Your Employer Brand: The Bottom Line of Top-of-Mind
- Author: Anna Kassulke
- Posted: September 10, 2007
- Category: Recruiting, Employment Branding
- Tags: No Tags
- Comments:
According to recent research, employer branding may be more important for your organization than profits. It lowers recruitment costs, shortens time to fill, retains the right people, and provides your company with a long-term competitive edge. As Nicola Hunt, co-founder of Management-Issues.com, writes, “The value of companies…is more than three times the value quoted on balance sheets, and the difference is to do with the reputation, brand and emotional capital of an organization.”
The point cannot be stressed enough. “Chief executives used to be driven by marketing, sales and financial numbers,” says Simon Barrow, author of The Employer Brand, but “the past three years have seen them realize that the attraction, retention and motivation of their best people has become their number one determinant of performance.”
Further research shows that 49% of American workers indicate that their companies’ brand or image played an important role in their decision to apply for a job at their respective workplace.
With such results, organizations have to ask themselves if they can afford not to focus on their employer brands.
We have said this before, and we will say it again: the most important initiative any company can take, regardless of their industry, is learning how to effectively hire and retain quality employees. And this research demonstrates that branding is a key component of that fundamental initiative.
Some organizations may claim that they’ve never needed to develop a strategic employer brand before, but Watson Wyatt research shows that “the very same models of hiring, developing and retiring employees that worked so well over the past decades could backfire if continued into the next.”
It is time to face the facts. Your company needs to begin the strategic development of its unique employer brand and it needs to begin now. A strategically developed employer brand will not only make your job easier, but it’ll make your organization more successful in the pursuit of its mission.
In Part 2, I’ll explain how you can begin the process of effectively branding your company, but if you don’t want to wait, feel free to explore the Employment Branding services provided by RCI Recruitment Solutions.
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Comments (15)
Comment by Lin Edards, September 11, 2007 at 2:32 am
It’s great to quote research in articles but please ensure that it is recent - you mention “recent research” and the articles you quote are going back to 2002 and 2003 which is far from current in todays fast changing world.
Failing to represent your argument with accuracy impacts on the perception of your personal brand and you will loose credibility in the eyes of your readers and potential clients.
Comment by Lavinia Weissman, September 11, 2007 at 8:06 pm
Anna, thanks for posting here. You are stepping in to some big shoes of the best bloggers in recruitment and it’s nice to see you here.
Yes your research is a bit out of date, however, academic research is also always out of date. Action Research is not something many consulting firms want to fund and it takes someone with a set of skills like mine equivalent to that of a expert journalist to get at the real story these days.
The real story is Social Networking and the real story is bringing “physical space to online network,”. This is why I highly recommend that any recruiter attend, a John Sumser Road Show, local to them.
What is more challenging to any industry right now is the reliance on virtual tools that people use to build distance under the guise that it makes them more efficient.
Who you chose to work with grows out of conversation and if you don’t know how to have conversations and organize your relationships to build trust, you can’t recruit well, work well or employ well.
this is my 2 cents. Take it or leave it.
Comment by Kyle Callahan, September 12, 2007 at 10:45 am
That is a very fair critique, Lin, and good advice for future posts, but at the same time, I wouldn’t expect employment branding to have less effect on employee hiring/retention in 2007 than it did in 2002 or 2003.
With that being said, let me see if I can be of assistance by providing a couple of links to some more recent data:
I found an article at Recruiting Trends about a study that finds:
If we assume that half of all employees (give or take) would still say that their company’s brand image played an important role in their decision to apply, it’s disheartening to find that only a minority of employers have developed a budget to take advantage of this effective recruiting tool; and what’s more, the majority of those who DO budget for it have no way to measure its effectiveness, which basically means they are branding in a blind alley. If we don’t measure the results, there is no way we can improve them.
A 2007 survey made by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development found the following:
An employer brand needs to fire on all cylinders if it is to be effective. It can’t just speak to “potential” employees, and when it does, it becomes little more than a marketing tool, a flashy sales gimmick to get people in the door.
A healthy employer brand speaks to all employees, from the CEO to the shipping clerk, and ideally, it inspires everyone to perform their duties with an eye towards the organization’s higher mission. It captures how things are and how things are supposed to be.
By concentrating a brand on potential employees only, an organization sacrifices the tremendous value that can be delivered a healthy employer brand.
Thank you, Lin, for your comment, and if you come across any more timely studies relating to Employer Branding, please be sure to let us know.
Thanks again.
Comment by Lavinia Weissman, September 12, 2007 at 5:14 pm
Kyle, this is excellent quantitative research. However, what is missing is local and regional issues with respect to branding.
