It’s no surprise that companies with a reputation for recruiting and retaining the best staff often have a strong brand presence. Branding is no longer just about influencing whether customers choose to buy from a company; it also determines who wants to work for them. But when you address the issue of branding and recruitment, you realise there are two sides to the equation.
(i) You can use the brand to attract quality people and
(ii) You can use the qualities of those people to build the brand further.
It’s a wonderful, virtuous circle. People respond to the brand but we mustn’t forget that, to a large extent, they are the brand. Yet, obvious as this seems, many companies don’t do their brand justice when it comes to recruiting.
So what is it about your company’s brand that can help or hinder the recruitment process?
How do candidates see your brand?
At the most obvious level, the more attractive the company, and the more consistently that it communicates its positive brand values, the more people will want to come and work for it. If your brand is well-known, you have a head-start in that you are already ‘on the radar’. A well-respected brand will also help the position to be seen as more secure.
Less obviously, however, there’s the ‘tribe’ factor to take into account. The urge to belong is often cited as one of the subconscious desires that brands fulfil in the modern consumer. Brands, especially fashion or leisure brands, are not so much products as a way to gain access to a new and desirable tribe. Wear a certain label in a certain way, and you’re part of the crowd. You don’t just buy an iPhone, for example, you join the iPhone generation.
In the same way, your recruitment strategy is also an invitation to join an exclusive club. This need to belong is at the heart of many career decisions: I have the skills, I like the salary, all the other boxes are ticked. But do I really see myself as one of them? Do I aspire to work for this kind of company? More to the point, do I feel that I will be held in greater esteem by people if I work for that company? The company brand is reflected onto people and if they’re not proud of that – if they don’t want to belong to that brand – it’s not going to work out however much you pay them. (And nor should you pay over the odds – if it’s not right for them, it’s not right for you).
The ideal, of course, is to attract not only quantity but also quality. Bear in mind then that the thought processes of the top 5 per cent of people out there are quite different to most. These people are already in demand. They are the one in 20 that every employer wants to recruit. Sure, they can demand more money. But, more to the point, they can afford to look at other aspects beside salary. Indeed, they are more likely to look at the bigger picture, and this is where the employer brand really comes into its own: making the difference in attracting and retaining top people.
What does an employer brand do for you?
Whether the employer brand is proactively managed or not, every company has one (What? Work for that lot? No way) and it is, as you would expect, consistent with the company’s product brands. This is a very good reason why marketing and HR need to put their differences aside and work together on this one. The HR people have the recruitment expertise, but then most of the experience of branding will come from the marketers and their experience with product brands. After all, an employer brand exists for the same reasons, i.e:
1. To differentiate
How do you differentiate your vacancy from your competitors? It is enormously difficult because they are probably offering everything you are: performance bonus, training schemes, flexible working hours, etc. But if you communicate those benefits, and the personality behind them, consistently over a period of time, the brand will sell your company to the sort of applicants you want to attract. This may seem no more than a decision based on common sense, but it goes deeper than that. Branding sceptics who fail to apply branding disciplines and fail to make the employer brand visible and understandable at every recruitment touchpoint (advertisement, interview, website, recruitment fair) will have the recruitment problems, not you, even though the positions on offer are more or less identical.
2. To support premium pricing
Whether you’re talking about reassuringly expensive lager, or IT hardware that you will never be sacked for buying, we all know that the highest margins go hand-in-hand with the strongest brands. Why offer discounts when you have a brand which can attract customers in its own right? Similarly, why enter into a salary war with competitors for the best staff? Do Google have to pay over the odds for the world’s brightest web programmers? If your brand is strong, you could be saving millions on your salary bill. The annual report by BrandIndex illustrates this point perfectly. It’s no coincidence that the three brands identified as the strongest overall all appear among the ten companies people would be proudest to work for. Tell them that next time they question the brand budget…
3. To inspire loyalty
The greatest value you get from your brand is not when a customer initially purchases. If they buy on the strength of a brand (as we all do, like it or not) and find that the brand really lives up to its promises, they will tell others. And that genuine advocacy speaks much louder than anything a marketing department can create. It is the same with an employer brand. A candidate will not only be attracted by the brand but, on realising some months later that it really is living up to the billing, he will become a fully-fledged company advocate. A quick look at the organisations featuring in The Sunday Times 100 Best Companies to Work For table shows that their employees speak consistently highly not only of their colleagues but of the nature of the company that they work for. Where they tread, others will follow.
Using your brand values as a recruiting tool
To define an employer brand, you need to put your corporate brand values into an HR perspective. For example, let’s assume that ‘innovation’ is one of the cherished pillars of your brand. If the customer buys into that value, it means one thing and one thing only to them. It tells them that the solutions you produce will be innovative and imaginative compared to those produced by competitors. For your customers, that’s good news because it brings them a competitive edge; it improves the way they work; it brings them measurable business benefits.
In the employment market, however, the message is turned on its head. It says to prospective employees: “Your innovative instincts will be valued here. Your sense of innovation will bring you more money, status and advancement”. Especially for those in the top percentile of people in your field – those who want to find a home where they can achieve as well as receive rewards – it is a highly appealing message.
The process of defining the employer brand starts by asking a few searching questions. Senior management of course will readily provide answers. Not only is it their job to know about the company brand, but a 2006 survey also showed that 83 per cent of senior management claim to actually live the brand. However, if you really want to get under the skin of what sets your employer brand apart, speak to employees, particularly new employees and, if you can, ex-employees. Get an all-round perspective by asking the following questions:
- What are our exceptional strengths as an employer?
- What is especially important for our target group when choosing an employer?
- What do the most important competitors offer?
- How are we currently seen as an employer?
- What is important to us as an organisation, and how are these values reflected in those who work for us?
Assess these answers, conduct workshops and examine competitor material. You will uncover a genuine set of employer brand values that will allow you to paint a consistent picture to candidates throughout the recruitment process.
An extreme but excellent example of how the distinctive requirements of a job can be integrated within a wider brand definition is that of HM Prison Service. They worked to define the employer brand and established the following set of key attributes:
- Human insight
- Humour
- Competence
- Courage
- Thoughtfulness
- Realism
Having first identified these key attributes, the Prison Service were then able to extend these to identify the traits which they expected from their staff. From there, it was just a short step to outlining the behaviour that would be required from those considering a career with them, for example:
Realism = Cautiously optimistic; Taking people as you find them; Sceptical not cynical; Nobody’s fool; Happy to change a small part of the world.
Whilst the typical B2B brand may have little in common with a sector involved in the long-term confinement of dangerous people, we can still admire the clarity and frankness on show here. We should aim to be as honest as they are in communicating brand values to prospective employees.
Putting it into practice
Once the employer brand is defined, don’t underestimate the importance – or the difficulty – of ensuring that it is communicated consistently throughout the recruitment process, whether on a recruitment ad, online, in store or at an assessment centre.
It’s worth the effort. Put your time and effort (and budget) into promoting your brand as an intrinsic part of your recruitment offering, and you will find that the people who come to work for you believe in your values – which makes them potential brand builders for the future. Attracted by the differentiating qualities of your brand, they will reinforce the perception of your company as an organisation with a clearly defined brand: a company that stands for something. And this enhanced brand experience in turn will help inspire other like-minded recruits to join. To misquote Field of Dreams: “Build the brand, and they will come.”
By Richard Bush, MD, Base One
