If the last four years of economic pain and suffering have taught us anything, it’s that big isn’t beautiful. The global financial crisis was caused by big banks. Banks often accused, in some cases inaccurately, of being ‘too big to fail’. Big is bad, you see.
And this antipathy doesn’t stop with banks. We dislike vast supermarket chains – their size and buying power putting smaller competitors out of business and distorting the shape and make-up of the high street. We grow cynical and uncomfortable about vastly successful businesses such as, you guessed it, the Big 4 accountancy firms. We are unlikely too to shed a tear for Big Pharma with its recent struggles with patent expiries, generic competition and growing regulation. Big doesn’t do PR very well, it would appear.
But this week’s Economist makes a timely plug for the big guy. The magazine favourably contrasts Germany’s concentration of large/medium sized companies, with their economies of scale, productivity and quality with Greece and Italy’s preponderance of smaller, less efficient, less scalable and less job creating organisations.
And why does this matter for employer branding? An impactful corporate ad for GE a few pages further on within the publication is all about size. It portrays a number of obviously engaged engineers in front of a huge jet engine inside a vast factory, outlining the global impact and footprint of the organisation.
Fair play to them. This is the authentic employment experience offered by GE. Their business is about scale, efficiency, consistency, technological advancement, innovation and global delivery. GE aren’t small and they don’t pretend to be. Nor do they pretend that the careers they create, in their thousands, are about working in a small environment. This doesn’t mean the organisation isn’t nimble, entrepreneurial and respectful of the individual. But it does mean that they view their size – both to customers and to employees – as a fact of life within the organisation and a fact of life to be proud of and one which makes working for the organisation different, ownable and hugely rewarding.
Size is important to GE and the organisation is brave enough to make this a key pillar of its employer brand and its employee proposition. Employer brands are anchored in an authentic representation of an organisation’s employment offering – big is what you get at GE. They don’t shy away from this, rather it’s a key building block in what makes their employment experience uniquely aspirational and uniquely GE.
Getting to the heart of your employee mindset 