Your Employer Brand Attract Engage Retain 2006

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Your Employer Brand

attract engage retain
First published, June 2006
Copyright 2006 Collective Learning Australia
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form,
electronic, mechanical - or other means, now
known, or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publisher.
Disclaimer
The material in this publication is of a nature of general
comment only, and neither purports nor intends to be advice.
Readers should not act on the basis of any matter in this
publication without considering (and if appropriate) taking
professional advice with due regard to their own particular
circumstances. The author and publisher expressly disclaim all
and any liability to any person, whether a purchaser of this
publication or not, in respect of anything and the consequences
of anything done or omitted to be done by any such person in
reliance, whether in whole or part, upon the whole or any part
of the contents of this publication.
Page 2
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Minchington
Your Employer Brand attract-engage-retain
This title is published under the imprint of

Collective Learning Australia, PO Box 614
Torrensville SA 5031
Email: (for orders)
admin@collectivelearningaustralia.com
or purchase copies online:
www.collectivelearningaustralia.com
P 61 8 8443 4115
F 61 8 8443 4149
The URLs contained in this publication were

checked for currency during the production
process. Note, however, that the publisher
cannot vouch for the ongoing currency of URLs.
Layout: Peter Davis
Printed in Australia by: Hyde Park Press
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Your Employer Brand attract engage retain
About the author

Brett Minchington MBA, B.Bus. (Marketing)
Brett Minchington has held a number of senior
management roles in a diverse range of
organisations in the public and private sectors in
Australia. With a keen interest on researching
emerging trends in business and their likely
impact on organisations, Brett's professional
interest in employer branding followed on from
three years committed to researching the topic.
This journey has led to the formation of a global
network of employer brand researchers and
practitioners who are contributing to the growth
of the discipline and an in-depth understanding
of the importance of employer branding to
organisations of all sizes.
Brett is currently the Managing Director of
Collective Learning Australia, a firm specialising
in employer branding, leadership development
innovation and employment transition programs.
He holds a Directorship of an International
training firm and is a member of the UniSA MBA
Alumni Committee. In addition to these roles
Brett consults to a number of leading HR firms
across a diverse client profile, and is also a
Senior Account Executive with Kick Brand
Management.
Brett has a Master of Business Administration
(MBA) from UniSA and a Bachelor of Business
(Marketing) from the Queensland University of
Technology (QUT).
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Quote
Before you can think of selling your

brand to customers, you have to sell it to
your employees.
How the brand is positioned in the
minds of consumers is heavily dependent
on a company's employees.
Sergio Zyman,
Chairman and Founder of Zyman Group and
former Chief Marketing Officer of The
Coca-Cola Company
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Dedication
This book would not have been possible

without the ongoing love and support of
my beautiful family; Andrea, Bailey and
Taylah Minchington.
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Acknowledgements
I wish to sincerely thank the following people for their persistence,
positive attitude and contributions to bringing my book to fruition.
Claudia Tattanelli - CEO, Catrine Johansson - University Relations
Manager and Rachele Focardi - Ferri Senior Consultant and Senior
Editor (Universum Communications, Philadelphia USA), and Anton
berg - Project Manager Research (Universum Communications,
Stockholm Sweden), Simon Barrow - Chairman and Richard Mosley Managing Director (People in Business, London UK), Michael Hall Senior Researcher and Katherine Garrick (Incomes Data Services London UK), Rob Chapman - Managing Director and Sandy Pinkerton Personal Assistant to Rob (Bank SA, Adelaide Australia), Ryan Estis Senior Vice President & Chief Talent Strategist, (NAS Recruitment
Communications, Minneapolis USA), Annette Browdy - Senior Vice
President and Jorge Patrisso - Manager, Corporate/Global
Communications, (Bernard HODES Group, New York USA), Kathryn
Oakman (Hays Recruitment, Sydney Australia), Warwick Bowd National Practice Leader (Hudson Employment Branding, Sydney
Australia), Sal Vitale, Senior Vice President, Operations (The Conference
Board, New York USA), Aysil And - Managing Director (TNS Piar),
Alexandre Sidorenko - UN Focal Point on Ageing (Department of
Economic and Social Affairs, New York USA), Liz Sanders Customer
Services Executive (Melcrum Publishing, London UK), Tina L. Campbell
- Executive Assistant and Sergio Zyman, (Zyman Group, Atlanta USA),
Andrew Boal and Margo Weston (Hewitt Associates, Melbourne
Australia), Roger Edwards, - Commonwealth Copyright Administration,
(Attorney-General's Department , Canberra Australia), Meagan Upsher
- Qualitative Data Coordinator - Supply Chain Coordinator - Marketing
Assistant (ISR, Melbourne Australia), Alice Atalla (Watson Wyatt,
Melbourne Australia), Todd Raphael - Editor (Electronic Recruitment
Exchange, New York USA), Clayton Glen - Director (HDA, London UK),
Colin Dalby (Thomas Cook, Stamford UK), Rob Willock - Group Editor,
(Personnel Today, Surrey UK), Joe Hall - Ad Marketing Manager, (The
Economist, London UK), Margit Huber (Global TRI*M Centre in
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Acknowledgements
Munich - TNS), Mike Petch, Group HR Director (TNS, London UK),

Rebecca Schneider, Member Services HR Practice (Corporate Executive
Board, Washington D.C USA), Peter Davis (Adelaide, Australia) and my
fantastic proof readers, Katie Cavanagh, Michael Devers, Ursula
Bronicki, Kimberly, Komazec and Daniel Lloyd (Adelaide Australia).
A special thank you to my distinguished colleagues who have each
contributed a chapter to this book:
Dr Steven Goodman (Chapter 3) - Senior Lecturer, Adelaide University
(Adelaide Australia), Ron Tomlian (Chapter 5) - Managing Director,
Marketing Counsel (Adelaide Australia), Professor Mike Ewing (Chapter
6) - Head of Research, Department of Marketing, Monash University
(Melbourne Australia).
And finally to my family and friends who have inspired me to
write this book:
Andrea Fielding, Bailey and Taylah Minchington, Barbara, Darlene,
Rochelle and Felicia Minchington, Herb, Jane, Sean, James and Marnie
Ewinger, Ian, Carole, Preston, Lyndal and Leanne Stewart, Rob and
Marsha Dowling, Ross Melville, Roger Henderson, and Sandra Bracken.
10
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Table of Contents
About the author
Dedication
Acknowledgements
List of illustrations
Foreword
Preface
SECTION 1: THE ENVIRONMENT FOR
EMPLOYER BRANDING
1) The emergence of employer branding
in todays knowledge economy
The rise in awareness of employer branding
Where does responsibility in an organisation for
employer branding lie?
The objectives of employer branding
Workers attitudes to their workplace
and their employers
The brands people want to work for
Understanding the value of diversity
In the spotlight - General Electric
Employer branding and the public sector
2) The role of employer branding in organisational
strategy: Dr Steve Goodman
Employer branding - Improving the organisation's
competitive position
The resource based view of strategy
Four conditions for organisational success
(i) Heterogenous organisations
(ii) Capabilities must be rare and have value
(iii) Capabilities must be hard to replicate
(iv) Capabilities must not be easily traded
Planning and control structures
Emergent self organisation
3) The strategic drivers behind the rise in
acceptance of the employer brand concept
The ageing global population
4
7
8
14
18
20
25
26
29
34
36
38
39
40
41
45
46
46
47
47
48
49
50
51
51
55
56
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Table of Contents
Declining birth rates

In the spotlight - Australia
Economic growth
Labour force participation
Migration
Skill shortages
4) Building the business case
The major benefits of developing and
implementing an employer brand strategy
The financial benefits
Top management becoming increasingly involved
Pitching the employer brand concept to
senior management
In the spotlight - the BASF Corporation
In the spotlight - Southwest Airlines
SECTION 2: BUILDING A LEADING
EMPLOYER BRAND
5) Understanding the brand fundamentals: Ron Tomlian
The history of brands
Brands - Where did they come from?
Branding - What is it?
Branding - What's in it for me?
Elements of the brand
Who was that masked man?
Position - Position - Position
Taking care of business
6) Employer attractiveness: Professor Mike Ewing
Advertising's role in creating strong employer brands
Advertising's internal audiences
Towards a typology of employer advertising approaches
Implications for management
Introducing the notion of employer attractiveness
The underlying dimensions of employer attractiveness
Interest value
Social value
Economic value
Development value
11
58
59
62
63
64
64
67
68
68
72
72
73
74
77
78
78
79
81
83
85
86
87
89
90
91
93
95
95
96
97
97
97
98
12
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Application value
Applications for business
Future research directions into studying employer
attractiveness
7) Employer brand metrics
Employee engagement
Human capital measures
The top 25 levers of engagement
The value of employee research in tracking your
employer brand efforts
In the spotlight - technology organisation - an
illustrative HDA case study
8) Employer brand communication and actions
Getting the right message across
Employer brand communication methods
Conveying a brand across cultures
Importance of differentiation
Web technology
Recruitment advertising
In the spotlight - Coca-Cola Amatil
The strategic employment brand in action - a holistic
approach to living the employer brand
The firm-employee relationship cycle
First contact
The dating game
Proposal
Marriage
Maintaining the passion
Anniversary
SECTION 3: THE EMPLOYER BRANDING PROCESS
9) Employer Brand Management Framework TM
Employer value proposition
Defining the employer value proposition
Employer brand identity
98
98
99
101
102
103
106
108
110
110
115
116
119
122
123
123
126
126
129
130
130
131
133
134
135
136
139
142
142
144
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Table of Contents
Page 13
13
Employer Brand Employee Platform TM

Recruitment and induction
Compensation and benefits
Career development
Employee research
Reward and recognition
Communication systems
Work environment
Employer Brand Strategic Platform TM
Mission, vision, and values
Corporate social responsibility
Leadership
Corporate reputation and culture
People management polices and practices
Performance management
Innovation
The Corporate brand
Market forces
Customers
Prospective employees
Stakeholders
Evaluating your employer brand program
8 steps to developing an employer brand
10) The future for employer branding
SECTION 4: EMPLOYER BRAND CASE STUDIES
Thomas Cook
Bank SA
The Compass Group
SECTION 5: EMPLOYER BRAND
EXCELLENCE SCORECARD TM
Worksheets
144
144
145
145
147
148
149
149
150
150
150
151
152
153
153
154
154
155
156
157
157
158
159
165
References
Index
211
225
169
181
189
201
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List of Illustrations
Figure 1: How important is employer branding to your organisation?
Source: Personnel Today 2005, p.27
Figure 2: In the future employer branding will become
Figure 3: Employer branding is too much of an important issue to be
left solely to an HR department. Source: The Economist Survey 2003, p.30
Figure 4: Where does the responsibility for Employer branding in an
organisation lie? Source: The Economist Survey 2003, p.31
Figure 5: Departments involved in the employer branding work
Source: Universum Communications 2005, p.33
Figure 6: How important is your brand in delivering the right message?
Source: The Conference Board 2001 www.conference-board.org, p.34
Figure 7: Main objectives for employer branding work
Figure 8: Main objectives for employer branding work by industry
Figure 9: Three centuries of world population ageing
Source: The United Nations Programme on Ageing,
www.un.org/esa/socdev/ageing/agewpop.htm 2006, p.56
Figure 10: Percentage increase in age 60 and over by region 2000-2050
www.un.org/esa/socdev/ageing/agewpop.htm 2006, p.57
Figure 11: Ageing is set to accelerate - Annual change in the share of
people aged 65+ in the population 1922-2051
Source: Productivity Commission 2005, Economic Implications of an Ageing
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15
Australia, Research Report, Canberra - copyright Commonwealth of

Australia reproduced by permission, p.60
Figure 12: From pyramid to coffin: Changing age structure of the
Australian population 1925-2045 Source: Productivity Commission 2005,
Economic Implications of an Ageing Australia, Research Report, Canberra copyright Commonwealth of Australia reproduced by permission, p.61
Figure 13: Population pyramids: age and sex distribution, 2000 and
2050. Source: The sex and age distribution of the world populations: 1998
revision, volume ii: sex and age (United Nations publication, sales No.
E.99.XIII.8), medium variant projections 2006, p.62
Figure 14: The 3P's of economic growth - population, participation and
productivity. Source: Productivity Commission 2005, Economic Implications
of an Ageing Australia, Research Report, Canberra - copyright
Commonwealth of Australia reproduced by permission, p.63
Figure 15: National skills shortage (NSS) List - Australia 2004
(Professionals) Source: www.workplace.gov.au, p.65
Figure 16: Impact of engagement on business performance
Source: ISR 2005, p.69
Figure 17: Expected benefits of developing an employer brand
Source: The Economist Survey 2003, p.70
Figure 18: The Brand Pyramid
Source: Brand Asset Management 2002, p.85
Figure 19: DaimlerChrysler advertisement in The Economist
Source: The Economist, p.92
Figure 20: A model of employer attractiveness
Source: Professor Mike Ewing 2006, p.97
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Figure 21: The ISR employee engagement index - variations by country

Source: ISR 2005, p.103
Figure 22: ISR engagement model. Source: ISR 2005, p.105
Figure 23: Human capital measures. Source: ISR 2005, p.107
Figure 24: The Top 25 levers of engagement
Source: Corporate Leadership Council 2004 Employee Engagement
Survey, p.109
Figure 25: The talent management process
Source: Clayton Glen, HDA 2005, p.114
Figure 26: Are current and prospective employees clear about what
makes the organisation a great place to work?
Source: Hudson 2005, p.117
Figure 27: Are job seekers clear about what makes their current
organisation stand out as a great place to work?
Figure 28: Is the actual employment experience consistent with what is
promised to current and prospective employees?
Figure 29: Do job seekers believe that their current organisation has
delivered the employment experience that was promised?
Figure 30: What are the most used and most effective tactics for
communicating the employer brand?
Source: The Conference Board 2001, p.120
Figure 31: Area you will be investing in over the next two years
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Figure 32: Coca-Cola Amatil advertisement

Source: Adenergy 2006, p.128
Figure 33: The firm-employee relationship cycle
Copyright 2006, Bernard Hodes Group. Reprinted with permission from
Bernard Hodes Group, 220 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017,
http://www.hodes.com, p.130
Figure 34: Employer Brand Excellence Framework TM
Source: Brett Minchington 2006, p.141
Figure 35: Employer Brand Employee Platform TM
Figure 36: Employer Brand Strategic Platform TM
Figure 37: What do companies measure and how often?
Figure 38: Customer vs. employee profile at Thomas Cook
Source: Melcrum Publishing 2005, p.172
Figure 39: Thomas Cook's values - PROUD
Figure 40: Thomas Cook's employer brand strategy
Figure 41: St George (Bank SA) Values.
Source: St George Bank Limited 2006, p.186
Figure 42: Compass Group's cross-functional employer branding team
Source: IDS 2005, p.194
Figure 43: The 'Identity Block' and the employer brand promise.
Source: IDS 2005, p.197
17
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Foreword
Written by Simon Barrow, creator of the
Employer Brand approach and co-author of
'The Employer Brand - bringing the best of
brand management to people at work'
published by Wiley in October 2005.
Simon is Chairman of the consultants
People in Business, in London.
I owe my inspiration for the idea of the employer brand to the fact that
my early experience combined two very different strands, first as a
brand manager in the consumer goods business and later as CEO of an
HR and Recruitment Group. The need for marketing disciplines in the
world of employment rapidly became apparent to me and I gave the
first public talk on the subject back in October 1990.
I welcome an Australian book on this subject and it is good to see so
much research, writing and speaking happening globally. I urge all
those interested in this subject to concentrate on the essence of good
employer brand management and realise that it is about the realities of
every part of the employment experience and not just the
communication aspects (i.e. the design and copy) of recruitment and
internal messages and materials.
Making sure that those realities reflect what you need to create an
experience which will enable your people to achieve their business
objectives takes courage and coherent management across the often
deeply entrenched silos in most organisations. Ultimately, employer
brand projects must have the whole hearted, consistent support and
total involvement of the CEO. A function-driven initiative will not
succeed. HR, Marketing, Internal communications and line management
must work together to create the programme with the CEO's approval.
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Foreword
If there is one thought which should underpin your reading of this

book it is that of coherence.
Simon Barrow
June 2006
The Employer Brand is a registered trademark in the

UK owned by People in Business Ltd.
19
20
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Preface
The employer-employee relationship paradigm has been changed
forever. The employment world has transitioned from the industrial era
to the knowledge era and the supply and demand curve for talent is
becoming increasingly favoured towards the employee. This has led to
organisations around the world aligning their people management
efforts with the development of an employer brand strategy to attract,
engage and retain talent.
This book aims to build on previous work in employer branding in
order to widen the discussion and thinking around the concept in
businesses around the world.
Simon Barrow, now Chairman of People in Business based in London
(UK) is acknowledged as the creator of the moniker Employer Brand
Concept as early as October 1990. Barrow defined employer branding
as:
The package of functional, economic and psychological
benefits provided by employment and identified with the
employing company. The main role of the employer brand
is to provide a coherent framework for management to
simplify and focus priorities, increase productivity and
improve recruitment, retention and commitment. 1
Employer branding is not jazzing up your recruitment advertisement or
re-designing your corporate website and other communication touch
points. Whilst your company projects its image through its
communication vehicles, the employer brand concept lies much deeper
than this.
An organisation with a superior employer brand is one whose people
brand matches their corporate brand. This means that the value
proposition that the business articulates is reflected by the actions of all
people, at all levels of the business, at all times. In its simplest form the
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Preface
21
process of employer branding requires a long term orientation to the

management of people.
Employer branding is concerned with building an image in the minds of
current employees and the potential labour market that the company,
above all others, is a 'great place to work'. The employer branding
process is about building and sustaining employment propositions that
are compelling and different. Successful employer branding lies in the
ability of an organisation to deliver on its employment promise.
In a commercial context employer branding is the glue that holds all
the different components of the organisation together to ensure:
Employee loyalty, commitment and performance = customer loyalty,
advocacy and satisfaction = business growth, profitability and market
share = stakeholder, competitor respect, employer of choice. 2
Employer branding should not just be seen as a marketing or human
resource management function. Support from employees at all levels is
required to create and sustain an employer brand. It is not just about
developing good people. It cannot be looked at in isolation.
All companies, regardless of industry, have an employer brand. But
many companies are losing out on a powerful business tool by not
developing or maintaining their brand correctly. A strong employer
brand with the right target group - the ideal employees - will lower
recruitment costs and enable companies to recruit efficiently in a
shorter amount of time. It also diminishes costs of your 'regretted
losses', i.e. your unwanted turnover. Most importantly though, it
ensures your supply of talent for growing your business, for efficiency
and for productivity.
The driving motivation to compile this book is to provide senior
managers and HR professionals with a comprehensive resource to assist
them with the increasingly complex task of managing human capital at
a time when they are also being asked to take on a more strategic role
in the deployment of human resources in their organisation.
A well planned employer brand strategy binds an organisation's human
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Page 22
resource, marketing and internal communication functions to create an

engaged and committed workforce that meets the economic, social and
environmental objectives of the organisation. Employer brands drive
innovation and growth in companies. However the power of the
employer brand to build 'great companies' is closely tied to the
employee and delivering on his/her expectations better than the
competition.
This book will provide readers with a detailed understanding of the
emergence of employer branding in today's knowledge economy, the
driving forces behind its rise in acceptance, its 'fit' with organisational
strategy, the business case, the benefits, the methodology, and presents
a strategic Employer Brand Excellence Framework TM to guide those
responsible for creating and developing their company's employer
brand strategy. This book concludes with several case studies of
leading companies who have successfully developed their employer
brand and reaped the benefits as a result.
There has been a significant increase in the awareness and acceptance
of the employer brand concept amongst senior managers and the global
HR community throughout the world over the past few years. With a
deficiency of books and publications on the discipline I decided to
consolidate my employer brand research over the past three years with
my HR, marketing and management consulting experience to write this
book and share with companies and practitioners the best of employer
brand research and practice undertaken globally over the past decade.
This book provides a platform to promote the benefits of employer
branding and to guide your organisation's efforts in the development
and implementation of its employer brand program. This book will also
clarify the purpose and methodology behind the employer brand
concept.
The employer brand concept is a relatively new field in the complex
world of business compared to the models, theories and methods
developed before it. All signs indicate that the concept will continue to
be embraced by companies and their leaders who are serious about
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Preface
23
taking a proactive approach to address the challenges of the knowledge

age, such as an ageing global population, increasing skill shortages,
changing demographics of the workplace and the impacts of
technological change and globalisation. My research has shown that
employer branding is consolidating its place in the global HR domain at
significant speed. And it is here to stay!
During the course of writing this book I had the pleasure of meeting
with the pioneer of the employer brand concept, Mr Simon Barrow,
Director of People in Business (PiB) whose International head office is
based in London. I met up with Simon following one of his trips to
Hong Kong to conduct workshops and speaking engagements on the
discipline. Simon's knowledge and work in employer branding is
inspiring and has contributed to an increasing number of companies
implementing an employer brand strategy to manage their human
capital. I am pleased to have Simon write the foreword for this book.
A number of leading business professionals and academics were chosen
to contribute material for this book to bring their own professional and
research experiences to the topic. It is in this context that, as intended,
the writing style of this book may appear to change between chapters
on occasions.
I am interested in any new work being undertaken in employer
branding over the coming years as it is intended that this book will be
the first of many that will assist in presenting a balanced view of global
research and practice which will contribute to the development of great
places to work throughout all corners of the world.
I have received permission to use world leading research and employer
brand best practice which has been undertaken throughout the world
by leading HR, marketing and communication firms. As a result you
will find this book provides the most comprehensive guide to employer
branding ever published.
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Page 24
From my own professional experiences and research for this book I

truly believe that employees are a company's only truly sustainable
competitive advantage, and I trust that this book will provide you with a
robust and meaningful approach to building a strong employer brand in
the eyes of your customers and employees alike.
Brett Minchington
MBA, B.Bus (Marketing)
E brett@collectivelearningaustralia.com
P 61 8 8443 4115
F 61 8 8443 4149
W www.collectivelearningaustralia.com
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Section 1
The Environment for Employer Branding
Chapter 1
The Emergence of Employer Branding in
Todays Knowledge Economy
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The rise in awareness of employer branding

In a marketplace where mergers, acquisitions, bankruptcies and layoffs
have blurred company identities and rattled employees' sense of
security, the rise in acceptance of the employer brand concept is coming
just at the right time. Around the world, companies strive to achieve
sustainable competitive advantage in an increasingly complex and
challenging market place. External environmental factors such as
technological change, the rise of globalisation, and the ageing
population has focused the spotlight on the importance of the
employee in the employer-employee relationship.
Employers can no longer rely on a continuous supply of skilled and
talented workers in today's knowledge-driven economy. Is the only
remaining truly sustainable competitive advantage for organisations its
people? Products, services, and systems can be copied or substituted
over time and innovation occurs more rapidly today due to globalisation
and the increasing rate and sophistication of technological change.
We have been brought up to favour consumer brands over others
through our personal experiences and through the referrals of
colleagues, family and friends. We choose to buy a certain brand of
coffee, brand of cereal or drive a certain brand of car. In much the
same way as we choose to favour consumer brands, the employer brand
we choose to work for is driven by our own personal experiences,
perceptions and referrals from others. Which brand do you work for?
Would you recommend it to others as a great brand to work for? Now
ask the same questions to three other people and consider the results!
Developing an employer brand strategy is fast becoming a popular
approach for companies striving to achieve sustainable competitive
advantage by differentiating their employment offering from their
competitors. In an era when knowledge, commitment and loyalty of
employees are among the main competitive tools, no one can ignore the
significance of attracting, engaging and retaining committed personnel.
The employer brand is therefore crucial for overall company success.
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Page 27
The Emergence of Employer Branding in Todays Knowledge Economy
27
Employer branding is a relatively new field, both academically and

professionally, and is being embraced as an important strategic tool for
leaders in organisations of all sizes. In a 2005 survey of 1,889
Personnel Today readers in the UK with responsibility for recruitment it
was revealed that 95% of respondents believe employer branding is
'important' (see figure 1). 1
Figure 1: How important is employer branding to your organisation?
Source: Personnel Today 2005 - reproduced with permission

In the same survey, 80% said that in the future employer branding will
become more important (see figure 2). 1 The research highlights the rise
in awareness of employer branding. The challenge now is for
organisations to develop a meaningful and robust framework to guide
their employer brand efforts in order to establish a platform that
attracts, engages and retains talented employees.
Figure 2: In the future employer branding will become
28
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Page 28
The Personnel Today study reveals that the HR community believes

branding is vital if an organisation is to recruit the best candidates. In
the war for talent, HR professionals are now being equipped with one
of the most important weapons in the recruitment armoury - employer
branding. There will no doubt be a plethora of suppliers to assist
organisations to develop their employer brand over the next few years
as it grows in awareness and acceptance. However, beware! Employer
branding is not a fast track to attract, engage and retain talent using a
slick advertising campaign to simply jazz up the corporate brand.
Employer branding is characterised by immense confusion and lack of
structure. There is a clear need to create and establish standards, to
develop best practices, to measure developments and to exchange
knowledge amongst HR, marketing and communication specialists.
Although most companies realise that their external messages need to
be true in order to retain talent, they seem to attach much less value to
the views of current employees than they do to external perceptions.
Many companies underestimate that the over-promise but under-deliver
proposition leads to disappointments and frustration amongst existing
employees, leading to higher turnover rates and problems in attracting
talent. 2
An employer brand must be built from inside the company. To build
attractiveness and appeal to future employees, companies have to start
appealing to their current employees. Most would agree that having a
good reputation as an employer and a highly committed workforce can
deliver significant competitive advantage. It makes it easier to recruit
and retain talented staff who contribute to the growth and productivity
of the organisation and who assist in delivering superior levels of
service to customers. In the end this results in employees delivering the
brand promise to the company's customers.
The link between the depth of talent in organisations and the overall
success of an organisation is very strong. The manner in which the
company's brand is delivered to their customers is highly dependent on
how it is delivered to their employees. There must be a strong
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correlation between the corporate brand and the employee brand so

that the communication of the company's value proposition is
consistent to both its customers and prospective employees. This will
assist employees to understand what is expected of them and how to
behave in a manner that is consistent with the firm's values and
objectives.
The employer brand is the most powerful tool for attracting, engaging
and retaining the right 'talent/culture fit' that will assist leaders to
develop a sustainable organisation in a candidate short employment
market.
In today's increasingly competitive marketplace and global skills
shortages there is so much competition for good candidates, and
companies with a strong employer brand will be able to pick and
choose from the best candidates. People are becoming more inclined to
look for roles where the organisation's values are aligned with their
own.
According to the Conference Board Report, 'Engaging employees through
your brand', an effective employer brand is:
1. Holistic. It applies throughout the company and
throughout the internal and external markets.
2. Known and understood throughout the company. All
employees know the brand's message and (more importantly)
how it applies to them.
3. Known in the employment marketplace. Candidates will be
familiar with the brand and will be applying to the company on
the strength of the brand. Examples-McDonald's 'food, folks,
and fun', Southwest Airlines' 'freedom', or L.L. Bean's
'outdoors enthusiast'. 3
Where does responsibility in an organisation for
employer branding lie?
In May 2003, The Economist conducted a survey to assess attitudes to
employer branding amongst a select panel of readers (senior
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management/heads of department) from companies in UK,

Cont/Europe, Asia Pacific, and the U.S. Over 80% of respondents
agreed that employer branding is too much of an issue to be left solely
to an HR department (see figure 3). 4
Figure 3: Employer branding is too much of an important issue to be
left solely to an HR dept
Agree strongly
Agree
Source: The Economist Survey 2003 - reproduced with permission

In the same survey the majority of respondents (19%) said that the
responsibility for employer branding lies in the HR department, closely
followed by 15% saying that responsibility lies with the CEO/MD and
8% said with the board/senior management (see figure 4).
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Figure 4: Where does the responsibility for employer branding in an

organisation lie?

