If simplicity was good enough for Albert Einstein, it probably should apply to your employer brand

Einstein had many entirely laudable qualities, little however did I expect that we might add employer branding visionary to such a long list. However, one of my favourite quotes from the great man – ‘If you cannot explain something simply, you do not understand it sufficiently’ rings true across employer branding as much as theoretical physics. Probably.

Einstein’s admiration of simplicity echoes some research undertaken this month with a colleague, Sam Monteath and myself. Part of this research, conducted amongst the UK employer branding community, touches on what such professionals want from and see in a great brand. Authenticity, flexibility and believability all rank, not surprisingly, very highly.

But that for an employer brand to be admired and to be effective, it should demonstrate simplicity, was also a key learning.

And nothing could have been apparently more simple than a hugely popular thread doing the LinkedIn rounds last week. The thread touched on the challenges of explaining to their young children what professionals actually did at work. A tough, questioning audience who have no desire to be patronised and fobbed off but who do want clarity and simplicity. The thread clearly struck a chord amongst LinkedIners as the theme was picked up by any number of people who had had equal struggles attempting to clarify exactly what they did. There was too a similar number recounting the efforts of their children to describe exactly what they thought their parents did by way of gainful employment. Not always entirely flattering or possibly accurate, but generally pretty simple.

A wind turbine engineer became ‘Dad makes big windmills’; – a senior merchandiser described her work as ‘I buy stuff’; and a groundworks engineer took a very simplistic approach to explaining what he did – ‘We dig really big holes’.

And as someone who still struggles to explain exactly what he does to his parents, never mind his children, I’ve certainly got a lot to learn.

But if simplicity is what employer branding professionals crave, is that always the reality?

Not according to recent LinkedIn research. In a talent market already suffering from shortages and saturation levels, are employers doing all they can to differentiate their message and create clarity amongst talent pools? Not so, for LinkedIn. The key roadblocks getting in the way of candidates changing jobs? The most popular reason for not making a move, for 34% of this audience, was ‘Not knowing what it’s really like to work at the company’.

So, a third of all potential job changers do not go ahead with their intentions because a recruiting organisation has not described with sufficient simplicity and clarity the working reality they offer. In other words, they have failed the ‘What does mummy/daddy do at work?’ test.

More proof about the importance of simplicity? Look no further.

Staggering news from Nokia this week, who have announced they are to re-launch the iconic 3310. It originally saw the light of day in 2000 and, for its durability and robustness over its looks, was a huge success. You’ll probably have one hidden deep in the recesses of a garage drawer somewhere. And my guess would be that the battery still has some flickering signs of life. Can its range of functionality and sophistication approach that of your sparkling iPhone 7? Not a chance. But if battery life, the game of Snake and simplicity is what you’re after, get an order in now.

So why is simplicity so important in today’s labour market? Because talent has so much choice and so many loud and competing messages expressing such choice. The most recent soundings from the UK labour market suggested that employment reached 74.6% in the final quarter of 2016 – a figure never touched before. Unemployment, at 4.8%, has not been as low for more than a decade – September 2005.

However, another indicator perhaps better articulates the sense of competition within the labour market. January’s claimant count was 745,000. And the number of official vacancies in the economy? 751,000.

There are literally thousands more jobs in the UK labour market than people to fill them. It was unclear whether this had ever happened before.

Talent, then, has choice and options, as well as a lot of employers trying to push their employer brand in the direction of such talent.

‘I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one’.

It’s not clear to whom this quote should be attributed – Mark Twain, Blaise Pascal or Sir Winston Churchill are all possibilities – but it is clear how relevant this is to employer branding.

If employers do not have the clarity and insight and stories that will differentiate their employer brand within tight, competitive markets, they are likely to resort to quantity over quality, padding out their brand and its articulations with verbiage and clutter.

They are unlikely to make much headway amongst audiences in the playground or the workplace. And whilst there is a temptation to resort to the thesaurus when describing jobs, working environment, culture and employer brand, is this likely to pass the Einstein test? (A man not only with the general theory of relativity to his name but also a member of the Plumbers and Steamfitters Union. Yes, really).

So, do we understand what makes our own organisation’s employer brand different and ownable with enough clarity to explain it simply? Because if that isn’t the case, this is the candidate roadblock most likely to see your resourcing struggles continuing.