Stand Out from the Pack

Why does brand matter? BMW Group Australia provides a clear example of the power of branding. Recent research from Australian universities on the top brands that IT and engineering graduates want to work for ranked BMW as ninth out of 500 companies. Ironically, BMW has not hired IT or engineering graduates for the past five years – but such is the power of the BMW brand.

“People just want to say ‘I work for BMW. I want a business card with that logo on it’. We’re not always the highest payer in the market; we’re not always the easiest place to work, even though we have quite progressive policies. But the brand translates into employees wanting to work for the company,” says Adrian Dolling, general manager of HR at BMW Group Australia.

While Dolling jokes that when he places a recruitment advertisement all he needs to do is add the BMW logo and he will be inundated with applications, the power of the brand flows through to other crucial areas such as employee engagement and satisfaction. Dolling cites corporate fun runs as being typical of the heart-on-the-sleeve love for the company. “When our employees do a triathlon they don’t just show up in their old gym clothes – they’re wearing BMW labelled clothes and they are doing it in teams. They feel it’s more than a company – it’s a family, a band of brothers. People idolise the company and all it stands for.”

While being perceived as a ‘sexy brand’ certainly has its advantages, there are steps all organisations can take to ensure they are putting their best foot forward when it comes to attracting candidates (and retaining employees) through their employer brand.

Every organisation has one
The first misnomer to clear up when it comes to branding is to assume that just because an organisation hasn’t focused any attention on their employer brand means they don’t have one. In many ways, the perceptions of an employer brand are formed in the same way as a consumer or product brand. Justin Papps, director of Mettle Consulting, explains: “If you’ve got a client you’ve got a brand because as soon as someone has any some sort of interaction with you they are forming an opinion of you, which then shapes their brand experience.”

Papps adds that the number one reason for someone choosing one brand over another remains recommendation from friends or family. “They’re the ones controlling your brand, not necessarily your marketing director. The marketing director can help shape it but they’re not going to control it. That applies to the employer brand more than anything else. Think about how many times you’ve been asked ‘where do you work?’ and then ‘what’s it like to work there?’ Word of mouth is very important.”

Analysis
The first step towards creating an employer brand is research and analysis. This analysis can cover a range of areas including understanding what the organisational goals and objectives are and how those relate to defining the people strategy, understanding what current employee value proposition (EVP)perceptions are, and whether the employer brand should be tied to the corporate brand. Internal and external focus groups and surveys can help to answer some of these questions and assist in uncovering any ‘perception gaps’.

“You need to understand the gap that exists within all organisations- and if they tell you it doesn’t exist then they’re lying,” says Mike Beeley, CEO of ReAgent Employer Marketing. “There’s the corporate fantasy of what we think we are – ‘we treat everyone well, we’re generous’ – this false sense of comfort that we lull ourselves into,verses the reality of the workplace which very often is the complete opposite to what we think it is. Don’t just assume that people hate you or love you. Find out. You can only do that through research.”

Research will reveal what internal and external perceptions of a company are, including what the company does well, what it doesn’t do well, and if there are any uncertain ‘grey areas’ that people need clarity on.

Papps notes that it’s not unusual for organisations to start from the wrong place. “If you’re starting a brand from scratch, you’ve got a lot more freedom than you do if you’ve got a developed brand in the market – because that brand will already have a series of attributes whether you’ve given them to the brand or not just by virtue of people experiencing the brand,” he says.

Before developing or even thinking about the EVP, there are other factors to consider. For example, what are your competitors doing?There’s not much point in developing the EVP and the brand around it if a competitor has chosen the exact same EVP to push – and perhaps utilises it more effectively.

Beeley feels it’s also important to be mindful that every industry is fragmented. “If a client says to us, ‘we need to get engineers’, we say ‘what type of engineers?’ There are 50 different types of engineers, all with slightly different ideas of what makes a great employer. You can’t lump industries into one jar.”

Developing the EVP
Developing an EVP can be challenging – after all, every organisation needs to stake their own unique selling point and there are only so many ways to call a spade a spade.

“My experience is that I can almost tell you what people will describe when they talk about their EVP. It’s invariably generic. It’s the same old issue – how do you own it? What does it mean for you? For any external brand, differentiation is the key,” says Mark Orson, business director of The Right Group. “There’s always going to be similarities both on the attraction and retention side, but how do you own those things in ways that are unique to your organisation?”

Papps notes that if you’ve got exactly the same EVP as a competitor you in actual fact don’t have an EVP; furthermore, too many EVP’s focus on a company’s mission or values. “The problem with most mission statements is that people don’t believe it because it’s not compelling. It doesn’t create an emotional reason to get out of the bed in the morning. If you can create a mantra or noble purpose that gets people out of bed and say ‘that’s where I want to spend my time today’ -that’s what creates value.

“As for values, they can become wallpaper if they’re not respected and rewarded. A great quote from Barack Obama was ‘the legitimacy of values depends on the degree to which they’re rewarded’. In organisations values are only legitimate if they are rewarded. Too many companies have the generic values of honesty, integrity and teamwork but if they’re not rewarded it’s just wallpaper. Make the values emotive statements that you can’t argue with but are also really clear about how you need to behave.”

A company’s EVP should be based on two broad components: the rational component, in which a candidate will ask questions such as:

* What will I be paid?
* Do I get a company car or a nice office?
*What is the management team like? Are they new or old school management? Will I feel at home here or am I going to be constantly arguing with you?
* What’s the team cohesiveness like?
* What training will I receive?
* Will I travel?

The second component creates an emotional trigger in people. It’s the way an organisation treats people. It’s about the ethics of the organisation and whether they match the ethics of the candidate. Are they progressive or traditional? Are they a dynamic organisation or are they stifled by cynicism? Importantly, is it a place where the candidate will belong?

