Employer Brand Management – Time to step into the future

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Now that access to the best exper�se and talent has become the most cri�cal resource to ensure an organisa�on's future success, what must be done to a�ract and retain that talent has to be taken to a new level. It is a big challenge for organisa�ons to ensure they have the right talent and competence to secure their future. You have to build a strong and a�rac�ve brand in the labour market and among employees, and update the working methods you use to do this. In this ar�cle we focus on two areas with the greatest challenges for employer brand management: differen�a�on and ac�va�on.

Differen�a�on

All brand building, irrespec�ve of the intended target group, requires you to take a strong stand and to be clear about who you are, what values you have, how you work and what that means for your employees. Job seekers are a�racted to companies whose values and benefits they feel fit with their own personal drivers and meet their needs. Peoples' needs are different, and employers that con�nue to try and be a�rac�ve to everyone by describing themselves as being good at everything, will be perceived as being unclear about who they are and not a�rac�ve to anyone as a result.

So it's �me to realise that you can't be all things to everyone. A clearly differen�ated offering to the labour

market (by using an EVP = Employee Value Proposi�on) is the founda�on of an a�rac�ve Employer Brand. Dare to stand out and posi�on yourself.

Ac�va�on

The second major challenge is to make sure that your chosen posi�oning is clearly and consistently implemented. Brands will be strong, valuable and good for business if they are clear. Brands become clear when their posi�oning is consistently expressed and delivered through all the different ac�vi�es an organisa�on undertakes. This applies to what and how the organisa�on communicates, but even more important is how it acts, what it does and how it delivers it. Everything you do to a�ract and retain the right talent.

Dare to choose - Create a unique brand by segmenta�on and differen�a�on

Different types of branding have different star�ng points and are owned by different parts of an organisa�on. Customer marke�ng is usually owned by the marke�ng team, corporate branding in the central communica�ons func�on, and employer branding in HR. In marke�ng it has long been obvious that customer branding concerns crea�ng a unique iden�ty, something which is far less obvious in corporate or employer branding.

Employer Brand Management – Time to step into the future

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But if you go back a number of decades, this was not always the case even in marke�ng. 50 years ago, branding was mainly about delivering products with func�onal features and benefits, and everyone in the same industry did the same thing. The next step was to try and create something unique about their own products, by looking for something unique about these features and benefits (USP = unique selling point). As it became ever more difficult to differen�ate only by func�onal benefits, so the focus in branding shi�ed to concentra�ng on the brand's personality (archetypes and personality have become what you use to express emo�ons). The focus has shi�ed from “what” the brand delivers to “who” the brand is.

Employer branding has yet to go through the same journey. If we look, for example, at the stated objec�ves for employer branding for the biggest banks in Sweden, it is extremely difficult to dis�nguish one from another. What this means is that the banks all try and a�ract the same people with the same arguments. So what happens is that candidates rank them in order of a�rac�veness, and those banks at the top of the list have the most applicants. The result is that all the brands become increasingly alike. If the brands in the car market had the same approach to their customers, you would end up with a list ranking the most a�rac�ve car brands and try to communicate the same values for each. This may be a good enough star�ng point, but it isn't enough to build a strong, differen�ated brand.

The concepts of segmenta�on and posi�oning are the building blocks of branding that you simply can't do without. Both segmenta�on and posi�oning are fundamental to building strong, clear and unique brands no ma�er which target group you are focusing on. No one can be successful by appealing to everyone. So you have to segment the market and decide which target group or need to concentrate on. If you do this well then some people will love you, while others will decide your brand is not for them and go somewhere else.

How, then, do you go about crea�ng clear and differen�ated brands in the employer market? By using your common sense, actually. You start with your own organisa�on – what culture you have, the values of the organisa�on, and how your corporate brand is posi�oned. Then consider how you would characterise the type of people who best fit into this environment, what values they have, what needs they have, their views on leadership, colleagues and so on. Using this as a star�ng point, you can then develop your offering to the labour market, expressed in an EVP (Employee Value Proposi�on). It sounds obvious. If so, why then do so few work in this way with their employer brand?

We believe there are two main reasons for this. To begin with it is very hard to opt out of something. This applies to all brand building. The fundamentals of segmenta�on and posi�oning mean that you have to choose, and that in turn means that there will be things you will choose not to do. It is key to accept this.

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A basic rule of brand building is that clearly differen�ated brands are more successful. These brands have chosen a clear posi�oning. The cost of doing this is that there will be a part of the market that does not choose them. Nevertheless, overall this is a winning strategy. Strong a�rac�ve brands must offer something that the others don't. This uniqueness comes from an emo�onal aspect, perhaps a feeling of belonging, or a place where people feel they can be themselves, an atmosphere they can iden�fy with, or maybe role models they can look up to.

The other main reason is that it is hard to think from the inside out. An organisa�on with a strong unified culture that is derived from the founder's own values and drivers (e.g. Steve Jobs at Apple, Ingvar Kamprad at IKEA, Yvon Chouinard at Patagonia) acts more o�en from within than do organisa�ons which are the result of an amalgama�on of different cultures that try to coexist in a newly invented one, with a handful of words to describe the core values, and which has to be explained to everyone in the organisa�on.

