Two events have given me cause this week to pause and realise the passing, indeed acceleration, of time. My eldest son has finally gone past my height notch on the kitchen door – he’s now looking down on me for more than one reason. If that wasn’t sufficiently painful, I am hurtling towards a large, significant and apparently unavoidable milestone of a birthday on Saturday. And whilst my own milometer appears to be spinning around apparently out of control, maybe it’s not a bad analogy for what I see around me.
Some great and insightful research out earlier this month from Lithium Technologies, which suggested that 53% of Twitter followers expect a response back from a tweet on your brand within just an hour of posting. Another 12% will give you the benefit of another hour. Harnessing social channels is no longer much of a debate for both consumer and employer brands – but embracing such media at anything that might be construed as a dawdle isn’t going to play well. A key factor in this equation is that of the candidate mindset. For half a decade, talent pools have been wary and cautious, reluctant to raise their heads and dust down their CVs. That is changing, and changing fast. But whether it’s the speed of response they encounter from a would-be employer or the overall experience they receive along the candidate journey – how many organisations are genuinely ready for this gear-shift in talent mobility?
Someone who epitomises life at full throttle is the uber successful Sebastian Vettel. Not content with taking his fourth world championship earlier in the season, his success at last weekend’s Austin Grand Prix in Texas was his eighth consecutive win. As breathtakingly quick as his Red Bull car is, Sebastian is himself equally swift at changing his position vis a vis his team. On breaking the record for the most wins on the bounce at the weekend, Vettel went out of his way to praise the win as a team effort, ‘We have an incredible team spirit. Everyone is willing to push. I love you guys’.
A lovely sentiment, doubtless heartfelt, but somewhat at odds with Vettel’s approach earlier in the season when he flatly ignored the same team’s orders in order to pass his team mate, Webber, late on in the Malaysian race to grab a very personal victory. At the time, his team boss suggested ‘You have some explaining to do’.
But if we’re looking at examples of brands moving at pace – if, not necessarily, in the right direction – look no further than the Co-op. Up until as recently as last year, it was tough to imagine an organisation that had managed to straddle so effectively commercial success with such an honest, approachable, sustainable and ethical stance. Few other brands could command anything like the respect and genuine admiration that the Co-op had managed to achieve. However, the past year, following the increasingly ill-considered takeover of the debt-laden Britannia, the failed purchase of excess-to-requirement Lloyds Banking Group branches and an utterly unconvincing performance in front of the Treasury Select Committee, the brand has accelerated into a downward spiral. News over the last few days that former Bank Chair, Paul Flowers, had been caught trying to buy cocaine and ketamine, which brought about the immediate resignation of current Group Chair, Len Wardle, only served to accelerate the brand’s fall. It is hard to quantify the full extent of brand impact from both a consumer and employer perspective.
And owners and managers of employer brands have little choice, particularly now, but to operate with real pace and momentum. If the recovery has, up until the last six months, been characterised by a two steps forward and one back pattern, the tide of economic sentiment seems entirely in one direction. Inflation? Down now to 2.2%. The service sector? The PMI/Markit index is now at 62.5, its highest reading for 14 years. GDP? Growth of 0.8% in Q3 or an annualised 3.2%. Unemployment? Down to 7.6%, with 177,000 more people in work on a quarter by quarter comparison. Vacancies? There are 545,000 in the economy, up 6,000 on the previous quarter. To echo a point from our last blog, the CIPD feel that, ‘Talent is on the move again.’ And talent is likely to be making up for lost time.
Perhaps the key finding from candidate-based research TMP presented just today at the Royal Institution, around talent pool dissatisfaction, reflected the fact that 65% of candidate audiences feel that their careers have slowed down over the course of the last five years.
Today’s, and tomorrow’s, employer brands should be mindful of the emerging – and fast emerging – talent landscape. The economy and employment choices have emerged from hibernation. Candidates and employees have more choice than at any point in the last decade and they are keen to make up for lost career time. Brands that can reflect this sense of purpose and momentum will be the talent winners in 2014. And if Vettel’s pace and momentum has seen he and his team sweep all before him, does anyone remember who took second?
Getting to the heart of your employee mindset 
Time for some shoe lifts then.
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