Do we belong in HR or marketing … or somewhere else?

Last week, Steve Crescenzo’s RR front-page column asked a loaded question: If you had to choose marketing or HR, which would you rather report to. Plenty of RR readers had opinions:

Howard Krais, ICB Consulting Limited, United Kingdom: I read through Steve Crescenzo’s latest front-page column, “Where do we belong?” with interest.

As Steve says, this is an issue that appears to have been out there for so long, and in my judgment over the past few years we have seen too many communicators spending too much time trying to work out the answer.

This is an interesting issue for your friend: HR or Marketing? My experience working full time at Eversheds LLP, a large UK law firm, over the past five years or so before joining the communications consultancy trail, and indeed before that at Adecco, the huge recruitment company, as their first UK communicator, has been very interesting.

On both occasions I was placed in marketing, on both occasions this became more and more of an issue, and on both occasions I forged close ties with the HR department.