Citibank Australia increased their customer engagement and loyalty by creating a dining program where they partnered with Fairfax to offer their customers a free bottle of wine when they dined at participating restaurants. Citibank noticed that, regardless of budget, their customers tend to eat out often. So what did they do? Create a partnership that would add value to their current offerings and show their customers they care and understand some of their important needs. What does any of this have to do with HR or Recruiting?

Whether interdepartmental partnerships or external partnerships working cross-functionally can increase the ROI of HR & recruiting. Maybe its partnering with your Marketing department or an outside service to write better job descriptions that express company culture and attract the best qualified talent. It could be partnering with a brewing company to have company wide events that increase employee engagement (very important) or to put on recruiting events for your candidates to get familiar with the types of positions you are hiring for. Either way partnerships are mutually beneficial and significantly increase engagement with your employees, clients, and potential new hires.

Of course its great to have company perks and benefits, but even more alluring is having partnerships with companies that access another part of your employees or potential hires’ lives. People want to feel like they are understood as a whole person, not just an employee for a company or a job seeker. Work-life balance, work-life integration, these are things that people care about. Partnering with other companies and organizations is one way to solidify your commitment to work-life integration and show that you understand the whole person, not just the one part of them that is the employee or potential employee.

HR Tech is this week and it’s a great conference for networking, exchanging ideas, and seeing what other similar companies and like-minded people are doing. It’s also a great way to build some partnerships and think of strategies to increase engagement whether you’re an HR department or a Recruiting firm. Maybe you come into contact with someone from an organization that has an offering you don’t and they are missing something your company has, time to partner up to increase brand visibility and engagement.

Long story short: it’s all about the partnerships, baby! Use HR Tech as a catalyst to get started on your partnership-building and adding value to your employees, clients, and customers' lives. HR and Recruiting is about so much more than just jobs and employee retention, it’s about finding ways to integrate work life into individual lives. Make sure the value is mutual and don’t be shy!

[Recruiterbox CEO, Raj, will be at HR Tech so tell him Hello and that Teju sent you ;p]