People must be seen as a company’s greatest asset

Workforce wellbeing should be a company-wide concern that is built into the fabric of the business. Simply offering a gym membership won’t cut it anymore.

diverse business team

What is the measure of success in your company? An improvement in net promoter score? Sustained sales gains? A fertile innovation pipeline? Whatever it is, I would wager that for the majority of you the tools available to help bolster your team’s performance centre on training, workshops and other tried and trusted means that are designed to help your professional development.

For the lucky among you, your personal development needs will be satisfied by an ‘art of leadership’ course, or perhaps a ‘management of team and time’ workshop. All perfectly legitimate. How many employers, however, link wellbeing to performance management?

This is not about gym memberships and bonuses. As important and welcome as they are, creating an environment where the mental and physical health of employees is considered a brand asset is not completely unheard of but it is still a rarity. It is with this in mind we have been focusing on wellbeing this month.

We look at the development of performance management strategies that focus on targeted outcomes while offering people the support to grow and perform. The role of wellbeing in creating a willing band of brand advocates intent on improving the experience of their customers is also tackled.

Creating a culture where people do not feel overwhelmed, where they are able to focus, where they are able to speak out is just as important.

Wellbeing is a company-wide issue. It is as necessary for accountants as it is for human resources executives. The pressure on marketers is particularly acute today. The answer to developing better marketers is not just a Snapchat training course, a lunch-and-learn with an esoterically named startup, or a fast track qualification in SEO. Although all entirely valid, creating a culture where people do not feel overwhelmed, where they are able to focus, where they are able to speak out is just as important.

It is said that marketers should be equally focused on customer, company and sales. For those in leadership positions, I would add people-focused. People are a company’s greatest asset; they need to be seen as such and nurtured accordingly. Doing so will not just attract and retain talent in a very competitive market, but will also improve brand performance.

Meanwhile, agile marketing is discussed in our report of a roundtable we recently hosted in partnership with Workfront. More specifically, we debate the culture, structure and environment that enables marketers to navigate the vagaries of modern marketing – where there are more tools of execution, more demanding customers and more real-time options that can only in part be handled by automation.

Editing Marketing Week is always an education but folding the latest thinking on positioning, brand architecture or segmentation into my working day is limited by virtue of the fact that my day job is journalism. This issue, however, provides plenty of inspiration. I hope you get as much from it as I did.

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