The survey results highlight that the responsibility for contributing to
cultivating an employer brand culture lays at all levels of the
organisation.
Successful employer brand case studies have consistently reported that
the strategy requires the sponsorship of the most senior managers in
the organisation. At Compass Group the group's executive board and
CEO were sponsors of their employer brand program. As part of
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communicating the employer brand message a 15 minute launch video

was presented by the CEO which included case study profiles of
Compass Group employees from around the world. 5
At Bank SA in Australia the Managing Director, Rob Chapman leads the
firm's employer brand from the front. Soon after commencing at Bank
SA Mr Chapman increased the company's induction program for new
employees from one week to four weeks and he makes a point of
attending the first day of the program to promote Bank SA's mission,
values, and company history to the new employees. Mr Chapman also
encourages questions from the new employees and maintains an open
door policy whilst openly encouraging feedback from all levels of the
organisation. This level of commitment to the Bank's employer brand
has had a major impact on Bank SA's performance. In the first three
years of Mr Chapman's tenure employee turnover has decreased 12%,
employee engagement has increased 32%, employee overall satisfaction
has increased by 30% and before tax profit has increased 57%.
In an interview for Universum Communication's 2005 employer
branding global best practices report, Elaine Williams of Pfizer said that
senior management is the starting point of employer brand strategies,
which then cascade and are echoed in department strategies. According
to Williams, Lou Clemente, who heads Pfizer's Corporate Affairs
division said, 'We have to think as one company and have access to all
the resources within the company and get out of our silos'. She pointed
out, however, that because we are such a large company and we're so
diverse, much of our communication is done at the business level. At
corporate, we put together a lot of the key messages and get them out
through our communication distribution channels. At the operating
division level, these messages are amplified and linked to specific
business strategies and objectives. Our CEO, HR, and communications
groups work closely on the framework, but everybody is responsible for
communicating these key messages. It isn't just a top down thing
anymore. 6
In the Economist survey (2003) 4 previously mentioned 41% of
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respondents said that the marketing department is responsible for

employer branding in their organisation whilst 25% said the HR
department and 25% said the corporate communications department
was responsible (see figure 6).
Universum Communication's 2005 employer branding global best
practices report involved research with over 300 leading European and
American companies. The survey results were similar to The Economist
survey and found the main departments involved in the employer
branding work in organisations were the HR department (89%), top
management-head office (80%), information/communications
department (66%) and the marketing department (51%) - see figure 5.8
Figure 5: Departments involved in the employer branding work
Source: Universum Communications 2005 - reproduced with permission

The survey highlights the importance of senior leadership support in
driving the employer brand strategy through the organisation both at
the strategic and tactical level.
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The objectives of employer branding

In a 2001 Conference Board Report titled, 'Engaging employees through
your brand' (see figure 6) 3 communications/marketing and HR
executives identified their top goals of employer brand efforts as:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
helping employees internalise the company's values;

achieving a reputation as an employer of choice;
recruiting employees;
retaining employees; and
facilitating integration following merger or acquisition.
Figure 6: How important is your brand in delivering the right message?
Source: The Conference Board 2001 - reproduced with permission
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35
The Conference Board report highlights the strategic importance of the

brand in delivering the right message to existing and potential
employees and recruiting and retaining customers.
The Universum Communication's report (see figure 7) also found that
75 percent of all employer branding objectives chosen can be
categorised as external (such as to support corporate branding activities
or supporting long term recruitment success) and only about 25 percent
as 'internal' (such as to enhance the corporate appeal among current
employees). 6
Figure 7: Main objectives for employer branding work

This is a disturbing finding given that the cost of replacing an existing
employee can be up to 2.5 times their salary. Faced with the challenges
of an employment market with a shrinking pool of talented workers,
companies will need to start focusing their employer branding efforts
more on existing employees if they are to decrease employee turnover
levels. 6
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The study also found that there is currently more focus on recruiting
than on retaining talent across industry sectors. Although most of the
companies surveyed realise and state that their external message needs
to be true, they seem to attach much less value to the views of current
employees than they do to external perception. In addition there are
fewer targets for internal employer branding than for external efforts
(see figure 8). This is a worrying trend as one of the most valuable
channels for creating a picture of a company is through dialogue with
its current employees. 6
Figure 8: Main objectives for employer branding work by industry

The report findings demonstrated that the focus on external efforts for
employer branding is not simply related to a few industry sectors - it is
a common theme across all industry sectors.
Workers attitudes to their workplace and their employers
In the seventh Work USA survey since 1987, Watson Wyatt 7 surveyed
12,750 U.S. workers at all job levels and in all major industry sectors
about their attitudes toward their workplace and their employers.
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The major findings of the research were as follows:

1. Never extraordinarily high, trust levels between employees and
senior management are falling. Only 39 percent of employees at U.S.
companies trust the senior leaders at their firms. In addition, the
percentage of employees who say they have confidence in the job being
done by senior management dropped five points between 2000 and
2002 to 45 percent.
2. Companies with HR functions that employees perceive as effective
are more likely to have dramatically better trust levels, communication,
commitment levels and lines of sight. Employees at these companies
also are more likely to favourably view their company's ability to
manage business change.
3. Only 43 percent of employees say their companies effectively manage
business changes such as restructuring, downsizing, merging, expansion
and growth. Improvements in this area are necessary since the
difference in three-year total return to shareholders (TRS) between
companies that manage business change well and those that manage it
poorly is dramatic.
4. There is considerable room for improvement when it comes to
communication - only 31 percent of employees rate their companies
well in this area. Communication about pay is particularly needed - the
percentage of employees who say they understand how their pay is
determined is at its lowest level in a decade.
5. Huge shifts in corporate strategy in the past two years have left
employees confused about the link between their jobs and company
objectives. The percentage of employees who say they have a clear 'line
of sight' between their jobs and company objectives dropped 13 points
between 2000 and 2002 to 52 percent.
6. Managing and rewarding employees to encourage the behaviours
necessary for achieving business goals is a challenge for companies.
Only 25 percent of employees say their companies perform well in this
area.
7. As in 2000, the data showed that strong employee commitment leads
to higher shareholder returns. Even more important, it also suggests
that employee commitment may pay off even more for companies in
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bad times than in good. High-commitment companies outperformed

low-commitment companies by 47 percent in the 2000 study and by 200
percent in the 2002 study.
It can be concluded from the Watson Wyatt study that there are some
serious issues for organisations to address. Organisations should
undertake ongoing employee research to ensure that their perceptions
of their performance does not fall short of their employees
expectations. Furthermore, strategies should be aligned to address any
deficiencies.
The brands people want to work for

According to a 2005 survey by specialist recruiters Hays 8 of employees
in Australia and New Zealand, the most popular brands people want to
work for in Australia are the Government/public sector, ANZ, Virgin and
Telstra. In New Zealand, the popular brands were Vodafone, the
Government/public sector, Telecom NZ and Westpac.
Without any prompting, why were these companies named most
frequently as ideal employers? Predominately because of the perceived
employee experience they offered, or in other words, their employer
brand. Career opportunities, reputation of the company and the
professional development and training offered were the top three
reasons provided by Australian survey respondents for selecting their
nominated 'ideal' employer. In New Zealand, the reputation of the
company was the primary reason, followed by professional development
and training provided, then career opportunities. In both countries,
these justifications were ahead of salary and benefits, which
demonstrates the value of creating a reputation for a strong employer
brand in the marketplace. 8
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39
Of 614 responses, the top-ten Australian most frequently named

ideal employers were:
1. Government/public sector
2. ANZ
3. Virgin
4. Telstra
5. Westpac
6. IBM
7. Optus
8. Microsoft
9. Vodafone
10. PricewaterhouseCoopers
Of 260 responses, the top-ten New Zealand most frequently named
ideal employers were:
1. Vodafone
2. Government/public sector
3. Telecom NZ
4. Westpac
5. Air NZ
6. Fonterra
7. Bank NZ
8. ANZ
9. National Bank
10. ASB
Understanding the value of diversity
In an interview with Marietta Cozzi, Vice President of Talent Resourcing
at American Express for the Universum Communication's 2005
employer branding global best practices report, Ms Cozzi said, To win
in the marketplace, American Express must attract the most talented
people and help them thrive so they remain with the company. That is
one of several reasons why commitment to diversity is an important
business priority when developing an employer brand. The best and
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brightest people don't all look and think the same way. People of
character, competence and integrity come from all backgrounds.
Moreover, being a leader in diversity provides American Express with a
competitive advantage. Reaching our goals, pioneering new products
and providing superior service can't happen if we all think the same
way. We need to draw on different perspectives to remain innovative,
to truly understand the needs of our diverse customers, and to gain
market share. Being a leader in diversity strengthens our company's
brand image, employee satisfaction and customer loyalty. A majority of
our communication with students goes through our website or by
email. But last year when we were on campus we found that most of
the students still wanted a brochure. They do visit our website, but they
still wanted something tangible to walk away with after our
presentation. 6
The value of how a focus on face-to-face interaction contributes to
developing a strong employer brand is also evident in the following
section where Steve Canale, who manages General Electric's entry-level
recruitment, discusses how making an early connection with the
students leads to successful hires. 6
In the Spotlight - General Electric
Commitment and international focus attract talent
People often associate GE with quality, integrity, good ethics and high
performance. That strong corporate brand helps the company build an
attractive employer brand. Steve Canale elaborates: I believe our
international focus and our leadership training programs add to our
good reputation. Although not everyone within the organisation can
travel abroad regularly, it is very common for people to make
international connections on a daily basis as part of their job. GE
invests more than $1 billion per year in employee training. That
commitment to its employees is what attracts many talented young
people to the company. In building its employer brand, GE values faceto-face interaction. The best and brightest GE representatives involve
themselves in many campus activities such as classroom visits and
speaker presentations. 6
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I want our potential employees to say that 'he was so passionate about
his work', or 'she got back to me so quickly', when they talk about their
experience with GE. Every year GE hires 1,800 interns and co-ops. It is
important to reach out to the target audience early. GE's internship
programme was recently recognised on the Wall Street Journal's list of
America's top internships. This is a great opportunity for them to learn
about our business and for us to see if they will be a good fit for our
organisation. Today, 60 percent of our leadership development program
hires come from our pool of interns and co-ops Canale said. 6
Diversity goes beyond gender and ethnicity
GE annually recruits nearly 1,000 students in the US. The company
looks for people with a proven record of academic and leadership
achievements. Canale said, We want team players with high integrity, a
commitment to life-time learning and a passion for their field of study.
The aim for the company is to attract a diverse group of people from
different backgrounds. Last year our entry-level hires in the US were 34
percent minority and 38 percent female. But we don't just focus on
ethnicity and gender. We want to recruit from a variety of schools, a
range of minority associations and from various parts of the country. 6
To measure the success in communicating and upholding the brand, GE
conducts its own hire and decline survey. Through the interviews, GE
collects valuable information about how the company is perceived. By
interviewing students who select us as well as students who select a
different employer, I believe we obtain a well-rounded understanding of
our image. But we can always improve. It's a continuous process...
Canale said. 6
Employer branding and the public sector
Aside from a few obvious exceptions such as uniformed police and the
defence forces, public sector organisations have not traditionally
invested in shaping a distinctive image or perception around the
particular employment experience they provide. Traditionally the
marketing of public sector careers and specific roles has been a relative
low-key affair, characterised by bland newspaper advertisements and a
highly process-oriented approach to candidate sourcing, attraction and
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selection. Some employees are likely to have some sense as to what

differentiates their agency's employer value proposition from the next,
however the clearest distinctions tend to have been drawn between
public sector employment as a whole and alternative careers in the
private sector.
Evidence suggests this may be changing, as more and more public
sector organisations realise that to compete successfully for candidates
and to retain high performing employees, they need to be more
proactive in shaping a positive and compelling perception around what
it is that they have to offer. This doesn't just mean 'spicing up' their
image and being more pro-active with their promotion. It also means
deciding on the specific attributes that define their employment
experience and delivering them in a way that builds a reputation over
time as a great place to work.
There are a number of reasons these changes are occurring:
1. Firstly, the types of benefits and value concepts traditionally offered
in the public sector such as a sense of deeply meaningful work,
reasonable working hours, flexible working conditions and an emphasis
on workplace diversity, are now being offered by an increasing number
of private sector organisations keen to compete for premium talent.
People who may once have chosen a public sector career for some or all
of the above reasons are now being given a much broader range of
alternatives from which to choose;
2. Secondly, the skills shortage is beginning to seriously hurt the
capacity of certain areas of the public sector to deliver their services,
and the ageing of the workforce is further exacerbating this pain. There
is increasing recognition of the skewed (older) age profile of public
sector workers and concern about the impending rapid departure of the
baby boomer generation and consequent loss of intellectual property.
There will be fewer younger people entering the workforce than those
retiring, there is increased competition for available talent;
3. Thirdly, there is considerable competition for talent between the
different government agencies, particularly across job roles and
functions that are not specific to any particular agency. Not only are
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agencies attempting to attract talent from the private sector, many are
also looking to differentiate themselves individually as employers.
Government and indeed all not-for-profit organisations are tending to
adopt a more competitive mindset when it comes to positioning their
employment experience.
Despite the increasing need for employer branding within the public
sector and recognition of this from within, it is also evident that there
is a lack of expertise as to how to go about doing this effectively. The
concept of branding, while highly familiar to many private sector
companies is a relatively foreign one in most public sector circles,
hence the increasing engagement of external employer brand
consultants to assist public sector firms in developing their employer
brand to attract, engage and retain talent.
This chapter has detailed the rise in awareness of the employer brand
concept and has outlined the increasing role of senior management in
guiding a firm's employer brand strategy. This chapter also outlined
the objectives for employer brand work which provide the foundations
for understanding the role of employer branding in organisational
strategy. This is further explored in chapter 2 by my colleague Dr Steven
Goodman.
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Section 1
Chapter 2
The Role of Employer Branding
in Organisational Strategy
Dr Steve Goodman
BIntBus (Hons), PhD (Adelaide)
Adelaide Graduate School of Business
University of Adelaide
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Employer branding: Improving the organisations's

competitive position
For years managers have touted that staff are their most important
asset, a concept that is central to the notion of employer branding.
Whilst few would argue against this, is it supported enough to actually
base a strategy upon it in order to improve the firm's competitive
position? There are several factors that demonstrate 'why' employer
branding is a course of action to follow, factors that stem from an
understanding of 'how' it actually improves the firm's competitive
position in the marketplace, not just as a short term fix, but as that
'holy grail' of competitive advantage, delivering long run, sustainable
benefits. The concept of employer branding has its support firmly
embedded in the discipline of strategy. The aim of this chapter is to
outline this support to enable managers to see the value of employer
branding in developing and implementing their organisational strategy.
The roots to examining how employer branding works are found in
several areas; the resource based view of strategy and the notion of
competitive advantage which, to be successful must be difficult to
replicate. Michael Porter supports that activity (performed by people) is
the basic unit of strategy and that a complex set of interlinked activities
is difficult to replicate. Organisational architecture supports that the
culture of a firm is difficult to replicate and the concept of emergent
self-organisation advises that people in an organisation can achieve
success and continually evolve the firm and in doing so develop
dynamic capabilities.
The resource based view of strategy
The resource based view of strategy is the view that firms are different
to one another due to the unique set of resources they hold, that assets
are likely to be costly to transfer, if at all possible. As such it is held
that sustainable competitive advantages are likely to be able to be built
upon these resources. It is the resources of the firm that enable
strategies to leverage for revenue and growth, these resources are both
the tangible and intangible assets of the organisation. This is a
fundamental shift in strategic thinking which had previously focused on
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The Role of Employer Branding in Organisational Strategy
47
the importance of the external environment, on positioning and moving

assets from one field to another, the resource based view supports that
it is as much the internal aspects of the firm that matter. Hamel and
Prahalad 1 proposed the notion of 'core competence', from which
developed the notion that strategy can be developed from within, that
the differences between firms could build and sustain competitive
advantages over the long run. This core competence or 'capability'
relates to the learning, the processes and systems the firm employs to
organise its resources for implementation. This is now widely held as
the key to successful strategy.
As an intangible asset it can be seen through the resource based view
of strategy that the labour that the firm employs can play a vital role in
the strategy, and likely success, of the firm. The concept of employer
branding to give an identity to this asset, this group of people who
work for the company can play a role in the direction of effort and
deployment of a vital resource. The supporting systems and processes to
implement this key resource can be developed through successful
employer branding. Whatever form the employer branding takes, its
existence gives rise to the identity of the asset, its ability to attract and
retain the best fit complementary resources (workers) as well as giving
direction as to the shape, feel and culture of the organisation. To some
extent the employer branding strategy can be seen to encourage organic
growth and movement of the labour force that comprises the key
intangible asset of the firm. Employer branding is not just a feel-good
marketing exercise - it is strategy itself.
Four conditions for organisational success
The resource based view states that it is not just a case of leveraging
from tangible and intangible assets that builds competitive advantage.
Graham Hubbard 2 advises that there are four conditions that must hold
in order for success - all of which have ramifications for the importance
of employer branding.
1. Heterogeneous organisations
Firstly organisations must be heterogeneous; that is companies (read
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'those who employ labour') must have difference. Whilst the idea of
world's best practice has merit as a Quality Assurance goal, and
outsourcing offers a valuable tool for operational efficiency, neither of
these two approaches are actually strategic. Michael Porter 3 warns not
to confuse operational efficiency with strategy - the former is about
doing things right, whilst the latter concentrates on doing the right
things. If many companies have the goal of 'best practice' then all those
companies are setting very similar objectives to one another - the goals
of what is deemed to be 'best practice' in that industry. Similarly, as
industry has followed a trend towards outsourcing, more and more of
the work within the value adding chain has been performed by
companies that specialise in that area.
In Australia, when Pan Pharmaceuticals encountered quality problems
and product recalls, many chemists and health stores pulled up to 75%
of the brands off their shelves. As a result of so many companies
outsourcing their manufacturing to Pan Pharmaceuticals any cost
advantages had begun to disappear. More and more companies start to
look the same, albeit for the differences in their marketing 'spin' and
label design. These minor differences do not rate on the scale of
heterogeneity amongst firms that successful competitive advantages
require. In fact the more brands, the more buyers then the more the
power and competitive advantage shifts to the manufacturer who can
then raise prices to seek a larger slice of the value chain profit.
Employer branding is a strategy that is underpinned by the resource
based approach to building competitive advantage - it is the attempt to
truly give the organisation a difference in appearance and organisation
of its labour force - of the intangible resource that will then develop
and implement strategies. It is the task of the core firm, the employer
brand, to attract, engage and retain the individual human assets and
collective resource that are needed to begin to build competitive
advantage.
2. Capabilities must be rare and have value
The second condition needed is that some of the capabilities the
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organisation possess must be rare and have value; the systems and
processes that firms have to organise their assets and implement them
must be unique to some extent and difficult for others to copy or
match. Once again, it can be seen that the management trend of
quality assurance or best practice, whilst beneficial in terms of
operational efficiency does not contribute to the necessary condition of
uniqueness or value. To use the resources of the organisation to build
competitive advantage rather than the same benchmarks or quality
systems, employer branding offers the opportunity to build this
required uniqueness. It does not mean that simply having an employer
brand gives this 'rarity', look at the supermarket to see how many
products have 'brands' and yet there is in fact very little difference
between them (or even amongst their customers). GMH tells us the cars
are powerful, solid, comfortable, reliable and the best car - so does
Ford, the buyer of a GMH car will tell you that their car is best for
much the same reasons a Ford driver will. This is not about
differentiation or points of difference.
The rarity requirement for building competitive advantage using
capabilities and resources requires real uniqueness, uniqueness that
stands for something and that can be used to build and maintain the
labour force and utilise it as a strategic asset. The employees of the
organisation perform activities, in most instances. Activities are the
building blocks of strategy 4 , so the efforts and interconnectedness of
the employees' activities is where the strategy of the firm is designed,
implemented and succeeds (or fails).
3. Capabilities must be hard to replicate
For competitive advantage to be built, the resource based view's third
condition is that for the firm to be successful the capabilities must be
hard to replicate. In more recent work, reflecting on developments in
the area of competitive advantage, Michael Porter 3 says that a complex
set of activities, conducted by people, becomes quite unique in itself.
Complexity supports the view that complex systems are one-offs. The
more the processes and systems develop, then the ever increasingly
complex and unique the organisation becomes. As a pathway for
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developing competitive advantage, employee branding offers the

organisation an opportunity to not simply be different, but to also
develop through its people, a collective learning and interconnectedness than only comes with experience. This uniqueness can meet the
second condition for success.
The firm that builds a successful employer brand will also increase staff
retention, contributing toward the increase in knowledge and learning
across its labour force. This culture of knowledge and learning built
around a core brand of the employer results in a unique organisational
culture that cannot be easily replicated. Even if a manager worked
inside the organisation, knew of its systems and its employer brand
they would not likely be able to move to another firm, implement the
systems and the same employer brand approach and get the same
results. The results that arise from an employer branding strategy are
essentially organic; they take upon a life of their own once
implementation leads to staff 'purchase' of the brand.
4. Capabilities must not be easily traded
The strategy of an employer brand also assists in meeting the fourth
requirement of the resource based view of strategy - that the
capabilities must be not easily traded. The employer brand is a powerful
tool for attracting good, new personnel and for retaining existing
people. It sets the 'tone' for the organisational culture, can define what
an organisation is, what it stands for and what its mission is. It can
contribute to the working culture, the organisational architecture and
the systems and processes for organising resources. It is not however
something that can be traded easily, if at all. In many cases where a
solid employer brand exists and the company is taken over or sold to
new owners it is not always assured that the employer brand will
remain as it is. This does not mean it will be successful; it is that it is
not likely to remain unchanged. The employer brand is an intangible
asset that is the system that drives the organisation and attraction of
resources with the goal of increasing the strategic value of the firm.
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The criticisms of the resource based view of strategy are primarily

centred around the fact that the view is focused on how things are now;
what resources are currently held and how are they currently organised
as capabilities, rather than looking or working at what can be
developed for the future environments. This is where employer
branding as a strategy can move beyond just delivering what the
resource based describes as the need to be successful. Hubbard 2 talks
about dynamic capabilities, those which change and grow in response
to the environment internally and externally. Employer branding is ideal
for assisting with the development of culture and organisation that can
evolve to be constantly developing capabilities that change and adapt
to ensure the firm increases not just its value but also the chances of
survival in unknown future situations.
Planning and control structures
Organisations that follow traditional 'planning and control' structures
to organise resources, systems and processes have problems with
adapting to their environments. When planning and control systems are
developed for the business they hold valid at a certain point in time.
Once they are implemented the environment itself, the future, becomes
unpredictable and uncertain. Those firms that have organised their
resources and into capabilities around a fixed static point in time are
most likely to encounter strategic disadvantages as they are unable to
shape themselves to meet the opportunities of the marketplace, or even
of their employees.
Emergent self organisation
At the other end of the spectrum from 'planning and control' is the
approach to coordinating the organisation, its resources and capabilities
so that they are dynamically positioned to adapt, improvise and
overcome the environment at any point in time over any number of
possible future environment scenarios. This approach is described in
literature in a number of ways, most commonly referred to across
disciplines as 'Emergent Self Organisation' (ESO). This is a concept
that is supported as the most effective way of organising and
structuring in fields as diverse as business strategy, nanotechnology,
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evolutionary biology and information technology. The central tenet is

that rather than using a centralised, hierarchical, top-down, controlled
approach, survival and success is more likely to occur if the organisation is based upon structures that support movement towards a
commonly accepted vision, that are permitted and supported to change
and adapt and can self-organise around problems or opportunities.
Firms seeking to enable ESO need to capture the learning and the
knowledge of the organisation; one of the key ways to address this is
through a systemic culture and longevity of resource members. Rather
than having new resources trying to organise to solve a problem in one
year that is similar, or had solutions that are similar to a problem faced
in previous years the firm should be attempting to have some of the
resources that were actually there in early years to address the issue using their learning from previous attempts to organise. To some extent
this means increasing employee retention - having people work longer
for the company, which employer branding seeks to achieve. Further to
this is the capture of the learning and knowledge of the organisation
through a shared culture and 'memory' - this too can be achieved
through a communal identity that employer branding can achieve.
To solve problems and take advantage of opportunities the firm needs
to have access to 'link' resources, the resources who have the time and
capacity to sit in cross-functional teams, resources that are not so busy
doing what 'has to be done' each day so that they can share and gather
knowledge within the organisation. This poses problems for a business
community that has been running to 'lean' organisations for the past
decade. Much of the so called 'fat' has been removed in the quest to
run lean and this is where the knowledge and resource time lies; good
people typically take separation packages when they are offered as they
know they can get a job somewhere else. This is part of a problem that
a successful employer brand strategy will seek to address through
building culture and organisational architecture based on the notion
that employees are humans, resources who can choose to take their
ever increasingly sought after labour, learning and knowledge
somewhere.
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For organisation to enable ESO employees must understand the vision

and goals of the firm, there must be direction as to what is expected in
terms of personal contribution and performance along with the values
and inherent mission that the firm has. This does not mean telling
each employee what they are required to do each day/week, but has the
employee being an individual component of a greater system. In order
to be part of the system, the employee needs to know what they bring,
what they are expected to contribute - and importantly what the system
is that they are working as part of.
What does the system strive to achieve, what are its values, what is
important to it, why is it worthwhile being a member of the system,
what benefits are to be reached when the system works well and what
makes it, as a system, unique to other systems. These are all issues that
an employee branding strategy seeks to address and in doing so
contribute to the firm enabling one of the most powerful aspects of
strategy - a bundle of resources that is self organised (to greater or
lesser extents) to produce dynamic capabilities. In order to survive and
prosper over the long term the firm must acquire resources that can self
organise around a vision, central set of values and an identity with a
purpose to produce dynamic capabilities to overcome difficulties and
take advantage of opportunities. Employer branding offers an
opportunity to achieve this in the long run whilst also delivering
significant short and mid term benefits to the organisation.
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Section 1
Chapter 3
The Strategic Drivers Behind the Rise in
Acceptance of the Employer Brand Concept
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The ageing global population

