1. Establish your personal credibility by finishing what you start and follow up on advice.

The trend today is for people to change jobs every 18 months to two years. What often happens in San Antonio human resources is that a new person arrives and makes changes but leaves before the changes have been embedded and measured. The next person comes and makes more changes (often back to the way it was before) but leaves before that change is embedded also.

We are not able to be effective in our practice of managing human resources because change, no matter how large or how small, takes time to embed and often requires more than 18 months. Measuring results will also require time. I believe to become a fully mature human resource professional you need to see change embedded and measured and be willing to stay in your job long enough to see this happen.

A large part of our job is to give advice to managers on what to do in a specific situation. I have noticed many HR professionals willingly give advice when asked for help but never go back to see what the outcome of the advice was and to help the manager with the next steps in the process.

If we check back we may have an opportunity to coach and mentor managers further, and we also have the opportunity to reflect on the effectiveness of our advice and improve our own skills. Our aim should be to become unnecessary to managers as they become competent in people management themselves, not for them to be dependent on us to take charge of their people issues, so never lose an opportunity to coach and mentor by following up on advice.

Longevity in our jobs, following-up and measuring the advice we give is a couple of simple ways to build our credibility.

2. Getting the basics right first and establishing a tool kit of useful aids.

Many times human resource professionals concentrate on the wrong things. Instead of developing tools, policies and processes from the bottom up, they take a top down approach. This involves putting in elaborate performance measurement systems, organizational development strategies, climate surveys etc. when the managers and workforce don't have the basic information or tools they need. To use Maslow's model they are working on the level of self-actualization, esteem, loving and belonging instead of physiological and safety. Get the basics established first and then work up the pyramid to the 'nice to
Start with compliance such as a robust employment agreement, basic health and safety policy, leave management, and a disciplinary policy. Then work through a 'should have' list to a 'nice to have' list thus working from bottom up not top down.

3. Be approachable - a sounding board

In being approachable see yourself as providing a service to managers. This will result in managers knowing the value you can give and see HR as the first point of contact not the place of last resort. Many HR professionals get it wrong and come across as authoritarian.

We all make mistakes, no one is perfect. When an HR professional castigates a manager who has made a mistake they not only lose the manager's respect but any future prospects of those managers returning for advice and support. People learn from their mistakes, so take every opportunity with managers to coach and mentor in order for them to feel confident to seek input into difficult situations before they take action. I have seen managers avoiding asking HR for help in their day to day issues because of their past negative experience.

HR professionals not only need to be approachable and a sounding board but they need to be skilled and knowledgeable in the advice given which means keeping up to date with changes in employment law and case studies relating to such changes. This is achieved by reading court decisions as that is where the interpretation of employment law happens. If you want to be skilled in employment relations, read case studies, attend seminars and be proactive in understanding what is happening in this area.

Be approachable, a sounding board, an expert, in order to establish a solid platform on which to extend the HR function.

4. Know your place in the organization, understand your customers and meet their needs.

I believe HR is a service and in order to deliver an excellent service, HR professionals need to understand how the organization works, the role of management, finance, operations, marketing, sales, etc. and where HR fits in. This understanding is necessary if you want to add value and show the worth of the human resources function. Without this understanding human resources San Antonio is viewed with skepticism and as not adding any value.

In the human resource arena everyone is your customer. Your most important customer and who need to be looked after first are the senior managers. Get to know them and what information and service they want regarding the workforce and the team they are responsible for. Typically the information managers need most is in the area of HR metrics such as headcount, vacancies, skill gaps and plans for filling these. If you have already got a way of reporting meaningful headcount information (not from a financial point of view but from a people point of view) you will get far in being seen as a valuable asset to your organization.

5. Be able to influence managers to ensure congruence between policy and practice.

Oftentimes the policies of an organization are at odds with the espoused strategy. Two examples come to mind. One organization was at the forefront of technology and had a relaxed culture, lounges, casual dress; in other words an environment seen as nurturing the creative process. But they decided productivity wasn't high enough, that there was no sense of urgency, so they changed performance measures and expected these to be accepted by the employees. They were trying to focus on urgency and productivity while providing a relaxed environment. The two are incongruent.

