How Can Marketing and HR Intersect Strategically?

Episode 2

Discover how marketing and HR can become highly compatible departments and establish overlapping objectives and goals.

Guest

Scott Carr

About the Guest

Meet Scott Carr, Director of Marketing Communications @ Stukent Scott's expertise in brand strategy blends business development concepts with proven marketing tactics to further Stukent's mission to help educators help students help the world. Prior to joining the Stukent team, Scott held several leadership roles in marketing and brand management at consumer goods companies such as Malouf, iFIT, and Melaleuca. Scott earned an MBA from Idaho State University and a BA from BYU. Outside of work, he cherishes his many adventures with his wife and their two children.

Summary

How Can Culture Drive Greater Profits

Crista Vance: “Throughout your career, you’ve been in marketing and PR, you’ve been a people leader, and now at Stukent, you’re doing it all. From your experience, how have you seen company culture drive greater profits?”

Scott Carr: “A great question. I wish it was a question that more people provided answers to because, especially in the world of marketing or PR. A lot of financial leaders will view [HR functions} as cost centers of the business rather than growth generating centers of the business, and in partnership with, with HR and with employee experience, company culture is a part of the brand regardless of how you look at it in my opinion. Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder, is famous for saying, ‘What is branding? Branding is what people are saying about you when you’re not in the room.’ “

“The essence of who we are, as a company, or a brand, is what other people are saying about us. And so managing that reputation, or that brand, across multiple platforms is so important. And so when you talk about company culture and how does it grow profits, well, some of my personal experiences as I’ve worked with organizations who had great company culture and not-so-great company culture. The employee engagement is palpable; you can see it, you can feel it when employees are engaged in, what the company is doing, and if there’s a shared mission or vision behind what they’re doing. “

“Social media marketing is one of the areas that I’m responsible for here at Stukent, and as I compare employee engagement on social media at Stukent compared to previous companies I’ve worked for, on average, there’s about a 50% increase in employees sharing about the mission of the company. Not just, ‘Hey, I work at this cool company, and they provide cereal in the break room for free.’ “

“That’s cool. But these are posts that say, ‘Hey, I’m working for this company, and I’m making a difference in the lives of these students who are then going on and changing the world.” And so it’s a different, deeper level of employee engagement. That is surely leading to profit growth because we all know the stats about employee turnover and employee disengagement and how that’s a real cost to companies. And talking about turnover, turnover at Stukent is less than 5%. It’s three and a half percent on average, month to month, which is great. And we’re a Software As A Service company, and for other Software As A Service companies, the industry average is close to 20%.”

How Can Marketing Teams Intersect Strategically With HR Teams

Crista Vance: “I hear you’re coordinating with HR as well with marketing. That’s an interesting crossover. So how do you feel they can intersect strategically, both HR teams and marketing? And what does that look like at Stukent?

Scott Carr: “I think marketing and HR are highly compatible departments and have a lot of overlapping objectives and goals. As we look at Stukent, we’ve overlapped those things. The first example that comes to my mind is our website. So, we spend a lot of time and energy on improving messaging on our website and making it the most persuasive and engaging. Go to our careers page; this is a project that we just updated about six months ago to really put our best foot forward when there are new applicants looking and considering a job opportunity with Stukent. So, that’s an example of a project that is run by HR but heavily influenced by marketing because we’re the ones that are creating that asset, right? And so, there’s a lot of opportunity like that, especially as we’re sharing job postings and everything’s on social media, or we’re contemplating our blog strategy.

Matt Vance: It’s interesting because [the careers page] can be a showcasing piece, right? You may have customers who are looking at how you speak to and treat employees and job candidates and vice versa. You can have job candidates and employees that are seeing how you treat customers and potential clients. You need to be mindful that other stakeholders are observing. They’re watching your performance you’re on stage.

Scott Carr: Matt, I really like you talking about the stakeholders of the business. That’s a phrase that I love when we’re talking about company culture and branding overall. The experience of every single stakeholder within the company, or the influence of the company, needs to be considered, and it can’t just be about the financial success of the company. You have to take into consideration employees and their families, their neighbors, and the community as a whole. We want to take each of them into consideration as we’re, making progress and putting out messaging moving forward.

How a company mission really drives engagement and performance

Matt Vance: “Do you have any more examples or personal stories about how a mission really drives engagement and performance?”

Scott Carr: “I would say I’ve worked at four companies in my career, and I kind of split it down in the middle to say two or maybe mission-driven. And two, we’re very much profit-driven, and the mission was secondary. As I compare my experience there and my interactions with my co-workers, the joy of coming to work and contributing is so much stronger at the companies that are mission-driven.”