Over the past few years, the world's population has continued on its
remarkable transition path from a state of high birth and low life
expectancy rates to one characterised by low birth rates and increased
life expectancy rates. At the heart of that transition has been the
growth in the number and proportion of older persons (see figure 9). 1
Such rapid, large and ubiquitous growth has never been seen in the
history of civilisation.
Figure 9: Three centuries of world population ageing

http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/ageing/agewpop1.htm, accessed 2006 reproduced with permission
The ageing global population will impact on the productivity and long
term sustainability of organisations due to a decreasing talent pool of
skilled workers. There will be a reduction in those entering the
workforce (Generation Zs born after 1995) compared to the number of
early baby boomers (born 1944-1964) who will be retiring from it in the
next 5-10 years. This will lead to increased competition amongst
employers for talent and organisations with strong employer brands
having a major advantage over those who will have to rely on increasing their expenditure on recruitment advertising efforts to improve their
attraction of talent.
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The Strategic Drivers Behind the Rise in Acceptance of the Employer Brand Concept
The current global demographic revolution is forecast to continue over

the next 50 years with the percentage increase in persons aged 60 and
over predicted to double in some regions (see figure 10).
Figure 10: Percentage increase in age 60 and over by region 2000-2050

http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/ageing/agewpop1.htm, accessed 2006 reproduced with permission
As figures 9 and 10 demonstrate the major features of this revolution
include the following:
1. One out of every ten persons is now 60 years or above; by 2050, one
out of five will be 60 years or older; and by 2150, one out of three
persons will be 60 years or older.
2. The older population itself is ageing. The oldest old (80 years or
older) is the fastest growing segment of the older population. They
currently make up 11 percent of the 60+ age group and will grow to 19
percent by 2050. The number of centenarians (aged 100 years or older)
is projected to increase 15-fold from approximately 145,000 in 1999 to
2.2 million by 2050.
3. The majority of older persons (55 percent) are women. Among the
oldest old, 65 percent are women.
4. Striking differences exist between regions. One out of five
Europeans, but only one out of twenty Africans, is 60 years or older.
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5. In some developed countries today, the proportion of older persons is

close to one in five. During the first half of the 21st century that
proportion will reach one in four and in some countries one in two.
6. As the tempo of ageing in developing countries is more rapid than in
developed countries, developing countries will have less time than the
developed countries to adapt to the consequences of population ageing.
7. The majority of the world's older persons (51 percent) live in urban
areas. By 2025 this is expected to climb to 62 percent of older persons,
although large differences exist between more and less developed
regions. In developed regions, 74 percent of older persons are urban
dwellers, while in less developed regions, which remain predominantly
rural, 37 percent of older persons reside in urban areas.
8. Over the last half of the 20th century, 20 years were added to the
average lifespan, bringing global life expectancy to its current level of
66 years. However large differences exist between countries. In the least
developed regions, men reaching age 60 can expect only 14 more years
of life and women, 16 more, while in the more developed regions, life
expectancy at age 60 is 18 years for men and 22 years for women.
9. The impact of population ageing is increasingly evident in the oldage dependency ratio, the number of working age persons (age 15 - 64
years) per older person (65 years or older) that is used as an indicator
of the 'dependency burden' on potential workers. Between 2000 and
2050, the old-age dependency ratio will double in more developed
regions and triple in less developed regions. The potential
socioeconomic impact on society that may result from an increasing
old-age dependency ratio is an area of growing research and public
debate. 2
Declining birthrates
Driven by the nation's immigrants, the U.S. has the fourth-highest
birthrate - after Turkey, Iceland and Mexico - among the 30 members of
the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OCED),
a group of the richest countries. The U.S. is one of six OECD members
whose birthrate rose in the last 25 years, and the only one of the six
with a fertility level above the line needed to increase population. 3
The U.S. birthrate is estimated to have increased to 2.11 children per
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woman in the five-year period ending in 2005 from 1.79 in the five
years to 1980, according to the United Nations. Japan's birthrate is
estimated at 1.32 during that period. The European Union's rate was
1.46 in 2002. The U.K.'s fertility rate fell to about 1.7 children per
woman today from as high as 2.9 children in the 1960s. 3
Falling birthrates aren't just affecting the wealthiest nations. China, the
world's most-populous country, India and Brazil are experiencing a
drop in fertility levels. China's fertility rate is 1.86 children per woman,
down from about six per woman in 1966. By 2050, 30 percent of the
population will be over 65, compared with 25.5 percent in the U.S.,
according to the UN. At current fertility rates, Europe's population is
set to fall from 728 million in 2000 to 597 million in 2050, an 18 percent
drop. 3 It is clear that the ageing of the global population will impact on
all countries in different ways. The following section highlights the
impact of the ageing population in Australia.
Australia faces a pronounced ageing of its population over the next
forty years. In Australia the current fertility rate of 1.2% (which is
below replacement) is forecast to slip to an even lower rate of 0.85% by
2016. This trend is expected to deliver a pressing workforce shortage
over the coming years, resulting in a sharp drop in new entrants joining
the workforce. 4
During the decade 2020 - 2030 only 125,000 new entrants are expected
to enter the Australian workforce. This forecast contrasts sharply with
the current annual rate of 170,000 new entrants. As a result, there will
be a larger proportion of older workers in the labour market relative to
the supply of younger workers. In Australia in 30 years time there will
be just two people of working age for every person 65 years of age and
over. The proportion of the 'oldest old' will increase even more. In
itself, population ageing should not be seen as a problem, but it will
give rise to economic and fiscal impacts that pose significant policy
challenges. More importantly it will result in an increasing shortage of
skilled workers. 4
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People aged over 55 years have significantly lower labour force

participation rates than younger people. As more people move into
older age groups, overall participation rates are projected to drop from
around 63.5 percent in 2003-04 to 56.3 per cent by 2044-45. Assuming
the average labour productivity performance of the past 30 years, per
capita GDP growth will slump to 1.25 per cent per year by the mid
2020s, half its rate in 2003-04. 4
Whilst population ageing is not a new phenomenon, it will begin to
gather pace over the next two decades (figure 11) with far-reaching
economic implications. It will slow Australia's workforce and economic
growth. In every year between 2012 and 2028, the aged proportion of
the Australian population is projected to increase by more than 0.35
percentage points - an increase around 4 times the long-term average. 4
Figure 11: Ageing is set to accelerate - Annual change in the
proportion of people aged 65+ in the population: 1922-2051

Australia reproduced by permission
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The ageing of our population has been occurring ever since people
started to acquire influence over fertility and mortality. As the incidence
of deaths in all age groups has declined and the average number of
births per women has fallen, the age structure has shifted profoundly.
At Federation (in 1901) , the old were scarce. Less than one in 25 of the
population were aged 65 years or more. Now, they comprise one in
every eight Australians. By 2044-45, almost one in four will be aged 65
years and over. They will comprise around 7 million Australians. The
age distribution is being squeezed into a different shape by these
demographic pressures. It has already shifted from a pyramid to its
present beehive shape. Given current trends, the population age
structure will continue its inversion and begin to resemble a coffin
(figure 12). 4
Figure 12: From pyramid to coffin: Changing age structure of the
Australian population 1925-2045

The "pyramid to coffin" impact of the ageing population is not unique
to Australia - it is also repeated on a global scale (see figure 13).
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Figure 13: Population pyramids: age and sex distribution, 2000 and
2050

www.un.org/esa/socdev/ageing/agewpop.htm - reproduced with permission
This 'coffin' effect will impact on a country's ability to sustain economic
growth and ensure that the ageing population can be cared for
adequately.
Economic growth
Population ageing will reduce labour supply growth - diminishing
Australia's future (per capita) growth prospects (see figure 14). There
are several factors at work here, but the most important is the impact of
ageing on the labour force participation rate. This is the share of the
population who are in the labour force (either in a job or actively
looking for one). 4
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Figure 14: The 3 P's of economic growth: population, participation and

productivity.

As detailed in figure 14 the 3 Ps of economic growth; participation,
population and productivity are all affected by a shrinking talent pool
as a result of an ageing population and lower birth rates. This will
make it increasingly important for organisations to develop a strong
employer brand that attracts, engages, and retains talent at a higher
rate than their competitors to ensure sustainability of the firm.
Labour force participation
The labour force growth rate is projected to slow to an average of 1.6
percent per year over the next ten years. This compares with 2.0 percent
per year growth over the period since 1985. The reasons for this
slowdown are the projected reductions in the rate of natural increase
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and level of immigration as well as changes in the age structure of the

population. This means that there will be a reduction in the growth of
the number of people of working age. The labour force participation
rate is projected to continue to increase as quickly as over the past
decade as a result of greater participation by middle-aged women. 5
As a consequence of these trends, the composition of the workforce will
change. The long-term trends towards more part-time work, a middleageing of the workforce and an increased proportion of females will
continue. 5
Migration
Australian Bureau of Statistics figures on migration over the past 20
years are revealing. In 1983 47,020 Australians left for overseas for more
than a year. By 2003 it was 145,377. The inward movement was even
greater, with overseas visitors staying for more than 12 months up from
30,742 to 207,696. 6
In 2005 the Centre for Population and Urban Research at Monash
University had a positive take on all this people movement. In a
detailed study of skilled migration, it found that Australia had a net
gain of more than 36,000 skilled migrants in 2003-04, substantially up
on previous years. It acknowledged a large outflow of Australian skilled
workers, but argued that this was to be expected in an increasingly
open, global economy. 6
Skill shortages
From 2008 more Australians will be leaving the workforce than entering
it. In Australia skills shortages are being experienced across the board,
not just within the traditional problem areas of professional services
such as nursing, accountancy, engineering, and information technology
(see figure 15). In its simplest form, a labour shortage exists where
there are not enough people to fill needed jobs. However statistics
often reported in the media such as a forecast teacher shortages of 1
million in China in the next 6 years can be misleading. People may hold
down two positions and improvements in technology may reduce the
reliance on workers to fill positions that are created in the future.
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Figure 15: National Skills Shortage (NSS) List - Australia 2004

Professionals 2004
1. Child care coordinator
2. Child care worker
3. Civil engineer
4. Accountant
5. Registered nurses
6. Enrolled nurse
7. Dentist
8. Pharmacist (hospital/retail)
9. Occupational therapist
10. Physiotherapist
11. Speech pathologist
12. Podiatrist
13. Diagnostic radiographer
14. Radiation therapist
15. Nuclear medicne technologist
16. Sonographer
Source: www.workplace.gov.au, accessed 2006
One third of Australia's current workforce will reach retirement age
within the next 10 years. Employers will need to ensure their employer
brand strategy includes ways to attract potential employers from the
hidden job market, such as mature aged workers, disabled, and those
who aren't actively seeking work but may look for part-time and/or
casual work in the future. Currently only 49% of Australia's over 55's
are employed. In the US and much of Europe it's between 56% and
70%. This presents an opportunity for employers who target this
demographic. However they must ensure they develop their employer
brand so that it attracts this target group. The statistics are simple - and
dramatic. Australia's working age population usually grows by around
180,000 people every year. However, trends forecast that the working
age population will grow by just 190,000 for the entire decade of the
2020s - a tenth of the current pace.
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Organisations who invest in their employer brand to attract talent in a

declining talent pool and workforce with a changing age structure will
be best placed to handle the challenges the ageing population will
bring over the next 10 years as the baby boomer generation starts to
exit the workplace.
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Section 1
Chapter 4
Building the Business Case
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This chapter will guide managers in preparing a business case for

developing an employer brand program in their organisation and details
a range of global research findings that will assist in this process.
The major benefits of developing and implementing an employer
brand strategy
The three major benefits of employer branding identified in research
conducted by organisations including Hewitt Associates (USA), The
Conference Board (UK) and The Economist (UK) are generally cited as
(1) shorter recruitment lead times and cost, (2) increased levels of
employee engagement/commitment, and (3) retention of talent.
Effective employer brand management doesn't replace anything you're
doing well already. It just brings it all together to greater effect. Brand
management has been successfully applied to building brand reputation
of products and services and winning the loyalty of customers for over
50 years. As many companies are beginning to realise, the cohesiveness
of brand management can equally be applied to attracting, engaging
and retaining your most valued employees (from your top strategic
talent to your frontline 'brand ambassadors').
The financial benefits
One of the most significant studies in the relationship between
employee engagement and positive financial results has been
International Survey Research's (ISR) 1 three-year global study (19992001) involving 360,000 employees from 41 countries across a range of
industry sectors. The results demonstrate a strong correlation between
levels of employee commitment to the organisation and changes in
both operating margins and net profit margins. On average those
companies with high levels of employee commitment increased their
operating margins by 3.74% over the three-year period, compared to a
decline of 2.01% among those with low commitment. Likewise, high
commitment companies increased their profit margins by an average of
2.06% over the period compared with a 1.38% decline among lowcommitment companies (see figure 16). 1
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Figure 16: Impact of engagement on business performance
Source: ISR 2005 - reproduced with permission

In Watson Wyatt's Work USA Today 2 study involving research with
12,750 workers across a range of different industry sectors, they
demonstrated that the three-year return to shareholders was 36%
higher in organisations with high-employee commitment compared
with low commitment.
A study conducted by the Frank Russell Company demonstrated that
between 1998 and 2002 those organisations featured in the UK Sunday
Times list of 100 Best Companies to Work For delivered a compound
annual return of 12.1% compared with a 5.8% overall decline in the
FTSE All Share Index. 3
These studies demonstrate the financial benefits of developing your
employer brand and send a clear message to senior managers that a
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long term orientation to the management of their human resources has

financial benefits for the company and their shareholders.
Probably the most extensive research undertaken around the world to
ascertain the expected benefits of developing an employer brand was
conducted by The Economist in 2003. In the study 72% of those
surveyed said that higher staff retention was an expected benefit of the
development of an employer brand whilst 68% said it would result in
employees recommending the organisation as a place to work and 52%
said it would lower recruitment costs (see figure 17). 4
Figure 17: Expected benefits of developing an employer brand
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My research has also found expected and actual benefits of developing

a strong employer brand that were commonly described in case studies
and research included:
1. increased productivity & profitability
2. increased employee retention
3. higher level of employer attractiveness (see chapter 6)
4. increased level of staff engagement and commitment
5. improved employee relations
6. shorter recruitment time
7. lower recruitment costs
8. improved staff morale
9. minimised loss of talented employees
10. employees recommending organisation as a preferred
place to work
11. employees committed to organisational goals
12. maintenance of core competencies
13. ensured long-term competitiveness.
A major employer brand study undertaken by The Conference Board 5 in
2001 examined the experiences and practices of 137 leading companies
with annual revenues ranging from $10 million to $6.2 billion, and 35 220,400 employees. The study compared corporate and employer
branding methods amongst 96 communications/market executives and
42 HR executives and provides benchmarks for successful
implementation of programs to engage employees through their brand.
Some of the key findings of the study included:
1. Funding for employer branding efforts has increased in the past two
years, and further growth is expected over the next two years.
2. HR and the senior management team are key players in employer
branding efforts. Senior management's involvement in branding (both
corporate and employer) is greatest at the stage of strategy decisions
while implementation relies heavily on individual business units.
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3. Corporate and employer brands are closely related. More than 90

percent of surveyed executives called the alignment between the two
extremely close, moderately close, or more than moderately close.
4. Employer branding may be especially important for companies that
face difficulties in establishing strong brand images-for example,
because their products or services are sold to other companies and lose
much of their product brand identity before reaching end users.
5. Measurement of branding effectiveness is lagging. Only about onefifth of surveyed executives said their organisations had metrics for the
impact of branding efforts. Of those that did, about one-fifth linked the
metrics to financial results.
Top management becoming increasingly involved
The growing focus on employer branding is confirmed by the high level
of involvement of top executives in these efforts. In Universum
Communication's 2005 employer branding global best practices report,
60% of companies surveyed indicated that management at head office
level is involved in their employer branding efforts. In addition, in
almost 60% of the companies the employer branding work is led from a
strategic rather than operational level in HR or Communications
departments. 6
Pitching the employer brand concept to senior management
With the financial and other tangible benefits previous outlined,
managers have an armoury of support for pitching the employer brand
concept to senior management. I recommend managers build a well
researched argument in the pitching document to demonstrate to senior
managers the benefits of developing a strong employer brand that
includes references to companies who have benefited from the
operational and financial benefits detailed previously. Chapter 7 will
provide you with a number of credible metrics that can be used to
support your argument. One tip though - if you fail to engage the CEO
or Managing Director on the concept then it is unlikely the employer
brand will develop to the level that is necessary to build competitive
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advantage. Senior management's support for the employer brand

program is critical for a number of reasons, not the least being to sign
off on the funding source for the strategy.
The following two case studies reprinted from the Universum 2005
report highlight the different approaches used by companies to develop
their employer brand and can be used to contribute to building a
business case for senior management.
(1) In the spotlight - The BASF Corporation

The BASF Corporation - a manufacturer of chemicals, auxiliaries,
plastics, fibres, pharmaceuticals, dyestuffs, paints and coatings, and
agricultural products has no corporate brand but does have a strong
employer brand, according to Tara Slattery, a staffing representative. The
impetus for the employer brand came when HR and the staffing
division looked into redesigning the company website. As a primarily
business-to-business company with multiple product lines, BASF is
limited in creating a strong corporate brand identity. Its slogan is, 'We
make things better.' When the HR/staffing task force consulted with
advertising professionals about the website, they suggested a redesign
that would emphasise an employer brand and essentially focus on the
theme, We make things better-especially careers. 6
When BASF surveyed its employees to determine how the company
stacked up against competitors in the chemical industry-for example,
Du Pont-employees gave BASF high marks for providing good
opportunities and rewards for hard work. The company's career
development program ranked very high. Slattery observed that the
chemical industry's image as conservative and slow growing makes it
potentially unattractive to the young college graduates BASF wants to
recruit. 6
Taking these factors into account, BASF focused the employer brand
campaign, in print and on the Web, on career opportunities. All
materials emphasise that the company is employee-friendly, and that its
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employee development programs give individuals opportunities to take

ownership of their careers. Since the company is in highly diverse
segments of the chemical industry, there are many career paths to
choose from. And despite the conservative image of the industry,
employees of BASF work in an environment of advanced information
technology and state-of-the-art engineering. 6
(2) In the spotlight - Southwest Airlines

Southwest Airlines is one of the world's top performing airlines and
continues to buck the current trends of an industry that struggles to
achieve stable performance. It has twice been cited as one of the top
ten US companies to work for by Fortune magazine, is consistently
ranked No. 1 for both customer satisfaction and on-time performance,
and has one of the lowest staff turnover levels in the industry. The
brand promise symbol of freedom has been fully internalised by
turning this into a promise to employees of freedom begins with me,
underpinned by two key behaviors - empowerment and accountability.
This passion and belief in focusing on the inside first is shared by all
the leadership. As the VP President of Public Affairs said, We put our
people first even before our customers. When employees know they are
valued and taken care of, then they take care of customers. The
commitment of staff at Southwest Airlines has been so strong that even
when other airlines were laying off thousands of employees, Southwest
staff have volunteered hours and worked unpaid shifts to help fuel the
firm's profitability during tough economic times. 7
This feeling about Southwest permeates their culture; how employees
relate to one another and how they relate to customers. If you've ever
been a customer of Southwest then you'll probably know that the
experience is unlike that of travelling with any other carrier. The staff
are energised, upbeat, enthusiastic and are clearly having fun. Taking a
bottom-up approach to developing a shared view of the vision, values
and brand positioning, 'freedom begins with me' provided an
innovative platform for the organisation to think differently about what
needed to change internally. They took a 'whole systems approach'
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covering everything from people processes and organisational systems

design, to performance management and reward. It was communicated
through a Bill of Rights for employees that set out eight basic freedoms
and the way in which people could explore these. 7
This chapter has provided managers and employer brand practitioners

with the elements to build a successful business case for senior
management to support the development of the organisation's
employer brand program. The following section 3 and chapters 5-8 will
provide managers with the tools to build a leading employer brand.
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Section 2
Building a Leading
Employer Brand
Chapter 5
Understanding the
Brand Fundamentals
Ron Tomlian
Managing Director
Marketing Counsel
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The history of brands

