ORGANISATIONS are taking a more holistic approach to employer branding whereby HR and marketing departments are using their unique competencies to collaborate more effectively, according to a global employer branding firm
ORGANISATIONS are taking a more holistic approach to employer branding whereby HR and marketing departments are using their unique competencies to collaborate more effectively, according to a global employer branding firm.
“The conventional approach is for management to offer an employment experience based on what they think employees want,” said James Wiggins, head of employer branding for TMP Worldwide Advertising & Communications.
“Organisations are now starting to listen to their people to make sure, before constructing and communicating an employment promise.”
Rather than relying totally on employee surveys, he said there was a shift towards focus groups and workshops in identifying why employees say what they do in surveys.
The research behind an employer branding program aimed to uncover the reasons why employees and candidates make job, employer and career decisions, he said.
“Knowing what these are enables an organisation to alter its employment experience to better satisfy current employees, reduce turnover and the need to continually recruit,” he said.
“In addition, it enables an organisation to construct messages that are actually relevant to candidate wants and needs when they do have to recruit.”
However, he said that organisations that conducted their own internal focus groups and workshops tended to gather superficial data, as they were too close to the situation and their fellow employees often felt reluctant to say what they really felt for fear of reprisals.
“Turning emotive and very intangible information about candidate and employee motivations, preconceptions and often irrational beliefs, into a tangible program of activities addressing specific issues, is not easy,” he said.
He pointed to recent research which provided empirical evidence that organisations with committed employees provide shareholders with a ROI six times that of organisations with low employee commitment, while those with effective internal communications delivered shareholders a ROI twice that of those with ineffective internal communications.
“Employer branding is the tangible program that objectively identifies the areas of the employer-employee relationship that inhibit or support commitment,” he said.
“The trick to gaining executive buy-in is explaining this in financial language.”