“Entrepreneurship is awesome. I am a capitalist business person, but I will say there’s an aspect of conscious capitalism that is very inspiring to me and that I’ve seen inspire large groups of people. And that is when we collectively use all of our skill sets together to further a monumental change in the world, and I think that’s what gets me really excited to get out of bed.”

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Matt Vance: Hello and welcome to the culture profit. Podcast. I’m Your Co-host Crista Vance, and I’m Your Co-host, Matt Vance, The Culture Profit Podcast Series obsessed with one question. How can Culture drive greater profits? Today we’re excited to chat with Scott, Carr Director of Marketing Communications at Stukens, a digital courseware provider servicing over 5,000 collegiate and high school institutions, including UCLA BYU and Oxford. Say Hello Scott.
Scott Carr: How’s it going? Thanks for having me Crista and Matt. Thank you.
Matt Vance: That works for you. We’re excited that you’re here with us Scott and we’ll go ahead and get to know you a little bit more. I’ve got this little intro will read. So Scott Carr is the director of Marketing Communications for Edtech Innovar Stukend. Scott’s experience in brand strategy, blends business development concepts with proven marketing tactics to further students to help educators help students help the world prior to joining Stukent or prior to joining the Stucan team. Scott held several leadership roles in marketing and brand management at consumer goods companies, such as Malouf Ifit and Melaleuca. Scott earned an NBA from Idaho State University and a BA from BYU outside of work. He cherishes the many adventures, he has with his wife and their two children,
Matt Vance: So thanks again for being here. So before we kind of jump into things, I’ve got a get to know you question. You’re an incredibly accomplished professional Scott? That could work anywhere. So why are you working at Stukens and Idaho Falls? Idaho of all places.
Scott Carr: Families. Yeah, thank you. You know, so you can see an amazing thing. Yeah, I’ve always loved education. I’ve, you know, made that a part of my life as I’ve grown up and learned and I know education can come through formal means, but also informal means and as I’ve studied student, followed it throughout the years, it’s been incorporated for 10 years now. I was just inspired by the mission and what students were doing . I previously at a previous employer, working together with the founder and CEO of students. So I’ve stayed in contact with him over the years and always been really impressed, but the mission of helping educators help students help the world. As I look at what you can’t offer it. It makes me say, I wish I had that when I was in school, I wish that I learned those things when I was in college and I can’t do that and I can’t go back. But what I can do is influence,
Scott Carr: What somebody who’s maybe 12 years behind me is thinking and hoping so they can prepare better for the workforce and for an industry that is quickly evolving because marketing today is far different than what marketing was five years ago or 10 years ago. And so that’s what I’m here at Stu Kent Idaho Falls. I’m an Idaho boy. So the Western side of the state, much different than the eastern side of the state but I still have Idaho roots so that’s why I’m here.
Matt Vance: So Idaho Root, so you grew up in Boise. Is that right? Okay, so almost like being a city boy in the potato farm or…
Scott Carr: Correct.
Matt Vance: The Potato Farm State, I guess, you could. I thought Idaho Greece was potatoes.
Scott Carr: Exactly. Yeah, it’s true. It’s true. That’s definitely eastern Idaho. Yeah, so I’m from West Idaho Boise. I mean, it’s not a big city by any means, but it’s definitely more metropolitan than what Idaho Falls is. And so, I’ve learned a lot over the last few months. As I’ve lived here in Idaho Falls, I’ve learned how to plow with the blade on. I’ve learned the rules and regulations of water, irrigation and water rights. And it keeps me on my toes. So I’m excited to be here learning anything.
Matt Vance: That’s amazing. Well, that definitely is impressive. And, you know, it may sound like some watered-down skills to figure all that stuff out, but you got to be sharp to know your stuff in the agricultural industry. So that’s impressive. Scott. So, I’m Yeah.
Scott Carr: Thank you. Thanks for throwing in some dad jokes too, Matt. I appreciate that.
Matt Vance: Yeah, sometimes it’s a dry sense of humor but not today. I guess a little bit more water down.
00:05:00
Matt Vance: So, tell me before we kind of move on to some of our primary questions here, tell me just a little bit more about Stupid. And who is their target audience? Like who’s using stukend?
Scott Carr: Yeah, yeah, so you can’t be used by professors mostly so professors of business marketing, or communication, and their students. So if you can put yourself in the, the mindset that you’re a student of social media, marketing, digital marketing, maybe public speaking, we have over four different courses that we offer and it’s a simulated internship or a sim internship, is the brand name that we use to share what it is that we do. So, we have a simulated environment where the students get in and they practice what they’re actually going to do, when they’re at their job, one or two right out of college. So it gives them real world experience. It allows them to interact with the supervisor, in a simulated environment. They have co-workers, they have different assignments that they get, and then it’s all kind of auto-graded and run in the background. So it doesn’t add workload to the professor. It just en