Just over ten years ago, marketing scholars and practitioners spoke of
the death of branding and its increasing irrelevance as a concept. Yet
today, brands are everywhere and stronger than ever. They permeate
our communications and have become part of our language (every
happy little Vegemite in Australia knows this!). Multinational
companies are judged as much on the strength of their brands as on
their balance sheet. Brands are now the darling of the management
fraternity and books on branding are as prolific as the brands they try
to codify.
This boom or bust approach to branding should indicate a sense of
danger - danger in either being too dismissive or too effusive about a
technique or concept. It is necessary to get back to basics and 'sort out
the wheat from the chaff.'
So, in order to apply the concept of branding to the issue of employee
attraction, engagement, and retention, managers must understand these
fundamentals - what are brands, how can they help achieve company
objectives and what do managers need to know about them to make
them work for them?
Brands - Where did they come from?
To understand brands, it is useful to look at the origins of the concept.
Not surprisingly, the word brand derives from the practice of Western
cattle ranchers of the mid 1800s of applying a red-hot metal shape (a
branding iron) to the rear end of their animals, leaving a distinctive
burn mark. This provided a form of identification for cattle that would
range across vast tracks of land. This provides the first clue to the brand
concept-brands are a form of identification. Even in fairly modern
textbooks on marketing, brands will still be described as, primarily, a
form of identification.
The shift to brand management began on 13th May, 1931, when Neil
McElroy (1904-1972) from Procter and Gamble (P&G) was working on
an advertising campaign for Camay soap. McElroy became frustrated
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with having to compete not only with soaps from Lever and Palmolive,
but also with Ivory, P&G's own flagship product. In a now-famous
internal memorandum he argued that more concentrated attention
should be paid to Camay, and by extension to other P&G brands as
well. In addition to having a person in charge of each brand, there
should be a substantial team of people devoted to thinking about every
aspect of marketing it. This dedicated group should attend to one brand
and one alone. The new unit should include a brand assistant, several
check-up people, and others with very specific tasks 1 - and so the art
of modern day brand management was born.
It is instructive to look at an earlier form of 'identification' to gain an
insight into a more modern view of branding. Heraldic shields or family
coats of arms derive from medieval times. While they were definitely a
form of identification (you would want to know if the person you were
about to dismember in battle was friend or foe) they developed beyond
this. The symbols chosen for identification were intended to say
something about the family in question - a crown implied loyalty to the
king, lions meant bravery, books implied the family was scholarly and
so on. There are two important implications here. Firstly, the family
'brand' tried to tell the observer about the values that the family held
dear - it was designed to go beyond a mere form of identification.
Secondly, by putting these values on display it provided an expectation
of what one would get in dealing with this family. Any deviation from
these emblazoned values would have direct implications for the
reputation of that family - it would affect people's perception about the
authenticity of the family 'brand'. These lessons are as relevant today as
they were over 1000 years ago.
Branding - What is it?
Delving into the field of branding can be an intimidating experience. In
the first place, it's hard to get a straight answer on what a brand is. As
already discussed, even modern marketing textbooks describe brands as
a name, term sign symbol or design, or combination of these intended
to identify the goods or services of one seller or group of sellers and
differentiate them from those of competitors.
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It should be clear from the discussion above that while brands do

identify, they do more than just this. The clue in the above definition is
the word differentiate - it is the jargonised escape clause for this
definition. To the uninitiated, this is simply a reiteration of the concept
of identifying one group from another, but mention the word
differentiation to a group of marketers and watch their eyes light up.
The more popularised books on branding try to decode this jargon.
Duane Knapp in his treatise 'The Brand Mindset' 2 talks about genuine
brands and describes them as the internalised sum of impressions, a
distinctive impression in their (the consumer's) mind's eye, the
perceived functional and emotional benefits. This description moves
well beyond identification and begins to place the brand as a construct
of consumers, something formed from their impressions and
perceptions (i.e. non-tangible).
Scott Davis, in Brand Asset Management makes the following
comments to describe what a brand is: in part, a brand is a set of
promises. It implies trust, consistency and a defined set of expectations.
The strongest brands in the world own a place in the consumer's mind
and when they are mentioned, almost everyone thinks of the same
things. A brand differentiates products and services that appear similar
in features, attributes and possibly even benefits. 3
Amongst marketing academics and as taught in MBA programs, brands
are considered a subset of a broader subset of market-based assets.
These are intangible assets that result from a firms operation in the
marketplace and, through their enhancement of marketing performance
of a firm, increase shareholder value. 4
There are other definitions that indicate where the author claims to
have developed a new perspective. However, amongst all the hype, it is
not hard to see a consistent picture of branding emerge from these
concepts:
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1. brands exist in the mind of the customer/consumer - they are

intangible (even though a customer gets their cues from very
tangible symbols and actions)
2. they deliver meaning to people - at the functional and
emotional level
3. they make a promise of consistency and a defined level
of quality
4. they are an asset that must have resources devoted to their
development and maintenance.
In many ways, brands can be likened to a person's reputation. In his
seminal text on corporate image/identity, Graeme Dowling did just that
and coined the phrase corporate reputation 5 This concept of corporate
brand as a company's reputation will become especially important when
the employer brand process is discussed in later chapters.
Branding - What's in it for me?
With the ever increasing quagmire of advertising that proliferates across
the airwaves, our television and computer screens, our papers and
magazines - indeed any available patch of anything that doesn't already
have an advertisement on it - it's hard for most people to make sense
of all the messages we receive. Coupled with ever-increasing choice and
the modern malaise of 'time poverty', people crave (and need) shortcuts
to help get through the day. (If you think this is a nonsense, simply go
to the supermarket and compare the range available today for a
'commodity' like milk with the single-type, two-brand selection that
confronted you twenty years ago).
Brands provide these shortcuts. Once established in your mind, the
sight of any familiar manifestation of a brand (a logo, a sound or song
even a colour, like Cadbury's purple) will spark a string of associations
that are programmed in to the consumer. You don't need to be told
again about what these symbols mean - the brand provides the
shorthand version. And it can deliver value at two levels.
Functionally, a brand can deliver a promise of performance and a
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perceived level of quality. Universally, we all look for value in terms of

a desired level of performance, the lowest price and good service
associated with the purpose. 6 A brand that is perceived to deliver on
these basics will at least be considered (assuming that the customer is
aware of it).
If this were all that was desired as consumers - functional performance,
a good price and good service - it is clear that brands can still help. But
in so many cases, customers want more. They often want products and
services that deliver social and emotional value.
Why would someone pay over three times as much for a shirt with a
polo rider emblazoned on the breast pocket? Because that symbol
(directly associated with the brand and its shortcut meanings of
prestige, wealth and style) add value to the functional performance of
the shirt. It says to everyone 'see, I am like this - I have style and can
afford to wear clothes of this quality.' It has social value.
Why would someone pay almost twice as much for an Armani suit off
the rack over a tailored equivalent? One could argue for the material,
the cut of the suit, the quality of the stitching, but there are few tailors
who couldn't match all three. In this case, unless the wearer is flashing
the label on the inside pocket at everyone he meets (behaviour hardly
likely for an Armani customer) it is not the social value sought because
the vast majority of people could not identify an Armani suit from a
tailored equivalent. The value lies in the way the suit makes the person
feel - a sense of achievement, successful, powerful - the emotional
value. And only the brand can deliver this.
The same is true of corporate brands. When meeting someone for the
first time they may tell you their position before the name of their
organisation. Others will simply say I work for XYZ corporation as a
way of associating themselves with the shortcut meanings associated
with the brand of that company. This concept of functional and
emotional benefits has clear implications for the employer brand. Try
this simple exercise - When you next hand your business card to a
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person whom you are meeting for the first time, place your thumb over
your company's logo and watch the expression on the face of the
person as they look at the card. Then take your thumb off to reveal your
company's logo - Does this cause a different reaction from the person?
Now consider if the corporate logo you revealed when you took your
thumb away was Microsoft, McDonalds or Coca Cola.
Elements of the brand
While an organisation may know what it wants for its brand, how it
wants the brand to be regarded by its customers and other
stakeholders, this aspiration may not (and seldom exactly does) match
the reality. If the brand is represented by the image that exists in the
customer's head then what is desired by the organisation (the ideal
image that it tries to portray) is the identity it projects.
Again, we can relate this back to the individual. Each person has an
identity (how they see themself and a belief of how they come across to
others) but does this necessarily match the image that others have of
them (what they really are like)?
Given this tension, how does one encapsulate all the information about
a brand so that they know how to steer the image closer to their ideal
identity?
Over many years of research and struggling with these issues, people
have developed various frameworks for developing brands - hence the
profusion of books about branding. Some is quite rightly considered
hype, but, like the definition of brands, there is some consistency
amongst the schemes that offers insight into the elements of branding
that need to be considered and managed.
At the lowest level are the attributes of the brand, the adjectives that
described the mental associations with it and the features of the
products/services it covers. For instance, consumers may think of a
specific service as 'fast', 'courteous' or 'professional'. Most people
would use terms such as 'well engineered', 'prestige', 'exciting', 'fast' or
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'well-designed' to describe BMW. While these deliver functional value,

they are easily copied by others and not particularly engaging to
customers.
Customers tend to be more interested in the benefits (functional and
emotional) as discussed previously. This is the next level at which
brands deliver meaning. The attributes associated with a brand need
translation to this level (i.e. if this is the feature, make it clear what is
in it for the consumer). Often, this is done through advertising, but in
great companies they are engendered in every form of communication
and interaction with the customer. Prospective employees are much
more savvy these days and companies cannot rely on simply creating
slick advertisements to attract the brightest.
Brands can also deliver meaning about the values that it identifies with.
(Note that this is different from the concept of value that was discussed
above - always a problem with the English language!) These are not
attributes or benefits but the core principles that it operates by. These
are the values that the brand embodies and espouses - they could be
different from those of the company that developed and maintains the
brand. Hence, the irreverent, anti-establishment youth brands that
value confrontation and 'attitude' have been developed by law-abiding,
often multinational corporations. Increasingly, however, customers are
seeking consistency between the values espoused by the brand and the
organisation that uses them.
Needless to say, in the case of the corporate brand, the values of the
organisation and that of the brand should be one and the same. Indeed,
any lack of consistency itself speaks to the values of the organisation.
Scott Davis summed the brand elements up best with his concept of a
Brand Pyramid. 3 (see figure 18)
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Figure 18: The Brand Pyramid
Source: Brand Asset Management 2002

The first two levels of the pyramid embody the elements of product
competition, not those of brand competition. The top level of the
pyramid illustrates the concept that powerful brands attract and hold
customers with their particular promises of value that reflect the values
of their target customers. This leads to the creation and reinforcement
of brand loyalty.
Who was that masked man?
Once consumers know so much about a brand - how to describe it, the
benefits it offers, its values - it is hard not to start thinking of them in
the same way as we think about people we know. People have a
tendency to personify a number of things in their lives - such as their
pets and cars.
In concert with the functional aspects of the brand is the brand persona
or personality. When trying to uncover what people think of brands, it
is not uncommon for market researchers to ask If this brand was a
person, what sort of person would it be? Usually, the subjects have no
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problems describing such a person (unless they are unfamiliar with the
brand). This personification tendency is used to advantage by marketers
who understand that individuals are drawn to personalities that they
find attractive (and often who they see themselves like, at least ideally).
They will try to craft, through communication and product/service
delivery, a personality that matches that of their target audience. A
quick way to achieve this is to 'borrow' the personality of someone who
the target audience already knows and identifies with. Hence celebrity
endorsement, or celebrities becoming the 'face of' the brand, is used to
achieve immediate personification. A good example of this is the use of
tennis sensation, Australia's Pat Rafter by Bonds to promote their range
of men's underwear.
While this can and does work for consumer product brands, it becomes
more difficult for service brands and corporate brands. This is because
the clues that people use to decipher or reinforce the brand personality
are gathered from each and every interaction with the organisation.
This means that the culture, policies and values of the organisation and its effect on the behaviour of the people who interact with
customers and other stakeholders who support these people - all has
an impact on their perceptions of the brand.
Position, Position, Position
Like the real estate mantra of 'location, location, location', branding
has its own mantra - 'position, position, position'. Corporate brands are
developed to differentiate themselves positively from rivals - to
position their product as attractive and superior in the minds of the
target consumer.
All the 'stuff' associated with branding that has already been discussed
comes into its own in this exercise, because the attributes, benefits,
values and persona all combine to help provide a unique position in the
mind of the target customer in a way that a simple product/service
cannot.
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A critical concept here is 'target.' To be different, companies will appeal

to some and not others. While most people wear shoes, not everyone
identifies with irreverence for the establishment and 'attitude.' A shoe
manufacturer can make their shoes more appealing to the youth market
not only in the styling of the shoes, but in the brand that surrounds
their product. But, by design, this will not appeal to an elderly
consumer who seeks dependability and identifies with the mainstream.
Skeechers are not Grosbys (even if they were made in the same
factory).
Taking care of business
It is clear that there is a lot to the concept of branding. To make it
work, its application in organisations has to be consciously and
continuously managed. The aspirations of the brand (identity) has to be
managed in the context of what the brand currently delivers and what
place it occupies in the mind of customers.
To achieve this, the brand has to continually reinforce what it is and
what its stands for. This means managing all the ways that people get
information about the brand from all touchpoints - from the billboard
advertisement, to the product/service itself, to the way that the
telephone is answered. All manifestations of the brand have to be
considered and actively managed to provide a consistent, reinforcing
view of the brand. By necessity (and probably most importantly), this
includes all interactions that a customer has with the organisation.
Research has shown that these interactions, more than any other cue,
are what shapes the customer's view of a brand.
This is easy to say, but the role of brand management is harder to
achieve, especially as those given this task rarely have operational
authority to make it happen. The problem is magnified in service
organisations (which now constitutes the majority of companies), where
the tension between the existing culture (the way we do things around
here) and the culture necessary to deliver on the brand promise (the
way we should do things around here) are at odds.
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Armed with the fundamentals of branding presented in this chapter,

managers should now begin to see how branding can help with the
challenges of employee recruitment, engagement and retention. The
remainder of this book is devoted to providing a practical application of
employer branding and how it can make a difference to the long term
sustainability of an organisation.
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Section 2
Building a leading
Employer Brand
Chapter 6
Employer Attractiveness
Professor Mike Ewing

B.Com (Natal), B.Com (Hons)*
M.Com*, D.Com (Pretoria)
Head of Research
Department of Marketing
Monash University
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This chapter draws together and synthesises research that I have been
involved with since early 2000. To date, this work has culminated in
three conference presentations, an article in the Saturday Age
(Melbourne newspaper) and two lead articles in the International
Journal of Advertising - IJA (vol. 21, no. 1, 2002 and vol. 24, no. 2,
2005). I draw heavily on both refereed journal articles in this chapter. I
would like to acknowledge the stellar contributions of my wonderful
co-authors: Professor Pierre Berthon (Bentley College, Waltham, MA,
USA), Professor Leyland Pitt (Simon Fraser University, Vancouver,
Canada), Dr. Nigel de Bussy, (Curtin University of Technology, Perth,
Western Australia) and Ms. Li Lian Hah, (MPH, Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia). In this chapter, 'we' refers to conclusions drawn by my
colleagues, while 'I' signals a personal opinion.
Advertising's role in creating strong employer brands
Advertising is a potentially important tool in support of an
organisation's efforts to identify, acquire and retain skilled employees.
It is increasingly being used to build and sustain employment
propositions that are compelling and different. 1 However, this trend
signals a departure from more traditional views on the role and scope
of advertising. Indeed, for most of its existence, advertising has focused
on attracting customers. More recently, enlightened organisations have
recognised the need to expand their communications efforts to
incorporate all stakeholders, not only end-users. The marketing
literature has also begun to address stakeholder theory, as well as
advertising's indirect and internal audiences, but more as a secondary
consideration or by-product of consumer advertising. However, this is
about to change. I anticipate seeing more and more organisations using
advertising to create 'employer brands'. In response to this anticipated
trend, our 2002 IJA article uses a metaphor-driven pattern-coding
approach to analyse and discuss a number of exemplary cases that
illustrate how certain (knowledge-based) firms are currently using
(primarily print) advertising to create employer brands. We then
categorise these approaches into a basic typology and consider the
managerial implications of these approaches.
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Advertising's internal audiences

Marketing scholars to date have commented only on the impact of
advertising on (current) service employees, with little attention given to
the impact of a firm's advertisements on potential employees. For
example, a number of writers advise that service employees can be an
important audience for advertisements because they are responsible for
delivering on advertising's promises. 2 In summary, the marketing
literature on the effects of advertising on employees suggests that
advertising can have positive effects on employee morale and
organisational commitment by communicating that the organisation
values employees, clarifying workers' roles in the organisation, and
promising customers only what employees realistically can deliver. 3 The
empirical research of these authors suggests that employees evaluate
their organisation's advertising on the dimensions of accuracy, value
congruence and effectiveness. A possible reason for the dearth of
scholarly marketing research on recruitment advertising might be
attributed to the fact that while the marketing literature concentrated
on customers and brand equity, the literature in other business
disciplines such as management and strategy gave attention to the
global construct of corporate image. Indeed, the effects of concepts
such as corporate image and corporate reputation and their effects on
decisions to take employment have received considerable attention in
the management literature.
Firms such as BP, Shell, Chevron, Boeing and DuPont, have for some
time now, been using mass media techniques to reach the wider
community - not necessarily to sell, but to educate, inform, remind and
communicate. More recently, new entrants to the technology sector
have used advertising to announce their arrival and generate brand
awareness. Agilent Technologies (a Hewlett-Packard spin-off), Aventis,
Infineon Technologies and Lucent Technologies all provide good
examples. In the area of professional services, the former Andersen
Consulting (now Accenture) re-defined the role of advertising in one of
the most traditional and conservative marketing arenas. Following a
succession of highly effective television, print and outdoor campaigns,
the management consulting practice was rewarded with a 60% increase
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in brand awareness and leadership in its industry. One implication of

this proposition is that in the future employees may well come to be
viewed as no longer a secondary audience, but a primary one. At the
time of writing, this prediction was borne out by the launch of a new
campaign for DaimlerChrysler in the international business print
media, which clearly targets potential employees as the primary
audience (see figure 19). The advertisement shows a number of
DaimlerChrysler vehicles positioning them not as consumer products
but as company cars - a potential benefit for prospective employees.
The advertisement's headline, 'Join the company with the most exciting
choice of company cars', leaves no room for doubt as to its objectives.
Figure 19: DaimlerChrysler advertisement in The Economist
Source: The Economist
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Towards a typology of employer advertising approaches

Given the recent recognition of employer branding as a legitimate
construct, there is limited prior research on employer advertising. In
new research domains, observation and classification are common
features of initial endeavours. 4 Thus, using a pattern coding approach of
qualitative research, we sought overriding concepts to classify
employment advertising strategies. To understand how firms distinguish
themselves to employees, we reviewed marketing and management
research literature, surfed corporate web sites and examined print
advertisements in major business periodicals, such as The Economist,
Time, Fortune, Newsweek and the like. After evaluating these sources,
we used metaphors to label and group print advertisements into
categories. The categories are not mutually exclusive, just as the
underlying metaphors are not distinct categories.
Using the Young & Rubicam (Y&R) Brand Asset Valuator dimensions 5
and my colleague Pierre Berthon's notion of branding as serving a
reduction function 6 , we identified the following three categories:
1. TRANSNATIONAL, Inc:
Status & Mobility (Global network - big & successful)
We turn over $ X billion, have offices in Y countries and employ Z people.
In this instance, the organisation is essentially promising the potential
employee stability and mobility (within the organisation). Using the
branding as reduction notion, advertising reduces the potential
employee's search costs, while promising what Y&R would call 'esteem'.
The employment proposition here is - we're big, we're stable, we're
multinational and we're a respected and admired employer - why look
any further?
Examples include many of the banks and financial service providers, eg
Allianz, Bayerische Landesbank, Commerzbank, Crdit Agricole, UBS
Warburg, HSBC, Perpetual, Pictet, West LB, UBS Warburg, State Street,
Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, Zurich, Credit Suisse First Boston.
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2. MISSION TO MARS
Excitement (New experiences)
What we do is exciting - join us and be ahead of the herd
Here the organisation/industry is fairly new and possibly not that well
known. As a result, many potential employees may not yet know the
major players in the industry, and even exactly what it is that firms in
the industry do. The branding challenge here is to create awareness (or
what Y&R call familiarity), and reduce any potential psychological
risks 11 whereby potential employees might be hesitant to work for an
organisation that they or their peers may not have heard of.
Examples include the new technology spin offs and start ups, such as
Aventis, Novartis, Alstrom, Agilent Technologies, Aspira (from
Motorola), Lucent Technologies, Infineon Technologies, Intelsat, Linde,
Nokia, SK, United Technologies, Viatel, Headstrong, Hyundai
Electronics and management and technology consultants, Booz Allen &
Hamilton.
3. THE 'LOCAL' (pub)

Identification (Source similarity)
See our (highly talented) employees - if you fit the profile (or aspire to do
so), join up. Our third category uses the tried-and-tested advertising
technique of source similarity. Here the employer uses current
employees in an attempt to lure potential employees. Immediately, this
ploy reduces perceived risk by offering a highly relevant 7 employment
proposition, These are the kinds of people who succeed in our
organisation - if you're of the same ilk, join us and succeed too.
Essentially, the employer brand in this case reduces the risk of making
a bad decision, attempting to convince the target employee that they
will not go wrong if the seek employment here. Examples in this
category include JP Morgan, IBM and Goldman Sachs.
The fourth Y&R Brand equity driver is differentiation, but we would
argue that this is a generic when it comes to employer branding. In
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other words, regardless of the employer proposition/employer brandtype, all advertising should attempt to differentiate the brand from
direct and indirect competitors. Indeed, we would suggest that
employer branding is the key to differentiated recruitment and
sustainable human resources management.
Implications for management
Managers are going to have to develop a better understanding of how
the organisation's communication efforts impact severally and jointly
on all its stakeholders. It is unlikely that branding strategies, attempts
to build and enhance corporate image, and employer branding
initiatives are seen by stakeholders as unique and separate messages.
More probably, customers are impacted upon by employer branding
efforts ('they want to employ the best people, therefore their products
and services will probably be great'), and employees by branding efforts
('I would love to work for a firm that makes an exciting product like
that'). While there have been calls for more integrated marketing
communication efforts for some time, the increased overall branding
complexity created by employer branding means that managers will
now have to heed them, rather than merely acknowledge their
importance. Our example ads attest to the possibility of confusion and
problems in interpretation by target audiences. While some are
obviously ads intended to create an 'employer brand', others are less
direct in their message and may be susceptible to misinterpretation, or
might even miss the mark entirely. Almost certainly management must
be aware of this and anticipate the consequences.
Introducing the notion of employer attractiveness
Over the past two decades, the concept of internal marketing has
become an important area within its own right, while at the same time,
it has continued to evolve and expand to incorporate themes such as
internal advertising and more recently, internal branding. Our second
major study 8 continued along a related line of inquiry into employer
branding, and focused on a closely related concept - 'employer
attractiveness'. This concept has been broadly discussed in the areas of
vocational behavior 8 , management 9 applied psychology 10,11
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communication 12 and marketing 13 . It has also become an increasingly

'hot topic' in the popular business press and 'Best Employer' status is
something that more and more organisations are striving for, as
attention is drawn to this mantle in both the contemporary electronic
and print media.
We define 'employer attractiveness' as the envisioned benefits that a
potential employee sees in working for a specific organisation. The
construct may be thought of as an antecedent of the more general
concept of employer brand equity. In other words, the more attractive
an employer is perceived to be by potential employees, the stronger
that particular organisation's employer brand equity. But how does one
operationalise and measure employer attractiveness? This is precisely
what our second major study set out to achieve. In the interests of
sanity, I have saved the reader from pages and pages of statistics in
support of the reliability, validity and psychometric robustness of our
approach. Masochists are free to consult the article themselves 10 - but
be warned, the methodology is capable of boring birds out of trees! In
summary, we followed well accepted guidelines for scale development,
inductively developed a 32-question employer attractiveness measure
('EmpAt' - to be discussed in more detail shortly) and administered it
to a convenience sample of >600 university students.
The underlying dimensions of employer attractiveness
Following rigorous statistical analysis (exploratory and confirmatory
factor analysis and multiple regression), we arrived at a five-factor
solution. In other words, through a process of data reduction (factor
analysis), we distilled and grouped the 32 items to five underlying
dimensions to capture the employer attractiveness construct (see
figure 20).
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Figure 20: A model of employer attractiveness
Source: Professor Mike Ewing 2006 - reproduced with permission

These five dimensions consist of:
1. 'Interest value' assesses the extent to which an individual is attracted
to an employer who provides an exciting work environment, novel work
practices, and who makes use of its employee's creativity to produce
high quality, innovative products and services.
2. 'Social value' assesses the extent to which an individual is attracted
to an employer who provides a working environment which is fun,
happy, provides good collegial relationships and a team atmosphere.
3. 'Economic value' assesses the extent to which an individual is
attracted to an employer who provides above average salary,
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compensation package, job security and promotional opportunities.

4. 'Development value' assesses the extent to which an individual is
attracted to an employer who provides recognition, self-worth, and
confidence, coupled with a career enhancing experience and a
springboard to future employment.
5. Finally, 'Application value' assesses the extent to which an individual
is attracted to an employer who provides an opportunity for the
employee to apply what they have learned and to teach others, in an
environment that is both customer oriented and humanitarian.
Applications for business
Organisations are increasingly competing to attract highly skilled
personnel in various professional areas. 14 There is a possibility that in
future the competition for the best employees will be as fierce as the
competition for customers. Companies who can attract the best minds
will have a distinct edge in the marketplace. 15 Thus, just as marketing
is seen as being too important to be left only to marketers, so too
human resources is seen to be too important to be left solely to the HR
function. 16 17 It is perhaps time that organisations dissolved traditional
departmental boundaries 18 and fully utilised the synergy that can be
created through the integration of business functions. As companies
seek to both attract new employees and retain existing staff,
employment advertising and employer branding will grow in
importance. This can only be done effectively once organisations
understand the factors contributing towards 'employer attractiveness'.
Only when organisations work towards integrating these factors into
the employer brand can they hope to successfully compete globally in
attracting new employees. The present study identifies the dimensions
of employer attractiveness, which in turn are likely to contribute to
employer brand value.
For practicing managers, EmpAt can be applied in various contexts and
situations. For example, it might be used as a checklist among current
employees - to track changes in their perceptions towards the firm
longitudinally. Or, it could be administered to various 'target audiences'
of potential employees (e.g. students, graduates, professions, etc). For a
more general overview, it could be linked to the organisation's
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homepage - thereby facilitating self-selected, web-based responses

from potential employees and other interested stakeholders. Finally, it
might find use as part of an 'employer brand template' used by both
marketing/advertising and HR in formulating and executing recruitment
strategy. EmpAt also provides exciting opportunities for academic
researchers from a wide variety of disciplines (e.g. advertising,
marketing, management, organisational behaviour, human resources,
organisational psychology, economics and finance - to name but a few).
The scale provides a foundation to further identify and refine
antecedents and consequences of employer brand equity.
Future research directions into studying employer attractiveness
In today's global economy, organisations are increasingly attempting to
recruit the best talent from all over the world. Thus, they need to
understand the impact of different cultures and nationalities on the
perceptions of potential employees on their employer brand. An allied
avenue for future inquiry is that of country-of-origin employer brands.
So called 'brain-drains' are seriously effecting many countries around
the world, particularly in the antipodes (Australia, New Zealand and
South Africa). For example, Australia is experiencing a mass exodus of
mainly young, professional or graduate workers of about 120,000 p.a.
(from a population of <19m). In fact, >5% of the Australian population
works overseas, compared with 20% of New Zealanders and only 2% of
Americans. Another direction which researchers might consider is how
the so-called 'employer brand' effects post-employment dissonance. For
product purchases, the brand is used to assure consumers that they
have made the right product or service choice to increase consumer
satisfaction and decrease post-purchase dissonance. Similarly, there is a
need to determine whether the employer brand can increase job choice
satisfaction and decrease post-employment dissonance once an
employee begins his/her job.
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Section 3
The Employer Branding Process
Chapter 7
Employer Brand Metrics
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There are several metrics that can be applied to measure the success of
your employer brand efforts. This chapter presents a range of metrics
that are being used by organisations to measure and evaluate their
employer brand program.
My research discovered that employer engagement is one of the most
common metrics that firms are using to measure the impact of their
employer brand efforts. It is therefore appropriate to begin the
discussion on employer brand metrics on this topic.
Employee engagement
Employee engagement can be defined as the degree to which employees
perform work over and above what would normally be required for
their role. It is the level of discretionary effort that employees give
when they are committed, satisfied and motivated in their role.
In order to improve employee engagement, an organisation must
understand where it is currently. It must also understand the
components of engagement - the factors that influence it - in order to
know what to change.
Among employees in ten of the largest world economies, Australia has
the third highest rate of engagement across its workforce, according to
a major study by ISR (a global employee-research and consulting firm)
of nearly 160,000 employees across 10 nations. The study included
hundreds of different companies across a broad spectrum of industries
in Australia and nine other large economies: Brazil, Canada, France,
Germany, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Singapore, UK and the US. The
highest rates of engagement are found in the U.S. and Brazil, in which,
on average, 75 percent of responses to survey questions about
engagement are favourable. Rates in Australia (and Canada) are 70
percent, placing it third in the survey, compared with rates of 72
percent in the Netherlands, and 59 percent in France, the lowestranked country in the study (see figure 21) 1
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In the spotlight - Australia 1

The ISR survey also documented key differences among the countries in
what dimensions of engagement matter most and what specific issues
most influence engagement. Among the findings:
1. Australian employees are most likely to connect to their companies
through an intellectual bond - i.e. to believe in the goals to which their
organisation aspires and to accept the values it articulates.
2. The most important workplace issue affecting employee engagement
in Australia is the availability of opportunities for personal development
and growth.
3. On one behavioural aspect of engagement, Australian employees are
the fourth most likely to express a desire to leave their current
employer (behind Singapore, France and the UK).
Figure 21: The ISR employee engagement index - variations by country
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Using ISR's database of millions of employee survey responses from

around the world, and applying the latest research into this topic, ISR
has developed a three-component model of engagement 1 (see figure
22). All three components are vital to understanding both what level of
engagement the organisation has achieved, and why. The components
are:
1. Cognitive ('Think'): Cognitive commitment occurs when employees
agree with the organisation's goals and values and decide to support
them. In other words, they buy in to the organisation. Stronger buy-in
will improve overall employee engagement. 1
2. Affective ('Feel'): As a consequence of buying in, truly engaged
employees feel a sense of belonging and attachment; they develop a
sense of pride in their association with the organisation. This
component of engagement is closest to what has traditionally been
described as a sense of loyalty. 1
3. Behavioural ('Act'): There is a third dimension of engagement that is
critical, and that is employees' willingness to act in ways that are
consistent with their beliefs and feelings. There are two facets to
behavioural engagement. First, employees desire to stay with the
organisation; they are unlikely to actively consider other options. The
second facet is a willingness to put in extra effort, to go above and
beyond their normal job responsibilities in order to help the
organisation succeed. 1
Strong employee engagement results from a combination of all three of
these components. Measuring all three is necessary to understand both
what the current level of engagement is, and to develop appropriate
improvement initiatives. 1
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Figure 22: ISR Engagement Model

Employee research conducted by Towers Perrin research suggests that
there's as much as a 5:1 ratio between improvement in the degree of
employee engagement and improvement in operating results. 2
Towers Perrin's, 'Our Workplace Experience Study 2003' explored
people's emotional connection to their jobs and the impact this had on
performance. Engagement from the employees perspective fell into
three distinct categories and within each category, there were a number
of specific factors that influenced their emotion about work - either
positively or negatively. 2 These were defined as:
1. Myself - their sense of confidence, competence and control (self,
development, career, future).
2. My job - what they do, how they contribute and how they're
recognised and rewarded (challenge, assessment, results, workload).
3. My workplace - the people they work with and for, the company, and
the work culture and atmosphere (work place, energy, interest). 2
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Disturbingly, the study showed that today's current work experience is

largely negative, driven by a combination of difficult issues. And the
gap between the real and ideal experience is enormous, with workload,
recognition, contribution and rewards cited as the worse factors.
Human capital measures
The need for companies to invest in their 'human capital' to achieve
sustainable competitive advantage is supported by a growing body of
research evidence. ISR's own research has consistently shown that
companies who have talented and well-motivated workforces
outperform those who are lacking in this regard. There is also growing
pressure on organisations, not least in the UK following the recent
government-sponsored Kingsmill Report on human capital reporting, to
develop reliable and relevant metrics of the value of human capital and
its affect on business performance. 1
The need for companies to invest in their 'human capital' to achieve
sustainable competitive advantage is supported by a growing body of
research evidence. To understand the extent to which measurement and
management of human capital is happening in organisations, ISR
conducted an Internet survey of senior executives, managers and HR
professionals. The sample of 100 respondents included a broad mix of
industry sectors and geographies across the Americas, Europe, Asia
Pacific, the Middle East and Africa. The key points to emerge from this
research are outlined below.
1. 91% have some measures related to human capital.
2. 58% include human capital measures in their key performance
Indicators or business performance scorecard.
3. 46% actively assess the value of their human capital and its impact
on business performance. 1
These results show that a large proportion of companies are building
human capital measures into how they run their business, and some
have also attempted to frame this in terms of financial value or impact.
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What measures of human capital are companies using?

