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Transforming culture with employer branding

Have you read Brett's new book,  Employer Brand Leadership-A Global Perspective?

The original article was published in the UK's Personnel Today as article 4 in a 4 part series in the lead up to the 2012 UK Employer Branding World Series Summit in London on 21 March 2012 where Brett is Chairing and presenting.

Upcoming 2012 employer branding events -

May

17 - Toronto

22 - Kiev

25 - Madrid

29 - Paris

31 - Milan

In the final article of a four part series, Brett Minchington, chairman and CEO of Employer Brand International teams up with Neil Harrison, Head of Employer Branding and Insight at TMP UK to discuss the challenges of transforming organisational culture through employer branding strategies and highlighting  the key focus areas to improve your success.

The holy grail of employer branding is the ability for leaders to transform the company’s culture to align with the identity, image and perception they strive stakeholders to have about their organisation as a ‘Great place to work.”

Many have tried and many have failed!

Challenges of implementation

Some of the most common challenges and excuses we hear from leaders when the employer brand strategy has little or no impact on transforming culture usually begin with, “Perfect! We’ve just developed our new employer brand strategy.” However:

Employer branding communications - it’s time to get social

Have you read Brett's new book,  Employer Brand Leadership-A Global Perspective?

The original article was published in the UK's Personnel Today as article 3 in a 4 part series in the lead up to the 2012 UK Employer Branding World Series Summit in London on 21 March 2012 where Brett is Chairing and presenting.

Without a doubt, advances in new technologies, the emergence of social media and the popularity of mobile devices have encouraged companies to rethink how they communicate employer branding messages to employees, candidates and other key stakeholders.

The speed of the transition from print to online, and the need to integrate online and offline communications, caught many companies by surprise. A significant number are only just starting to catch up.

When social media first became popular, many companies resisted its surge and simply reacted by banning employees from accessing sites such as Facebook and Twitter during working hours. However, this attitude no longer holds weight. To get around the ban, employees simply brought their own smartphones to work and used them away from the prying eyes of their supervisors.

Due to its potential size, scope and scale, social media has become appealing to businesses of all sizes around the world. Successful use of social media has had a positive impact on employer brand equity for companies such as Starbucks, Sodexo, Coca-Cola, Zappos and Philips.

Organisations are required to react to changing consumer and employee behaviour and embrace new media that are fast becoming entwined into our daily lives for social, business and commercial reasons.

A strong employer brand is built upon mental (image) and physical availability (market reach), so it should work towards building consistent associations that you want your employees, candidates and other key stakeholders to have about what it's like to work at your company. Your social media strategy should work towards expanding your market reach to your target audience using the most effective internal and external communication channels.

Employer brand managers need to know what their distinctive employer brand assets are. Readers are familiar with the distinctive brand assets of companies such as Google (employee benefits and working environment), Zappos (company culture) or being able to easily recognise some brands simply from their logo (Nike). Employer brand managers need to reinforce such distinctive assets in their communications rather than frequently changing their way of addressing candidates.

Understand which media are most effective

Success in today's new media landscape requires diversity in online and offline employer brand communications, and the need for integration across platforms. Only around 1% of fans of the biggest brands on Facebook are actually engaging with the brands, according to a study from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, an Australia-based marketing think tank that counts Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola and other major advertisers as supporters.

RUSSIA-Employer branding’s emerging market

Have you read Brett's new book,  Employer Brand Leadership-A Global Perspective? click here

Upcoming International events where Brett is presenting click here>

An International Whitepaper

By Brett Minchington MBA Chairman/CEO Employer Brand International and Emelenko Elena, Head of Employer Branding Consulting Centre, HeadHunter

Russia has a market economy with enormous natural resources, particularly oil and natural gas. It has the 10th largest economy in the world by nominal GDP and the 6th largest by purchasing power parity (PPP). It is also one of the BRIC economies, an acronym for the economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China combined. In 2003 the term was first prominently used in a Goldman Sachs report which speculated that by 2050 these four economies would be wealthier than most of the current major economic powers.

The key to unlocking the enormous economic potential of this vast country will be to develop the human resource capabilities of companies based in Russia, a trend which is well on the way of positioning Russia as a country where the art and science of employer branding may well lead the rest of the world within the next five years. Russian companies are in a prime position to be able to learn from the mistakes and successes of Western companies before them. There is enormous interest in employer branding in Russia supported by the attendance of more than 250 managers at masterclass events I conducted in February and May 2011 and our first International Employer Branding Summit in September (400+delegates)  in collaboration with HeadHunter, the country’s leading online job board.

To read the full article please click here to download the pdf

AT A GLANCE!

12 Employer branding best practices to focus on in 2012

Have you read Brett's new book,  Employer Brand Leadership-A Global Perspective? click here

As we approached 2011 I wrote an article titled, “11 Employer branding best practices to focus on in 2011.”  The art and science of Employer branding has evolved considerably since I wrote that article more than twelve months ago.

In 2011 I was fortunate to travel to Russia (three times), Turkey, New Zealand, Australia, Denmark, Belgium, Spain, Italy, UK, Netherlands, and Chile to chair Employer Brand International’s (EBI) Employer Branding Summit Conferences and Masterclass events. I also took the opportunity to spend time with leaders in the regions who are driving the employer branding agenda inside their countries to witness first hand just how challenging and complex attracting and retaining talent has become. It is as if the market is moving at one (fast!) speed and companies at another (slow!).

In September 2011 at EBI we published a major Employer Branding Global Survey report which highlighted key trends in employer branding in advanced and developing economies. We published a similar report in 2009 and it was interesting to see the developments in employer branding over the past two years. Following the Global Financial Crisis in September 2008, the world of work has undergone significant changes. There are six million less jobs in the USA and unemployment continues to remain high (though there was some improvement in the last quarter of 2011) despite a number of government initiatives to stimulate the economy. 

Along with political unrest in countries such as Syria, Egypt and some Middle Eastern countries there has been an ‘Occupy’ uprising which had its roots in the USA. Around the world many citizens are fed up with the wealth being concentrated in a small percentage (or the 1% as it has been defined!). Despite multiple European bank and country bailouts and downgrading of credit ratings in countries such as France there are serious concerns about the future of the Euro, the solvency of a number of European countries and the ongoing risk of the market overheating in China and India. Welcome to the new normal!