Post on 17-Jul-2015
Methodology Asked whether terms “successful”
and “unsuccessful” applied to branding
Asked to characterize successful and unsuccessful brands
Name firms with successful and unsuccessful brands
Clarify and further explore their characterization
Area Of Expertise Position Company
Employer BrandingDirector
ConsultancyHead – Branding Team
Internal/ External
Employee
Communications
Director
Manager Internal
Communication
Employee
Communication
Consultancy
Employee Attraction/
Retention
Director and COO
Director HR, Asia Pacific
Head of Practice
Improvement
HR Consultancy
Fortune 500 Firm
Data collection and analysis
Expert industry panel –
17 semi-structured interviews in 6
months – 13 industry participants
Diversity of experience across
companies, industries and
countries
Verbatim transcripts of interview
and field notes were coded
countries
Common themes were identified – closely
related themes were merged
Final check to find that interpretations were
resonant with data captured
Constructs were compared for establishing
relationships
Themes grouped to form constructs
Methodology
Characteristics Consistent with
consumer and Corporate Branding
Being known and noticeable
even if you have a brand, how do people understand the brand?
Does the recruitment team deliver the brand on the outside?
the supermarket Aisle example
Being seen as relevant
company knows what its employees value, carry and
communicate it effectively
bad brand is when it doesn’t translate into potential hire’s
perspective
Being differentiated from direct competitors
are you saying the Unique things?
you need to look at emotional reasons why you are different
bad brands are soulless; they tell nothing about identity or
character of organization
Additional characteristics
Fulfilling a psychological contract
a good employer makes you want to work, and gives you an accurate
idea of what it is about.
brand is an on-going promise – your HR and line must be on the same
page.
Employees have many interactions with firms’ values, culture and
policies
Unintended appropriation of brand values
employees cannot distinguish an employing firm prior to employment
like it can experience a McD or Pizza Hut
An employee thinks like a consumer before joining. They like the
honeymoon period of 3 months - the logo attracts them to work
Later , only the work matters – the people, processes and the thought
matters
Type of Metric Indicator for Successful /
Unsuccessful Brands
Externally focused metric
% of job offers
acceptedHigher than industry average
= attractive brandApplicants /
Role
Internally Focused Metric
Average Length
of Tenure
Higher than industry average =
attractive
Average Staff
turnover
Lower than industry average =
contract fulfilled
Level of staff
engagement
Higher than industry average =
contract fulfilled
Alignment of HR and Marketing
Employee behavior and customer satisfaction are aligned
Employer brand impacts expectations and experiences at every stage of employee life cycle- even after separation
Employment experience as a product
Firms culture, policy are core product.
HR acts as the exchange between product manager and the developer
Change management, manages the intangible and emotive aspects of experience
Strategic considerations
1. Communication Breakdown
- Employee not attracted
- Contract fulfilled
4. Sustained success
- Employee attracted
- Contract fulfilled
3. Long term disconnect
- Employee not attracted
- Contract unfilled
2. Strategy Mismatch
- Employee attracted
- Contract unfulfilled
Strategy
Employer Branding: Employer attractiveness and the
use of social media
A study aimed to investigate the factors employers should focus
on in their employer branding
Tested EmpAt and analyzed relationships between dimensions of
the scale and use of social media in relation to corporate
reputation and intentions to apply for a job
In order to improve the reputation and increase attractiveness,
employers need to strengthen the company’s name as a brand,
and this is labelled as employer branding
EmpAT
Interest Value which encompasses innovation and interest in product/services
Social value which refers to the work environment and relations
to other employees
Economic value which relates to economic benefits
Development value which points to the possibility for future
opportunities
Application Value which encompasses the possibility to use what has been learnt
already
Developed by Berthon (2005) and derived from Ambler and Barrow’s
dimensions for psychological, functional and economic benefits, it
consists of 25 items across 5 dimensions
Social media has opened a new
way for organizations to attract
talent
Advertisement of job vacancies has
become common
Internet has also enabled employers to find
passive job seekers along with active ones
This helps organizations to find and
evaluate candidates at lower costs
Social Media
Hypothesis used
H1: Potential employees’ perception of the five dimensions of employer attractiveness has a
positive relation with their perception of a good corporate
reputation
H2 : Potential employees’ perception of employers’ use of
social media has a positive relation with a good corporate
reputation
H3 : High corporate reputation has a positive relation with the
potential employees’ intention to apply for a job
H4 : Potential employees’ perception of employers’ use of
social media positively moderates the relationship
between corporate reputation and potential employees’ intention to apply for a job
1. Participants: Norwegian engineering students
2. Three firms students had to choose from were Statoil, Aker Solutions and Kongsberg
3. Link for a web based survey was made available
4. Respondents were asked to state how familiar they were with the firms and answer only the questions related to the firms they had knowledge about
5. 184 engineering students responded with a total of 366 answers
1. Employer attractiveness: Measured using 25 indicators of EmpAt on a 7 point Likert scale
2. Corporate reputation: Measured using a scale developed by Turban (1998) consisting of 4 indicators such as ‘I have heard good things about the firm’ and were measured on a 5 point scale
3. Intentions to apply for a job: Was measured using a scale developed by Highhouse (2003). 5 items such as ‘I would accept a job from this company’ on a 5 point scale
4. Social Media: Measured using a scale developed by Collins and Stevens (2002).4 indicators such as ‘I have seen advertising of jobs on social media by this organization’ on a 5 point scale
Results
• There was a significant positive relations between innovation
value and corporate reputation, psychological value and
corporate reputation, application value and corporate
reputation
• No relation was found between social dimension or economic
dimension and corporate reputation. Therefore, H1 partly
confirmed
• No interaction effect was found of social media between
reputation and intentions to apply. Therefore, H4 is not
supported
• Social media linked positively to reputation and there was also
positive relation between reputation and intentions to apply,
supporting H2 and H3
• There was a significant relation between psychological value
and intention to apply
Implications
• Findings show how monetary questions are less important in
attracting and retaining employee compared to non-monetary
factors
• Potential employees, who feel they are going to feel better
about themselves and feel more self confident if they work in a
specific organizations, are also more likely to think about
applying to those organizations
• Use of social media in employer branding can be helpful in
building good reputation
• Corporate reputation has a significant effect on the intention of
someone to apply
Social Media: Harnessing the power of word of
mouth for employer branding
Today, word of mouth, both externally and internally, can spread
stories faster and wider through social media. The results can be
both positive and negative for the reputations
55% of employees do not see the business benefit in using the
social media
Only 15% of employees think that personal and work accounts
should be the same
Only 15.6% of employees know how to represent their employer’s
brand on social media platforms
1. Organizations need to realize how different portions of workforce use different social media channels in different ways
2. It’s crucial that organizations create an effective social media strategy from which they can formulate policy
3. That way, everyone will be more aware about what they are publishing via social media
4. Companies need to remember the power of getting internal stakeholders to advocate their brand via word of mouth
We have looked at how social should an organization’s social
media channel be and who should an organization be
engaging with and how
Social media represents a golden opportunity to engage employees and create brand
ambassadors. Social media is about sharing and
recommendations. 65.1% of employee have no involvement
with their organizations on social media
Using social media, organizations can shape and
determine their employer branding to create one unified
voice for all internal and external communication
In spite of a lot of buzz around hiring via social media, very few
organizations seemed to be really doing so and truly
harnessing these channels for recruitment. This needs to be
changed