Many different human capital measures are in use by companies,
including head count (56%), employee surveys (47%), productivity
(44%) and training hours (40%). A wide range of additional measures
are also in use, relating to topics such as leadership, cultural alignment,
and workforce profile (see figure 23). The findings suggest that a
mixture of 'hard' and 'soft' measures are being used, but there is
considerable variability across organisations. The findings regarding
head count illustrate this. Just over half of the respondents regard head
count as a measure of human capital. It is unclear whether the
remainder dismiss head count as an appropriate measure or simply lack
a reliable way to measure it. In either case the results indicate widely
differing approaches between organisations. This study does not resolve
whether this variation is due to the appropriateness of the metrics to
evaluate progress against business strategy or due to organisations
simply choosing what they see as the easiest or most convenient
aspects of human capital to measure. 1
Figure 23: Human capital measures
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Interestingly, a significant proportion of those running employee

opinion surveys appear to be missing an opportunity to use the results
in their human capital measurement for business performance. The
survey found that whilst 77% of respondents conduct an employee
opinion survey, only 47% are using the findings as part of their Human
Capital KPIs or balanced business scorecard. 1
The challenges are to find ways of reliably assessing human capital,
aligning these metrics to business strategy, understanding the impact of
human capital on business performance and embedding this into how
the company is run. It is only through this route that the mantra
'people are our greatest asset' will become a living, operational reality
and deliver the promised benefits. 1
The top 25 levers of engagement
In an employee engagement survey conducted by the Corporate
Leadership Council in 2004 it identified that the top 25 drivers of
engagement point to the importance of employees' connection to the
organisation. The most important among the 25 highest-impact drivers
of engagement are:
1. a connection between an employees' job and organisational strategy
2. employee understanding of how important their job is to
organisational success
3. understanding how to complete work projects, and
4. cultural traits - predominantly, good internal communication, a
reputation of integrity, and a culture of innovation (see figure 24). 3
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Figure 24: The top 25 levers of engagement - Top 25 most effective

levers of effort O. Organisational Culture and Performance Traits
D. Day-to-Day Work Characteristic M. Manager Characteristics
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
Connection between work and

organisational strategy
Importance of job to organisational success
Understanding of how to complete work
projects
Internal communication
Demonstrates strong commitment to
diversity
Demonstrates honesty and integrity
Reputation of integrity
Adapts to changing circumstances
Clearly articulates organisational goals
Possesses job skills
Sets realistic performance expectations
Puts the right people in the right roles at the
right time
Helps find solutions to problems
Breaks down projects into manageable
components
Accepts responsibility for successes and
failures
Encourages and manages innovation
Accurately evaluates employee potential
Respects employees as individuals
Demonstrates passion to succeed
Cares about employees
Has a good reputation within the
organisation
Innovation
Is open to new ideas
Defends direct reports
Analytical thinking
Impact
32.8
Category
D
30.3
29.8
D
D
29.2
28.5
O
M
27.9
27.6
27.6
27.6
27.2
27.1
26.9
M
O
M
M
M
M
M
26.8
26.7
M
M
26.6
26.5
26.3
26.1
26.0
26.0
26.0
M
M
M
M
M
M
26.0
25.9
25.8
25.7
O
M
M
M
Source: Corporate Leadership Council 2004 Employee Engagement Survey - reproduced with permission
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The value of employee research in tracking your employer

brand efforts
The following section details a case study of a technology organisation
which used employee research and developed a program to drive talent
engagement and retention.
In the spotlight - Technology Organisation an Illustrative HDA case study 4
A rapidly changing technology company had delayed its commercial
launch in the UK given software development delays. The business's
investors were keen to keep the organisation fully engaged, within a
highly constrained budget:
1. developing its world-first technology at high speed for an accelerated
launch within the next four months;
2. retaining key technology skills and expertise within the business;
3. developing global partnerships;
4. ensuring that its intellectual property was protected;
5. ensuring that key quality processes were introduced;
6. ensuring that a new CEO was hired within the next three months.
Given these objectives, the company demanded a lot from its people
(For example, the London office was often almost fully staffed two or
three hours after the close of 'normal business hours' for at least the
first year after start up, as a 'normal' day's work could not fit into a
typical eight-hour day. It was also the norm to 'find' Palo Alto
colleagues online, completing their previous day's work at 10 or 11 a.m.
each morning). 4
Being a lean venture capital funded company, the company also had
very little to offer people as other than a future stake in the company
(via stock options), and via actively seeking opportunities to leverage
careers by encouraging people to get involved in areas of the business
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that they would not typically get involved in within more established
businesses. Notwithstanding the fact that, for the most part, people in
new or newly restructured organisations are often required to spend
much of their time working well within their capabilities, ensuring that
the basics are done within the constraints of the situation, without the
typical levels of support available within established companies. 4
An internal, holistic survey was conducted on all staff across the
organisation, both in the UK and the USA. The survey measured the
following predictors of team satisfaction:
1. Process. Are the right processes in place to support the business?
2. Role challenge. are roles challenging and motivating?
3. Values. Are company values clear, and are they clearly subscribed to
by management?
4. Work-life balance. Are workloads full but not excessive?
5. Information. Do senior managers provide the business with an
appropriate level of information?
6. Stake/leverage/reward/recognition. Do people have significant longterm stakes in the business, and are rewards, recognition and career
leverage opportunities with the organisation competitive?
7. Management. Are performance objectives clear, and is performance
regularly reviewed and fairly managed for ongoing personal
improvement?
8. Work environment. Is the work environment supportive and
empowering?
9. Product. Do solutions, products and services continue to excite and
challenge? 4
Detailed and headline feedback results were then systematically used over
the next six months as a key driver for:
1. facilitated objective-setting;
2. management meeting actions;
3. management interventions;
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4. process adjustments; and

5. company meeting agendas. 4
The process was repeated after six months, and again six months later,
with focus on continuous improvement in all measures, and the
facilitation of change where operational and managerial weaknesses
were identified. As expected, improvements in certain measures,
impacted negatively on others. 4
During this 18-month period the company successfully launched its
technology in the UK and in Germany, and licensed its technology in
Japan, whilst extending its cash reserves for four months longer than
budgeted. During the period, the company experienced only one
resignation (in the USA), and was considered to be very stable, despite
its various financial constraints, the marketability of the talent within
the organisation, and significant differences of opinion across the
organisation about future directions of the business. The management
team agreed that managing within a clearly defined framework for
measuring the team's temperature, and for informing management
team actions (followed by concrete - and clearly communicated responses to areas of weakness) was a valuable approach to setting the
agenda for managing the key people component of the business
within a highly constrained environment, specifically:
1. key skills and talent retention;
2. employee engagement and motivation; and
3. development of quality culture.
Attendance was never an issue in this organisation, with a small
number of exceptions.
The value of assessment and feedback in talent engagement
and retention
Once a solid company-wide feedback base is developed, linked to a
consistent and focused communication process, skills, knowledge and
behavioural assessment at an individual level can be sensibly carried
out in a way that links to the overall engagement objectives of the
business to the individual. 4
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Often, organisations implement assessment tools linked to their

performance management process, or as part of an independent
leadership development/retention initiative. Very often, I come across
organisations which have multiple initiatives in this area, focused on
company-wide 360-degree assessment and feedback measures, high
potential assessment and development centres, senior talent assessment
measures, and so on. Often the objectives of each of these initiatives
are disconnected, and difficult to calibrate against the firm's broader
commercial goals - all too often these initiatives live in the pet-project
world of the HR or L&D team, with an unclear line of sight back to
broader employee motivation, engagement and retention objectives
which mitigate organisational risk and which address commercial
opportunities. 4
Individual assessment is best viewed (and closely managed) broadly
and holistically - with a clear view of the link between analysis,
assessment, and development to employee motivation, engagement and
key skills retention (see figure 25). Important questions for
organisations to ask beforehand to ensure the effectiveness of any
assessment and feedback initiatives in driving talent engagement and
retention include:
1. How will the organisation's strategy and external business
drivers affect future talent requirements?
2. Who will lead the changing business in three, five and seven
years' time?
3. How do our values, beliefs, culture and line managers'
attitudes affect the talent pipeline speed and quality?
4. Which is easier - internal promotion or external hiring? 4
Having first asked these broad organisational questions, and taken the
view that individual assessment and feedback are necessarily part of a
process that is rooted in clearly recognised and agreed business drivers;
then the various assessment methods - 360-degress feedback,
competency-based interviews, psychometric ability tests, panel reviews,
online self-assessment, assessment/development centers and so on -
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are likely to generate feedback and developmental outcomes which

truly support the business. 4
Figure 25: The talent management process
Source: Glen Clayton (HDA) 2006 - reproduced with permission
The metrics detailed in this chapter provide managers with meaningful

and robust measurement choices for their employer brand program.
The metrics used will depend on the employer brand objectives of the
firm. Once identified the metrics become a valuable evaluation tool that
can be used to assess the performance of the company's employer
brand program using a tool such as the Employer Brand Excellence
Framework TM presented in chapter 9.
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Section 3
Chapter 8
Employer Brand
Communication & Actions
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This chapter will inform readers of the importance of aligning the

communications program with objectives of the employer brand
program. Building an effective employer brand begins at the heart of
an organisation by defining the firm's employer value proposition. The
important role of communications must not be underestimated in
persuading current and potential employees that the organisation is a
'great place to work.' Companies are spending increasing amounts of
funds on recruitment advertising, company websites and external
advertising campaigns with the aim of creating and maintaining an
image in the minds of their target audience that the company is a more
attractive place to work than their competitors.' However all the
advertising in the world will not help companies that fail to deliver on
the employment promise. The psychological contract that is formed
between the employer and employee at the commencement of the
employment is continually evaluated by the employee against the actual
employment offerings they experience during their tenure with the
firm. Companies that promote strong leadership only to be found to
deliver dysfunctional leadership at the coal face are soon exposed, and
the contract with the employee is broken.
Getting the right message across
In a survey of more than 8000 Australian employers and 2500
employees published in The Hudson Report 1 in 2005 respondents were
canvassed for their views surrounding the key issues of employer
branding. Interestingly the survey found that whilst 74 percent of
employers said that current and prospective employees were clear about
what actually made their company a great workplace (see figure 26), 40
percent of prospective employees said they were not clear (see figure
27).
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Employer Brand Communication & Actions
Figure 26: Are current and prospective employees clear about what
makes the organisation a great place to work?
Source: Hudson - reproduced with permission

Figure 27: Are job seekers clear about what makes their current
organisation stand out as a great place to work?
Source: Hudson - reproduced with permission

However the survey found that 81 percent of employers believed there
was consistency between what was promised and what was actually
delivered to employees (see figure 28).
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Figure 28: Is the actual employment experience consistent with what is

promised to current and prospective employees?
Source: Hudson 2005 - reproduced with permission

However the survey also found that 62 percent of employees (once job
seekers) surveyed said their current employer had not delivered the
employment experience it had promised (see figure 29).
Figure 29: Do job seekers believe that their current organisation has
delivered the employment experience that was promised?
Source: Hudson 2005 - reproduced with permission
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Accordingly, these results raise the possibility that many organisations

currently operate under a delusion or misguided impression. They may
think their employer brand is working for them, when in truth it is
missing the mark and possibility even working against them.
Employer brand communication methods
There are several communication methods companies are using to
promote their employer brand efforts to their existing and potential
employees.
A study by the Conference Board 1 which included response from
communications/marketing and HR executives (mainly North American)
from companies ranging in size from 35-22,400 employees and revenues
of $10-$70 billion found that the top 5 most used tactics for
communicating the employer brand were (see figure 30):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
outside print and broadcast media

internal print media
internet campaigns
in-house meetings
intranet campaigns.
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Figure 30 What are the most used and most effective tactics for
communicating the employer brand?
Source: The Conference Board 2001 - reproduced with permission
There is no universally accepted process for communicating your

employer brand. It will come down to your firm's unique branding
needs and that of your target market(s). It is unlikely that all firms will
choose the same mix.
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However it is likely the employer brand communication plan will

include a combination of:
Web based
1. Company intranet Site
2. E-marketing campaigns
3. Promotions & events
4. Banner advertising.
1. Internet
2. Newspaper
3. Newsletter
4. Radio
5. Direct mail
6. Cinema / theatre
7. Television
8. Outdoor / mall
9. Transit
10. Video production.
Event marketing
1. Career / job fair
2. Telemarketing
3. Open house
4. Trade show / conference
5. Special events.
Employee communications
1. Referral program
2. Reward and recognition program
3. Induction resources
4. Brochures, flyers, posters
5. Company intranet
6. Multimedia presentation.
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University relations
1. Image advertising
2. Brochures & binders
3. On-campus promotions
4. Sponsorships
5. E-marketing.
Conveying a brand message across cultures
A recurring theme in the interviews conducted for The Conference
Board study is the need-mentioned especially by big, diversified
companies-to convey unified, coherent brand messages in ways that are
appropriate to different sites and cultures. In an interview for
Universum Communication's employer brand global best practices
report, Melissa Reinke, of GE describes how the company met the
challenge in a particular instance-the launch of a new company
initiative dealing with issues of integrity, a key brand component. Ms
Reinke said, 'We created a communications toolkit for use by our HR
folks and our communicators. It can be used at the corporate level and
customised at the unit level. The kit includes training materials,
facilitators' notes, videos, posters, wallet-size cards, sample e-mails
they can use in their businesses, and talking points that managers can
use if they get questions from employees. This allows a multi-channel
approach.' 2
We launched the initiative with an all-employee e-mail from our CEO.
On the local level we worked with the businesses. Each business could
do its own communications plan. We gave them all the marketing tools
that they needed to promote everything locally before we did the
corporate launch. The range of support materials enables each business
to give one-on-one training or group employee training, Reinke said. 2
GE's approach is likely to become a common approach for companies
due to the increasing level of multiculturalism around the around and
in corporations.
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Importance of differentiation
A major challenge for companies in communicating their employer
brand efforts is the need to differentiate as a result of increased
competition. Given the trend of increased focus on employer branding
in organisations, the need for differentiating your approach will grow
continuously. 3
Unilever uses marketing and advertising agencies to develop
communication materials globally. Local communication depends on
the scale of the operation. A recruitment agency is used in some
countries, especially where the level of interest in job vacancies is
overwhelming. Finding people that share the Unilever values plays a
key part the recruitment process. The selection process is therefore
based on finding both the right competencies and the right values in
candidates.
What Unilever looks for is closely related to their vision-adding vitality
to life. Unilever looks for people that share that vision. Once the right
people have been hired, Unilever offers them growth opportunities as a
way to retain them. Based on the statistics about why people leave, it is
not usually a question of money. It is about having a rewarding job and
being given the chance to develop. The company is very aware that the
behaviour of leadership within the company needs to be correct and
that people in management have enough time for their staff. 3
Web technology
According to the Universum Communications report 3 the corporate
website is the single most important channel of external
communication for companies. In Universum's worldwide student
surveys, students typically rank the website as their most important
source of information about companies. Another popular source of
information with students (after internships) is 'acquaintances
employed by the company'. Students view current employees as
ambassadors for the company and as important sources of personal
information about the organisation. This once again points out how
important internal communication is for an employer branding strategy
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to be successful-companies that do not prioritise their internal efforts

are making a mistake.
Web technology is playing an increasingly important role in recruitment
at BP. The application process has become more streamlined and
coherent since the company started implementing a leading edge online
recruitment solution. 3
BP used to rely on fragmented local websites, but now they market
themselves with a consistent employer brand and are able to present
job and application details via the web. To achieve further efficiency, in
many countries the company is moving towards only accepting
applications online. BP is making use of screening questions to ensure
that only the applicants who meet the minimum requirements of the
job continue in the application process. This supports their core value
of being meritocratic. A powerful feature of BP's recruiting solution is
the global database of active and passive job seekers. Applicants can
register their interest in joining BP and express job preferences. The
big advantage for job seekers is the e-mail alerts they receive when
suitable opportunities come up at BP. The web gives BP access to
talented individuals from across the globe, but recruiting still has its
challenges for BP. Although they have a global approach to attracting
and selecting new recruits, they have to do this in a local context and
ensure they consistently bring the best people into the company.
Technical and professional competencies and trained interviewers and
assessors are helping BP achieve its goal of recruiting the most talented
individuals into the company. 3
At Deloitte their website started out as a global site with global
activities. It was changed dramatically after it became clear that it did
not sufficiently support local recruiting content. The site now looks
local everywhere in the world, while still reinforcing Deloitte's global
recruitment strategy. 3
At Shell their website caters both to new graduates and experienced
professionals. Management at Shell understood early on the
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importance of an effective web presence as a means of communicating

with potential employees. The site has previously won first place in a
Financial Times' survey of career websites. 3
In a Personnel Today (UK) survey of over 1800 readers responsible for
recruitment, respondents claimed that the fastest growing medium over
the next two years will be their company's own websites. Seventy-six
percent plan to use their company websites more for recruitment
purposes. Local and national newspapers will be the losers, with 23%
and 37% (respectively) of respondents planning to use them less for job
ads. One respondent summed up the general mood when he said he
intended to get his company's website working efficiently to attract
candidates without agency or advertising fees attached. 4
HR departments are increasingly finding that the return on investment
from their recruitment spending is being measured. That investment
will be channelled into a number of areas, but principally it will go to
employee retention schemes, followed by developing in-house
recruitment websites and improving employer branding programs
(see figure 31) 4 .
Figure 31: Area you will be investing in over the next two years
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The following case study demonstrates the value of creative recruitment
advertising in communicating the employer brand to external
stakeholders including prospective employees.
In the Spotlight - Coca-Cola Amatil (CCA)
Employee referral programs
The cost of staff turnover has been calculated at around 2.5 times an
exiting person's salary. This has led to an increasing trend in
organisations to develop employee referral programs (ERP's) under the
assumption that engaged and satisfied staff are more likely to refer
their organisation as a 'great place to work' to their family, friends and
colleagues. Existing employees become part of the screening process in
an ERP by introducing endorsed candidates to the organisation leading
to decreased recruitment costs, reduced recruitment lead times whilst
contributing to a positive company culture.
Prior to 2005 the role of the existing ERP in the overall recruitment
strategy at CCA was unclear and limited geographically to NSW. The
program had low visibility, its processes were very manual and
communication to candidates and referring employees was slow and
lacking in detail. This led to a small volume and poor quality of
referrals. There were few repeat referrals and a low level of confidence
in employees referring top talent to CCA. Overall, the ERP delivered
less than 5% of total external hires.
The aim of the campaign was to develop an ERP that delivered
significantly increased speed to hire leading to increased revenue and
volume opportunities for the company. CCA also found that employees
hired through ERP's had higher retention rates than those hired
through other sources of talent and sourcing. It also found that ERP's
were 70% cheaper than recruitment advertising.
In 2005 Coca-Cola Amatil (CCA) engaged leading Australian agency,
Advertising Energy to reinvigorate the branding of the existing ERP as
their current HR needs could not rely solely on recruitment advertising.
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Action
CCA's reviewed their existing ERP and identified gaps and areas that
needed attention. Advertising Energy were engaged to review the
branding and creative execution of CCA's communication program,
resulting in the National launch of 'Who's on your talent radar'
program in 2005. The target audience for the campaign was employee
family, friends, and employee's network of associates. The campaign
proposition was, 'I love my job so much I want my family and friends to
work here.' This was clearly captured in the creative used for the
campaign (see figure 32). The launch activities included extensive
training to local HR and recruitment teams. A 'Lotus notes' based
database was developed to simplify the referral process and to improve
tracking ability.
Results
The results were exceptional with an increase in referral volumes of
400% in the first 6 months of the campaign. The quality of referrals
increased to over a 60% success rate (success defined as hired or talent
pooled for future vacancy). Total hires from the ERP increased to 15%
and are targeted at 25% for 2006.
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Figure 32: Coca-Cola Amatil advertisement Rotate 90`
Source: Adenergy 2006
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Integrated communications
On average, companies indicate that they use four channels of
communication for internal information and six for external-another
indication that external communication is prioritised at the expense of
internal. When discussing communication channels, one notable
difference between European companies and those based in the US can
be found. American companies use an average of seven channels when
communicating externally while European companies use about five. To
some extent, the reason for that may be that the US companies are
typically larger, but probably more important is that competition is
fiercer in the US. 3
The following section provides an example of a holistic approach to
'living the employer brand' based on the firm-employee relationship
cycle.
The strategic employer brand in action - A holistic approach to
living the employer brand (this section is reprinted with permission from
Bernard Hodes Group) 6 The employer brand's magic lies in the
relationship it fosters between the firm and its employees. This
relationship starts before a person is even employed and is built over a
series of stages, resembling the 'marriage' relationship that people go
through.
A marriage can be understood as a series of bond-building experiences.
These experiences, in most cases, serve to strengthen and preserve the
relationship between couples. Similarly, companies have
the ability to create bonding experiences for employees. These bonding
experiences strengthen the employee's commitment and feelings toward
the firm. The marriage metaphor helps explain the firm employee
relationship stages more completely, and provides firms with a valuable
guide on how to create an effective 'marriage' with their employees.
The six relationship stages in this metaphor can be classified as: First
contact; the dating game; proposal; marriage; maintaining the passion;
and anniversary (see figure 33). A brief discussion of each stage
follows.
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Figure 33: The Firm-Employee Relationship Cycle
Source: Bernard Hodes Group 2006 - reproduced with permission