What ac�ng from the inside out means for employer branding work is to start by crea�ng a pla�orm based on your organisa�on's own values and culture. Most organisa�ons will already have most of this described in the brand pla�orm for the corporate brand. What employer branding has to do is to take this and interpret the posi�oning into messages that are relevant to the labour market. Let's take an example and assume that the organisa�on has

decided to build a posi�oning based on the personality expressed as a “competent specialist” (in looking for a unique and differen�ated brand posi�oning, the brand's personality is the basis for the posi�oning).

The culture required to support such a posi�oning has to contain values relevant to this personality, for example “evidence-based”, “curious”, “orderliness”, “control” and so on. What employer branding does is to focus on individuals who want to pursue their careers in a culture that bears the hallmarks of these values. The labour market offering, EVP, will focus on these types of values. The emo�onal aspects of this deal with how the organisa�on communicates and acts in order to a�ract people with these types of drivers, while the func�onal aspects deal with the working environment, training and career paths that will a�ract those who want to pursue a career as a “competent specialist”.

An EVP will contain a clear descrip�on of what it is that differen�ates the organisa�on from other employers. It will consist of a clear set of values and benefits that will a�ract the target candidates. A unique EVP will consist of a number of building blocks describing the organisa�on's commitment to the employment market, in an easily understandable way. Typically this would include emo�onal benefits (e.g. emo�onal experiences that could be expected), social iden�fica�on based on the organisa�on's values, culture and image, and specific func�onal benefits like work content, compensa�on and so on.

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Whilst common sense says that the internal culture, corporate brand and the employer brand should all have consistent messages, this is not always the case. If a brand is not coordinated in this way, it becomes ineffec�ve and unclear. A brand that communicates one way with its customers, with a clear personality and a tone of voice that conveys a specific emo�on, and at the same �me communicates in a different way to the labour market, will not use the power inherent in exploi�ng all the available channels to build the same brand. It is ineffec�ve and probably confusing. It creates uncertainty.

We have met with organisa�ons that have not even thought of the idea that the internal culture, corporate brand and employer brand should be one and the same, and regarded them as three separate ques�ons. We have come across organisa�ons which have seen big differences between the brand's posi�oning to the customer (e.g. an extroverted, me-oriented rebel), and an internal culture which is described as friendly, caring and team-spirited (we-oriented introvert). Once this is discovered, you have to decide what has to change – the culture, the brand or both. Or nothing at all.

Powerful and consistent ac�va�on

In a perfect world, everyone involved in the labour market ac�vi�es will know what the EVP means and how that applies to their own work. When you look at everything the organisa�on has done in recent years, how it communicates with the labour market and how it acts to retain staff, you see

that everything is connected to a clear expression of the brand with a consistent personality. In a perfect world “one brand, one voice” applies. Everything should exude the same personality and tone of voice, whether it is the internal staff magazine, external recruitment adverts, par�cipa�on at career days, how the leadership acts, designing the workplace or team-building events like staff par�es or internal awards ceremonies.

The problem for many organisa�ons is that it doesn't look like this. The brand is all over the place; it becomes unclear and is not a�rac�ve to anyone.

A useful way of thinking before the start of an ac�va�on project is that those involved have to go through different phases before the ac�va�on can really said to be happening. The EVP directs all the ac�vi�es involved in recrui�ng and retaining people, and it involves many different parts of the organisa�on. Everyone needs to understand the meaning of the EVP, by being involved in its development, taking part in training, workshops, all with suppor�ng documenta�on etc. Everyone must also accept the EVP and understand that it will be valid for a long �me, which needs the express support of the leadership team in different contexts. You have to believe in it and know that it will bring success - that it will help the work of both the organisa�on and myself as a member of staff or as a manager. This in turn means you have to be involved in describing what the EVP means in prac�cal terms for different types of ac�vity.

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Having come so far, it is possible to liken this to launching a boat. The work to ac�vate the EVP is up and running. Now what it needs is momentum, the same momentum that ensures that the boat doesn't just end up in the water, but con�nues to gather pace. When the staff and managers alike see the results of the EVP work, where everything the organisa�on says and does consistently expresses the values and personality in the EVP – then you have achieved momentum. The organisa�on will need help with acknowledging, rewarding and dissemina�ng good examples so that everyone sees what is happening, that the EVP is really is guiding everything you do. And behaviour that is contrary to the EVP should be cri�cised, as it risks crea�ng confusion.

Lastly

To summarise, modern employer brand management needs to focus on what is important in brand building – daring to stand out and be different, and being resolute in its execu�on. As with all brand building, the key is to be confident and create an employer brand that is unique and accept that the brand will not be to everyone's tastes. You have to reinforce the emo�onal drivers that make the brand unique and make sure the brand is a�rac�ve to precisely those people you want to employ. You have to be consistent in the ac�va�on, and make sure the implementa�on is empha�c and confident. Everything that is done to a�ract and retain employees has to contribute to crea�ng the brand experience. Everything done to a�ract customers likewise should help create the same emo�ons.

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