8) So, what has all of this got to do with Employer Brand?

Research can define both your EVP and your HR action plan. I’d go further, they should define it. And they are both vital to your employer brand.

 

As I alluded to last time, I think that too often an organisation’s EVP (what you get for working here) and its employer brand (how it feels to work here) are treated as the same. Your EVP is a snapshot of the great things about working in your organisation right now. Take it fresh out of the box, and use it today.

On the other hand, your employer brand is a couple of things:

1)     Hypothesis #11: It’s a constant process of building your reputation. And there’s a strong parallel with consumer branding. It’s about understanding, even anticipating, what your audience wants, and creating the product to match that need. It’s not claiming that you make the best widgets; it’s making the best widgets.

2)     Hypothesis #12: It’s a permanent process of cementing your reputation. And there’s another strong parallel with consumer branding, it’s about understanding what your audience already associates with you, values about you and what they wish you to represent in the future. It’s continually building a body of evidence for why yours are the best widgets.

Your employer brand should be actions and communications, always about what drives employees or future employees, building in the purpose, told in a culturally appropriate way – experienced and evidenced consistently in and out of the organisation. And the more you do inside, on defining culture, on building engagement through communications, managers and leaders – the easier to attract from outside.

You’ll get benefits from using it as a communication tool. But to get the real benefits, it must be long-term, it must involve culture, management, engagement – and it’ll take commitment from outside of HR. Then it all leads back to greater performance, and should be one of your key tools to improve your organisation.

Here ends the lecture.

There’s a few topics that I’ve skimmed over in the last 8 posts. I’ll return to them soon.

7) Promises

In my last post, I finally got round to the topic of research. Finally? Well, it’s what I do in my day job. I-would-say-this-wouldn’t-I, but I believe that good research, a depth of understanding, a real dialogue with employees – is the secret to engagement, to enhance your culture, to creating a great employer brand. And with all of that in place, performance should take good care of itself.

So, as I’ve described in posts passim, the things in need of attention in research are: understanding of purpose and culture, experience of communication, management and other drivers of engagement.

With a clear picture of this – and a picture over and above an engagement survey - you can uncover two things, which lead me to two more of my hypotheses:

1.     What it’s important for the organisation to do, and which it delivers on well now.

Which is a decent definition of the EVP – and Hypothesis #8 Most attention by HR depts and their employer marketing agency is spent here. That’s understandable, if there’s a recruitment need, the platform is probably already well ablaze. But it’s the short term solution.

2.    What it’s important for the organisation to do, and which it isn’t seen to deliver well on now.

Which is a decent definition for an HR strategic plan – and Hypothesis #9 Often HR is doing lots of things it doesn’t get full credit for. The communication, line management, cultural alignment just doesn’t allow it to be fully seen or understood

But more than this I think it’s vital for: Hypothesis #10 Concentrate on celebrating what is good now, but it’s just as important to making more things great in the future. So a bit of 1), and plenty of 2). After all, giving the customers (in this case employees and potential employees) what they want, how they want it, is how you build a great brand. And I’ll return to an employer brand next time out.