National brands are diluted now and a company, e.g. Procter and Gamble was the first to learn this through quantitative local research and analysis of the history of their more traditional clients going back 50 years.
Anyone in marketing will tell you know that you cannot make generalized assumptions in the branding game and have to work on this from a perspective of diversity, locale and bringing face and touch to polling and surveys.
Comment by Amitai Givertz, September 12, 2007 at 6:14 pm
A couple of points:
Lin:
You are correct to point out that in a fast changing world citing recent research is more helpful than referencing old and possibly outdated stuff. But allow me to correct you on one point which you understandably miss: The original article was written by Anna nearly two years ago for Performance Staffing which is one of the initiatives to come out of the RCI Center of Excellence. I know because I commissioned the writing and worked with Anna on it.
You are absolutely right in saying that “failing to represent your argument with accuracy impacts on the perception of your personal brand and you will loose credibility in the eyes of your readers and potential clients,” but you are confusing Anna’s personal brand – which is beyond reproach, trust me – and RCI’s emerging online persona which is being defined through this blog and other initiatives. Again I know because until recently I have been involved in helping that process unfold.
The truth is that the faux pas is entirely mine. I recently passed the editor’s baton over to Kyle and failed to mention that the posts I had loaded some time ago were dated and may need revising. So, not that it can be undone, please forgive the error on my part. The carelessness was mine.
Lavinia:
To Anna’s journalistic prowess and academic credentials you can rest assured that RCI would not have commissioned her to write for the RCI Center of Excellence if she couldn’t back up a 30 year association with me personally with a CV that laid those things out very clearly. I know you see the value of endorsements on LinkedIn because I think in all the years I have been networked there I have only made three of them. One for Anna, one for you and one for Kyle – see below. How’s that for a coincidence?
That said, as always, you are gracious and kind in suggesting Anna has big shoes to fill and for pointing to projects which I am still involved in. Lavinia, I am more flattered by your comments knowing that you truly know your stuff –- your comment above and elsewhere on this blog make that plain — although you omitted one vital piece of information in referencing John Sumser’s Recruiting Roadshow. That is that RCI is not only one of the sponsors for the Atlanta event on Tuesday September 25th but also a potential partner for future shows as well. Without RCI’s participation for Atlanta I couldn’t guess how we would have nearly “sold out” 160 seats with nearly two weeks to go.
Kyle:
Your response to Lin affirms what I have known all along. You are a consummate pro.
All,
I hope this helps clear up any confusion and adds to the conversation. After all, this blog has as much to do with RCI’s brand as anything. Being two things I have been involved in in the past I continue to hope they will reach their potential through conversations like these.
Comment by Lavinia Weissman, September 12, 2007 at 6:41 pm
Ami, your entry here is an important testimony to your leadership, how you bring people together and weave an exceptionally agile network of intelligence, and extract what is valuable, even when points of view are different.
Ami, going off line tonight for the Jewish Holiday (for a few days), you provided me a nice New Year compliment. Thank you.
Kyle, I am pleased to meet you and hope to meet Anna, someday as well
Lin—thank you for stepping up here and sparking this conversation.
Providing an intelligent critique that invites dialogue is not something many people do well.
Comment by Amitai Givertz, September 12, 2007 at 7:42 pm
Kyle, to your point “…I wouldn’t expect employment branding to have less effect on employee hiring/retention in 2007 than it did in 2002 or 2003″ I disagree.
Any number of factors - societal, behavioral, environmental, economic, political — would effect hiring and retention in a labor market that is changing on so many levels.
For example:
1. The attitudes of retiring baby boomers and the aspirations/values of the next-generation workforce have fundamentally changed the way many employer brands are received and/or perceived.
Today I think the candidate-consumer is a heck of a lot savvier than they used to be. More so than ever before they understand that beneath the veneer of recruitment communications lies a workplace environment that is often out of synch with their own good senses and recent work experience. I think that explains why topics like “work-life balance” have become increasingly important elements in the branding mix as employers respond to this realization, don’t you?
2. The emergence of social media as an increasingly influential part of many candidate’s lives leaves those employers who “get it” with an advantage over those who don’t. Social media has changed the employment landscape for many recruiters, organizations and even industries since 2003.
For many, it has changed how employment branding is transacted. Think YouTube for example - recruiting video/viral messaging and so on; job branding and optimization; vertical search; SMS and text messaging; blah-blah-blah.
3. Mergers and acquisitions change things too and in ways that are different then from now.
When AT&T swallowed up Bellsouth and Cingular recently how were those two entities’ brands rolled into the AT&T employment brand — or not as the case may be — and how did that impact stakeholders’ overall perception of employer branding as having more to do with product marketing – the product being who you now work for?
