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Because Talent Matters® as much today as it ever did.

Once upon a time, in the heady days of economic boom, at any HR seminar or conference worth its attendance price tag, that well-worn cliché, “War for Talent” was trotted out along with the in-vogue buzz term “Employer Branding”.

Human Resourcing executives, under pressure from senior and line management to find and convert that scarce talent the company needed to continue its world domination, (an almost alien thought these days) clamoured for any professional opinion out there on how their company could create an ‘employer brand’. Equally there were many opinions to be found (mine included) that would explain what this advertising jargon, ‘branding’, had to do with employment and recruitment. Not least that you couldn’t ‘create’ an employer brand…it already existed.

So, has this all now been put away in the cupboard until the next time? Replaced in the interim by “Human Capital Management in the ‘new’ market”, “Restructuring, Reorganization and Reality” or even “Downsizing for Dummies”? Surely the file on Employer Branding has been moved to the very bottom of that ‘to-do’ in-tray. Who cares about our brand as an employer right now when we are more focused on preserving the company’s very existence? But employer branding was never just about recruitment advertising – nor just about the perception of those outside your firm that you wished were inside.

To quote, as I often do, the founder of Amazon.com and his definition of a brand as…”it’s what people say about you when you’re not in the room”; those ‘people’ always included your employees too. After all, it is their experiences of what it’s like to be employed by your company that is the real test of your employer brand. And never more so than right now. Whatever turbulence your firm is experiencing, be it the 30,000 feet gut wrenching plummet of some of the world’s largest financial institutions or the constant buffeting of the global economic woes on your still very sound business proposition, there’s little doubt that you need to get the safety belts firmly strapped on.

Moreover it’s not just about keeping your people in their seats but somehow motivating and mobilising them to keep or get your company back on track. It’s almost too obvious to state that any retrenchment, or even just rumours of it, will damage your employer brand. It’s something that the financial services sector has learnt the hard way in recent times. Your employees represent a powerful weapon in protecting and preserving the integrity of this brand. And the only way that you can utilize this weapon is to make sure that they are reassured by, and ‘on-side’ with, the reality of your company’s present status and future direction.

These employee communications challenges lie at the heart of the Hodes approach to ‘Inside Out Employer Branding’. Simply put, by communicating effectively inside, you can and will impact your brand on the outside. And really effective internal communications is not straightforward. Just as HR executives reached out for creative, innovative communications expertise to communicate their career offerings in those heady ‘War for Talent’ days, so they can also seek expert help for what can be complex internal employee communications; particularly with a workforce of scale and/or geographic spread.

It’s already proven that high levels of employee engagement have positive influence on the bottom line. This is unchanged. And as companies across every sector (perhaps most notably in financial services) prepare for the upturn, we’re seeing more and more recognition of this.

I always felt that ‘Employer Branding’ was either misinterpreted or even misunderstood. Looking at it from the inside out, particularly in these difficult times, makes so much more sense.

For more information about Hodes and how we can help with ‘Inside Out Employer Branding’ email Chris in Hong Kong at cplowman@hk.hodes.com or Alistair Milnes in the UK at amilnes@hodes.co.uk

Chris Plowman
Regional Director, Bernard Hodes Group APAC

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