The future for Employer Branding – maybe
What follows is a response I wrote to a “discussion” that came from a question raised on a LinkedIn Group on Employer Branding (I scaled down the response on LinkedIn though – I generally see that environment as more about questions & answers than a forum for debate). The question was posted asking (basically) if anyone within the Employer Branding Group had any research on the measurable effects of an employer brand on an organisation’s bottom line. Steve White (from TMP) thought his Head of Planning & Research had some work on it, but as of writing this post other examples weren’t exactly forthcoming, which got me writing about my personal experience, opinion and hopes for the evolution of Brand as a single entity in the emerging hyper-connected world:
Recruitment and employment experiences touch a person more directly and intimately than any other channel of communication – that is surely an incontrovertible fact. It still blows my mind that organisations who pump millions into marketing and branding haven’t cottoned onto this and invested accordingly in their Employer Brand – instead leaving it to generalist HR departments to try their best to understand, establish and promote with their ever shrinking resource and broad remit, viewed (as I generally believe they are) as a business necessity but all the same pretty much just an operating cost (despite the glib “people are our greatest asset” statements that seem to spew forth with regularity from CEO annual statements).
If TMP’s Head of P&R does indeed have such research then I applaud them for nailing it down and following it through. I’ve always been amazed that those companies who actually do invest in significant Employer Branding activities seem to stop short of the ongoing investment to comprehensively track the fundamental effect and returns of their efforts. Even long served recruitment industry Employer Branding experts I’ve listened to and spoken with seem to never have delivered the complete circular service to prove actual ongoing ROI measurement – which I think if you were to start now with current tracking & measurement technologies and a broad enough remit and reach would be quite startling and incredibly compelling.
One of the contributors to the LinkedIn discussion mentioned that some published research done by Tesco discovered the difference in sales volume between stores with high and low levels of engagement (although it wasn’t stated how that was qualified though) was no less than 36%. Whatever the specifics of that research piece a few years back I produced a site for Tesco (HR) and their driving force was pretty much to keep the price as low as possible – so I wonder at what point Marketing departments start to realise how powerful the employment and recruitment experience is as a key brand influencer and appreciate the opportunity that is quite literally right under their noses to manage and leverage accordingly.
Recruitment Advertising has for so long played the role of being the poor relation of “proper” Advertising and Marketing Communications and perhaps it’s a form of snobbery that prevents businesses Marketing Departments looking into themselves rather than at “sexy” external reach campaigns, but as Social Media continues to bring conversations online (and therefore eminently more broadly influential and at the same time trackable) maybe the day when Marketeers get to understand the influencing power that many brands have available through their own workforce and recruitment activity is finally approaching.
So I too hope that Steve White opens up whatever research TMP may have in a web2.0 collaborative style – maybe it’ll give renewed impetus to unlocking a greater appreciation of what a brand is all about: an enmeshed product and employer entity that is as much individual and peer conveyed experience & perception as it is straplines, PR and marketing cleverness.
Of course with greater attention from Marketing and the budgets they carry then the face of HR would change from being what is effectively IMHO&E a ‘department of doing’ to being a key group of specialists within a newly created division called Engagement. Engagement would be headed by a C level representative who truly understands (and critically can illustrate) the £s & pence effect to the businesses bottom line of really treating “people as our greatest asset”– creating a business that in this highly connected world truly embraces the full power of people engagement right across the communications spectrum.
Hey – why not start the year with some near hallucinatory day dreaming and far reaching predictions. Seems to be the thing that breaks bloggers back into the new year.
Nice Post Alex!
Unfortunately I think alot of this will stay in Utopia, which is a real shame. HR are by their nature generalists, and very few organisations seem to have the balls (and vision) to split out some of the functions that could be better served by other people. The employer brand piece is a perfect example of this, as is the recruiting function. These are both specialist roles and need specialist knowledge, but are still intrinsically linked to the people side of the business – HR or Human Capital (if you are being poncy!)
When was the last time you actually had Marketing talking to HR or vica versa? It very rarely happens because there is mutual distrust there between the two functions. An example would be on career sites. Where is the best place to put the career/ job page links on the main corporate website? At the top of course…….but the helpful marketing departments don’t often allow this because it is “selling space” and therefore perceived to be valuable real estate!!
They don’t seem to realise the value of recruitment, and bringing in the best talent into the business. If they did, then they wouldn’t even argue!! But they would be the first to complain if HR weren’t delivering them quality candidates when they needed to recruit!
So employment branding HAS to have the buy-in from all parts of the business with people managing it, that actually understand its value. All the time there is in-house posturing then it just won’t happen!!
