR strategy, make sure it fits your organizational
culture.
⊳ If the culture is ready, then think about what customers you want to target and what
you want to achieve. “Consumers are overloaded, and HR has to be innovative and
selective about how you engage your customers and what you want from that
engagement.
⊳ Organizations should focus on outcomes rather than output. Output refers to the
number of pieces produced/calls made but outcome is about the impact created in a
customer's life.
⊳ Keep outcome at the center and output will follow.
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6. Action Plan Cont..
⊳ HR professionals also need to make sure that when customers come into help, they
feel valued. It’s a big time commitment for customers for not much return in
traditional terms.
⊳ Find people passionate about improving the quality of service at your organization.
⊳ Find those customers, engage them and really listen to them. You have to partner
with them.
⊳ Get customer insight on making the next product better or the service more efficient.
The answers will lead to specific ways to improve employee behavior.
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