What would you miss if you left tomorrow?

// August 18th, 2010 // No Comments » // Employment Branding

Imagine your organisation closes its doors tomorrow. The people disperse, the product disappears from the market. Teams are divided off to competitors, the brand vanishes.

What would the world be missing out on?

What would you, as an employee, miss out on?

The answer to the first question is the reason your company exists.

The answer to the second is your employer brand.

The reason any employee works at a company can be seen as an overlap between the company’s ‘generic’ employer brand (ie, the value proposition constructed from the points which the majority of employees agree are part of the employment experience) and the employee’s personal brand affiliation. Let’s call this an overlapping synergy. The larger the synergy, the more likely you’ll be a culture fit, and the more likely you’ll enjoy the role.

Mapped in two dimensions, this is a simple Venn diagram. Larger overlap, more points of common perceived benefit (between you and the ‘brand’ average) means a picture of more engagement. (and as a side note, look at those values and try and construct a person out of them. Even a fictional person makes it very easy to start drawing comparisons. This is what I call a ‘brand mannequin’ – looks like a person but isn’t, but good for measuring people against)

However, the two-dimensional synergy (and indeed the brand mannequin) doesn’t take into account the power of beliefs. Sharp spikes in the strength of those values can create different synergies. That extra dimension makes a substantial shift in the nature of engagement.

For example – Carl works for a company which has ten core values at the heart of the EVP. He doesn’t care about six of them, and two of the remaining four are things he agrees with at a reasonable level. The remaining two are Carl’s defining passions – they drive his career goals and his desires. In a two dimensional argument (yes/no) along the brand agreement, Carl scores 4/10. Not a high score on the employee engagement scale.

However, ask Carl what he’ll miss if he can no longer work for the company, and his answer will probably, amidst the social data, suggest that the company was aligned to his values. Maybe not all of them, but certainly the ones that mattered.

Overlapping synergy between the brand values is the first goal of an EVP – find out what we stand for and why people work here, and align the workforce, through education or ongoing recruitment, to build an overlapping synergy between the company and the individual value positions. Understanding the passions, and how huge a difference they can make to brand loyalty, to engagement and to a personal investment in your own professional development, comes once an organisation’s value proposition becomes part of the performance and career dialogue.

If you had to leave tomorrow, what would you miss? And is that really the reason you go to work every day? And if it is, what are you doing to get more of that, or keep it more secure?

Where do you see yourself in five years?

// June 18th, 2010 // No Comments » // Career Development

Most companies ask this because it’s a way of finding out more about what drives a candidate, so they can be more expertly profiled for a manager or role. The closer the alignment between where we want them to be, and where they want to be, the higher they rate on the scale. It’s part of that old chestnut, ‘culture fit’. It’s company-serving information – it benefits the organisation.

I think there’s a better way. A way that includes changing the defaults.

• When someone answers that question, write down the answer in full. Explore it if it isn’t clear enough by discussing it with them.
• If they get the job, give it to their manager before they start, as a reminder.
• Brief the local L&D team that this is where they want to be in five years.
• Organise a skills assessment that can sit above their resume as a current state analysis.
• Find someone who’s at that point now and approach them about starting a mentoring relationship.
• Find people with similar goals and create networking opportunities for those people to meet and share ideas.
• Look at succession planning and see what schedule of upskilling and project/task exposure is needed to achieve the milestones involved in that goal.
• Include the goal in dialogue discussions and reviews
• Make it process. Make it part of their everyday experience. Send the message that you’re thinking about how you can give them what they want, besides just paying for their time.

If every employee feels like the business cares about their dreams, and is actively monitoring their progress, then there’s something to come to work for besides a paycheck. There’s a future they have a say in.

Creating Tribal Value

// March 29th, 2010 // No Comments » // Employment Branding, Internal Communications

Paul Jacobs wrote about epic wins this week in a thought-provoking blog post that links gaming, the most immersive artificial experience currently available, to the industry of talent and service. This got me thinking about what the epic win represents to the individual, and how we can emulate that feeling when it comes to work. How can we deliver epic wins?

(I’ll preface this by pointing out that I am a gamer, albeit casually. So my insights into gaming as a subculture are driven largely by my own participation in gaming. )

Where gaming becomes essentially a tribe (by which I mean a subculture with a communal interest, language and standard of value) is when shared exposure to a particular experience becomes a unifying factor. Gamers become members of factions within their tribe that revolve around genres, platforms, styles, social connections and more. There’s occasionally some tribal warfare among these smaller groups (PC vs console, X360 vs PS3, etc) but they are still all gamers. Their membership to a self-selected class of people becomes part of their identity. They actively seek out discussion on their areas of interest. They recognise each other through a shared cultural language and, occasionally, uniform.

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7 Things HR Can Learn From Video Games

// March 3rd, 2010 // No Comments » // Employment Branding, Internal Communications

I love video games. I have loved them since I first had a computer that required a knowledge of BASIC to get the games running, It had a cassette drive. I’m not kidding. I’ve played habitually on almost every system, and enjoyed some of the tastiest fruits that the gaming tree had to offer. While the gaming industry thrives on entertainment, there are certainly some good lessons to be learned. Here’s just a few;

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Designing The Employee Experience

// February 18th, 2010 // No Comments » // Employment Branding, Internal Communications

Recently, I’ve been reading up on user experience design. Largely, it’s been driven by the part of my role which includes redesigning our corporate intranet to deliver better information to our staff. So like a good little boffin, I read about web design, and SharePoint design, and building for user value, and creating meaningful interfaces. And something funny happened. I tried to apply it to being an employee instead of just using the intranet.

