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EMPLOYER BRAND
EMPLOYER BRANDING is the buzzword in organizations
these days
and has caught significant momentum
since it first emerged as a recognisable term in the
early 1990s. For many years, it was largely
restricted
to recruitment advertising. Over time, this
consistent
management of the company's employer brand image
has extended well beyond paid advertising to a much
wider range of communication content. Developing a
strong employer brand may require compelling
communication, but it ultimately depends on the
quality of the employment experience.This means that
leading companies pay as much attention to ensuring
their people management practices align with their
employer brand proposition as their recruitment
marketing.
WHAT ROLE DOES EMPLOYER BRAND PLAY IN HR?
EXPERTS SPEAK
OUT
DP SINGH, head HR, IBM
HR: THE NEW MARKETING
MANAGER
It is not about HR
building the brand or the marketing
peo ple building the
brand; every employee in an organisation is building the
brand of hisher
organisation.Now, what are those HR practices, interventions
and programmes that will
enable the organisation to build its brand through
its employees? For
example, the outside world experiences IBM through an
IBMer. And if the
IBMer's experience is not what it needs to be, then we
won't be able to build
the brand. HR has a very important role to play in
terms of programmes and
practices in terms of promoting its brand in a
big way . Like we listen
to our clients and consumers, HR should be listening
to its employees because
you need to measure their feedback. You need to
know what they are
talking, what they are saying and you need to keep
building on it. The
expectations and requirements of employees will
continuously evolve. HR
needs to continuously listen and put together
programmes and practices
to support these. HR has programmes, processes
and inter ventions which
help fi nally build the brand through its employees
whom they touch. Also,
when you flatten the organisation, the people
who were not in knowledge of certain pieces, starts
changing.
Finally, it is about the
holistic approach which you need to look at and
touch your employees and
then they become your brand outside.
SHEFALI MOHAPATRA, group
head-human resources, ACTTV
The techniques of
employer brand ing remain the same, but how one brands
oneself is very
different from company to company and industry to industry .
The general perception
is that public sector organisations are not very
glamorous, but there are
a whole lot of people out there who aspire to
work for the public
sector. So, there is a target segment out there that wants
to work for public
sector organisations and they would change if they need
different kind of
employees. So, onesize-for-all doesn't work in employer
branding. For instance,
if we as an organisation, had decid ed to bring the
PSU kind of employer
branding activities, we would have failed miserably.
We wouldn't have been
able to do what he have in the last 5 years. So, it is
different though
techniques will be the same. Also, no matter what an
organisation wants to be
known as, at the end of it, it is the employees
who decide what the
employer brand is and it is entirely based on experience.
So, the experience that
I So, the experience that I have as an employee and ‘
that would be based on
the most often `experienced' experience, is what I
would define as my organisation's culture,
which in turn, is the employer
brand.
ASHISH TANWAR,
university relations manager India, DELL
W hatever your employees
are saying about you as an organisation, is your
employer brand. So,
would I as an employee go and tell my brother to join
my organisation? You
cannot tell people to promote your organisation
outside. Also, if you
are saying that it is the responsibility of only the HR
department to actually
build or sell the culture of an organisation, then that
is some thing that has
not happened ever and will not happen. It is a top down
approach; it is what the
leader of the organisation wants to tell the world about
his organisation. So,
this is not something that only the HR people decide in an
organisation; it comes
from the top. For example, At Dell, we have the
Dell 2020 Legacy of Good
Plan, wherein there are 21 goals that we need to
reach by 2020. The goals
have to be a call of the organisation's leader and
then the way you educate
others on these kinds of offerings is what the
HR department now will
be doing as the new marketing manager.
EDWIN MOSES, senior VP,
Oracle
E mployer branding is im
portant because the de mand for talented employees
is going ed employees is going up and the
supply is not growing at the same
rate. Hence, you have to
have an upper hand. Secondly, moulding somebody
takes time. If you have
to create a guy who is one day going to be the CEO from
within the ranks, you
have to mould him well. You have got organisations that
are becoming mul
ti-portfolio, but they need to have one overriding theme.
And then they have to
decide not to do anything that does not stand for the
theme.
Moreover, I feel that
rather than making HR rather than making HR the
marketing manag er, make
HR the prod uct manager. When you take an
HR profession al and put
them into various businesses, they have to do
what Peter Drucker said
and that is, `the job of mar keting is to understand
the customer so very
well that when you cre ate a product, it is so perfect,
that you don't have to
sell'. This have to sell'. This might sound Utopian, but
you have to start
somewhere.
PROF RAHUL CHOWDHURY,
associate professor, IFIM Business School
U ltimately, brand ing
is not a sum mation of tactics; it is a strategy involving
the whole
organisation.So unless you get that total strategy which will express
itself in the
organisational culture, it is not going to work. Also, is the CEO
driving the branding, is
a question to be asked, since ultimately it is about
culture and reputation.
And culture is something that can't be changed
overnight. It is what it
is and it stands for it. And the employees will come to
know what it is.Hence,
building the organisa tional culture is a very good step
towards building the
employer brand. Also, there has been a lot of change in
the way the student
community thinks now. They look for a lot of information
about the companies they
are about to join before they make a deci
sion. The companies will
have to also get involved in l this entire process and
place them selves
according to the student communities they cater to.
The entire environment
is changing, be it business opportunities or employment
opportunities.
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Yasmin Taj
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TAS 23SEP15
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