Contrast this with 2002/3 and Worldcom’s acquisition of MCI and the branding hiccup that followed Worldcom’s corporate scandal and candidate’s subsequent standing-off from telecoms global employment brand. Remember that?
Lavinia – just saw your comments. Thank you and Happy New Year!
Comment by Anna Kassulke, September 12, 2007 at 8:25 pm
Hello everyone! Thanks Ami for your kind comments and thanks to all of you for injecting fresh perspectives into the discussion.
I would like to take another tack.
The research (and basis for research) that channels strategies for branding, retention (whatever) often comes at its subject with a national bent and/or adopts different research methodologies. So how do we determine which are the most pertinent? Kyle mentions the CIPD. The UK-based turnover survey has been going for well over a decade now (this might provide a useful comparative analysis of how things are changing!). On average the CIPD samples are relatively high (a total of 557 in 2003 and 905 in 2007). Their respondents included (amongst others): Rolls Royce and Marks and Spencer – iconic UK brands to say the least. The Rada Advertising (Recruiting Trends) findings are from the US and a sample of little more than 100. How do we synthesize nation-specific and varied samples of quantitative and qualitative research? Should we all, as Lavinia suggests, be cautious about generalizing on the basis of such disparity?
Comment by Amitai Givertz, September 13, 2007 at 7:33 am
Kyle….hmmm. Re-reading these comments I see I may have missed what you actually meant by “…I wouldn’t expect employment branding to have less effect on employee hiring/retention in 2007 than it did in 2002 or 2003.″ Please explain.
Anna - not for nothing but I question the motivations behind the research — and therefore the methodology and quality of data — when the research comes out of an ad agency [and polling from such a small sample]. Rada Advertising has a vested interest in driving their clients’ recruitment communications, helping them articulate and communicate Rada “proprietray take” on employer branding — from which they profit of course, naturally.
That is not an indictment of Rada Advertising who is simply “playing the game” and well enough to have commanded some of our attention on RCI’s turf. But they would not have been the first — certainly not the last — to validate their position with a veil of objectivity/credibility afforded by a couple of decimal points here and a few well placed % signs there - if you know what I mean
Comment by Lavinia Weissman, September 13, 2007 at 8:01 pm
This conversation is one of the most intelligent, I have participated in — on line in a long time. Thank you Anna, Kyle and Ami — This conversation is intelligent because it is a conversation and no one is throwing information at anyone that does not permit reflection and thought.
Anna—I offer you to think about the word “diversity” instead of “disparity”. Disparity suggests a “flaw”. In this case I am offering the word “diversity” as a way to shift the reader to read research and make certain they understand the intent and purpose of the research, just as Ami has described regarding Rada Advertising.
In the coaching world, best practice coaches assure that they do not “tell” or “dictate” to their clients, “what to do.” I view one of the examples of how so many people, want to be told what to do, by the numbers of books and publications shaped as “how to do.”
People look for formulae for success. While this is natural it has ceased to work. A success formula achieved can be out of date now almost as soon as it is learned.
When I first came into the Knowledge Ecology/Management world—it was not well received or something that managers welcomed as a practice fearful of the cost and investment not guaranteeing a result.
Workforce Planning has become that kind of investment. Ami’s knowledge management practice that he synthesized introducing this blog, is one of the first attempts along with the RoadShow Unconference.
Historically, Marketing was driven by the concept of shaping a logo/brand to communicate the power of product or company. Now
marketing depends on the experience that customers have in using products or tapping knowledge. In fact this is why shoppers will pay $.60 more a can for organic tomatoes at Whole Foods than buy the same product for less at WalMart.
It has been my prediction for a long time now that recruitment as we now know it, will disappear. Ami was one of the first to agree with me. The firms and people who succeed in this field are going to be catalysts for identifying the best talent and formulating the road maps by how their clients access that talent.
I have just proved my own theory with my consulting practice. I now have a team of 4 people working with me (note: I consciously say “working with me” versus “working for me”). These people are now part of my “work” node of who I am. I trust them and have cultivated these relationships over 2-3 years. As a result we are now forming into a trusted team through me. This means I save my social media clients a lot of time and my profile is analyzed with social network tools, shows I am skillful in creating a “work” network of value to me and the people I serve.
Technology maps, e.g. www.linkedin.com and Face Book do not offer the structure to convey this. What conveys what I offer is the result I produce and how I make this visible through my portfolio, which is reforming as we now speak. Over the next month, my team is going to design a web page that reveals and describes my branding through hyperlinking as Tim Berners Lee, innovator of the Internet perceived possible and Judith Donath of MIT Media Lab proved would work with her doctoral thesis. It has taken me six years to prove this experiment because it is not growing out a story I made up and wrote, it has emerged out of relationships and how I conduct myself relative to these relationships in trust. That is my brand.