“Those are much harder to capture, but these are the sorts of things that define us. We need to match those very carefully,” says Beeley. “Internally is not enough – we need to look externally as well. We need to assess the environment, which considers things that you’ve done in the past, what you currently do, what your competitors are doing – you can’t go to market if someone is already doing it or has a better claim over it. When Volvo decided they had the safest cars in the world they didn’t just come out and say it; they first assessed if it was true or not. Companies generally don’t do that.”

There are also economic and political influences to consider. In the mortgage market, for example, the sub-prime crisis has had a significant impact on how people view certain sectors of the financial community. Some organisations would now be finding it harder to attract candidates to certain jobs.

Despite all these considerations, determining an EVP need not be an onerous task. Papps suggests putting yourself in the shoes of a candidate. “I would ask the employer to give me the one reason why I’d invest my greatest asset – that is, my time, my energy, my future -with you over someone else. If you can answer that clearly you’ve got the start of an EVP. If you um and arr about it you need to dig deeper,” he suggests.

The follow through
Once the EVP is determined it’s time to work on the creative model for articulating it, which Beeley feels is the heart of the employer brand. “It talks about things like visuals – do we have people in the ads or do we have animals like Optus? What emotional response to we want – do we want people to be intrigued? Reassured? What tone is it – professional and corporate or more relaxed? Are we Richard Branson or Commonwealth Bank?” he says.

A good employer brand goes way beyond advertising, however. There needs to be consistency from the top to the bottom of the organisation.Any key touch points that a candidate will have with the organisation need to be covered off – from the recruitment website to the interview, right through to the onboarding and induction.

“Look at the job application process – are you stuck in a room with a glass of water and interviewed by an HR person who’s disengaged? Ordo you walk the floors with someone and have a run through of current projects shared with you? If you’ve got that disengaged person doing the interview you can have the best advertising in the world but it’s not going to make a bit of difference. The big challenge we see with brands is where a lot of money is spent trying to get the external brand right but the internal experience is so different. You’re dealing with people – if your employer brand doesn’t match experience that person is going to feel betrayed,” says Papps.

Like any branding, honesty is the key to a successful employer brand. It’s not worth the negative word of mouth to promise the earth and deliver very little. “There’s an old saying that brands that behave and communicate in different ways are doomed to failure – you can’t say one thing and do another,” Beeley adds.

The employer brand needs to be articulated into all communication in a way that is both arresting and imaginative. In addition, it needs to be aligned with existing employees. “Your people practices and processes have to support the communication. A lot of organisations do very slick advertising in terms of their employer brand, but after three months – which is the critical period – a lot of people who have been sold on the messaging realise that there’s a disconnect with the people processes and procedures,” says Orson.

Branding challenges
With candidates looking beyond remuneration, rapid promotions and perks towards areas like reputation, corporate social responsibility and sustainability, the rules of attraction have changed. It has also levelled the playing field in terms of employer branding. Organisations that may have once been deemed ‘unsexy’ or ‘boring’ but have strong CSR or environmental policies can push these to the fore. “A brand has to be much more holistic and rounded than it used to be,” says Papps.

It also means that corporate culture is critical. The EVP makes the promise and the culture delivers on the promise – that’s the connection people are looking for. “Questions we’re hearing at job interviews are not so much about how long will it take to be promoted to X level, but things like ‘your website mentioned that you’re committed to reducing your carbon footprint – what are you doing about that? It’s the connection between what you say and what you do,” says Papps.

The audience also has to be considered – an organisation may be considered unsexy or boring – but by who? “I might find something boring that someone else may not,” Papps says. “Regardless, there’s still got to be something about that organisation that attracts the right sort of person. What have you got that someone else will engage with? The closer it is to the truth the better it is. If you try to be something you’re not you get to that betrayal point and it doesn’t matter who you are – there’s one thing worse than being unsexy and boring and that’s being a liar. You can’t get that trust back.”

The desired behaviours, values and attributes of candidates can also be targeted through successful branding. “While there may be technical competencies organisations want, you also want attitudinal competencies because ultimately if you buy into the argument that you hire on attitude and train for competencies, that’s what to aim for. The key is to get people into an organisation who have an affinity for that organisation as well as attitudinal fit,” says Orson.

Who owns it?
HR does not need to shoulder the burden of creating and nurturing the employer brand in isolation – in fact it’s far more effective if a cross-functional team works on it.However, HR does have a critical role to play. By rights HR should be closest to the employees. They should have a sense of what attracts people to the company and why they are (or aren’t) receiving unsolicited CVs. They should be aware of how hard it is to recruit and be aware of who’s going out and who’s coming in. The executive team also needs buy in – they have to believe in it and understand the value of it – because if they don’t know one else will.

HR and marketing should work side by side. “They can share expertise, abilities, a whole range of things. Both symbolically and in terms of corporate intent it sends a very clear message that this is something being driven not just by marketing or HR, but it’s about us as an organisation, what we stand for and why you should stay with us.Marketing has a lot of expertise in terms of communicating and segmenting markets that HR can tap into and vice-versa,” Orson comments.

Ultimately, Papps says that everyone owns the brand. “Everybody in the business is involved in creating it but also living it. They become brand ambassadors,” he notes.

The excuse of not having appropriate financial resources doesn’t cut it either. Papps notes that a big budget is not required because the process starts with a simple conversation: What’s important to your people, what’s important to your customers and how does that make you different? “The more rigorous and detailed you become obviously means there’s an incremental cost but the easiest place to start is when someone asks you where you work, ask them back – ‘what have you heard about us?'” he concludes.

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