Employer Branding

 Employer brand: the image of your orgn as a 'great

place to work’ (Minchington, 2005)

 Employer branding: enhancing your company's

employer brand
 Origin

The term "employer brand" was first publicly introduced

to mgt audience in 1990, & defined by Simon Barrow &
Tim Ambler, in the Journal of Brand Mgt in Dec 1996 as:
"the package of functional, economic & psychological
benefits provided by employment, & identified with the
employing company".
 Definition..
sum of a company's efforts to communicate to existing &
prospective staff what makes it a desirable place to work, &
the active mgt of "a company's image as seen through the
eyes of its associates & potential hires".
The Power of Brands
 Who would you like to work for?
 4 E’s of Brand
Airtel Cadburys
Sis ter Maa

Occasions Emotional Old Teacher

& Traditions
Connectivity
Value delivery
Differentiation Accessibility (Price / Expenses)
from clutter & reach
Uniq ueness Ah-ha

Exclusivity
4 E’s of Experiences
Brand
Rep
eats
Ego needs
I am different Advocacy Fulfillment Recall
My needs are unique

Engagement
Outreach Involvement in need identification

Awareness Integration with need fulfillment

& actual fulfillment
DaimlerChrysler Advertisement in The Economist

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 What makes employees STAY?
 Advancement opportunities.*
 Constituent attachment (co-workers, boss, employees).
 Extrinsic rewards (pay, bonus).
Green – cited
 Flexible work arrangements. significantly more by
 Investment in the organization. high performers
than low performers.
 Job satisfaction.
 Lack of alternatives. * - cited significantly
more by higher-level
 Location. employees
 Non-work influences.
 Organizational commitment.
 Organizational justice.
 Organizational prestige.*

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Embeddedness Theory of Retention
Premise: The more embedded an employee is in the organization, the less likely they
will actually leave.
Embeddedness factors include:
◦ Fit:
 With organization--working conditions, culture.
 With community--affordable housing, commute, pace, etc.
◦ Links (connections):
 To people & projects in organization.
 With the community.
◦ Sacrifice: What would I have to give up?
 From organization (benefits, flexibility, tuition, perks).
 Community (schools, neighborhoods, friends).

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Generational Viewpoints on Job Changing

 Matures: Job changing carries a stigma.

 Baby Boomers: Job changing puts you behind.
 Gen X-ers: Job changing is necessary.
 Millenials: Job changing is part of their daily routine.

Adapted from: F. Leign Branham, The Seven Reasons Employees Leave, presented at 2006 SHRM national Conference,
Washington, DC
 What is an Employee Value Proposition?
…..the holistic sum of everything employees experience & receive
while they are part of a co.

Everything……
the intrinsic satisfaction of work
the envt,
leadership,
colleagues,
compensation, & more.

-It’s
about how well the co. fulfils people’s needs, their expectations, &
even their dreams.
EVP Elements Are a Fundamental Part of the Company

To create a compelling EVP, a co. must provide the core elements that
managers look for:
exciting work,
attractive compensation,
opportunities to develop

Change things as fundamental as:

the business strategy,
the organization structure,
the culture, &
even the caliber of leaders in the orgn.
Building a Compelling
‘Employer Brand’
Google
 Fortune’s 100 Best Places to Work
 Known for little bureaucracy.
 Hire smarts; less emphasis on experience.
 Good ideas are implemented, regardless of who they
came from.
 What is it like to work at Google?

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Goals for Employer Branding
 Establish an image of the employment experience.
 Create synergy with consumer brand:
◦ Align promise to customer with promise to employees.
 Clearly state “what’s in it for me” to potential applicants.
 Entice the right candidates to apply for the job.

Adapted from: Estis, R. (2008). Employment Branding: Attracting & Retaining Generation NEXT, 60th Annual Conference &
Exposition, Chicago, IL.
 Building an Employer Brand

Discussion Questions
1. How is employer branding different from recruiting?
2. How do you start a branding effort?
3. What should your branding message include? What is your value
proposition?
4. How should the level of branding efforts vary based on the economy?

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Source: Joinson, C. (2002). Building & Boosting the Employer Brand, Employment Management Today, 7 (3).
Five Steps to Building an Employer Brand
1. Understand your organization.
2. Create a compelling brand promise that mirrors your
customer brand promise. Articulate your value proposition
for employees.
3. Develop standards to measure the fulfillment of the brand
promise.
4. Align all people practices to support & reinforce the brand
promise.
5. Execute & measure.