Scott Carr: Is the courseware that they’re already providing to their students?
Matt Vance: That’s pretty awesome. Yeah, that is something that I wish I had,…
Scott Carr: Yeah.
Matt Vance: like you said, that’s very selfless of you to want to give back something that you didn’t have yourself. I think.
Scott Carr: Well, thank you. Yeah. It’s a really brilliant product and you know, there’s a need for it and higher education is constantly being viewed out of, you know, students are making a financial decision, as their way in this out, as they’re considering their future career. Like, Do they need a four-year degree in order to, you know, receive the type of job that they’re wanting to do? And so I feel like you can’t and what we’re providing is allowing, you know, professors and higher education to continue to be a better option for students who are wanting to learn specific skills in specific industries and it really rounds out the experience. So it’s not just an academic or theory-based education but actually as hands-on practical application as well.
Matt Vance: Yeah, that rule real world’s application is huge and and I think like you said, I think the higher education role has changed a lot especially since covid and yeah that were real world experiences so necessary to to stand out.
Scott Carr: Yeah.
Matt Vance: I think that’s awesome.
Scott Carr: It is.
Matt Vance: Yeah, so throughout your career, you’ve been in marketing and PR, you’ve been a people leader and now at stuttant, you’re doing it all from your experience, how have you seen company culture drive greater profits?
Scott Carr: A great question. I wish it was a question that more people provided answers to because, especially in the world of marketing or PR. A lot of financial leaders will view those as cost centers of the business rather than growth generating centers of the business and in partnership with, with HR and with employee experience, like company culture is a part of the brand regardless of how you look at it in my opinion. So Jeff Bezos. The Amazon founder is famous for saying, What is branding branding is what people are saying about you when you’re not in the room. So, from a marketing perspective, we can say things about ourselves all day.
Scott Carr: But the essence of who we are, as a company, or a brand, is what other people are saying about us. And so managing that reputation, or that brand across multiple platforms is so important. And so when you talk about a company culture and how it profits, well, some of my own personal experiences as I’ve worked with organizations who had great company culture and not so great company culture. The employee engagement is palpable, you can see it, you can feel it when employees are engaged in, what the company is doing and if there’s a shared mission or vision behind what they’re doing. And so as I look at some of the past organizations that I’ve worked for that were maybe more generated by bottom line, profits, or shareholder value. It was a much different culture than those who are, you know, bought into this vision. And this is what we have at Stuart Canada’s vision of what we can change education to be, or how we can improve the world to be a better place.
Scott Carr: And that’s what inspires me as an individual, it inspires a lot of other employees and some metrics that I’ve found. So social media marketing is one of the areas that I’m responsible for here at Stu Kent and as I compare employee engagement on social media to students compared to previous and companies I’ve worked for on average. There’s about a 50% increase in employees sharing about the mission of the company, not just that. Hey I work at this cool company and they provide
00:10:00
Scott Carr: Cereal in the Break Room for free. That’s cool. But like these are, these are posts that, Hey, I’m working for this company and I’m making a difference in the lives of these students who are then going on and changing the world in whatever format they choose. And so it’s a different deeper level of employee engagement. That is surely leading to profit growth because we all know the stats about employee turnover and employee disengagement. And how that’s a real cost to companies and talking about turnover to turn over at Stew Camp. For example, less than 5% is, it’s three and…
Matt Vance: Amazing.
Scott Carr: a half percent on average month to month, which is, which is great. And we’re a software as a service company and other software. As a service company, the industry average is close to 20. So the fact that we have an employee group who’s dedicated and, you know, has a shared vision of what we’re doing, but that we’re investing in. Company culture is making a difference financially for the company as well.
Matt Vance: That really is amazing. You know, I don’t think I thought of measuring the frequency and quality of employee posts across social media, as a way to gauge engagement. But I think that’s really smart and very intuitive because it’s an organic metric, it’s something that’s happening on its own, and from some of the research I’ve done with LinkedIn sharing. Specifically, employees are believed three times more than anything,…
Scott Carr: I don’t know.
Matt Vance: a leader can say because they’re, you know, more less less biased, right? The leadership always has to say what they have to say because they’re public figures of a company.
Scott Carr: Yeah.
Matt Vance: But it’s a, you know, the rest of the team, their voice, their perspective, that Carrie is more weight, it’s more of a peer-to-peer sharing of feelings and sentiment online. So I think that’s really neat.
