So are you, so to speak, a top down or bottom up organisation as regards employer branding? A number of fascinating stories have been doing the rounds over the course of the last two weeks outlining different organisations and their own individual approaches to such an issue.
In his own deliberately quiet and quietly deliberate way, Antony Jenkins, Barclays’ new CEO has been outlining the bank’s new approach to customer delivery, internal behaviours and profitability. In a marked change from the modus operandi of his predecessor, Bob Diamond, Jenkins has been unveiling his blueprint to reinvent the organisation through ‘doing well financially and behaving well’. This is a new Barclays with a new vision which will suit some of the bank’s employee base but probably not others. And Jenkins is entirely happy with this. The reasons people are attracted into the organisation, the reasons people stay and the reasons people thrive are changing and changing significantly. Barclays is evolving, as is its employer brand, and it is very clear who is the source for such change.
If Mr Jenkins faces something of a challenge, it, relatively speaking, is put in perspective by that of Barack Obama and the US labour market. If his first administration was often criticised as being focused on tax rises, his annual State of the Union address this month introduced us to a new direction: ‘Delivering growth and jobs will be the North Star that guides our efforts’. If Mr Obama has sometimes appeared diffident to the needs of business in the past, his approach now seems far more aligned. US plc and its employer brand are now firmly focused on growth, job creation and recruitment. Again, behaviours and a shift in focus are coming decisively from the top.
But that’s not the only way. Whilst there here might not appear to be connection between the President of the United States and a sandwich, bear with me. Not one, but two sandwiches, in fact. First, the chain Eat. The organisation has been through some major changes in terms of customer engagement, look and feel of the stores and product development. Instead of adopting a uniquely top down approach, Eat engaged with a key employee pool – its store workers. According to Ed Godwin, Eat’s People Director, ‘We didn’t want our people to be on the receiving end of a new brand.’ Instead, Eat involved these people significantly in the defining, creation and roll out a new value set, a new employer brand and new engagement activities. The result? 80% of new managers are internal appointments and external hiring activity has gone through the roof. Perhaps more to the point, Eat’s people feel engaged and involved in their business and able to impact it.
If such a bottom up approach worked so well for Eat, what about the experiences of direct competitors, Pret a Manger? The organisation produced in late January a list of guidelines around how its retail employees should adopt ‘Pret perfect’ behaviours. These rules outline how Pret staff should be ‘charming’, ‘have presence’ and ‘create a sense of fun’. The rules, fifty of them, extend to employees being tactile with each other and never ‘just being there for the money’. The charter was picked up by the press which termed the approach ‘emotional labour’ and the series of rules was subsequently removed from the Pret website. Doubtless this is an initiative born out of best intentions but the contrast between Eat behaviours being the product of employee dialogue and Pret’s being imposed from on high is striking.
The question as to whether an employer brand and its influences should be top down or bottom up is important and one that should focus the mind of any organisation contemplating behavioural shift. For TMP Worldwide, differentiated employer brands should strike a meaningful balance between the authenticity of the employment experience and the aspiration of senior management’s vision. If the employer brand feels weighted too much towards one of these balancing points, then it is likely not to either align with business strategy or the working reality of its people.
And why is the balance of an employer brand so critical in early 2013? The UK employment market is beginning to look a lot more competitive by the month. The latest figures from the ONS suggest that vacancies in the workforce are at their highest since 2008, employment rose by 90,000 in the quarter to November and unemployment fell by 37,000 during the same period.
At the same time, whilst UK plc is adding more jobs, productivity continues to struggle. An article in yesterday’s Sunday Times suggests that the productivity gap between average output per worker in the UK compared to the rest of the G7 was at its widest since 1993. Whilst every hour worked in the US creates 27% more output than the same hour in the UK, even the stricken Italy trumps us by 3%.
So not only is there an increasing squeeze on talent hiring for many UK organisations, there is an increasing challenge to enhance the productivity, engagement and alignment of those people when they do join. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that creating a balanced employer brand is a major feature in and organisation’s ability to both hire and inspire.
Getting to the heart of your employee mindset 