Comment by Andy Headworth — January 9, 2009 @ 11:28 am
I hear you – and I know that’s always been the case – but to quote some curly headed bloke who I’ve never thought could sing – “Times, they are a changing”.
In the past it’s been all too easy to ignore the effect of an Employer Brand on your Product Brand (and indeed vice versa) – or indeed far too difficult to really pick up on it let alone track the effect of it. Now (and increasingly so) by plugging into the groundswell (as the Marketing department are having to do to at last put some deep quant analysis into their ROI) they’ll become aware of the EB related noise out there and the part it plays in peoples’ perceptions (what I like to call the Living Employer Brand). And once on the Marketing Departments radar they’ll soon start paying attention and realising this is too important for them not be influencing and / or leveraging.
They’re doing it now in some small way – they’re just probably not aware of what it is they’re doing. One would think that Argos Marketing / PR was at least aware of last years Facebook sacking debacle, certainly by the time it ran in the UKs biggest selling paper (http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article263447.ece). Did it negatively impact the product brand – probably not in this case (although ironically I think it would have the employer brand) – but this is what I mean about the need today and tomorrow for joined up management of Engagement across a company.
I think for the vast majority of companies the two brand elements are intrinsically linked, and as soon as that penny drops (maybe by a Marketing Department making work for themselves in a “quieter” period?) then don’t you think that there’ll be someone in Marketing who’ll want to take control of that aspect of their Brand too? Especially as they increasingly realise that their Brand is not actually theirs to control at all but rather something that the public owns and something they in the main just influence (a very web2.0 debate that one I give you). So smart companies, understanding just how much they need to exploit every possible engagement touch point to positively influence the public’s perception of their Brand, will realise that they actually can’t afford to leave EB as the muse of a stretched HR function. Then we’ll see some home page space for careers promotion – and I think a significant increase investment in what EB is really all about: people.
Of course there’s always the perspective that I’m just a deluded Utopian fool and businesses will simply keep being all short term focussed, in these economic climes as much as at any other – but what can I say: I like my side of the fence
Comment by Alex — February 5, 2009 @ 10:03 am
This was a really insightful piece to me, crystalizing what I think I intuitively knew (as a marketer, and as an employee) but hadn’t articulated. Your angle on recruitment and what I’d probably call the “onboarding” process is dead on; companies not only need to consider reputation management and brand strategy as it pertains to their target consumption audiences–but also to attracting, cultivating, and building strong teams that embody the brand. Word gets out to the street, and that’s where the “potential consumer” and “potential recruit” lines can blur. Thanks for leading me here! Heather Rast
Comment by Heather Rast — February 6, 2009 @ 5:07 am
Hi Alex, I think you’re right on track here. It’s difficult for most businesses to relate the tangible face of their product brand to an employment experience (and for those with no public face, it’s much worse). The massive investment in creating niche markets within a customer base to date hasn’t realy focused on what seems an obvious truth – your customers are also potential employees and referrers. In a study in Australia, books superchain Borders found that the top 20% of in-store owrkers had enjoyed a store experience good enough to make them work for the chain. An unforseen product of the consumer relationship, but it worked for them!
If you’re not investing in your people, how can you plan for the future?
Comment by Jared Woods — February 15, 2009 @ 9:28 pm
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Pingback by 3D MarComms » The best Employer Branding presentation I’ve ever seen. — February 16, 2009 @ 1:56 pm
Hi Alex,
Intriguing post!
I was especially caught by the idea that the employer brand (what it’s like to work here) has gotten elided into the product brand/corporate brand (what we provide customers/who ‘we’ are) without people really paying attention to whether or not they ought to fit together, and how.
Maybe it’s because I’m a little behind think in terms of how people are thinking about the employer brand, and adding more to it than the characterization of ‘what it’s like to work here’.
— Do you think that most HR people talking about employer branding are incorporating the organiztion’s identity, its reputation beyond the work enviroment, and other elements? I’d love your thoguhts on this.
CV Harquail http://www.AuthenticOrganizations.come
Comment by CV Harquail — February 19, 2009 @ 4:17 pm
Thanks for the comment CV – nice to hear from you.
I think, unfortunately, that it’s symptomatic of general business practice that despite rhetoric otherwise businesses/people can’t help themselves acting in a silo’d fashion. Every department fights for their own budget and concentrates on their own targets with no one ever really looking at the whole (other than in the broadest pure profit & loss sense).
