I had the pleasure last week to chair a seminar hosted by LinkedIn and Frazer Jones/Carter Murray. The event sought to establish the extent to which there was increasing common ground between an organisation’s customer proposition and its employee value proposition. LinkedIn were excellent hosts and the event brought together marketing and HR decision makers from a range of industry sectors, with the speakers representing Virgin, EA and Microsoft.
Pleasingly, although there is an absence of complete alignment around the most popular brands and the organisations people most want to work with, gaps between the thinking of HR and marketing teams are closing. This certainly corresponds to my more anecdotal perspective whilst constructing the research and insight which goes to form employer brands – there is today far more trust and confidence from both sides of the apparent divide as to the role and contribution each has to make.
And certainly, we can see this played out in the business world. One of the organisations that combines a hugely attractive customer proposition, whilst being a clear employer of trust is Tesla. When faced with the quietly horrifying statistics that his employees were 30% more likely to face injury than other comparable car manufacturers, Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO, was quick to respond.
He did so in a way that reached out emotionally and practically. An email to all employees spoke to the former – ‘It breaks my heart when someone is injured building our cars and trying their best to make Tesla a success’. Over and above this, he also sanctioned the hiring of a third shift on the Tesla production line. This meant that his people would not have to undertake overtime – making them tired and more vulnerable to accidents. It’s a move that will clearly have bottom line implications in terms of the increased headcount, but which should play positively to both Tesla employees and the growing number of passionate Tesla brand advocates.
Musk’s position was endorsed by one of the many interesting outputs of the recent 2017 Edelman Trust Barometer. As well as indicating a significant fall in the public’s trust in all four key institutions – business, politics, NGOs and the media – there was a more positive reading in terms of how brands should evidence their position.
In a long list of key sources of trust, the key influencer of a brand for global audiences is not business activities or advertising – although they did feature highly – but employees. Great, passionate, engaged people are the most credible means of carrying and landing a brand amongst consumer audiences.
(Contrast Musk’s position with that of ex Uber CEO, Travis Kalanick, whose approach to his organisation’s success was all about the initial proposition and very little about the on-going people experience – as he was forced to resign following a range of sexist accusations throughout his organisation).
But the relationship between the employer brand and the employment experience and how this impacts on the customer offering are not always so aligned.
A report from Lloyds Banking Group late last week came over as both hugely positive and similarly concerning at the same time.
Their business confidence index was up to 24%, a significant increase on the immediate reading of 12% immediately post the original Brexit vote. This figure represents an 18-month high. What the index appeared to ignore was the sizeable increase in those organisations experiencing difficulties in hiring skilled labour. This had risen from just 31% in January to 52% today. Despite such challenges, the net balance of organisations wishing to increase headcount over the next six months rose by 6 points to 8%.
Whilst positivity around economic sentiment is to be lauded, there is also a feeling of a chasm between the business and some harsh resourcing and HR facts. The latest ONS figures suggest employment within the UK is up to 74.8%, the highest since 1971 and that there are now more advertised vacancies in the country than active job seekers. (To put such talent scarcity into perspective, Adzuna reports this week that the number of job seekers per vacancy in centres such as Guildford and Oxford stand at 0.08 and 0.12 respectively).
The ability then of organisations to hire individuals who will enhance their customer offering, given the amount of competitor activity and the shallowness of the talent pool, suggests a significant disconnect between those responsible for delivering a customer value proposition and those shaping the employee value proposition.
This was a view backed up by the REC just last week. They published some fascinating data which indicated that 85% of UK organisations had made a bad hire according to their HR leaders. The report went further, suggesting that no less that two out of every five hires represented a poor resourcing decision. For anyone who’s been in business for any length of time, this is perhaps not a massive surprise.
However, of more concern was the finding from the same research that – despite the likely impact to the business through wasted training, declining productivity and customer service and the hit to internal morale – no less than 33% of the report’s senior leaders felt that making a bad hire would have no negative impact on their business. So, yes, a third of HR leaders feel that hiring the wrong people who negatively impact internal morale and external customer experience will not damage their business.
Which is central to my thinking here. Even if there is a degree of alignment in terms of how organisations reach out to both customers and candidates, it’s more about the experience.
The customer experience is a space of increasing focus and sophistication. Apple Stores, for example, are not about shifting product, but about providing an experience to customers which enhances the brand of Apple. Employees within such environments are informative, passionate about the product, not tempted to push for a sale and are likely to improve the way we feel about Apple.
A great employee experience is directly related to a great customer experience. Something backed up by Deloitte, which suggests that organisations that excel at customer experience ‘have 1.5x as many engaged employees as do customer service laggards’.
Aligning propositions is the start, but only the start of the process. The whole experience, from candidate, through to new joiner to employee, your people are exposed to has a direct relationship on the quality of the experience they too are likely to pass on to their customers.
So, whilst it’s hugely positive that people should be joining organisations with an increasing grasp of how they will contribute to organisational objectives, it is central to the service such organisations are able to deliver to customer audiences, that such people have an inspiring, nurturing and engaging employment experience.
In contrast to the customer experience benefits the likes of Tesla and Apple (and definitely not Uber) have created, partly through the exceptional people experience they deliver, few things feel as empty as an Employee Value Proposition which isn’t delivered upon.
Getting to the heart of your employee mindset 