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Direct Mail, when done correctly, produces great results. The problem is that most people don't really understand what direct mail is, and confuse it with plain old mail. Let me briefly explain the difference. Now bear with me; this may seem a bit simplistic but most people actually misunderstand what makes direct mail different from simply mailing out an ad. Consequently, many marketers get poor results from their mailing campaigns. Mail is, well... mail. Mail is simply something that gets sent out to someone. It's as simple as that. It could be a letter, an advertisement or a catalog. You get the idea. But direct mail is a bit different.

Have you ever reflected on why direct mail is called direct mail? Direct mail is called that because it is mail that asks for a direct response. A direct mail piece can be a letter, postcard, door hanger, brochure, or even some kind of unusual attention-getting item. Crafting an effective direct mail piece is an art rather than a science.

Let's discuss the factors that affect the response rate to a direct mail campaign. One of these factors is the quality of the list. Another is the timing of the mailing. (In other words, the time of the week, month, or year that you mail out a piece may affect the response rate.) In addition, response rates will vary with the quality of the creative copy that you send out. What I mean by that, is that all the different components of the copy in your direct mail piece will affect the response rate you get. These components include the headline, the benefits you create, the credibility you create, and even the paper you use. And finally, the offer that's presented will affect the response rate.

For success, it is absolutely critical to track each campaign you run as to list service, timing, list specifics, copy particulars, rate of response and sales generated. Improving each aspect of your campaign can have dramatic effects on your sales growth. Keep in mind that having 100 responses and 2 sales is not nearly as good as having 5 responses and 4 sales. So while the rate of response is good to measure, and it is good to get up as high as possible, the ultimate measures of success are the number of sales and the dollars of sales that are generated by your marketing investment.

Next, let's talk about the components of a well-crafted direct mail piece. It's important that you craft a direct mail piece that addresses the concerns and needs of your recipients. If you want it to be effective, then don't send out a vanilla, yellow page-type ad. (If you open up the yellow pages, you'll see ad after ad of the same message with different company names. Unfortunately, the same thing holds true for many mail pieces.) We often get very vanilla mail pieces. They don't spark any interest or emotion.
An effective direct mail piece should:

1) Be personalized if possible
2) Be crafted as an ad in letter form
3) Address the concerns of the recipient
4) Be stated in terms of benefits rather than features or advantages
5) Highlight the things that set you and your service/product apart
6) Ask for a direct response from the recipient; and
7) Include an incentive to take action now.

Now many of those list items are things that you would normally say are kind of a "no-brainer". They're things that you would obviously address in your marketing piece. Yet piece after piece that I know I receive - and I'm willing to bet you receive - don't have those components in them. Many of the marketing pieces sent out are focused on the products and services someone is trying to sell, rather than on the recipient, their needs, and the benefits that you and your product and service could provide. In addition, most mail pieces that I've seen focus on saving money (which, of course, attracts price-shoppers). So in the rest of this article, we're going to discuss the components in an effective direct mail piece.

The first component we're going to discuss, and one which many people believe to be the most important component of effective sales copy, is the headline. Basically, if the headline doesn't immediately capture the reader's attention, the rest of your copy won't be read. The job of a headline is to capture the reader's attention.

The next step in crafting an effective direct mail piece is to clarify the benefits of what you are offering. It's important to recognize that a person will be most motivated to act when they clearly see what's in it for them. People generally are not motivated by the features of a product/service, or even by the advantages. They're mostly motivated by the benefits that a product or service provides.

There's one more very important step in creating an effective direct mail piece. You need to get them to respond to you. You need a response mechanism, preferably with an incentive for taking immediate action.

The response mechanism would typically be one of four approaches:

1. You want them to call you
2. You want them to come by your office
3. You want them to email you, or
4. You want them to mail back a reply card

You need to be very clear as to what you would like them to do, and you need to have at least one or two mechanisms for them to respond with. Now in conjunction with that call to action, you should incorporate an incentive to prompt them to act sooner than later. That prompting can be related to a certain date or within a certain timeframe. A couple of ways to add an incentive are, for instance, to offer a free gift or a free analysis. You could offer a free report you've developed. What you want to do is give people an incentive to respond to you if they have any interest at all.

So to wrap up, direct mail can be an excellent means of finding new prospects when done correctly. You need to be mindful of your marketing investment. You need to track your expenses, your response rate, your conversion rate, and the sales generated. If you craft a direct mail piece correctly and run consistent campaigns, you can generate a consistent stream of quality prospects.