In my opinion HR tends to be treated just as a necessary part of running a business, generally doing the bidding of other departments rather than being appreciated as an element that can play a pro-active part in driving (and sustaining) business success. Don’t get me wrong – in the majority of instances they do an excellent job, but it’s only ever within the prescribed parameters the business has set. With an increased “social and environmental awareness” (be that cynically or heart felt) the rise of Corporate Social Responsibility on the business agenda over recent years is an example of something that affects both the product & employer brand perception (internally & externally), but is, in my experience, either micro silo’d or given 100% to HR or Marketing to control – which means the true impact and potential benefit is diluted or never understood by the area that doesn’t ‘own’ it.
I believe that whether you’re paying it attention or not an organisations Employer Brand and Product/Corporate brand must impact on each other. It depends on the business and product/markets served the level of impact and/or leverage this has, but if you’re working on an Employer Brand proposition and you ignore how your organisation is perceived through it’s corporate profile then you’re either missing a trick or exhibit signs of not living in the real world.
‘What it’s like to work here’ is important information to convey for sure – but if a candidate consciously or subconsciously has a negative preconception about a business then they’d never even get that far in considering the employment proposition. Similarly if you give someone a poor employment or recruitment experience you can expect them to view your product/corporate brand through a tainted perspective.
Let’s make up an example: Joe loves animals & works in HR. As such, this person’s purchase of toiletries sticks to brands who have made a big noise about being ‘cruelty free’. Lipstick n Stuff Corp. is looking for a new HR Manager for which Joe is probably the ideal candidate – but years ago there was a case that received a lot of publicity about this company saying they were ‘cruelty free’ but buying in core constituents from a company that did significant animal testing in their product development process. There was some scandal as they tried to deny, cover up but then finally apologise, but Joe’s heard nothing more since. Joe remembers feeling cheated at the time, has never bought any of their products since and whilst interested in an appropriate career advancing move isn’t exactly an ‘active jobseeker’. So what do you think would happen when the job alert email advertising the vacancy pops up from a job board? I think it’s safe to assume that the response would go from ignoring the alert on principle and following it no further to being a little curious and reading up more on the company. But if the company information just relays ‘what it’s like to work here’ then I think Joe would almost certainly stop considering the opportunity there and then.
I don’t think this is anything new – but in our increasingly information rich and connected world not only does individual influence stretch beyond our immediate locality and social & family circles, but that effect becomes demonstrable, which makes it real to corporate decision makers. The Internet is a great channel of human insight, helping business and individuals alike better track and understand interaction cause and effect within our own world, and as it beds into corporate thinking I believe it will herald a new dawn of transparency that leads to appreciating that long term success is nurtured through positive engagement of all stake holders of your brand – internal or external, actual or prospective.
Comment by Alex — February 23, 2009 @ 1:05 pm
Good post Alex. I’ve been banging on aboout employer branding since the 90’s.
Let me give another more topical example. To what extent has Monster’s employer brand been affected by recent incidents? Moreover, will this have a direct effect on their product brand? When connected by an all-encompassing brand eg. Monster, Lego, Amazon, or even “Joe the Plumber”, all sides of a business are inextricably linked.
I used to tell candidates preparing for an interview, that company X had a great reputation, and was a great place to work, but their recruitment process was where they fell down. That way, they wouldn’t be put off by the random nature of the interview process and unprofessionalism of the HR Manager,
In these days of social networking, even the most obscure company has an employer brand which can be polished, or tarnished with just a few mis-steps online. The key to taking control, is first of all self-awareness. If an organisation wishes to attract and retain the best employees to drive the business, it must decide how it wants to be perceived, and how to to get there. When a company doesn’t actively decide this, it allows others to decide for them.
Comment by Stephen O'Donnell — February 23, 2009 @ 1:39 pm
Thanks for your input Stephen. I guess Company X probably didn’t know how lucky they were having someone doing the prep as thoroughly as yourself for those candidates who came through you a least – but of course with social connection through the web so much more amplified I fear in future such sloppy recruitment practices would need more than a lone diligent Consultant to get the best talent through the door and signing up.
When a company isn’t / is unable to be true to themselves (or worse – has no idea what they as a business really stands for as they have no cohesive and REAL people-centric values) then they will spend a fortune trying to establish and force a voice that will increasingly be seen for exactly what it is – hollow.
And many may think this is a long way off – but we’re now talking about progress and change in internet accelerated timeframes and so I think demonstrable social consciousness related brand impact effects are closer (and more visible, therefore more trackable) than many lumbering “traditional” businesses will be able, or indeed willing, to get their head around.
At the current time getting/retaining a job is all that’s really important – but when the economy comes back I think business will find that those who will grow fastest will be those that attract and retain the best talent through realising that the GenY phenomenon isn’t in fact a generational one – but an internet catalysed attitudinal one than is increasingly generation agnostic.
Comment by Alex — March 10, 2009 @ 11:16 pm