Hence, my thesis that Social Network Analysis is a living form of market research that is going to reshape branding.
Comment by Anna Kassulke, September 13, 2007 at 10:55 pm
Lavinia, Ami, Kyle-
In many ways the whole shift is related to the perspectivism that some say Nietzsche and others prescribed/identified. The philosophical shift has affected us in many ways - not just in management/recruitment, but in a host of other disciplines too. I agree wholeheartedly that the apple cart has been upturned and that old prescriptions will not cure our current ills. We should all (regardless of our area of expertise) come to these things with a fresh, multidisciplinary and inclusive approach that fearlessly embraces change.
Thus spoke a baby boomer.
Comment by Amitai Givertz, September 14, 2007 at 12:18 am
To the points above here are some great resources:
BusinessWeeks’ The Future of Work and Lou Adler’s take Building the Workforce of the Future
The Future of Work Weblog
Talentism
RAND’s The Future at Work — Trends and Implications
The Engaging Brand
A River of Reputation Runs Through Your Employer Brand
The Underbelly of Your Employer Brand
Enjoy!
Comment by Lavinia Weissman, September 14, 2007 at 12:35 pm
Ami, what a “gold mine.” While I would normally take time to critque each entry and link, I don’t have time for that this morning.
There is structure emerging in these communications, however, that differentiates research from opinion. There is only one link provided by Ami, that has a quantifiable “future” of value (the kind of value that if translated into practice that you can take to a bank and “bank on a tomorrow.” If you want to guess which once and tell me why, email me at coregroup@workecology.com. Yes this is a test!
Anna, what you have contributed here is a valuable representation of how a researcher, such as yourself, can benchmark change and think their way into it. So thank you.
Emerging within this conversation is a “truth” that will weave into real success stories. We are moving to a decade of the “unbrand.”
Brands sell products. Brands to not validate or credential knowledge. The difficulty with the HR and recruiting space at this time is that like in all fields, expertise (knowledge) is being differentiated from innovation (applied practice). If you are an innovator, you may not work for a brand. Your drive will be if the company will let you contribute to brand and you can recruit and work for that.
I think this conversation has some signficant implications that can only be tackled with quantitative research within a social network of trust. Web based polls in this area are useles if they cannot be quantified. In fact most magazines on the newstand are losing major advertising dollars right now for that reason. They don’t really know any longer who their reader is or if they are simply attracting a reader that puts forth heroic deeds, a la Jack Welch.
The workplace of the future is going to bank on a future as a result of collaboration and the disappearance of the hero into a immune system like galaxy of people representing a diversity that cannot be defined. Their voice and knowledge (not age) and how they speak (based on emotional intelligence) will define their power and influence. I suggest that anyone who reads here read this article in the most current issue of http://www.strategy-business.com on Howard Gardener. Just go to the search engine after you register for free and search HOWARD GARDNER.
Stay tuned for latest future scenario at the new under construction:
www.laviniaweissman.com. Coming to desktops in December/January.
Comment by Amitai Givertz, September 15, 2007 at 1:01 pm
No comment, Kyle?
Comment by Kyle Callahan, September 17, 2007 at 9:53 am
Sorry sir. We had the religious holiday off last week, so I got a little backed up with some things.
Anyway, you wrote:
You then wrote:
I simply meant it seems unlikely that, in the last three or four years, people have become less educated and/or less concerned with the notion of branding as it relates to their employer. Maybe it’s because I am an active participant in the advertising/marketing/branding industry, but it seems to me that Americans (particularly those of younger generations) are becoming more attuned to the industry’s strategies and more aware of any disconnect that arises between a brand’s promise and its real-world delivery.
There’s an article on BrandWeek about teenagers’ response to Brands, and one of the findings is that 52% of teen feel that “Brands are created by marketers just to get more money.”
While some businesspeople might say “No, d’uh,” the inclusion of the word “just” implies a moral condemnation of such profit-motivated tactics. Employers need to take that condemnation into account (pun intended). If an employment brand is developed for the sole purpose of increasing the bottom line, then the younger generation of recruits (who are not searching for a career as much they are searching for meaning) will find themselves dreaming of escape before they’ve even completed their training. And that doesn’t help anyone.
What it comes down to, in my mind, is branding as an honest appraisal of who a company is and what it hopes to achieve. Everything that happens after the appraisal, from the development of a brand-influenced message to the design of a brand-influenced design template to the selection of brand-influenced colors is nothing more than (and nothing less than) advertising.