First Contact
In the past, graduating students and established business professionals
sought employment from a handful of 'blue-chip' employers such as
AT&T, General Motors, Xerox and Arthur Andersen. For these
companies, hiring the best and brightest - and grooming them for lifelong careers - was a fait accompli. In short, attracting desirable
candidates was a non-issue.
But the rules, as we know, have changed. Success no longer belongs to
a cadre of large, stable and well-known companies. Firms leave and
enter the list of successful companies frequently and forcefully. Large
companies lay people off in droves, and startups grow by leaps and
bounds. The marketplace of products, brands and employers has
crowded. And the 'best and brightest' no longer flock, but flow between
companies, industries, technologies and opportunities that meet their
frequently changing needs and expectations.
Considering the numerous employment choices available to today's
highly mobile workforce, the adage 'there's no second chance to make a
first impression' is particularly applicable. Firms must capture
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attention in the crowded and competitive employment marketplace, and

simultaneously generate prospect interest. The prospective candidates
who get away are often lost forever. They simply have too many options
to choose from.
The importance of competitive positioning cannot be overstated. Many
companies today are able to provide empirical evidence of business
success and can afford to pay people well. To stand out, an individual
firm must deliver a unique and focused message. And to capture the
continued interest of a prospective candidate, the firm's choice of
message and delivery must be memorable.
Firms can use advertising campaigns, public relations, brochures and
word-of-mouth to promote their brands. But the crowded nature of the
employment marketplace means that a firm must do more than simply
put the brand in front of people to be successful at first contact. Firstly,
it must constantly innovate in the way it delivers its message, and not
just rely on traditional channels. Secondly it must have a message for
passive job seekers, not just for active ones. To the extent that the firm
reaches out successfully to this vast group of people and plants seeds
for future relations, it will gain a long-term advantage. The bottom line:
successful first contact is more a function of the brand's message than
of the brand's ubiquity.
The dating game
After successful first contact, the prospective candidate and firm begin
the dating game - a period during which both parties explore the
potential for an employment relationship. The prospect, at this point,
seeks deeper information about the company and its opportunities.
Since their interest and time are valuable (and are in demand by other
firms), they want to conduct this due diligence as efficiently thoroughly and quickly - as possible. If they conclude that the fit is not
right for them they will self-select themselves out of the relationship
building process. If, on the other hand, they find they have continued
interest in the firm, they will seek to pursue the relationship-building
process further.
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The firm's interests are similar. To the extent that the prospect is able to
rule themself in or out of the relationship-building process, the firm
will save time and will be able to allocate its recruitment resources
toward the right candidates. This is an opportunity that every firm
should seek to exploit for one simple reason: good candidates are
scarce and can be gobbled up very quickly by a competing firm. The
firm should do everything, therefore, to enable its prospective
candidates to gather helpful information quickly and easily.
A possible outcome of the prospect's research process is that they
retain interest in the firm even while finding no suitable, or exciting,
job opportunities immediately available. In this case, the firm should
use its applicant tracking / hiring management system just as someone
might use a 'little black book' - i.e., to keep tabs on prospects. Those
already screened for specific skills or experience (qualified prospects)
should be kept on the hook by direct contact or through third party
recruiters until both the firm and the prospect are ready to pursue
serious discussions about an opportunity. The employer brand plays a
key role in maintaining or developing the prospect's interest during this
potentially long pre-interview period. To the extent that the brand is
memorable and unique - and to the extent that the firm actively
manages the fragile relationship it started with the prospect - the firm
will be able to recapture candidates over the long run that it otherwise
would have lost to competitors.
Once the firm has a bona fide opportunity that is of interest to the
prospect, both parties evaluate the match through the interviewing
process. The prospect officially becomes a candidate. If the interviews
go well, the firm should use its employer brand to sweep the candidate
off their feet. One way the interviewer accomplishes this is by
explaining the employment proposition in detail and by introducing the
prospect to other employees who provide evidence of its veracity. To the
extent that the firm applies other unique and exciting ways of
solidifying the candidate's interest, the firm will maximise its chances
of taking the relationship further.
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Since a good candidate is likely to have other employment options

available, this part of the dating game is both necessary and important.
Obviously, the candidate could lose interest in the firm if what they see
and hear does not accurately reflect the brand image. And losing a
candidate at this point means the firm has wasted a good amount of its
time and resources. Thus, it makes good business sense for the
company to not only 'design' an effective brand, but to ensure that it
lives it out and consistently applies it.
Proposal
The proposal is one of the most cherished experiences in a marriage
relationship. Happily married couples look back to that occasion as a
symbol of the enthusiasm and excitement they share for being with one
another. Indeed, it is not only an important step in a couple's
relationship, but it is a source of inspiration and encouragement during
times to come.
'Popping the question' serves an equivalent (if not as passionate) role
in solidifying the relationship between the firm and employee.
The job offer is a chance to wow the prospective employee - not just
with a higher salary, but with a better opportunity in life. And its
delivery should reflect this new opportunity: unique, exciting and
unforgettable. By so doing, the job offer represents the beginning of a
new and terrific experience, and becomes a potential source of
motivation and encouragement for the employee in the future.
If the firm's employer brand promotes a high quality employment
experience, then the firm's job proposals should be high quality.
Unfortunately, this tends not be the case in reality. Regardless of their
efforts at developing any sort of employer brand, most companies pay
little attention to the way they present candidates their job offers. Not
only are spelling mistakes and other type-oriented errors common, but
most offers are made in standard, plain vanilla fashion. These represent
more than poor form; they represent missed opportunities.
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There has never been a good excuse for poor follow through or
mistakes in the offer process. Given the benefits of a strong firmemployee relationship, there is also no reasonable business case for
making a less than memorable offer. The process itself need not be
complicated or costly. Just as with a marriage proposal, a little creativity
and attention to detail are all that are necessary. The CEO of a small
firm might personally call the candidate to invite him to join the team.
A hiring manager at a larger company could make the job offer in
person, while showing the candidate to his new office. Even an overthe-weekend phone call from the human resources person could
demonstrate the firm's excitement at bringing a candidate on-board.
In short, the job offer is a simple yet potentially strong foundation to
the firm-employee relationship.
Marriage
Once the job offer is accepted, the firm must welcome, orient and
integrate the new employee. This should include effective preonboarding communication between the offer and the first day of
employment. Unless its brand message amounts to 'sink or swim-you're
on your own', the firm should take advantage of this opportunity to
create bonding experiences, thereby deepening the firm-employee
relationship.
As with the job offer, an effective 'honeymoon' period should not be
difficult to provide. From the moment the employee walks in on the
first day, the employee should be provided with the basic tools and
provisions: desk, phone, computer, network connections - anything that
they need to do their work effectively. As simple an assignment as this
may seem, it is rarely carried out flawlessly. What this amounts to is a
subtle message that the firm 'does not care'. It stunts the firm employee
relationship and plants a seed of guardedness that can grow over time,
contributing to moral hazard and other company costs.
The firm should go beyond the basics, however, and do all that it can to
create bonding experiences during the employee's first couple of
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weeks. Firm-specific training, introductions to other team members,

and a tour of the work site are just a few easy steps that can deepen the
firm-employee relationship.
The same issues discussed in the proposal stage apply here. Firms
should take this stage seriously, as it can have long-term effects-both
positive and negative. In general, the more quickly and completely a
new employee is empowered and made to feel part of the firm, the
more positive an impact the employee will have during their career
there. The opposite is true as well. If an employee is not paid attention
to, and does not develop a strong sense of belonging when they join
the firm, they are less likely to stay motivated and committed over time.
Indeed, this person's company will experience more problems in work
quality, employee turnover and moral hazard than it otherwise should.
Employees who genuinely feel part of the team are the ones most
excited about being on it. So for each additional employee who feels
this way, the firm receives two major rewards in return: first, a more
loyal and committed workforce; second, a workforce that thinks and
acts more like ambassadors. As a result, the company will reap more
and better employee referrals-an added weapon in its war for talent.
It is clear, then, that firms paying attention to this stage of the firmemployee relationship can reap significant, long-term benefits.
Maintaining the passion
A firm's hires will typically follow a statistically 'normal' distribution of
cruisers, losers and stars: some will turn out to be ineffectual, others
natural superstars, while the majority will fall somewhere in between.
The effectiveness of the employer brand will help determine the
marginal commitment received from this vast middle group. If the
brand promotes (and delivers) exciting opportunities, challenges and
learning, then it will deepen the firm-employee relationship. If the
brand is weak, a higher proportion of employees will lose sight of the
'big picture', disengage from the company's mission, and ultimately
breed turnover and company costs.
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The previous two relationship stages are easy for the firm to overlook;
this one, on the other hand, is just plain difficult to do. Maintaining an
employee's passion does not occur over a short or finite period of time.
Rather, it is the fulfilment of the brand's promise over the entire course
of an employee's career. Indeed, it is the firm living out its employer
brand. Making it more difficult still, there is no one formula that can be
systematically applied to every employee. Instead, each employee has
their own set of circumstances and career needs that requires a tailored
response from the firm.
Still, the upside to maintaining the passion is significant. This stage in
the firm-employee relationship gives companies the best opportunity to
distinguish their employer brands. The firm that is able to consistently
deliver a quality employment experience to its people will find itself
with a terrific competitive advantage. Characteristic of having a strong
employer brand, the firm's attraction and retention costs will go down;
hire-quality and employee productivity will increase; and company
costs will diminish.
Anniversary
Wedding anniversaries are times at which people remember their vows
and renew their commitments. Similarly, firms must continuously
measure and assess their effectiveness at following through with the
commitments embedded in their employer brands.
Couples do not use the anniversary to rethink whether or not they
belong together. Rather, they use it to reflect on the actions they take to
make their relationships work.
Continuing this metaphor, a firm should not use the anniversary stage
to re-evaluate its employer brand. Instead, the firm should focus its
attention inward-to assess how well it is doing at creating and living
out its employer brand.
The firm should ask itself: How well is the employer brand being
utilised? How can we communicate it better? Whom is it reaching and
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whom is it not? What channels can we use to promote it more

effectively? Are people getting the right messages or are they getting
something different? More specifically, the firm should look at its
effectiveness at each and every one of the firm-employee relationship
stages, from first contact to maintaining the passion. The firm can use
surveys, focus groups and other types of studies to get answers to these
questions.
The implication is that over time, the firms most successful at
implementing their employer brands - and therefore, most able to gain
the advantages of strategic employer branding - are the ones that
continuously seek to learn and improve.
This chapter has detailed the range of methods being adopted by firms
to communicate their employer brand to existing and prospective
employers. It is a critical phase of the employer brand process and
must be executed effectively to assist in building a perception in the
mind of prospective employees that the company is a 'great place to
work. Likewise it should then support the firm's efforts in delivering
on the employer brand promise.
The following chapter brings together the best of international
employer brand research and practice and presents an innovative
strategic framework to guide managers' employer brand efforts and
provide a meaningful and robust method to evaluate their employer
brand program. The framework encourages companies of all sizes to
consider both internal and external factors impacting on the firm's
employer brand.
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Section 3
Chapter 9
Employer Brand
Excellence Framework TM
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It is clear from the preceding chapters that there is commonly accepted

solution when it comes to choosing the best employer brand strategy
for the organisation. In this chapter I present an innovative Employer
Brand Excellence Framework TM - a strategic framework that will guide
organisations and their leaders through the development of their
employer brand programs. The chapter concludes with an easy-tofollow 8 step process to develop an employer brand.
Employer Brand Excellence Framework TM

Armed with the knowledge of the best in employer brand research and
practice from around the world over the past 10 years I have developed
the Employer Brand Excellence Framework TM - a strategic framework
(see figure 34) which can be used to guide the employer brand program
that will lead to higher levels of engagement at all levels of the firm
and result in the attraction, engagement and retention of talented
employees. Successful implementation of the framework will ensure
that the promise to customers that is articulated by the company's
corporate brand is matched by the promise delivered by your employer
brand. As detailed in preceding chapters employer branding is a long
term orientation to the management of people.
With this in mind, the framework will provide firms with a robust
method to audit, create, manage and evaluate their employer brand
progams.
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Figure 34: Employer Brand Excellence Framework TM
Source: Brett Minchington 2006, Rotate 90`
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The Employer Brand Excellence Framework TM (EBEF) provides a robust

strategic framework for managing employer brand efforts. At the centre
of the framework is the employer value proposition (EVP). All
organisations have an EVP - it just needs to be discovered. The EVP
can be identified using a number of primary research methods such as
focus groups or employee surveys conducted across the organisation.
Employer value proposition
An EVP consists of a set of associations and offerings that characterise
an employer and differentiates it from competitors.
Defining the employer value proposition
In the autumn of 2002 American Express undertook a global corporate
culture review. Through focus groups and an online survey, employees
from around the world shared their views about American Express.
Overall, the results of the culture review indicated that while the
company's core values remain relevant today, American Express also
needed to place a greater focus on fostering an organisation that is
driven by a strong will to win and where individuals hold themselves
personally accountable for the company's success. As an outcome of the
culture review, the company made significant changes in many of its
processes, including performance management, leadership
development, employee survey and external communications. 1
In developing the employer brand at GlaxoSmithKline they arrived at a
brand that focuses on quality of life. The core message is about working
together to make life better - a message that appeals to every audience.
When the tsunami devastated the area around Thailand in December
2004, GSK asked itself what it could do to make a difference. It decided
to donate products worth millions of dollars. The company felt it was
simply the right thing to do. The employer brand that GSK has arrived
at is based on integrity and truth. It does not say that GSK is the best
company in the world, but it emphasises good values. It also shows
that those good values are integral to the way the company operates
and to its aspirations for the future. GSK's focus on patient care runs
through everything GSK does, from the products it makes to the way it
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treats people. Care is a philosophy that works as an effective retention

strategy. 1
Through my research I found that Microsoft was one of the best
examples of how a company communicates a different EVP to its target
groups. Though each EVP reflects the underlying 'realise your
potential' proposition, Microsoft tailor how this is expressed to each
target group through their corporate website:
Human resources EVP: Fulfilment is the catalyst for achievement 'People are Microsoft's greatest asset. Human Resources ensures that a
diverse range of candidates is considered for opportunities. We believe
that hiring exceptional, diverse talent gives Microsoft unlimited
potential. The result is enhanced product development and employee
performance, as well as a connection with communities everywhere.
It's an important mission - bringing the right people in and taking
good care of them. It plays a critical role in helping Microsoft generate
technology that positively affects the lives of millions of people around
the world. This mission is also your opportunity, as a Microsoft Human
Resources professional, to discover just how far your abilities, ideas,
and skills can advance your career. In Human Resources at Microsoft,
your big ideas matter - and we want to see them take you far'. 2
Finance EVP: Wanted visionaries: 'Our financial experts are not only
smart with numbers, but visionaries as well, pushing those numbers
forward to drive our various business divisions. Our Finance operations
encompass a diverse range of skills and opportunities on a global basis.
We need experts in accounting, finance, investments, venture
integration, taxes, audits, investor relations, and treasury functions. For
members of our finance team, the responsibilities are enormous and so
are the rewards, both personally and professionally. 2
Once managers have clearly identified the employer value proposition
(be patient as this may take time) they are ready to move onto the next
stage - defining their employer brand identity.
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Employer Brand Identity

The employer brand identity is made up of two components - the
Employer Brand Employee Platform TM (EBEP) (see figure 35) and the
Employer Brand Strategic Platform TM (EBSP)
Figure 35: Employer Brand Employee Platform TM
Source: Brett Minchington 2006

The Employer Brand Employee Platform TM consists of employer brand
elements that are closest to the employee and impact on the ability of
the company to attract-engage-retain employees with the 'right
talent/cultural' for their organisation. These include:
Recruitment & induction
From the moment a prospective employee comes into contact with the
company, whether that is through a recruitment advertisement in the
local paper or via a job board on the firm's website, the candidate is
assessing the company's employer brand. Consider what the external
employer brand efforts say about the company? The firm-employee
relationship cycle previously detailed in chapter 8 demonstrates the
value of focusing employer brand efforts from the beginning of the
employment cycle.
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Where many companies fall short on the delivery of their employer

brand promise is at the induction stage. One of my fondest memories is
of my first day on the job as CEO of a state sporting association. I was
welcomed by a surprise breakfast prepared by staff - and I was
wondering why I was required to start work at 7.30am on my first day!
This was in stark contrast to the first day in another senior
management role. I was due to meet with my General Manager at the
start of my first day. Rather than the usual meet and greet, I was
informed by the GM that she had resigned that morning and would be
leaving the next day. At this stage I knew that everything that had been
promised at the job offer stage would vanish with the exit of the
General Manager. Over the next 12 weeks I was subjected to the
rotation of three acting GMs, each one in a 'holding pattern', at a time
when I had been recruited to undertaken a significant change project.
You guessed it - I didn't last long and quickly exited the organisation.
These two memorable events (one for the right reason and the other for
the wrong reason!) remind me of the importance the induction period
has on the employee's perception of the organisation as a 'great place
to work'.
Compensation and benefits
I have consistently found in my research that compensation and
benefits are not the main reasons why employees leave organisations
and join those with an ability to pay higher benefits. Whilst
compensation is an important part of why people go to work - it is not
the only reason. Though it pays to regularly research industry salaries
to establish benchmarks, a strong employer brand can make up for any
shortfall in compensation and benefits compared to industry standards.
The reason lies in the value that an employee places on the total
compensation package and the importance of the items of the package,
e.g. flexibility of working hours.
Career development
Research has shown that Generation Ys (born between 1980 and 1994)
are attracted to organisations who offer career development
opportunities that complement their existing skills. Some organisations
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try a 'hit and miss' approach and expect to achieve everything in a 1-2
day workshop. Organisations such as Adelaide Bank in Australia
provide career development opportunities at all levels on a continual
basis so that learning and development is integrated into the company's
lifelong learning culture. I recently completed my MBA at a University
that promotes 7 graduate qualities that underpin the curriculum across
all courses. One of the graduate qualities is 'to prepare for lifelong
learning in pursuit of personal development and excellence in
professional practice'.
From my experience, graduates would be lucky if they find an
organisation to work for that shares this vision and assists them to
further develop their body of knowledge through their employment
experience. From my experience too many organisations do not see the
value of learning and development in contributing to the success of the
company. A lot more work needs to be done in the higher education
sector to build workplace competencies such as effective communication skills, problem solving skills, and oral presentation skills to build
a more capable workforce to meet the challenges of an increasingly
complex world of business. Leaders need to be encouraged to develop
individual personal career plans with their employees. These career
development plans should be hot wired into the performance
development process for the employee and should be reviewed
regularly and aligned with objectives of the organisation and those of
the employees.
Goldman Sachs brands itself as the place where employees can build a
multifaceted career over a number of years. The company has a robust
internal mobility program for those who want to take part in
opportunities in areas others than the one they started in. In an
interview for Universum Communication's 2005 employer brand global
best practices report, Edith Hunt (Co Chief Operating Office of Human
Capital Management) said, We want people to understand that working
for Goldman Sachs is about more than money-it's about building a long
term career. As the pace of change escalates in the industry and the
complexity of financial products continues to increase, the pressure on
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the firms to keep up grows. Goldman Sachs plans to respond by

continuing to recruit the top talent and develop training program that
keep employees abreast of the changes. When people do leave the
firm, it's generally because they are offered broader responsibilities
somewhere else. It's the flip side of having such a deep talent pool.
People sometimes are offered opportunities at other firms a couple of
years earlier than at Goldman Sachs. 1
A clearly articulated and accessible career development program
provides an opportunity for the firm to retain talent that they have
invested in over the employee's tenure with the firm. It also ensures
competencies are retained within the firm assisting to build
competitive advantage.
Employee research
Leaders should be encouraged to seek formal and informal feedback
from their staff through employee feedback surveys that measure either
(or a combination of) employer attractiveness, employee engagement,
employee satisfaction or employee commitment. This should be
undertaken on at least an annual basis and the employer brand strategy
aligned accordingly. The benefit of employee research in developing a
strong employer brand has been detailed extensively throughout
preceding chapters. Organisations that guess the aspirations of their
employees or develop strategies that attempt to force employees to
falsely 'buy in' to 'the way we want it to be' do so at their peril. A mix
of both qualitative and qualitative research is important if you want to
know what employees perceive about your company's employer brand.
The survey results should identify areas that require corrective action to
ensure that employer brand is aligned with corporate objectives.
The first step in developing the employer value proposition at Microsoft
was surveying 7,300 employees. The respondents rated 40 elements
characterising the Microsoft employer value proposition. The survey
gave management a good measurement for the current situation. The
survey also asked the participants to select the five most important
elements and it helped to identify the critical factors for management
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to take into account. These cornerstones of aspiration related not only

to recruiting, but also to their training and leadership development
efforts. 1
Reward and recognition
Excellence in performance should be recognised through the use of
rewards that are creative, flexible, and meaningful. When administered
and communicated effectively, reward and recognition are an important
part of a total compensation program for employees, and they
encourage discretionary effort. Managers are encouraged to design and
develop defined rewards programs that encourage a culture of
continuous improvement in the organisation.
Below are some guiding principles to design an employee recognition
and rewards program for the organisation:
1. rewards should be given for significant outstanding
performance that advances team/organisational goals, and
should be tied to a specific accomplishment such as the winning
of a major tender,
2. rewards are most effective when they are meaningful to the
individual,
3. care should be taken in communication and distribution of
rewards so that they are viewed as performance excellence, not
as entitlements,
4. rewards may be designed to reflect the unique nature of the
team's work culture and organisational structure,
5. rewards should not be substituted for a competitive salary
plan. For example, rewards should not be used as a long-term
alternative to permanent salary adjustments when these
adjustments are appropriate for consistently high performance,
significant changes in responsibility, increased value of a
position, or internal pay equity,
6. rewards should not be used as adjustments to base salary,
supplemental compensation, or variable pay programs (such as
commission).
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Communication systems
Informal networks (sometimes referred to as 'grapevines') in
organisations are renowned as a great source of company information.
Companies that fail to communicate effectively with their employees
may feed the 'grapevine' to the point where it becomes the most
credible source of company information. Whilst some employees would
argue that this is not a bad thing, it is important that what the company
would like to say about its employee brand is communicated in a
manner that is consistent with their corporate brand messages.
Chapter 8 provides a wealth of communication mediums that can be
used to communicate your employer brand strategy to your existing and
prospective employees. It would pay to also undertake an audit of the
corporate website and company intranet to determine if these
important communication tools are contributing to the strength of the
company's employer brand.
Work environment
It is surprising to hear of the value that employees place on the
physical environment that they work in. Having personally worked in
both old style and modern workplaces I would agree that a comfortable
work environment impacts on attitude and productivity in the
workplace. A leading postal authority in Australia found itself in hot
water a few years ago when one of their policies prevented employees
from having photo frames and other personal items at their
workstation. The incident resulted in major press headlines and after
extensive media and public scrutiny the organisation changed their
position and realised (the hard way!), the value that employees place on
their workplace environment. Vodafone designed their new
headquarters campus in Newbury with two of its core values 'Passion
for our people', and 'Passion for the world around us', very much in
mind. 5
Employer Brand Strategic Platform TM
On completion of the assessment of the Employer Brand Employee
Platform TM elements, it is time to consider the performance of the firm
against the elements of the Employer Brand Strategic Platform (see
figure 36).
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Figure 36: Employer Brand Strategic Platform TM
Source: Brett Minchington 2006