Source: http://www.hewittasia.com/hewitt/ap/australia/index.htm
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Employment Branding Strategy:
Build company’s image as a top place to work Energy is
focused on:
 winning awards,
 being talked about in the media,
 constant competitive survey, &
 spreading positive stories

• what they think about you as
an employer.
• what they see as your
strengths & your weaknesses.
• how you compare with other
employers.
Ask your
employees
Ask your new
hires: Ask employees
representing diff
• what they heard about you &
why they chose you over other demographics &
potential employers.
• if you’ve been delivering what
professions what you
they expected. can do to become
more of an employer
of choice.
Make sure you do something with this input
 Design key employee experiences with greater mindfulness & precision.
 Make sure each step of the crucial employee experience creates a positive
emotional & perceptual take-away.
 Ask employees for step-by-step feedback on these critical employee moments
of truth because they profoundly affect an employee’s overall work experience.

Examples of such moments of truth are:

◦ new hire orientation;
◦ the on-boarding process;
◦ any organizational change &
◦ performance reviews.
Use of Integrated Communication Touch Points
 Online touch points:
◦ career website,
◦ blogs,
◦ social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter,
◦ virtual sites such as Second Life &
◦ online careers fairs.
 Offline touch points:
◦ press advertising,
◦ company presentations,
◦ recruitment & induction processes &
◦ community events.
 Candidates seek the following info about the employer during their job
search process:
 The location of the work site – is it close to public transport? – Is there free parking?
 How long will it take me to get to work?
 What are the career development opportunities?
 Does the company pay market rate or above salaries?
 Who are the type of people who work at the firm & their backgrounds, interests, etc?
 What is the culture of the organisation? Does the organisation foster an innovative culture?
What level of training & development does it offer employees?
 Does the employer offer flexible work practices? Can I work from home if the nature of the
task is better suited to being away from the office? If I need time off for study is this
supported by the organisation?
 If I’m thinking about starting a family - Does the organisation have a maternity leave policy?
Effectiveness of branding effort /ability to attract & hire
the best talent can be gauged in several ways:

 Hits to a company’s career site & number of applicants

compared to pre-employer branding efforts
 Conversion rate of applicants to potential
candidates
 Job acceptance rate of candidates
 Cost to hire & time to hire
Gallup’s research revealed:
“Employees join cos., but they leave managers.”
 In order to be an employer of choice:
invest in leadership development at all levels
make sure all supervisors & managers get the training &
coaching required to know how to create a work envt that
can make you an ‘employer of choice’.
Exciting work to feel passionate about
How do you attract employees to work that is considerably less
glamorous or seemingly less exciting & interesting?
You have to make your business & jobs exciting. Innovate faster than
anyone else,
start new businesses,
launch new products.
Create a mission that is inspiring.
Challenge yourself & your employees to transform your business.
Exciting work to feel passionate about
When shaping business strategy, think about guiding the co. in a direction that would
be exciting to highly talented people.

Elevate the mission of the company to something that inspires passion.

Consider structuring the organization in a way that creates more expensive &
interesting roles for people.

Create jobs that have elbow room & head room; give people as much autonomy &
responsibility as possible.

Where possible, create more jobs with profit & loss responsibility & more cross
functional teams

Strong performance orientation & an open, trusting environment.

Deliver on People’s Dreams
Substantially reshaping the EVP requires rethinking the way you :
conduct your business,
advance your people,
structure jobs, &
measure performance.
You may need to rethink the very culture of the organization.
The changes may cut to the core of some of the most closely
held traditions of the co.
The Consequences
• Lower turnover.
• Lower absenteeism.
• Higher productivity.
• Better customer service.
• A more positive, “can do” workforce.
The Acid Test
Overall a strong employer brand provides an answer to
the question “Why should I work for this company?”

The answer must be …

 Unique: It is different from the messages sent by
the strongest competitors in the labor market
 Consistent: All messages & communication
measures consistently reflect the EVP
 Appealing: The EVP is attractive in the eyes of
the most important target groups
 Realistic: The EVP must reflect what an employer
realistically can offer