Less than a month ago, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop sent an internal memo to all employees with a dramatic analysis of Nokia’s current situation.

While yours truly is a subscriber of direct communication, in certain situations I have to wonder what’s the real impact of such a harsh message in Nokia’s employer branding internally and externally, especially if you take into account how much in Asia we don’t like to lose face.

For a long time Nokia has been Finland’s #1 ideal employer as well as one of the World’s most attractive employers. With this message I believe Mr. Elop wanted to moralize and wake-up Nokia’s employees. The question of whether this will end-up by eroding Nokia’s attractiveness will be answered soon (the 2011 Universum rankings are about to be revealed).

My perception is that it might be harmful unless it gets tied up to a challenge/reward  – young talent wants companies with innovative products/ services, that offer job security, that help them developed and allows them to have a brighter future. Under the current circumstances, I’m not sure if Nokia offers this. On the other hand – taking the challenge of bringing Nokia to what it used to be and face Apple on the market that they now own will be one of the best achievements one can ever have on their cv.

Time will tell!

Recently several companies have engaged Universum about the question of taking or not their employer branding into moving media.  My answer would be yes!

Today’s talent lives in the digital world (facebook, renren, twitter, tudou, youtube, youku …) and expects to receive information via digital channels. Any information available online can then be accessible to a wider audience than the typical communication materials / efforts. Furthermore, a video gives companies the opportunity to show the real company environment and how it is to work there. It becomes a great tool for clear communication, enabling employer brands to be better understood by the target audience – something critical to ensure you have a proper talent relationship management strategy in place.

Some companies have also been facing the complexity of adding moving media into their communication portfolio, but creating a video doesn’t need to be complicated: interview or follow an employee during a day, show the company environment and also present basic information that students want to know (i.e., career path, mentoring programs, …). Communicate what the audience wants to know – easy to do if you have access to research data. Finally, use the videos during events (career fairs, open days, company days, …) and make it available on your online channels (website, social media pages). It will help people understanding better your employer brand and your offerings – critical to ensure you attract the people with the right personality and skills.

To sum up, creating a set of employer branding videos is a must have – it’s the same as thinking that marketing could only live with print adverts or fliers… not in this decade!

Business week, in a December article entitled “China Business Schools Hit Their Stride“, explains that Chinese business schools increasingly match the Western quality of education. It’s been an arduous journey, since the first business programmes in 1991, but results are now starting to show.

Although much has been done, the demand for talent is still high in China – 20,000 MBA students graduate each year, whereas 75,000 graduates are needed. Truly, the market cries out for business professionals, with international companies and Chinese employers (having operations abroad) being the neediest.

In terms of quality, schools in China succeed in two ways: 1) capture the domestic talent that once preferred to study abroad and 2) attract Western talent that is interested in knowing more about the world’s second largest economy. With this approach, allied to the networking possibilities offered by the programmes (40% international students, 60% Chinese students), China will keep talent inflowing.

Seems like the next smart thing to do is take an MBA in China…

By Christopher Van Mossevelde.

Due to a critical shortage of experienced staff, attrition is an “every-day hazard for companies operating in East Asia”, reports the FT.

In her article, “Aggressive hiring keeps the talent moving”, Elaine Moore, gives the example of RBS Coutts, which lost one third of its staff to its rival BSI.

According to her, the war for talent is not only affecting private banking and big corporations, but also small businesses where employees are known to switch jobs for minimal salary increases.

Michal Kalinowski, UNIVERSUM’s CEO, was quoted saying “In 2010, the first Chinese company entered Universum’s World’s Most Attractive Employers list (a global index of Employer attractiveness). An interesting sign of things to come is that for the first time ever there is a Chinese company in the top 50 – Lenovo at 44 among engineers”.

The report featured UNIVERSUM’s data on East Asian Students’ Career expectations and the ideal employers in Hong Kong, Singapore, China and Japan.

Quoting various experts in the field, however, the article’s main arguments were: 1) salary increases do not guarantee retention and 2) employers should assess cultural & motivational fit between candidate and the organisation prior to employment.

