PLEASE VISIT OUR SPONSORS

Recruitment & Retention

Published October 2007

What Is Your Employment Brand?

 

  Ron Lawrence

Every organization has an employment brand. It is made up of how people feel about working there, how potential job candidates view the company and even how the company is perceived by the market it serves. A distinctive employment brand is essential to lure and retain the best talent, which is the key competitive advantage for those organizations winning in today's marketplace.

Leading-edge companies openly articulate their employment brand and market it to talent as aggressively as they do their product or service brands to consumers or business customers. Not surprisingly, HR is a logical steward in defining and communicating a compelling brand with senior leadership's validation.

The Five Pillars of a Strong Employment Brand

"Employment branding is the hottest strategy in employment," said Dr. John Sullivan, human resource management professor at the College of Business at San Francisco State University. "It is one of the few long-term solutions to the 'shortage of talent' problem. Whereas most employment strategies are short-term and 'reactive' to job openings, building an employment brand is a longer-term solution designed to provide a steady flow of applicants."

A solid employment brand is a clear and compelling articulation of why an individual would want to work for an organization and give it his or her best. It's not just about making employees "feel good" or letting them have fun, but about fortifying the organization's culture with a set of pillars as a foundation for tangible financial and competitive benefits. These five pillars are: a clear value proposition, synergy with consumer brands, authenticity/consistency, loyalty and cultural consistency in practice.

A Clear Value Proposition

What is it about an organization that turns people on? What tangible and intangible benefits do they derive from working there? Many people are drawn to the clear value propositions of nonprofits or other organizations in which compensation might not be highly competitive. These work environments attract people who want to make a difference.

Others prefer a value proposition that offers more-tangible rewards. Additional value propositions people find appealing relate to creativity or innovation, such as the opportunity to keep learning or the excitement that comes from designing new products.

The value proposition should be closely aligned with corporate values. A company that wants to define itself positively in the eyes of current and future employees has to be explicit about how it motivates and rewards its people, what kind of culture it wants to foster and the values it espouses and by which it lives.

Perhaps the most famous demonstration of corporate values in the United States was how Johnson & Johnson handled the 1980s Tylenol-tampering incident. Although the company was not responsible for the tampering, which occurred after the product reached store shelves, it took responsibility and did what countless consumers would call "the right thing" — the company immediately recalled the product from the entire country, at a loss of more than $100 million, and created tamper-resistant seals.