The Employer Brand, Keeping Faith with the Deal is a new book edited by Helen Rosethorn. It explores the strategies and techniques organisations must embrace to ensure they have an outstanding employer brand. In this exclusive extract Rosethorn addresses the confusion between employer brand proposition and the employee value proposition.
Marketers teach us the concept of creating value in the eyes of the consumer or customer. The product offers the consumer or customer the promise of the delivery of a certain set of attribute(s) and/or experience(s). The consumer or customer keeps on coming back if that promise is met and that product or service continues to meet their specific needs.
The employee value proposition (EVP) needs to be seen in the same light as the customer proposition. It offers us the opportunity to capture the impact or benefits of the 'written and unwritten' aspects of the psychological contract.
Clearing the confusion
There is a lot of confusion between labels like employer brand proposition and the EVP and some writers have produced complex models attempting to explain where the EVP fits in with the employer brand. The confusion often stems from the fact that there is 'one brand' - there is no separate employer brand - and for the employee dimension to add strength to the 'one brand' it has to be linked to the overarching brand promise or proposition.
Some EVP definitions are only focused on the benefits to the employee. However, given the need for that employee to deliver value back to the organisation for the deal to be sustained, we prefer an EVP definition that captures the sense of fulfilment for both sides of the deal.
For many large and complex organisations, the drive to reach this overarching articulation sometimes feels like the search for the lowest common denominator rather than the highest common factor. The real measure of an effective EVP is its ability to translate into effective subpropositions for the audiences it serves, which we can describe as talent segments.
To return to the 'product' world for a moment, think about the power of the BMW brand and its promise of 'the ultimate driving machine' to its customers. Then consider how this is translated into the product promise to serve those who ride BMW motorbikes as well as those who dig deep into their pockets for their 7-series.
These are very different product articulations with very different attributes – but linked by the 'golden thread' of engineering excellence. GlaxoSmithKline, for instance, has summarised its EVP through the tagline 'Together we can make lives better'. However, it recognises that how this plays out as a deal for the individual is different from how it plays out for the pharmacist producing in the lab and the salesperson selling the company's latest vaccines to medical personnel.
Another vital aspect to appreciate in looking at segmentation in relation to employer brands is that while skills groups can offer one dimension of segmentation, there are other equally valid dimensions.
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs offers one such alternative method of segmentation. A more up-to-date interpretation of this, based on extensive research with 24 US corporations, has been published by Tamara J Erickson of the Concours Institute. Her model suggests that work plays six general roles, which correspond to six general types of employee based on psycho-demographic characteristics. Each segment cares deeply about several aspects of the employee-employer relationship such as 'structure or routine' or 'stimulating tasks that enable continual leaving and growth', but little about others.
Tesco
One organisation that has attracted substantial coverage for its use of segmentation to develop its employee proposition is Tesco. A key factor in Tesco's emergence as a world force in retailing has been its understanding of customer behaviours and, in particular, what drives customer loyalty.
However, in 2000, CEO Terry Leahy was concerned that the organisation did not have the same level of insight into what drove the loyalty of their people. As a result, Tesco established a 'people insight unit under the direction of David Richardson, who launched research to identify the employer brand drivers for the organisation. Segmentation was fundamental to David's work – in the first instance, by cutting the data to identify groups by loyalty, role and attitude.
The resultant attitudinal groupings yielded the insight that loyalty was at its highest at the two ends of the spectrum – for those who 'live to work' and those who 'work to live' – but that it played out in different ways in between.
Interesting correlations emerged, such as the links between emotional loyalty and absence and between functional loyalty and attrition. Moreover, the research helped Tesco recognise that people pass through different attitudinal groups during their working lives.
The impact of this segmented approach to research went far beyond mere diagnosis and a better understanding of the employee value proposition. Indeed, the organisation made changes to some of its working practices as a result – notably, improving its approach to flexible working.
The employee experience
EVP is nothing more than a car in a showroom – we're sticking with our BMW analogy – without the 'road-testing' of the employee experience.
We are in fact talking about perceptions, but the perceptions we form of the delivery of our deal with the organisation are the measures by which we are engaged or otherwise and deliver the performance required of us or not.
Because interest in the employer brand has, to date, been driven by the war for talent, too often the lifecycle focus has not been holistic. It has been too much about recruitment and not enough about life beyond on-boarding.
However, a new debate about which parts of the lifecycle carry more weight than others is emerging. Again, this is nothing new to the marketers. They aim to hook and retain us as customers by dealing with any 'cognitive dissonance' swiftly and effectively – the whole CRM discipline has grown up on the back of this. Disney has long talked about its 'magic moments' for visitors to its theme parks – points in the customer experience of particularly high impact and highly important to the brand proposition. Mickey Mouse's signature in the autograph book is one of the most well known.
If organisations really are to manage their employee experience as part of managing their employer brand, this is a key part of the lifecycle requirement. What are the pivotal points on the employee journey when the deal is sealed or otherwise? Of course, recruitment will feature in a big way, and today organisations such as Google speak proudly of the power of its recruitment processes in selecting a future 'Googler'.
Hot spots
Human resource strategy expert Lynda Grattan has written recently about 'hot spots' as the hallmark of the most successful and progressive organisations. These are the times and places within businesses and teams where cooperation flourishes, creating great energy, innovation, productivity and excitement.
Within her formula for 'hot spots' she points to the power of the 'signature experience' and defines this as 'a visible, distinctive element of an organisation's overall employee experience. In themselves, signature experiences create value for the firm but they also serve as a powerful and constant symbol of the organisation's culture and values.'
Google's recruitment process, for instance, is one of its signature experiences. Other organisations such as Starbucks talk about 'internal brand rituals', which bind their employees to the customer proposition and in turn offer value back to their people. The key brand ritual at Starbucks is their coffee tasting.
All this emphasises the point that the employee experience element of defining and managing an employer brand is not about 'one look or feel', starting with recruitment communications. It is about understanding the core deal, understanding how it plays out across the talent segments, understanding how it has to hit the right balance between aspiration and reality to attract and retain and then manage the organisational behaviours accordingly throughout the employee journey.
This is not to say that employer brand communications do not have their place. There is a whole raft of employee and prospective employee communication tools with which to enshrine a message and tone of voice about the 'deal'. But the behaviours must be right first.
Reproduced from The Employer Brand, Keeping Faith with the Deal, edited by Helen Rosethorn, members of Bernard Hodes Group and Contributors. ISBN 978-0-566-08899-5, cost £49.50, published by Gower during July 2009. Gower's website enables you to order online at a 10% discount www.gowerpublishing.com.
