Posts tagged "employer-value-proposition"

Feb 7, 2012 0

The Top 10 Stories in January

Here are the top 10 stories of last month.

1. 6 competencies for a successful HR professional

According to “the largest global study ever on human resource professionals” there are 6 competencies you must have to become a successful HR professional. Read more to find out how to become one, and how to build an effective HR department. Read more

2. 13 ways Millennials view work differently

Young people who are entering the workforce have an entirely different view than their parents. According to a recent study by a Yale professor, starting to work in a recession creates attitudes that could last up to 20 years. Read more

3. What is your Employee Value Proposition?

Why would top talent in your industry want to work for you? The answer shouldn´t only be written in words, it should be a part of your company’s culture. New studies show that in the tough job market it’s the culture, and not a high salary, that is important for employees. Read more
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Jan 4, 2012 0

Turning culture into statistics

Lovisa has a background as a management consultant with McKinsey & Co. and was the global director of research and consulting at Universum.

By Lovisa Öhnell

Tracking your external employer brand comes naturally for most sophisticated employers, but tracking your internal employer brand is less common. Universum’s research indicates that there is a very strong correlation between the satisfaction an employee feels with his or her employer and the perception of the employer’s brand.

So far I have focused on external measurements of employer attraction and employer brand here. But it is equally important to track your internal EB, what we call your Employer Identity. There are two reasons for this. First, you need to ensure that what you communicate externally is in line with your employees’ perception. Your employees are your strongest brand ambassadors. For example, employees are seen as a more trustworthy source of information by a potential jobseeker than HR professionals or corporate communication material. So in order to build a strong external brand, you need to track your Employer Identity and align it with your external communication. If your employees communicate a different story than yours, you are “in effect” throwing away your money.

Attribute association

The second reason why it is important to track your internal brand is that there is a strong connection between brand affiliation and satisfaction. In Universum’s Professional Survey, we ask how satisfied the respondents are with their current employer and which of 40 attributes they associate with them. Respondents who are satisfied with their employers also associate them more closely with the 40 attributes than the employees who are not satisfied. In the US Professional Survey, the average association for all attributes was 52 per cent, compared to only 39 per cent for the less satisfied employees. The biggest differences between the groups were for the attributes “Leaders who support my development” and “Good work/life balance”. Thus, these attributes are tightly linked to employee satisfaction.

Almost every employer tracks organisational health and provides feedback to managers. Universum’s survey is instead an employer brand survey, asking employees about their perception of the employer, rather than about their immediate surroundings in the organisation. This information about your Employer Identity should be tracked continuously, compared both to your peers and to your external image. The results should be used to develop the employee value proposition as well as enhance communication, both internally and externally.

Nov 18, 2011 0

Strategic planning

Fig 1. Business Plan

Universum has been doing research on the employer branding (EB) industry for the last 20 years. We have seen EB start from being a new buzzword to being an active component of a company’s corporate strategy. There is proof of companies being successful due to their recruitment and retention of the right talent and their strategic work with EB to achieve it. The magic formulae: they have buy-in from top management, have a clear vision of where the company would like to be, and set goals and objective to reach that sweet spot, their ultimate employer brand position. This strategy is today more and more often linked to the business plan.

Every company has a business plan, which includes a workforce plan. In order to be successful with the latter, Universum recommends having a strong employer branding strategy, as it’s that which will ultimately make you more successful with your recruitment and retention of top talent.

The workforce plan involves deciding how many people you need to recruit and retain, and what education and skills they should have. It’s a concrete plan that is typically based on one to three years. It’s important to focus on the critical target groups that are the hardest to employ due to the competition. Furthermore, it’s imperative to gain the right type of competence to deliver successfully on the goals and objectives outlined in the business plan. In alignment with your workforce plan, your EB strategy will help you achieve your workforce needs and can be done in a simple, yet comprehensive, three-step process, one which will be outlined in this article. Read the rest of this entry »

Sep 12, 2011 1

Checking your EB vitals

by Lovisa Öhnell (for Universum Quarterly)

Regardless of industry, country or position, it seems those that work with employer branding have at least one thing in common: the need for solid measuring tools for their employer branding activities. This need is particularly pressing now, since employer branding has gone strategic. Not having good measuring tools has an adverse effect on budgets, number of recruits and the quality of the recruits. But the suffering is unnecessary. There are plenty of tools you can use to correctly measure the results of your work.

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