The Employer Brand Strategic Platform TM elements include:
Mission, Vision & Values
The organisation's mission, vision, and values are the heart and soul of
the organisation. They must be relevant, contemporary and meaningful
to employees at all levels. They should be communicated in a clear and
concise manner so that they are understood by all employees.
The mission, vision and value statements should take into account the
strategic intent and social, economic and environmental goals of the
organisation.
Try this simple test - ask a small sample of employees in your team to
articulate the mission, vision, and values of your organisation. If they
cannot provide the correct answers then it may be time to revisit these
propositions!
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
Business and society are interdependent. The wellbeing of one depends
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on the wellbeing of the other. Companies engaged in corporate social

responsibility are reporting benefits to their reputation and their
bottom line. CSR is good for society and good for business. 3
The collapse of Enron catapulted the issues of ethics and social
responsibility of business to the top of the corporate agenda. Before the
scandal, CSR had been a slow burning issue being championed by many
but practised by few. Now it is the heart of many an anxious debate in
boardrooms around the world. Corporate governance, the role of nonexecutive directors, the probity of auditing conventions and the ethical
role of employees are all under closer scrutiny than ever before. There
is an accumulation of evidence which shows that an organisation's
reputation in the field of business ethics and CSR can tangibly affect
it's attractiveness as an employer. 4 A company should define CSR for
their particular business, understand the drivers and motivators for
their CSR commitment, develop or enhance overarching CSR policies,
and set relevant CSR goals, priorities and key performance indicators. I
encourage leaders to ensure that CSR objectives are communicated
through the corporate website. A visit to www.bodyshop.com 5 will
demonstrate how leading firms committed to socially responsible work
practices are communicating this to their internal and external
audiences. This makes it easier to attract employees with similar values
who are more likely to stay with an employer who lives and breathes
their socially responsible values.
Leadership
The value that effective leadership in your organisation delivers to the
employer brand cannot be underestimated. Research results
consistently show that employees value good leadership. Employees
value empowerment, consultation, and partnership. Bank SA's
Managing Director, Rob Chapman leads by example and the benefits
are obvious with significant increases in employee engagement and the
Bank's financial results in the first three years of his tenure. Leaders
should have their leadership capabilities evaluated using a credible 360degree measurement tool on a regular basis (e.g. part of annual
performance review). It is important that employees have the
opportunity to provide feedback to leaders as it should be seen as a two
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way process, not the 'my way - or the highway', scenario of the past.
Good leadership builds great leadership by starting with recruiting the
right 'leadership fit' that is aligned with the goals of the organisation.
Corporate reputation and culture
The ranking of the company in best employer to work for lists such as
'Hewitt's Best Employers List', 'The Sunday Times: 100 Best Companies to
Work For', 'The Financial Times: Best Workplaces' (in the UK and EU),
and Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For'- will assist in projecting
a positive image to existing and prospective employees. High rankings
give employees a sense of pride in working for an employer perceived
as an employer of choice, and it helps to spread the word about the
company's employment practices. Protecting the corporate reputation of
the company is critical to organisational sustainability, and this does
not mean the implementation of a slick public relations campaign to
cover up bad practices. A sustainable reputation is built on effective
people management policies and practices nurtured over a long period.
Consider the impact on employees as a result of the extortion threat on
Mars Bars in Australia in 2005. The company took quick action to recall
all bars across Australia even though they were not legally required to
do so. The swift action resulted in creating a perception in the minds of
existing and prospective employees that Mars is a responsible employer
and this resulted in consumers coming back in droves after the product
appeared back on the shelf.
In Jim Collin's research for his popular leadership book, 'From good to
great', he found that organisations which make the leap from good to
great are able to do so because of their focus on building a strong
culture around their organisation, within which their employees
can excel. These companies researched and built their own unique
culture and filled it with highly disciplined people who were prepared
to take disciplined action. They shook off bureaucracies, as 'bureaucratic
cultures' only arose to compensate for incompetence and lack of
discipline in employees. Jim Collins found that when the right people
are in place in your organisation, there is no need for bureaucracy! The
importance of traditions cannot be overlooked in building a strong
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culture especially in the early days of employment. This is evident in

the selection of the new Hewlett Packard CEO in 2005. HP Director
Patricia Dunn was quoted as saying that HP chose Mark Curd as the
new CEO after an extensive search due to his understanding of the role
of culture in a company's success. This appeared to be a good choice in
leadership style as HP has a culture that has been tested over the past
five years following its megamerger with Compaq. Critics had
questioned the leadership style of the previous CEO to support the
culture and traditions at HP which had been developed over many
years. The culture was deeply entrenced in the workforce 3 and
commonly referred to as 'The HP Way'.
People management policies and practices
The focus on people management policies and practices has shifted
from policy development to the implementation phase. Ask most
employees and they will say that they have a work-life balance policy in
their organisation. Ask the same person, 'How many people actually
use the policy' and the answer may surprise! I attended a seminar on
work-life balance in 2005 where an international recruitment firm
presented the results of their research into work-life balance. Two
guest speakers presented the role of work-life balance policies in their
organisations. The first speaker gained instant credibility by
articulating the firm's policy and by providing examples of how they
were successful in implementing the policy.
The second guest speaker, a CEO of a major law firm, mentioned that
whilst the firm had a work-life balance policy only one person in their
workforce of 200 was using it! Other policies and practices that should
be considered in the development of the employer brand strategy are
talent management, recruitment and induction, performance
management, workplace bullying and reward and recognition.
Performance management
In its simplest form, the aim of any performance management process
should be to improve the effectiveness of individuals and the company
as a whole. Organisations should seek to achieve this outcome by
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establishing (in consultation with employees), performance objectives,

assessment and professional development processes, in which
employees have clear goals and are supported in achieving them. From
my experience most employees fear the annual performance appraisal
and become defensive at the first mention of the performance
management process. I have had first hand experience of sophisticated
IT performance management systems and in the end the most effective
system has been where the performance management process is
embedded in the culture of the organisation and becomes part of
everyday language. I suggest beginning at the frontline of the
organisation and involving employees in the design of a performance
management process that is relevant to all parties and meets individual
and organisational objectives rather than relying on a 'one size fits all'
approach such as an off-the-shelf product.
Innovation
Innovation is the transformation of new ideas into sustainable valueadded outcomes. Evidence suggests that being more innovation
capable results in improved performance. The market forces impacting
on organisations such as the ageing population and skills shortages
means that firms need to become more innovative in the systems and
processes if they are to continue to meet customer needs. Innovation is
about finding new ways of doing business to build competitive
advantage. The other important element in innovation is the need to
foster an environment of entrepreneurship to allow the new ideas to be
commercialised. Firms that encourage and nurture innovation will be
more attractive to prospective employees than their competitors and it
will also assist to retain existing staff.
The Corporate brand
All the elements of your brand-the name, logo, tagline, and design
combine to form a message about what it is like to work at your
company. The messages become synonymous with your company in the
mind of existing and prospective employees. The message articulated by
your corporate brand should align closely with those communicated by
your employer brand. Through the course of my research for this book I
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came across an excellent example of how a company was using its

corporate website to appeal to prospective employers. When I spoke to
the head of human resources requesting to use a screen dump as an
example of 'best practice' recruitment marketing, I was informed that
the company was going through significant change and it wasn't a good
time to use the company as an example of best practice for employer
branding. I wonder how much money was put into the redesign of the
website and how much is being invested on the employees that reside
behind the corporate brand. This is a good example of how simply
jazzing up your communication collateral alone will not contribute to
building a strong employer brand.
Market forces
I highly recommend a PESTEL analysis be undertaken during the
process of developing your employer brand program. The PESTEL
analysis considers the following uncontrollable market forces and how
they may impact on your employer brand.
- Political - e.g. tax policy, employment laws, environmental
regulations, trade restrictions and tariffs, political stability
- Economical - e.g. economic growth, interest rates, exchange rates,
inflation rate
- Social - e.g. ageing population, health consciousness, population
growth rate, age distribution, career attitudes, emphasis on safety
- Technological - e.g. R&D activity, automation, technology incentives,
rate of technological change
- Environmental - e.g. legislation, corporate social responsibility
- Legal - e.g. trademarks, licensing, compliance, disclosure, industrial
relations
As detailed earlier in chapter 3 the ageing population will challenge
organisations in the recruitment of talented and skilled employees in a
shrinking talent pool. The outcome of the PESTEL analysis may lead
the company to consider exploring the hidden job market (e.g. mature
aged workers, single mothers, and disabled) to fill skill shortages as
part of their employer brand strategy.
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Customers
The most successful brands are built on an intimate knowledge of their
customers. In much the same way, successful employer brands are build
on an intimate knowledge of employees. The attitudes and actions of
employees impact on the promise delivered to customers. Research
shows that engaged and satisfied employees deliver higher levels of
service to customers and the expression of customer satisfaction has a
motivational effect on employees, inspiring them to voluntarily give
even more of themselves for the purpose of increasing customer
satisfaction. This has been referred to as the flashpoint effect. 7
Customers may be future employees and can make recommendations to
others about their customer experiences. I recall the time I cancelled a
wireless broadband subscription due to poor signal reception. Within
the 'cooling off' period I was allowed to return the wireless broadband
card for a refund from a major Australian telecommunications firm but
was advised by a (rude!) employee that I had not returned the card
within the store's refund timeframe. At the time the Director of the
store was on the premises and the staff member excused herself and
arranged for him to handle my query. The Director then preceded to
recite the refund terms in a rude tone and also went to the effort of
downloading a copy of the company's refund terms. It turned out to be
a blessing in disguise when I noticed that the refund terms detailed
that the card must be returned within 10 days of the cancellation of the
service, not from the date of purchase.
On explaining this to the Director he rang the company's helpline and
proceeded to argue with the operator that his franchised store could
overwrite the company's refund policy on hardware items if the
hardware wasn't returned within 10 days of its purchase. In the end the
Director agreed to refund the purchase price but not without the
following parting comment, Im only doing this because the store is
closing and I don't have any more time to discuss this with you. Is that
a store I would recommend anyone to work for!
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Prospective employees
Earlier in chapter 6, Ewing et al (2005) defined 'employer
attractiveness' as the envisioned benefits that a potential employee sees
in working for a specific organisation. The construct may be thought of
as an antecedent of the more general concept of employer brand equity.
In other words, the more attractive an employer is perceived to be by
potential employees, the stronger that particular organisation's
employer brand equity. 9
The attitudes that individuals hold about employers are informed by
their 'affective responses' to situations, people or things. Attitudes are
affected by their own employment experiences of those of their family,
friends, and colleagues. If the employment experience with an
employer in a particular industry is a negative one (e.g. call centre),
then that may impact on the attractiveness of the industry as a future
employment prospect for the employee.
As previously detailed in chapter 8 employee referral programs are
becoming increasingly common in organisations serious about
recruiting employees with values similar to the company's. Employees
who are engaged in their work are more likely to refer the organisation
as a place to work to their family, friends, and colleagues. This not only
saves on recruitment costs, it also assists to attract a workforce whose
employee values are more aligned with those of the organisation.
Research shows that Generation Ys use the internet as a primary source
of information about prospective employers. It is their experience at
this employer brand touchpoint that may be the difference in the ability
to attract this individual as a prospective employee.
Stakeholders
As part of employer brand research efforts it is recommended that a
survey of a sample of company stakeholders be undertaken to
determine how they perceive your employer brand. Consider how
stakeholders perceive the company's work practices. How do they rate
the service delivered by the employees? Chances are that if the service
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level is poor, the employee is likely to be disengaged in their work. I

recall the excellent customer service provided by a Generation Y
employee at a local supermarket I used to visit. The employee had a gift
for engaging and uplifting customers during every transaction. The
employee also appeared to know the name of the sales representatives
who visited the store. The employee became the face of the store and
the impact her attitude had on employees was evident in their dealings
with customers. I actually found it an uplifting experience to visit the
store and those who have visited the Pike Place Fish Market in Seattle
(world renowned for proving a first class customer experience, see
www.pikeplacefish.com) 8 will understand what I mean!
In the development of the employer brand strategy I recommend that
stakeholders are included in the development of the employer brand
vision and that a good relationship with stakeholders is leverage to
foster improved employee work practices.
Evaluating your employer brand program
Universum Communication's employer branding global best practices
report conducted in 2005 found companies typically evaluate and
measure employer branding activities once a year. The most popular
measurements are employee satisfaction and employee turnover (see
figure 37). Considering the low priority many companies put on
internal communication this is remarkable. Internal measures are often
used to evaluate the employer brand, but employer branding objectives
are seldom internal. 1
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Figure 37: What do companies measure and how often?

In summary, the Employer Brand Excellence Framework TM provides a
strategic tool to guide employer brand efforts and acts as a platform
from which all employer brand actions flow from.
My research found there are a number of approaches adopted by firms
to develop their employer brand program. I found the following 8 step
method a good summary for managers empowered to develop their
employer brand. The process was developed by Ryan Estis (NAS
Recruitment Communications) from Minneapolis, USA. 10 The 8 step
process provides an informative overview and summary of the employer
brand process for organisations in the early stages of developing their
program and prior to undertaking an audit using the Employer Brand
Excellence Framework TM .
8 Steps to developing an employer brand 9
Step 1 - Understand your business objectives
What is leadership's vision for the future direction of your
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organisation? What is the commitment to growth, new markets, and

business development? To the extent that it is possible, you need to
engage frontline level leadership in supporting the employer branding
initiative and encourage dialogue to help close any knowledge gaps
with respect to near- and long-term organisational objectives. The more
top-down buy-in you can achieve at the onset of your employer brand
development, the more likely you are to succeed.
Step 2 - Identify your talent needs
Determine the talent needed to accomplish key business objectives in
the future. Engage in workforce planning to clearly define the strategy
necessary to align the needs for talent acquisition with the future
direction of the business. Determine which skills are most critical to
support the evolution of your organisation, and assess where gaps exist
among the present workforce. You'll need to have a firm grasp of these
key steps, and you'll need to present a talent acquisition plan, in real
numbers, based on current trends with respect to openings, attrition,
growth/transition projections, the percentage of the workforce nearing
toward retirement, and new critical skills required by the organisation.
A well-organised talent acquisition plan is essential for achieving
consensus buy-in and the appropriate financial support.
Step 3 - Determine the employer brand attributes
Determine those key attributes that define the employment experience
with the organisation. Take into consideration the things that shape
your organisation, like mission, vision and values. Consider the role of
the brand as a promise to candidates about the employment experience
you offer, and make certain that the messaging is indeed accurate. At
this stage in the process, it's often useful to conduct employee
population focus groups to best ascertain what attributes are legitimate
and resonate most powerfully with your contributing talent. There are
tools available to obtain feedback online, or you can hold moderated
roundtable sessions to encourage open dialogue around the
employment experience among quality performers. Both are very useful
in developing an accurate understanding of the employment experience.
As a benchmark, encourage the participation of leadership in a related
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survey mechanism. Additional interviews with leadership around the

employment offering will help you develop a gap analysis, which will
allow you to determine whether the leadership perception of the quality
of the employment experience is consistent with reality. Creating the
awareness and working toward bridging any existing gaps are truly
important steps in the effort to brand your organisation as a true
employer of choice.
Step 4 - Look for synergy with the corporate brand
Many organisations have made great efforts to perpetuate an image of
the product or service offerings that define their brand. It is important
to consider how to best incorporate this messaging into the context of
recruitment communications. The role of marketing and corporate
communications is often essential in the employer brand development
process, to the point where we now see hybrid HR/marketing roles
emerging within leading organisations (with job titles like employer
brand manager or employer marketing manager). Regardless of
whether the hybrid role exists at your organisation, you need to be
certain to interface with a liaison from marketing or corporate
communications as part of the process, in order to understand your
current brand positioning and how to best leverage the existing
concepts to fit the purposes of talent engagement. Consistency in all
external communications can be achieved by working cooperatively
with marketing, and the advantage is that much of the heavy lifting will
often have already been accomplished.
Step 5 - Develop a communications plan
This outlines the talent engagement strategy and defines important
considerations like budget, timing, markets, media, and project priority.
Do some competitive intelligence gathering to benchmark your
organisation against leading firms and industry best practices. Based on
your own internal due diligence, determine what high impact areas
need to be addressed first. Is the candidate interface on your website
compelling? Does your firm have enough name recognition in the local
marketplace? What percentage of hires are generated through internal
referrals? What is your commitment to attracting diverse candidates?
What is the perception among leading candidates about your firm as a
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potential employer? Make a case for the appropriate investment

allocation and, through planning, shape your efforts and timeline
toward process improvement.
Step 6 - Develop the messaging and creative content
A strong employer brand is synthesised through a theme designed to
resonate with the target hiring demographic. The strongest themes
introduce the organisation and allow for the opportunity to develop
messaging that will engage the right candidates. Extend the messaging
to focus on what you offer that is unique, different, or better in the
context of your career opportunities. Strive to achieve consistency in
communication through all external channels and consider focus group
testing (internally and externally) prior to execution to ensure the
message is on-target and the brand achieves the desired impact. The
ongoing interface with your marketing liaison will ensure synergy with
corporate communications while achieving the ultimate objective of
presenting your employment experience in the most compelling way.
Achieve consensus buy-in on the theme and its accompanying visuals.
Step 7 - Establish metrics
The adage that you cannot improve what you don't measure certainly
applies here. At the onset, metrics based on desired outcomes should
be established. Determinations based on your own unique challenges
will guide your objectives, and it's likely that you are already measuring
efforts to favourably impact cost, quality, and speed. A well-developed
employer branding strategy will contribute to gains in each important
area and deliver improved quality lead generation as the marketplace
grows increasingly more competitive. Employer branding is as much an
internal process as it is an external one. That's why it's important to
carry the brand experience beyond engagement, through on-boarding,
and ultimately into support of your retention initiatives. To determine if
you are living the brand as an employer, solicit feedback from recent
hires and those employees whose contributions you want to replicate.
Equally important is obtaining feedback from those desired candidates
who turned down an offer of employment and developing
improvements to address those issues.
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Step 8 - Execute and evaluate

Once you are ready for marketplace execution, you need to develop a
platform of internal communications with a target launch date for the
new employer brand. Give employees multiple touch points with the
new brand by leveraging technology and appropriate internal
communication channels. Unveil the new theme, visuals, and
supporting strategy to engage new talent. This will create the necessary
awareness and support among key employee stakeholders, who can
leverage the new brand strategy to further perpetuate the right image
around your organisation as an employer of choice. Engaged employees,
who are resolved to share in the challenge of attracting more likeminded talent to an organisation where they believe one can exceed
one's own potential, are the pinnacle achievement of any employer
brand.
This chapter detailed the Employer Brand Excellence Framework TM that

can be used by firms to assess, develop, manage and evaluate their
employer brand programs. The quality of the outputs will be reliant in
the quality of the inputs. Employer brand champions should be
identified throughout the organisation and empowered with the role of
championing employer brand efforts and maintaining focus on planned
activities. They should also foster an environment that encourages
innovation and creativity in employees that results in activities that
continuously add value to the firms employer brand.
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Section 3
Chapter 10
The Future for
Employer Branding
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Having explored the rise in employer branding throughout the world it

is clear that the future for employer branding looks extremely positive.
Its future is being driven by a number of factors (see box below) which
will have an increasing impact on firms over the coming years. I have
previously mentioned that the employer brand process is a long term
orientation to the management of people at work and those who use it
as a quick fix solution do so at their peril!
The sooner the process is initiated the sooner the benefits will flow.
Companies who have invested in their employer brand programs such
as those detailed in the following case studies of this book are
beginning to realise the financial and operational benefits that the
employer brand approach will bring.
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The Future for Employer Branding
As detailed in chapter 1 The Economist survey in 2005 survey of 1,889

Personnel Today readers in the UK with responsibility for recruitment,
80% said that in the future employer branding will become more
important. This is supported by the results of other global research
undertaken with global brands and detailed throughout this book.
Employer branding contributes to building competitive advantage by
bringing together the capabilities of the HR, marketing and internal
communication divisions to develop a sustainable employer value
proposition that will attract, engage and retain talent.
In closing this three year journey which has culminated in the writing
of this book I now begin another journey of contributing as both an
employer brand researcher and practitioner to work with organisations
from around the world to develop their employer brand programs that
contribute to ensuring a larger number of employees of current and
future generations can proudly say that their company is a 'GREAT
PLACE TO WORK'.
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Section 4
Employer Brand Case Studies
Thomas Cook
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Developing an employer brand at Thomas Cook

Attracting a diverse and flexible workforce to meet future business challenges
Thomas Cook UK & Ireland is one of the UK's largest travel companies,
employing around 11,000 staff. Its principal operations include 616 high
street shops selling travel and foreign exchange, 121 separate bureaux
de change, seven Thomas Cook travel warehouses, four call centers,
Thomas Cook TV and thomascook.com. Thomas Cook UK & Ireland is
owned by German-based Thomas Cook AG, Europe's second largest
leisure group.
In 2004 Thomas Cook realised it had to look beyond its industry to
widen the selection pool of people it needed. Here, Colin Dalby
explains how it changed its approach to recruitment and began
developing an employer brand for short and long term business
successes.
Thomas cook is one of the leading brand names in travel and attracts a
large pool of candidates seeking a career in the industry and the
chance to work for a well respected organisation. However, recognising
the key people issues facing many organisations - low unemployment
levels and an ageing workforce - the company recognised it could
benefit by widening its search for new talent. A new approach would
enable us to locate candidates with sales ability or potential outside the
travel industry, whilst continuing with our quest for retail travel
experience. To do this we needed to change the perception that retail
travel experience was the only prerequisite to join the company. The key
capabilities of a successful travel consultant centre around sales and
service - travel is just the product on sale. The potential to sell and
having the right personal attributes to thrive in a sales environment
are key.
Our aim was to move to front of mind for prospective employees as an
employer of choice and start embracing activity to help us recruit a
truly diverse workforce. Taking a fresh approach to recruitment We
hadn't changed our recruitment and selection methods for a number of
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Thomas Cook
171
years and relied heavily on expensive standard press advertising, which

didn't attract applications from candidates outside the industry.
Although the holiday 'look and feel' of our recruitment adverts was
vibrant, it mainly promoted the Thomas Cook holiday brands. We had a
strong product offering already and there was no need to endorse this
via our recruitment materials.
Feedback from exit surveys and focus groups among new employees
also told us that they had underestimated how much selling and focus
on targets was involved. They also didn't fully comprehend the extent
of demand from customers and how much there was to learn. Our
recruitment process and materials needed to move away from a
'holiday' focus to a more realistic portrayal of roles in the travel
industry.
Looking to reap the benefits
Improving retention of new employees by getting the right people in
the first place, using more local low-cost recruitment activity and
placing greater focus on online recruitment would all provide clear cost
benefits. Our recruitment advertising spend annually was UK0.5m and
we also estimated that a one percent reduction in turnover could save
UK200,000, in the main by no loss of revenue of a person leaving.
Our ratio of full-time to part-time employees was 70:30, limiting our
ability to match resources against customer flow. Our trading pattern,
both weekly and annually, indicated clear trends to suggest a push to
recruiting more seasonal and flexible workers. Greater flexibility in the
workforce would enable headcount to flex up and down and therefore
lower payroll costs. We also recognised a mis-match in our customer
and employee profiles, particularly in terms of age (see Figure 38,
right).
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Figure 38: Customer vs. employee profile at Thomas Cook
Source: Melcrum Publishing 2005 - reproduced with permission

Our overall strategy was to make Thomas Cook an employer of choice
ensuring:
1. we recruited and embraced a diverse and flexible workforce;
2. our employee profile was closer aligned to our customer profile; and
3. our workforce would give us a competitive edge that could not
be copied.
Building an employer brand
It became clear that building a strong employer brand was essential to
attract new applicants to the organisation and help current employees
understand the employee experience and package. Getting our
employer brand right would ensure that new employees would become
ambassadors for the organisation and have a major impact on how the
public viewed us. Our new company values, PROUD, launched in 2003
(see figure 39), would provide the framework for all employees to
work to.
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Thomas Cook
173
PROUD stands for:

Figure 39: Thomas Cook Values (PROUD)

Developing new concepts
In 2003 we set up a recruitment team specifically to review our
processes and develop new methods to build an employer brand and a
stronger corporate identity for prospective employees. We worked with
a creative marketing communications agency to help drive our strategy.
They developed two concepts: the strapline 'Great people make our
world go round', which would underpin our Thomas Cook globe logo
and 'You'll Go Far', which would become the focal point for all
recruitment activity and internal communication.
These concepts embody what Thomas Cook as an employer in the travel
industry is all about. People are at the centre of everything we do selling the holiday, being there for the customer on the flight and
providing support in overseas resorts. 'The You'll Go Far' concept was
not just about recruitment. It's a holistic approach which includes
people development, communication and retention. It's about shifting
internal perceptions as part of a long-term effort.
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Recruitment under You'll Go Far was geared around attracting

people that:
1. reflected our customer profile;
2. were flexible in their working patterns to maximise sales
opportunities;
3. were self-motivated, ambitious and committed to giving the
highest standards of customer service;
4. have lots of energy and a passion for travel;
5. have the ability to sell
Impact on campaigns
The launch of our employer brand was timed to coincide with one of
the largest recruitment campaigns we'd ever conducted. We needed to
recruit 1,000 people across our retail stores and sales centers during the
peak holiday booking period in January and February 2004. We also had
to address the fact that a recruitment freeze earlier in the year had
resulted in cutbacks to our resource levels in preceding months. To
kickstart the campaign we placed 30 press adverts, advertisements
across 20 radio stations, on our own Web site and in stores. This was
reinforced by PR support that resulted in a number of press articles that
raised awareness of the people we were looking to attract. The
campaign attracted high caliber candidates, noticeably an increased
number of people who were returning to work, particularly mothers.
Twenty recruitment roadshow events were run across the UK,
culminating in 258 job offers being made across the retail network.
During a three-month period we also made 600 offers outside these
campaigns, almost a third higher than previous year's intake.
A robust selection process
The campaign included new adverts with the You'll Go Far logo and
visuals using our own employees. This illustrated the people-centric
culture we wanted to display, moving away from the holiday theme
used previously. We wanted to make our adverts more creative to sell
the Thomas Cook employer experience and target the audience we
wanted to apply. We met with Age Positive, the UK government
campaign focusing on eradicating ageism from UK employment.
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175
Thomas Cook was recognised as an employer champion in the cause.

