Three ways marketers can help HR keep employees engaged—and why they should

According to Gallup, “A staggering 87 percent of employees worldwide are not engaged. Many companies are experiencing a crisis of engagement and aren’t aware of it.” Many marketers might see employee engagement as a human resources problem, but there are steps that marketing departments can take to help with employee engagement and retention. Why bother when it’s not in your job description? Given that news of low morale and high turnover can drastically overshadow positive brand messages—and all of your hard work—it’s worth marketers’ time to invest in employee engagement, too.

Here are three ways to support human resources’ efforts in this area:

1. Involve employees in marketing decisions

Letting employees have a say in marketing efforts is a great way to help them feel involved and heard. When crafting campaigns and deciding between directions, run a survey where employees can vote on the direction they like best. When revamping a logo or website, let employees weigh in on what attributes they think should shine through. Or request their ideas for your content marketing program.

2. Interrupt your regularly scheduled programming to spotlight team members

At the heart of any brand is its people, which is why it’s important to allocate marketing resources to spotlighting their great contributions. Create short videos for use on your website with employees talking about what they do at the company or why they like working there. Write a blog series that highlights a different individual or team each month. Celebrate work anniversaries on the company intranet or social media pages.

3. Put some razzle on the HR dazzle

It’s your job to make the company or organization look good to the outside world, but how about making it look good to employees, too? Help HR by creating professional flyers for companywide programs or contests. Create and manage an internal Facebook Group for employees where you post about employee successes and milestones. Brand recruitment incentive or employee reward programs like you would any customer-facing program—and if HR doesn’t have those programs, gather your gaggle of creatives and help brainstorm some ways to reward employees for great work. Then create posters for the bathroom stalls, table toppers for the lunchroom, or shareables for social media to promote programs and, ultimately, help employees feel more recognized and engaged.