As Chinese companies continue to dominate the indexes of employer attractiveness (rankings here), it is with some dismay that I notice only a few western companies getting ready to address the challenge of talent attraction in the medium term.

Furthermore, looking at the business plans of some top western-world companies, a major growth is expected to come from BRIC; but how these companies are expecting to deliver in such big markets remains partially a mystery. What I know is that attracting talent will be a major challenge and without human capital, how are the companies going to deliver on such different markets?

Long gone are the days where being an international company represented a competitive advantage in the talent market. Nowadays, Asian talent has career expectations that they perceive only achievable in local companies. If western companies want to achieve success in Asia, the time to start building their talent pipeline is… right… now!

As Japan’s demographics go from pyramid to kite (see The Economist graph here – from “Into the Unknown” article), companies will face an increased challenge for talent attraction.  In the five decades after the second world war, Japan’s working population grew by 37 million people.  This demographic growth, together with an increase in productivity, took Japan from ruins to become the second largest economy in the world (now third, after China’s GDP surpassed Japan’s).

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According to the institute of international education, more and more Asian students are moving to the US to study:
- 103 260 from India
- 98 510 from China
- 75 065 from South Korea
- 29 264 from Japan

In a recent study by Universum, we identified that around half of the Asian students in the US wanted to stay in the countries where they are currently studying an pursue an international career. For those working in the field of talent attraction and employer branding this represents a huge opportunity (for US companies) and a big headache (for the Asian companies needing this talent).

How should US companies use this opportunity? As imigration rules are being tightened, this can be a great opportunity to counter-balance the difficulties of hiring talent from abroad – internships might be a great solution.

How can Asian companies react? Something has to be done to avoid a bigger problem: understanding why students are pursuing an international career and not wanting to return home should be the first step; offering competitive opportunities to get them back wil be the natural second step.

Read more about the study here:
http://www.iie.org/en/Who-We-Are/News-and-Events/Press-Center/Press-Releases/2009/2009-11-16-Open-Doors-2009-International-Students-in-the-US

On an unprecendent move in the talent management field, today Google announced a 10% raise for all employees worldwide, plus a 1000 USD Christmas bonus. The reasons? First to reward their employees for a fantastic year and a job well done; secondly to try to avoid losing talent to competitors. This salary increase has a cost of 1 billion USD… It’s clear that the war for talent in the IT industry is on and the price for employee retention is not cheap.

My question: is a payraise the best way to keep the top talent?

Read more about the raise here:
http://www.businessinsider.com/google-bonus-and-raise-2010-11
or here:
http://uk.ibtimes.com/articles/80323/20101110/google-gives-employees-1000-cash-bonus-10-salary-increase-in-2011.htm

If you’re working in the Employer Branding field or if you’re interested in talent attraction, here’s a must read story: imagine a country where only 60% of the female graduates aged between 25 and 64 are at work. Imagine that in this country, women earn on average 63% of what men do.

At the same time, also in this country, fertility rate is down to 1.15 children.

With this clear trend for a shrinking talent market and if female talent is undervalued and available, firms that hire more women should gain a competitive edge. A proper talent management strategy, based on an adequate employer value proposition that aims at this big gold nugget, can be your weapon of choice in the war for talent.

This is happening in South Korea. Read the full article “Profiting from sexism” in The Economist here:
http://www.economist.com/node/17311877

While reading the FT.com, I came across an interesting article written by Glori Ye: Concern over China’s ‘job-hoppers’. According to this article, in the US, the average working life for a fund manager at the same company is 4.8 to 4.9 years, while in China it’s only 1.68 years. These challenging HR conditions are one of the reasons for the poor results in the funds’ performance and have also forced fund managing companies to have two fund managers per fund – one “old” or existing manager plus a “new” fund manager.

For the employer branding arena, this is a clear sign that talent retention is a strategic issue: not only industries that fail to retain their top talent incur in higher HR costs, but also their performance is weaker. Definitely interesting to think: how much one’s company losing / winning due to bad / good retention strategies?