Matt Vance: That’s gonna be so much more believable to anyone on the outside.
Scott Carr: Right.
Matt Vance: Looking at Stucunt, somebody who’s working there and just experiencing it for themselves rather than the company itself talking about it, right?
Scott Carr: Kept totally Yeah but I know you two are experts in the The Review field. And so yeah, similar benefits that we’re seeing with user generated content of employees, sharing their experiences, very similar to an employee sharing, you know, their experience on glass doors for example and, and how that benefits the company.
Matt Vance: Yeah, it seems like what students doing with really having that intrinsic mission is, is more valuable than any of those smaller perks that companies often talk about, right? Like he’s mentioned the cereal to break room and just other little things like that, they aren’t as meaningful and long-term as something like a mission and, and having values like that. So it seems like that really motivates
Scott Carr: Yeah, and I should say, we still have cereal in the break room here…
Matt Vance: Yeah, both of them.
Scott Carr: but it’s not,…
Scott Carr: It’s not the most important thing. We actually got both of them. Yeah.
Matt Vance: That’s awesome,…
Matt Vance: even better. So okay, so from your experience and you let’s see. So you’re also coordinating, you. I hear your coordinating with HR as well with marketing. So that’s an interesting crossover. So how, how do you feel they can intersect strategically with HR teams and marketing. And what does that look like at Stuttant?
Scott Carr: Yeah. Yeah, I think marketing and HR are highly compatible departments and have a lot of overlapping objectives and…
Matt Vance: The Japanese people. It’s just
Scott Carr: goals. And so as we look at how at Stu can’t we’ve overlapped, those things. The first example that comes to my mind is our website. So, we spend a lot of time and energy on improving messaging on our website branding on our website,…
Matt Vance: something.
Scott Carr: and making it the most persuasive and engaging. And so, as you go to our careers page,…
Matt Vance: Yeah.
Scott Carr: you know, this is a project that we just updated about six months ago, to really put our best foot forward, when there’s new applicants looking and considering, you know, a job opportunity with students. So, that’s an example of a project that is run by HR but heavily influenced by marketing, because we’re the ones that are creating that asset, right? And so, there’s a lot of opportunity like that, especially, you know, as we’re sharing job postings and everything’s on social media, or
Scott Carr: Or were contemplating our blog strategy of, you know, how often are we going to cadence things that are specifically for professors versus students versus potential employees? And taking all those things into consideration with our communication plan, another area would be mentioned about reviews. And that’s, that’s an area that as a marketing team, we feel like we can add assistance for for writing and for designing you know, email invitations to be sent out different things like that just to improve the overall branded experience and consumer experience that HR is trying to get internally marketing is trying to get externally and we’re trying to blend those things where marketing is really good. HR is really good at something and we can learn from each other in that process too.
00:15:00
Matt Vance: Synergy that comes from work, those two groups working together. And one thing that’s kind of interesting to me is, you know, you talked about the marketing team helping with the career page for example, like, That’s a sharing of expertise in marketing, but it’s being applied to the use case of HR’s need to attract job seekers. And it’s interesting because that can be a showcasing piece, right? Because you may have customers who are looking at how you speak to and treat employees, and job candidates and vice versa. You can have job candidates and employees that are seeing how you treat customers and potential clients and you know, maybe universities and professors that you’re trying to work with and even though you kind of stay in your lane so to speak with some of those projects and objectives, you need to be mindful that other stakeholders are observing. They’re watching you perform on stage.
Matt Vance: When you’re completing those projects, especially when they’re public facing. And so there’s definitely some benefits from working together and collaborating from the marketing and…
Scott Carr: Recently.
Matt Vance: HR side. I think that’s awesome. I think there’s probably a very different perspective that each side brings to the marketing site. You’re obviously your expertise is more focused on strategic content and the wording and and how things are displayed and hrs. They’re more people focused, right? And so I think together you make a great team and you put out the best product, right?
Scott Carr: Yeah, yeah. And without that collaboration and coordination, we wouldn’t put out the best product because we would be, you know, solely focused on maybe where we tend to think or, you know what we’re comfortable with. And so being able to broaden that horizon and add more diversity into the thought process in the building together, brings a better product in the end. Matt, I really like you talking about stakeholders of the business and I think that’s it. That’s a phrase that I love in when we’re talking about company culture and branding overall, is that the the experience of every single stakeholder within the company, or the influence of the company needs to be considered and it can’t just be about financial success of the company because you got to take into consideration employees and their families. Their neighbors, the community as a whole that you live and reside in then you.
