How a Values-based Employer Brand Can Position Your Organization to Win the Talent Wars By MICHAEL BRUNO
Your Brand is Your Promise A strong employer brand (or employment brand) can separate good employers from great employers. They are the organizations people dream of working for. They are the companies on “best places to work” lists and with raving Glass Door reviews. But what exactly is an employer brand? At its core, a brand is a promise. Think of it this way: your company’s brand identity for its products or services is essentially your promise to customers. FedEx, for example, has cemented strong brand loyalty and a repeat customer base by consistently living up to its promises of fast, trackable delivery service. For most, the FedEx product brand is reliability. Similarly, your organization’s employer brand is your promise to a separate but equally important constituency: your employees. An organization’s success, growth and, ultimately, its profitability, is inextricably linked to employees’ level of commitment and dedication to their work. Your organization’s promise to these very important people is a combination of elements that collectively comprise your employer brand. And because of rapidly shifting dynamics shaping modern workplaces, your employer brand is more important than ever before.
An Employer Brand Defined Some people mistakenly equate a company’s “culture” with its employer brand. Culture is important, as we’ll discuss, but it’s only a single aspect of an organization’s employer brand. Let’s look at the individual elements of an employer brand (CLC, Kotler/Porter/Schnarrs), along with some context: • Culture: “Company culture” is a catch-all term that can mean a lot -- or very little. It can be used to describe the general personality of a company: “XYZ Corp. is a very entrepreneurial culture.” (What does that even mean, exactly?!) Others might attempt to define a company’s culture by its outward trappings: open floor plans, amenities, casual dress. In reality, and where the culture “rubber hits the road” is in more substantive manifestations: (genuine) inclusiveness, quality of teams, caliber of management, scalable technology, and active enablement of career development. (We’ll circle back to some of these in a bit.) Keep in mind that a culture a company advertises or espouses and the reality on the ground can be very different things – a disconnect that will diminish an employer brand very quickly. • Compensation: This element of the employer brand is selfexplanatory, but it is quickly evolving beyond concepts of salary, commission, bonuses, benefits, and retirement. Employees are demanding benefits that facilitate a better work/life balance – such as childcare and eldercare benefits – and progressive employers are listening. In fact, 57% of senior leaders responded that “their organizations are assigning higher priority to care benefits to better support their employees in both work and life” (Care.com’s “Future of Benefits” Report, 2021). 12
www.HRProfessionalsMagazine.com
• Environment: This element can encompass many things but let’s use just one example: the physical work environment, e.g. office/ remote/white-collar v. warehouse/blue-collar. One trend we’re seeing in the current Great Reshuffle is blue collar workers – exhausted, underpaid and overexposed to COVID-19 – applying for white collar jobs with better pay and more flexibility regarding hours and work locations. When you read that service workers are “lazy” or “don’t want to work,” please don’t believe this simplistic myth. After all, these critical, front-line workers largely kept society going during the worst of the pandemic. They still want to work, but many want to change their work environments. • Product Brand: Remember the aforementioned promise between and company and its customers? Well, this is crucial to its spillover in the employer brand. The overall reputation of a company’s products or services can be a clear differentiator if other elements are equal or close. • Work/life balance: Perhaps the most dynamic element of the employer brand, this is a concept that is getting its place in the sun. (PerformancePoint’s CEO, Brad Federman, has written that it doesn’t even exist, and advocates for work/life “sway” instead.) Regardless, a variety of factors influence this element, and it can be hard to read before accepting a job offer. Some things to look out for here include travel, remote work capability, vacation/PTO policy, etc.
The Problem with Pulling Levers Perhaps understanding that they couldn’t be “all things to all people,” some organizations have tried to stand out among competitors by making one or two elements of their employer brand particularly strong. Some companies known for high wages, for example, have tough and demanding internal cultures. Likewise, it seemed that some companies that advertised as “fun” places to work – ping-pong tables, free sodas – could get by with workplaces that blurred the work/life demarcation line. Still, other companies with just so-so compensation attracted scores of eager applicants because of their mission or vibrant, inclusive cultures. This calculus of levers still exists, but the current talent exodus we’re facing reflects a different reality and employers who want to win long-term will need to rethink this strategy in the context of a valuesbased employer brand. Things that used to be differentiators – salary, a strong benefits package – are now table stakes. And scores of employees, quickly seeing through cynical schemes designed to keep them at their desks longer, are tired of making trade-offs and voting with their resignations. Post-pandemic, your employees – the ones you have and the ones you want – are demanding more. They don’t want everything, as the “perfect” organization doesn’t exist. But what they do want is alignment. They want to work for a company that aligns with their values.
