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Thoughts, ideas and more…
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Share your brand guidelines with us and we’ll show you how you could uncover new untapped potential with the brand you already have
Thoughts, ideas and more…
Share your brand guidelines with us and we’ll show you how you could uncover new untapped potential with the brand you already have
If you have a project in mind please get in touch. We’re always happy to chat.
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By far, one of the toughest industries to attract and retain top talent is tech. Simply paying key talent more money is no longer enough to keep them engaged and working for your business. Technology employees consider a range of factors when determining where to work or whether to stay at their current companies – before they’re even invited for an interview and certainly while on the job. Those factors increasingly include culture, leadership, flexibility, growth and meaning.
We are seeing an ever-increasing number of organisations that span multiple continents and have a hybrid team model. The technology sector is one of the most distributed, in the true sense of the word and this presents many unique challenges.
Employee experience is critical to fostering unity and solidarity in such a fragmented organisation and the employer brand is increasingly acting as a glue which binds employees, regardless of their location, job or level, together.
In more profit-driven businesses there is an on-going risk of building a very high-performance organisation with no real engagement whatsoever. Conversations around sales targets, growth trajectories and innovation cycles are the common topic of communication. Without a meaningful overlay of purpose, care and clarity, conversations about high performance can play out in a vacuum with little emotional resonance for staff.
Employer brand is about winning the hearts and minds of employees. It is the story that connects their work to meaning, sense of belonging and cultural values, all of which help them to feel part of an organisation. Employer brand is more than just a pretty picture, it’s crucial infrastructure.
Today’s workforce, particularly younger Millennials and Generation Z, expect more than compensation, free table tennis and wellness lunches. So too have flexible working arrangements, a commitment to mental health and clear visible career progression pathways become table stakes. Now, the most significant ask we see is for leaders to be open and transparent and for them, as employees, to understand and feel part of the bigger picture.
If there isn’t a clear, well-communicated, authentic story behind the business goals, one that employees feel they contribute to, then trust erodes. The employer-employee relationship becomes purely transactional and retention naturally weakens.
There isn’t a magic answer, but at its heart, businesses must genuinely live the culture and the values that come with it. This cannot exist in the confines of a polished HR handbook that’s sent out on an employee’s first day and then lost in the void. The values must be demonstrated through the business behaviours and, increasingly, the operational processes that support these. If a senior leadership team doesn’t embed and model the culture of the business on an on-going basis, it’s noticed by employees.
Employer Brand isn’t a campaign but is something that people must live. It can only be effectively communicated through a compelling and consistent message, communicated and led from the top. People can spot inauthenticity a mile away.
Your employee experience must reflect your corporate or brand promise. If your brand promise is one of innovation, agility and bold thinking and your corporate culture feels traditional and overly hierarchical the disconnect will surface. The strongest tech brands ensure company values, employee value propositions and marketing, HR and leadership are all working in harmony.
To us, internal communications is fundamental in an employer brand strategy and not a secondary function. Effective internal communications reinforce your values and culture through a storytelling approach. It links your staff to the company’s strategy through adequate and timely information, guarantees a two-way flow of communication so that staff can tell you how they feel about the company and can turn staff into brand ambassadors.
The temptation to fall into a command-and-control type of communication model is always there, but resist those urges and dig out the gems of what your people are doing. Use real life examples, tell proper people stories and recognise the seemingly small but wonderful individual acts of engagement that are occurring every day.
Of course, recruitment and retention numbers are a big part of measuring the success of your employer brand strategy but measuring these alone is not enough. The best metric of your employer brand is what your employees have to say, whether that be through pulse surveys, feedback loops or exit interviews. However, acting on that feedback is critical. The quickest way to damage an employer brand is to ask for feedback, promise to act on it and then do nothing.
Want to get fresh perspective on your employer brand? Get in touch.