Your EVP and your employer brand are ideally connected to the employee experience. Not just as the result of it (which you gained through research and focus groups and surveys and such) but a continual cause-and-effect. Your brand is at its most effective when it is used to influence how employees feel about working for you, and how they connect with you. For many companies, this is about internal reinforcement – you told us you work here for X, so we’re going to provide more of X. X is great! Hooray for X, which we provide!

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Recruiting hearts, not minds

// November 26th, 2009 // 3 Comments » // Employment Branding

What used to be called “the war for talent” isn’t far from starting up again. The terminology is misleading, because wars have an end, and this is now a permanent market condition. There’s no war to be won – talent is scarce. Whether it’s graduates or experienced hires, your skills pool is shrinking, and you’re going to have to be more flexible, proactive and attractive to snare the people who’ll deliver your future.

Traditional sourcing methods are still delivering good candidates, everyone’s talking about social media and its “potential” as a sourcing tool, newspaper ads (like the newspapers themselves) are dwindling, and more and more people are looking at referrals, alumni programs and human-contact sourcing as viable, cost effective alternatives.

As the talent pool shrinks, there are seemingly two schools of thought about how to tackle the market: (a) talent as an acquired commercial asset and (b) talent as an investment in human potential. Each has its strengths and ROI, and each is viable as a resourcing business model. One recognises contribution to the bottom line, and one is more about contribution to the business culture.

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is Your Brand Built To Attract, Retain, Or Both?

// September 18th, 2009 // No Comments » // Employment Branding, Internal Communications

Many companies who began the process of defining and employment value proposition and creating an employer brand did so as a means of attracting staff. The brand became important as a means of talking to the market, of building an external reputation. It was a vehicle for communicating promise to a market that had no exposure to the reality of working for you.

As the market switches from recruiting to redeployment, many experts are saying that your brand still needs to be a fundamental part of your argument. This is absolutely true – you don’t stop having a brand just because you aren’t actively promoting it. Your brand is who you are, your fundamental personality. There is a scramble within market to turn brands inward, to focus on key staff retention and keeping talent, rather than attracting it.

If your brand is built on an honest reflection of the actual employee experience, this shouldn’t be too hard. Brands which attracted by overselling the company and building an idealistic view will struggle.Companies guilty of ‘oversell’ will start to see real problems when the false retention that the current crisis has induced begins to wear off.

When the recruitment requirements of companies begin to thaw, the employment brand of a copany will be a strong determinant in attracting key staff. More importantly, it will play a huge part in your ability as a business to hold onto the key performers you need, when the downturn ends. Your brand needs to be robust enough to attract and retain with equal measure – getting them in the door is only a small aprt of finding and engaging the staff you need to succeed.

Speaking The Right Language For Your Employees

// September 18th, 2009 // No Comments » // Internal Communications

Finding the right match means using the right language

Imagine you’re at a coffee shop on your own on Saturday morning. You’re in a relationship that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. You don’t feel that you’re ready to break up and leave the relationship yet, but you’re keeping a weather eye out, just in case. You’re enjoying some alone time.

While reading the paper, you see an ad that describes you as the person who is perfect for the author. The ad makes them sound attractive, rewarding and fun. Like your partner used to be. You’re intrigued. You want to know more.

You recognize the name from somewhere. Maybe someone you know has had a relationship with them before. Maybe one of your friends knows them. You know there’s a connection somewhere.

Do you:

1. Call the number on the ad and talk to them, knowing that they’re on the market and possibly desperate?
2. Look them up on Facebook, Twitter, wikipedia, or the web, to try and find out about them quietly?
3. Ask your friends if anyone knows them and whether it’s a good opportunity?
4. Wait and hope that one of your friends will introduce the two of you out of the blue?
5. Call a dating agency to see if they can introduce you?

The way you address this is no different to the ways you can look at engaging a company to find a job. There’s no right way – there are only different levels of directness. When you identify an opportunity, you have the control over how you approach the company. And in fact, a company that is closely aligned with you spiritually will have made itself contactable in your preferred method deliberately. They’ll have done this for two reasons – to put you at ease, and prove they can speak your language.

If you’re an employer, part of your employer brand includes where you choose to be seen, and how to be contacted. Your brand isn’t just about broadcasting a message. It’s also about designing mechanisms for conversation that make your target market feel comfortable to engage in. Understanding how your employees want to get in contact with you, and preparing a response or strategy for enhancing this first contact is crucial to beginning engagement.

Five questions worth asking of your brand conversation strategy are;

1. How do the bulk of candidates respond to an advertised opportunity?
2. Can your current contact plan ensure a consistent, brand-rich experience across all your contact mediums?
3. Where could your brand currently be that candidates would be looking for you? Note – this isn’t an excuse to leap onto Twitter, LinkedIn or any other social platforms. Research first, action second.
4. What isn’t working? Where are the holes in the process? What could you re-engineer to make more representative of your brand?
5. What is in place to ensure consistency? What guidelines are there about brand-rich communication for new staff, external recruitment agencies and your successors?

Just like the phone call after a first date, the immediate contact you have with someone who is interested in you as an employer is key. Make it brand-rich, honest and meaningful, and you drastically improve your chances of getting the right people on board.

Love Letters And Internal Communications

// September 18th, 2009 // No Comments » // Internal Communications

I was having a discussion yesterday with Adam Shay about internal communications and employer reputation management. Specifically, we were talking about companies where the employer brand is principally an external impression, a recruitment tool. This is actually pretty common – there’s no shortage of companies who use the brand to find talent, get them into the business, and then the brand is never seen again.

I compare the process to love letters. If you’ve ever been in a situation where you’ve received love letters, you know there’s a tremendous personality that’s part of them. Hand-written, full of protestations of affection, written to make you feel valuable and loved. You can put fifty of them from the same author side by side, and see a pattern.

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