Scott Carr: Your customer is utilizing it and how’s it influencing their life and decisions? And so there’s so many different people that are in that kind of sphere of influence. And so we want to take each of them into consideration as we’re, you know, making progress and putting out messaging moving forward.
Matt Vance: So smart and I agree with that entire list of stakeholders that you mentioned Scott. I’ve also seen the financial industry investors take specific interest in what content is published online. Specifically UGC reviews, reviews are an interesting piece of user-generated content because every review that’s submitted also has a star rating attached to it. That impacts a lifelong star rating. And that’s an aggregation of the voice of all people sharing about a product, a company or an employer. And so like you guys that, you know, stukin is doing an awesome job, providing this mission to the world and to the employees to connect to and they’re sharing about it across social media. And the more, as they share employee reviews, those pieces of content will impact the ratings for the life of the company, which is definitely pretty cool.
Matt Vance: Um, yeah,…
Scott Carr: Yeah.
Matt Vance: So we got one more question for you, Scott. So in your career you’ve worked for companies that heavily focused on improving the world in one way or…
Scott Carr: Okay.
00:20:00
Matt Vance: another for companies. And you’ve also worked for companies that don’t have that focus. How have you seen employee engagement impacted by a company mission or lack thereof? I know you talked about this a little bit before, but do you have any more examples or personal stories about how a mission really drives engagement and performance?
Scott Carr: Yeah, yeah, I think the biggest theme that kind of sticks out to me with that. The question is kind of the buy-in or the excitement of individuals at work. So, I would say I’ve worked at four companies in my career and I kind of split it down in the middle to say two or maybe mission driven. And two, we’re very much profit driven and the mission was secondary. As I compare my experience there and my interactions with my co-workers, like the joy of coming to work and contributing is so much stronger at the companies that our mission driven, in my opinion, you know, there’s something to be said about coming, working learning doing your best and then that money going to the owners new Mercedes-Benz. For example, that is made versus me doing all the same things as doing previously.
Scott Carr: Be working, my hardest learning growing as an individual and as a professional. But knowing that the prophets that are used, are doing something beyond just driving for more wealth within the ownership right now. Wealth generations. Great entrepreneurship is awesome. Like me, I am a capitalist business person but I will say there’s an aspect of conscious capitalism that is very inspiring to me and that I’ve seen inspire large groups of people. And that is when we collectively use all of our skill sets together to further,
Scott Carr: A monumental change in the world and I think that’s what gets me really excited to get out of bed. And to come to work, each day is to know that the work and the skills that I have to contribute are going to benefit somebody, besides just myself or just my boss for example. And I think that’s kind of the key that I’ve seen as a difference and and having a shared vision and mission is maybe the catalyst to get everybody marching and singing the same tune.
Matt Vance: Oh, that’s amazing. When I’m hearing it, it’s great to have a mission, right? But a lot of companies have a mission. You can find it somewhere on their website, but some companies are driven by their mission and it’s reflected in where the money goes and how people are treated. And just the overall feeling that the company has and the things that the way that even the employees act and, or you can have a company who has a mission, but it like you said, it’s just kind of in the background. It’s not something that they’re actually really. Implementing is just it exists, right? So, to really have the effects of that engagement,…
Scott Carr: Right.
Matt Vance: where people fill the value of the mission, it has to be a mission driven company reflected in everything.
Matt Vance: I would just add to that. That I totally agree, I’ve lived. In both of those environments from a work you know work history experience and it really makes a huge difference. Everyone can feel that mission embedded into everything that they do and that definitely opens up a desire to work harder and…
Scott Carr: Here we won’t.
Matt Vance: do more contribute, your ideas and do your best work so I think that’s awesome. But anything else you’d like to add to Scott walk before we wrap up?
Scott Carr: Oh, thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to listen to future episodes of this podcast because I think it’s an awesome topic that is probably not getting discussed enough. And I think as we’ve helped kind of collectively realize that there’s great benefits to having a people first business that more people will be treated well and hopefully overall happiness just improves.
Matt Vance: Definitely well, thank you for that and thanks so much for being on our podcast today. Your experience and your insights were so valuable I’m sure listeners will find that for sure. And just yeah, today’s thanks to everybody who listens in and we’ll see you next time. Thanks Scott.
Scott Carr: Thanks, thank you.