We demonstrated that we were encouraging all ages to apply and were
actively looking to recruit mature applicants to begin matching our
customer profile. We communicated all the details to our workforce
through videos and Head Office updates.
A key example of recruitment success was in our Direct business, made
up of four call centers across the UK. It's one of our most rapidly
growing businesses and earlier in 2004 implemented a recruitment
campaign that brought in nearly 300 employees over a three-month
period to resource for forecasted sales volumes. We introduced a new
robust selection process to ensure candidates had the right personal
attributes in regards to the PROUD capabilities as well as strong sales
ability. We trained all assessors and utilised a PC-based assessment
tool. As a result we've seen improved sales, improved call conversion
rates and reduction in data entry errors in comparison to the
performance of the 2003 intake of new joiners.
Creating a diverse workforce
Diversity would allow us to create a workforce that was both flexible
and more closely matched to our customer profile (see Figure 40,
below).
Figure 40: Thomas Cook's employer brand strategy
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Our customers were telling us they wanted to deal with confident,

professional and enthusiastic people. They saw real benefits to staff
with first hand experience of the resorts and destinations they were
travelling to and they wanted to be served by people who had a real
passion for travel. We recognised that moving forward it was people
who had life skills and potential to thrive in a sales environment that
we needed to attract. We needed to look at the mature workforce,
returning mothers and - with a female to male ratio in the sales force of
89:11 - attracting more male employees.
Diversity wasn't just about the age and gender profile, we also wanted
to target workers from other industries. Getting the diversity piece right
would pay real dividends to achieving our business goals. Our aim was
to make inroads into matching our employee profile to our customer
profile, and subsequently to increase levels of customer service and
product knowledge. We aim to grow the number of flexible workers through key time, term time and seasonal working - which would best
match our trading hours and meet employee needs. The overall goal
was to employ 50 percent of our people working core hours, with the
other 50 percent working flexible hours to allow headcount to flex up or
down with seasonal trends.
Focus on retention
In addition to attracting and selecting the best people for Thomas
Cook, it was equally important to get retention right.
Thomas Cook is currently reviewing its strategies in this area and
considering a number of approaches. Pay has always been one of the
major factors driving employee turnover in the industry. Retail travel is
regarded as a low pay industry and will probably remain so due to the
low profit margins of the business. Our aim is to promote the other
positive factors of working in the industry. After all, travel is about
selling dreams and should be recognised as one of the most exciting
products to sell to consumers. Driving sales is also linked to rewarding
employees through sales incentives and we are communicating,
internally and externally, our sales incentives, travel discounts,
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education and flexible benefits, all of which help build an attractive and
competitive package. However, we do emphasise to prospective
employees that they will work in a sales environment - it's not all
glamour and travel in these roles, as those looking to pursue a career in
travel sometimes perceive. Succession planning We've focused on
succession planning by providing clear career pathways and
development opportunities. For many years Thomas Cook has run a
successful Modern Apprentice scheme and in 2004 aims to attract 400
people. Trainees gain work experience for an 18-month period while
completing qualifications in travel and tourism. This provides a
foundation for Thomas Cook to optimise internal talent and fill future
vacancies. This year we've also recruited 12 graduates to our UK
Graduate Management scheme. The scheme is geared to fast-tracking
individuals to future senior management roles in the organisation. For
employees wishing to progress their careers we now have in place clear,
structured career progression plans, enabling individuals to gain new
skills and take on new opportunities.
Training and development
In 2003 we introduced an initiative where all new employees take part
in a Thomas Cook PROUD culture day. The aim is to ensure that from
the first day of their induction employees understand what Thomas
Cook is all about - our history, strategy and values.
Training at Thomas Cook also includes a blended approach to
development, provided through a combination of courses and self study.
Through our SAP HR information system, employees can view and book
training courses online and once attended, the system builds a profile
for each employee on their acquired skills and knowledge. Getting buyin from line managers
Creating an employer brand and making your company an employer of
choice cannot be achieved alone by the central HR function. All
employees should champion the cause, particularly line managers. To
encourage this we provide training and tools to help drive our strategy
right through the business. Recruiting the right people to work hours
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that match the business needs can be effectively managed at local level
because managers have the best knowledge of their local community
and workforce demographics. We've started to encourage managers to
use local tactics and share their successes and best practice with
colleagues.
Successful initiatives include networking in their retail area,
communicating resource plans with their team and visiting local
schools and colleges to raise the profile of careers at Thomas Cook.
Because customers tell us they like to be served by people who have
experience of resorts and destinations we may also approach welltravelled customers to inform them of job opportunities. In addition,
we've redesigned our recruitment training program for line managers.
This isn't just about interview techniques. It's designed to get the
basics right - spending more time with candidates at the interview
stage and keeping reserves 'warm' with effective communication that
creates a local database to select from the next time a vacancy arises.
The simple message to managers is that we need to get the right people
at the right time for the right cost. It's also about ensuring that
unsuccessful candidates have a good experience and aren't put off
returning to Thomas Cook in future as customers. Store managers have
also received comprehensive new recruitment guides that give them
tools to make them a successful recruiter - providing guidelines on the
selection process, the methods they can use and local tactics to employ
at minimal cost.
Thomas Cook
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Successes to date
Overall, the move to a flexible workforce is making headway. Our ratio
of part-time to full-time employees is now 35:65, whereas six months
ago it was 30:70. The aim to encourage more males is seeing results,
particularly in the sales centers. We're also finding a greater number of
mature applicants applying for roles. We see these trends continuing as
we maintain our focus on these aims, push forward on retention plans
and start to build a holistic diversity strategy. We are on a journey but
there is still a long way to go - we have completed some quick fixes,
and although we're well on the way to change, we still have plenty to
do. But, with great people we're confident we'll go far.
Key Points
Thomas Cook needed to expand its recruitment pool beyond those with
travel industry experience.
1. The company needed a more flexible workforce, and also one that
reflected its customer profile in terms of age.
2. The 'You'll go Far' campaign focused on employee development and
internal communication as well as a new approach to recruitment.
3. The campaign resulted in high-calibre applicants and, in call centres,
improved performance.
4. Thomas Cook is taking a holistic approach to retention, highlighting
factors other than pay that make it an attractive place to work.
5. The company has also trained and provided resources for line
managers on recruitment.
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Section 4
Bank SA
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The following case study involved a personal interview with BankSA's

Managing Director, Mr Rob Chapman in Dcember 2005.
The importance of senior leadership support in
developing your employer brand.
Rob Chapman joined BankSA as Managing Director in July 2002 after
an extensive career in the financial services industry. Mr Chapman was
previously the Adelaide-based Regional General Manager for the
Commonwealth Bank of Australia's operations in South Australia,
Northern Territory and Western Australia. Prior to this, he held a
number of senior roles with Colonial State Bank and Prudential
Corporation Australia. Mr Chapman is President of Business SA, a
Trustee of CEDA and President of CEDA SA, a Board Member of the
Flinders Medical Centre Foundation and serves on a number of
fundraising committees.
The organisation
BankSA, a division of St.George Bank Limited, is the largest financial
institution in South Australia and is the State's main provider of
housing, personal finance and rural banking services.
The Bank also plays a key role in the community as a sponsor of major
State events such as BankSA Crime Stoppers and more recently the
Adelaide Fringe Festival and through the BankSA & Staff Charitable
Fund which makes donations to approximately 100 South Australian
and Northern Territory-based charities each year.
BankSA has been a part of the fabric of South Australia since 1848.
With a full range of lending and investment products, merchant card
services and EFTPOS, import and export finance services and leasing,
BankSA caters to the financial requirements of South Australian
businesses across all sectors.
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183
Bank SA
BankSA provides a wide range of funds management, life and general

insurance services and superannuation and investment services. It has
a successful track record of innovative practices and was the first South
Australian bank to provide transaction banking services to its customers
over the Internet.
BankSA has the largest network of branches and ATMs in South
Australia - more than 120 branches located in metropolitan and rural
South Australia as well as branches in the Northern Territory.
Business structure
BankSA is made up of five different business units:
-
Metropolitan Banking
Rural Banking
Commercial Banking
Strategy & Marketing
Risk Management
BankSA differentiates its employment offering by its strong connection

with customers and local community.
More than 90 percent of the Bank's staff interact
directly with their customers ensuring they have
strong relationships and are in touch with their needs,
Mr Chapman said.
There are only three layers of management between
the customer and the Bank's Managing Director,
eliminating bureaucracy and allowing changes to
be easily made for the benefit of the customer and business.
BankSA's local autonomy allows it to tailor business plans and make
local decisions to meet the needs of the community.
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Role of the Managing Director

Rob Chapman prefers to lead by example, particularly in the area of
customer service. He not only makes phone calls to customer to
determine if the Bank is delivering on its promise, he also has his own
customer commitment plans to improve customer service, just as he
asks of the staff.
Mr Chapman believes in a very open and honest leadership style and
makes himself available and approachable to staff regardless of their
role in the organisation.
He likes to establish this relationship from the start and spends an hour
welcoming new staff as part of the Bank's induction program for all
new employees. Prior to Mr Chapman's arrival at BankSA in 2002, the
induction program was conducted over one week. Realising the benefits
of a committed and engaged workforce Mr Chapman increased the
induction period from 1 to 4 weeks and has made a point of attending
the first and last day of the program to ensure he is accessible to all
new staff and that they have the opportunity to ask him questions right
at the start of their employment experience at the Bank.
Mr Chapman does not believe in ivory tower managers and this is
evident by his own friendly and engaging leadership style and
welcoming office ambience that includes a comfortable couch that
encourages open and relaxed discussions.
Employer brand
To ensure that the Bank's employer brand is closely aligned with its
corporate brand, staff have an input into the strategic direction of the
Bank.
It is important that the General Manager of Human Resources is a
member of the BankSA Executive, Mr Chapman said.
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185
If we are serious about our people management strategies, then we

have to lead from the front and involve our senior HR personnel in
decisions which ultimately will affect people at all levels of the bank,
Mr Chapman said.
Asked how staff would describe the organisation they work for, Mr
Chapman replied: they would say they are working for an organisation
that is an important part of the local community and a South Australian
leader.
It is this ethos that resonates through all levels of employees at BankSA
and comes through in their relationships with customers in the branch
network.
BankSA has developed a different employer value proposition for the
different generations working at BankSA.
For the Baby Boomer cohorts it is security, competitive remuneration
and valuing the experience and loyalty of many long-term staff through
programs such as the Long Service Awards.
For Generation X and increasingly for Generation Y, the employer value
propositions are competitive remuneration, career opportunity and
diversity, substantial investment in training such as our online training
and graduate program, and My Benefits - a program providing staff
discounts, benefits and assistance in all aspects of their life - finances,
careers, family, lifestyle, workplace.
For all employees, the Bank's support of the community and company
values are also important. Those values spell out the acronym - ExCITE
which stands for excellence, customer focus, integrity, teamwork and
valuing each other (see figure 41).
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Figure 41: St George (Bank SA) Values
Source: St George Bank Limited - reproduced with permission

Mr Chapman describes BankSA's employer brand promise as market
leader which stretches far beyond credibility as a financial institution
to employment opportunities, working conditions, training, job security,
employee benefits, charitable and community involvement.
To ensure employees at all levels are aware of performance and
profitability issues, Mr Chapman personally sends regular emails to all
employees updating them on the Bank's performance progress.
In addition, he also works closely with the Regional Managers and Key
Branch Managers who share information on business targets with their
team. Mr Chapman encourages them to involve their whole team in the
creation of action plans to foster a sense of ownership and ensure that
everyone has a strong awareness of targets and the importance of their
role to the overall business.
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187
To ensure employee feedback reaches back to the senior levels of

leadership at the Bank there are several formal opportunities for
employees to provide feedback including half yearly reviews, the annual
independent and anonymous employee engagement survey conducted
by Gallup and, at a branch level, there are also weekly team meetings.
The Bank also conducts surveys and asks for feedback from employees
regarding new training programs and projects as the need arises. Mr
Chapman makes a point of regularly talking to employees at all levels
to gain their feedback. This helps him keep his finger on the pulse and
meet the changing aspirations of employees at all levels.
Mr Chapman ensures that the Bank delivers on its value proposition by
ensuring the Bank's values are hard-wired to the Bank's employees.
Living and delivering on the Bank's values is part of the half yearly
performance employee review process.
The values are also part of everything we do at BankSA such as the
Star Awards, which recognises excellence in internal or external
customer service. Everyone is encouraged to recognise the value of their
colleague's work by nominating them for awards. BankSA undertakes
an anonymous annual engagement survey of all employees and the
results show that the Bank's employer brand strategy is working - staff
engagement has increased by 32% in the past three years, Mr
Chapman said.
People management is a fundamental part of the Bank's core business
strategy - engaged people + great customer experience = superior
financial results.
We are delivering on each component of this strategy and it is
resulting in record profit. In the last financial year 2004/2005 our staff
engagement increased by 11 percent and our customer satisfaction rose
by 11 per cent leading to a 14.5% increase in our profit before tax, Mr
Chapman said.
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The Bank is serious about measuring the success of it's employer brand
efforts and uses some of the metrics detailed in table 1 to measure their
employer brand efforts - employee turnover, employee absenteeism,
employee overall satisfaction, employee engagement and employee
turnover costs
The following table summaries the performance of the Bank against
these measures over the past 3 years:
Effective people management practices at BankSA have resulted in

significant financial gains made by the Bank - a $189m before tax profit
for the year ended 2005 up from $120m before tax profit year ended
2002, the year before Mr Chapman commenced as Managing Director.
Mr Chapman's commitment to the employer brand concept
demonstrates what can be achieved when there is Managing Director /
CEO support for developing and implementing employer brand
strategies.
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Section 4
The Compass Group
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Compass Group
Compass Group is three years into an organisational change strategy
designed to create a unified culture to 'glue' together what was and still is a
highly decentralised global business, enabling it to grow organically. While
the business has faced significant challenges in the last 12 months, the real
value in this culture change has been the continuity it has provided and
platform it has created for future growth. Following the launch of a new
vision and set of core values, the Group developed and implemented a new
employer brand grounded in employee research, championed by senior
managers and aligned to a clear strategic priority - to attract, develop and
retain 'great people'.
Compass Group is the world's largest food service company, providing
food, vending and related services on its clients' premises in over 90
countries and employing some 400,000 staff worldwide. It has been on
a massive growth journey since 1987, at which time it operated solely in
the UK and had only around 20,000 employees. Through multiple
acquisitions, the company has expanded rapidly and seen sales increase
from 200 million to 12 billion.
Business context
Having created this global platform through acquisitions, Compass
Group's strategy changed in 2002 to one of driving organic growth,
with the emphasis on 'leveraging' the scale and reach of the business to
deliver better value. To facilitate this transition, the executive board
recognised the need to set a common direction and sustainable course
for what had become, in effect, a new organisation - one made up of
the individual cultures and histories of the 167 acquired companies that
had joined Compass Group in the previous 15 years. The objective was
to create a common language and culture, a 'glue' to bind the various
parts of the business together that would help to establish a shared way
of thinking and behaving.
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The Compass Group
191
To further this aim, Compass Group embarked on an organisational

change strategy, under the banner 'Our journey from good to great'.
This set out to:
1. make explicit the fundamental principles and values
underpinning the company's success
2. communicate with and engage all employees, especially those in
front-line teams, so that they work towards clear company goals
3. strengthen the employment offer and improve recruitment and
retention
4. build the company's reputation with all key stakeholders
5. continue to improve service delivery to clients and customers,
helping to drive increased loyalty and differentiating Compass Group
from its competitors.
Establishing a vision and values
The first stage of this strategy was the development of a new vision and
set of values. From the outset, Compass Group recognised a
fundamental link between the quality of its people and service and its
results - for clients, customers and shareholders.
The vision statement
Following extensive consultation, communication and piloting with
employees across the Group, a vision and core set of values were
identified that would be simply understood and meaningful to all. The
vision was distilled into the statement: 'great people, great service,
great results', which was presented in a way that gives equal weight to
all three elements.
Core values
Aligned to this are five core values, which identify the common
behaviours that characterise how Compass Group employees go about
their work. They are:
1. have a 'can do' attitude
2. embrace diversity
3. share success
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4. have a passion for quality

5. win through teamwork.
The new vision and values were signed off at an executive-level
strategy meeting in January 2002 and launched at the firm's global
senior management conference later that year. With this foundation in
place and having stated that 'great people' were integral to the
company's vision, Compass Group moved into the second and key
phase of its change program - to build and launch a new employer
brand.
Developing the employer brand
To achieve its strategic goal of being recognised as a preferred
employer, Compass Group set out to create a powerful employer brand
that would set it apart from other employers and enable it to attract,
develop and retain employees.
Guiding principles
The Group set itself some guiding principles to clarify what it wanted
from an employer brand. Ideally, the brand would:
1. deliver value to existing staff while being compelling to
potential recruits
2. be firmly aligned to the vision and values
3. be credible and meaningful, deliverable and measurable, simple
and clear to communicate
4. be unique to compass group, a clear differentiator
5. establish a platform for building the company's reputation as a
preferred employer, both internally and externally.
Throughout the project, another key challenge was how to create
consistency while retaining the individuality of local business units and
while continuing to value the organisation's rich diversity of cultures.
In the words of Tim Small, the director of group internal
communications and brand management, Compass Group is 'a house of
brands rather than a branded house.' So, in addition to fulfilling the
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The Compass Group
193
above requirements, the brand also had to be 'glocal' - simultaneously

a strong global identity for Compass Group and one that overlaid
harmoniously with the many existing, local brand identities.
Validating the business case
Compass Group quickly established the commercial benefits of
developing an employer brand. Principally, the company envisaged
benefiting from a reduced cost of employee turnover. At even a
conservative estimate, just a one percent reduction in annual turnover
would mean a direct saving of 16 million. In addition, the company
expected a strong employer brand to improve sales, service delivery and
productivity, through its positive impact on the motivation of
employees. In terms of the bottom line, there was a clear and tangible
case for brand development.
Managing the project
In such a large organisation, teamwork was always going to be central
to the successful development and implementation of the employer
brand. A small, versatile core team was set up, directly supported by
sponsors and linked with operational teams around the world (see
figure 42). The core team itself was led by two senior members of the
Group's International HR Forum - the director of leadership &
development, Tracy Robbins, and the executive vice-president of HR in
the Americas, Chris Ashcroft. The rest of the team was selected against
criteria of: proven skills and credibility in driving through major
strategic projects; multi-national representation; a strong affinity with
people; and specialist skills and experience in areas such as
communication, culture change, recruitment and resourcing. The
International HR Forum was crucial for communicating to, and gaining
feedback from, individual HR teams around the business.
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Figure 42: Compass Group's cross-functional employer branding team
Source: IDS 205 - reproduced with permission

The Group's executive board and, principally, the CEO, were the
sponsors. In addition, a number of 'key operators' - opinion-formers
across the business - were selected to give feedback and input on each
stage of the development. Brand management expertise was provided
throughout by the marketing team responsible for managing the
Group's consumer brands, while other internal specialists (from
functions such as PR and internal communications) also provided input.
In addition, two specialist branding consultancies - Hewitt Associates
and Bernard Hodes Group - were appointed following a tendering
process to work on aspects of the new employer brand.
Defining the brand promise
Following a period of initial research that involved identifying best
practice within the business (eg in France, where some employer
branding work had already been undertaken) and analysing how other
companies had successfully implemented an employer brand, the core
team set about identifying a brand promise unique to Compass Group.
This was done primarily through extensive employee research.
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195
Employee research
Employee research was focused around identifying what staff believed
to be unique about working for the Group and what sort of brand
promises resonated with them. As Tim Small explains: Research has
been crucial to everything we have done - the emphasis has been on
talking to our people because they are the ones who know best what it
means to work at Compass Group.
An initial e-mail survey was used as a 'toe in the water', this was
enhanced by feedback from the global employee survey and followed up
with focus groups of representative front-line staff in 20 countries. One
of the key findings was that a majority of employees identified with the
scale and size of the organisation, associating this with strength and
also the ability to offer its staff more opportunities than other
employers. This insight formed the basis of Compass Group's employer
brand promise, encapsulated in the strap-line: 'great people real
opportunities'.
Fleshing out the promise
With 'opportunities' identified as the key driver of employee loyalty,
further research was then undertaken (in focus groups and workshops)
to pinpoint what kind of opportunities staff expected from their
experience of working at Compass Group.
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Clarifying standards
This helped the project team to pinpoint eight clear standards for
delivering the brand promise. The 'real opportunities' that Compass
Group committed to delivering are the opportunities to:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
have a great start (i.e. induction)

have a work-life balance
learn & grow
be recognised
be in the know
share great ideas
make a positive impact
share rewards.
These were to form the basis of future initiatives to support the brand,
as well as providing a framework for measuring delivery of the brand
promise across the organisation.
Creating a visual identity
The next step was to develop a coherent visual identity for the brand.
Focus group feedback clearly indicated that this should feature
Compass Group staff living the company values - it was thought that
this would bring authenticity to the brand and provide public
recognition to individuals. In the event, three creative treatments were
designed, all of which feature real employees from across the business
who are role models and who, in one way or another, have benefited
from 'real opportunities'. With strap-lines such as 'being great comes
naturally' and 'different tastes, different dreams, different cultures same values', the emphasis of the posters (used both internally and for
recruitment purposes) is on celebrating the diversity of employees and
on communicating - through direct eye contact with the camera - a
sincere relationship between the individual and target audiences.
In addition to the poster campaigns, an 'identity block' was developed
which brings together the Compass Group logo with those of its subsector brands, along with the promise line 'great people real
opportunities' (see figure 43). This emphasises that Compass Group is a
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197
family of brands, showing potential recruits how joining one part of the
business means belonging to the wider family.
The development of common visual standards and an online image
library of Compass Group people has been a crucial part of brand
delivery, giving operating companies the flexibility to personalise their
recruitment advertising while remaining consistent with the overall
brand identity.
Figure 43: The identity block and the employer brand promise
Source: IDS 2005 - reproduced with permission

Implementing the brand
At the hub of the implementation work was the core team, who
managed the launch and communication program that spearheaded the
rollout of the brand across the business. In addition, brand 'champions'
were appointed in each division to help co-ordinate the
implementation. The champions attended a workshop in the
preliminary phase for a thorough briefing on the brand implementation
process.
Alignment workshops
Through workshop programs involving HR and business teams, each
business had to identify how well it was delivering the eight
opportunities and then put in place an action plan to bridge any
performance gaps. In some cases, alignment was led by board members,
as in the case of the UK & Ireland and the Americas, where the
divisional CEOs led the workshops in person.
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Internal communications
Each business launched the brand internally with support from the
centre. (The box below sets out some general guidelines that informed
the communications strategy).
Initially, a 'brand centre' micro-site was set up on the Group's global

intranet, Mercury, as a one-stop shop on anything related to the brand.
This included all implementation and communication tools, creative
guidelines and best practice case studies. In addition, a comprehensive
and innovative communications toolkit was developed to support
implementation. This included a briefing pack for managers, a standard
presentation pack and a launch video for communicating the employer
brand to the management community. This 15-minute film was
presented by the CEO and included case study profiles of Compass
Group employees from around the world. Using these tools, the brand
was cascaded down to front-line teams, where unit managers held
specific briefing sessions on the new employment brand. The primary
message of communications reinforced the idea that, at Compass
Group, opportunities are available and accessible to all and that every
employee is encouraged to take full advantage of them.
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The Compass Group
199
HR support for the brand

Attracting, developing and retaining 'great people' is recognised by the
Compass Group board as a key strategic challenge. HR has therefore
had a continuous role in developing and delivering the employer brand,
particularly around the eight 'opportunities'. Compass Group has been
careful to back up its brand promises with tangible initiatives that
demonstrate its commitment and help to bring the values to life.
'Ultimately, brand experience is about day-to-day delivery', says Tim
Small, If you don't get that right you end up with a bankrupted brand
that loses all credibility. Two examples of initiatives that directly
support the brand are the new staff suggestion scheme, '100 Great
Ideas', and a recognition scheme called 'Be A Star'. These provide
opportunities for all staff to 'be recognised' and 'share great ideas' and
are clearly linked to other brand promises, such as 'making a positive
impact'. Every year, a booklet is produced detailing each of the 100
great ideas.
This is distributed across the business so that ideas can be shared,
copied, improved and passed on.
Surveying employees
How well the company 'lives the brand' is measured through its global
employee satisfaction survey, which is conducted every 18 months. It is
an opportunity for staff to give their opinion about how Compass
Group is delivering on the brand and progressing on its 'journey from
good to great', which helps to pinpoint areas of improvement both at a
strategic and an individual unit level. Survey results and other research
feeds directly into continuous improvement efforts, with each unit
manager receiving a breakdown of the areas that have been highlighted
as below par. These are specifics based on team feedback - the team is
then involved in discussing with the manager what the collective action
plan is for achieving improvement aims. The purpose is to engage
employees by showing them that their feedback translates directly into
actionable goals.
200
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Page 200
Reaping the benefits

As a result of the launch of the vision and values, followed by the
implementation of its new employer brand, Compass Group has
achieved a clear and unified global identity and a greatly enhanced
profile in the labour market.
The most significant commercial benefits have been tangible
improvements in recruitment and retention, most notably in the
Group's two largest divisions (UK & Ireland and the Americas).
Achievements include:
1. a 20-fold increase in people visiting the UK
e-recruitment website
2. internal promotions are up by ten percent in the UK
and by 22.5 per cent in the Americas
3. labour turnover in the Americas has reduced by
two percent, saving $6 million
4. a 300,000 saving on media and advertising spend in the UK,
due to the consistency of branded recruitment materials.
In terms of brand delivery, the most recent global employee satisfaction
survey shows that 70 percent of staff believe they 'have a great start', 66
percent report satisfaction with their work-life balance and 61 percent
believe that they have the opportunity to 'make a positive impact'.
Overall, the company has seen a four percent increase in the key
drivers of loyalty; two out of three people state they are proud to work
for Compass Group and in terms of advocacy, 60 percent would
recommend it as a place to work.
External recognition of the Group's innovative work on branding has
been quick to follow. The Group has won a number of awards for its
people programs. Most notably - and most satisfactorily, given that the
ranking is based primarily on employee opinion - Compass Group was
recently placed 7th in the Sunday Times '10 Best Big Companies to Work
For' list.
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Section 5
Employer Brand Excellence Sorecard TM
Worksheets
202
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Worksheets
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203
204
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Worksheets
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205
206
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Worksheets
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207
208
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Worksheets
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209
210
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Notes
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Reference lists
212
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Page 212
Preface
1. Barrow, S., Mosley, R. (2005) 'The Employer Brand - Bringing the best
to brand management to people at work, John Wiley & Sons Ltd, London.
2. Thorne, K. (2005) 'One stop guide to employer branding', Personnel
Today Management Resources.
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Page 213
Reference lists
Chapter 1
1. 'Employer branding is key in fight for talent' (17 May 2005), Personnel
Today, http://www.personneltoday.com/Articles/2005/05/17/29929/
Employer+branding+is+key+in+fight+for+talent.htm
2. 'Employer branding spawns competitive edge of the future', (2005)
Universum Communications (2005)
3. 'Engaging employees through your brand' - reprinted with permission
of The Conference Board (www.conference-board.org), a not-for-profit
business research organisation with offices in New York, Brussels, and
Hong Kong
4. 'The employer branding survey', (2003), The Economist
5. Hall, M. (2005), 'The Compass Group case study', IDS employer brand
report, London
6. 'Employer branding: global best practices report 2005',
Universum Communications
7. Reprinted with permission from Work USA 2002, 'Weathering the
storm: A study of employee attitudes and opinions' 2006 Watson Wyatt
Worldwide. For more information, visit www.watsonwyatt.com
8. Hays Recruitment (2005), 'What employees want: our most popular
employers', http://www.hays.com.au/news/newsdesc.aspx?id=149
213
214
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Chapter 2
1. Hamel, G. and Prahalad, CK (1990) 'The core competence of the
organisation', in Harvard Business Review, May-June
2. Hubbard, G. (2000) 'Strategic management: thinking analysis and
action', Prentice Hall, Frenchs Forest, New South Wales
3. Porter M. (1986) 'What is strategy', in Harvard Business Review,
Vol 74(6)
4. Porter, M. (1985) 'Competitive advantage', The Free Press, New York
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Reference lists
215
Chapter 3
1. The United Nations programme on ageing,
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/ageing/agewpop1.htm, accessed 2006
2. The United Nations programme on ageing,
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/ageing/agewpop.htm, accessed 2006
3. www.bloomberg.com, U.S. births, immigration boost social security
system (Update1), http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=nifea&
&sid=a1LSvOsp9iUE, accessed 2006
4. Productivity Commission 2005, Economic implications of an ageing
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5. Australia's Workforce 2005: Jobs for the future,
http://www.dest.gov.au/archive/publications/2005sum.htm
6. Hywood, G., Migration, like finance, needs to be deregulated,
http://www.theage.com.au/news/Opinion/Migration-like-finance-needs-to-bederegulated/2005/02/09/1107890270533.html, February 10, 2005
7. www.workplace.gov.au/NR/rdonlyres/ A821DE6D-8708-4E63-BADC6FBB107A1A83/0/NSSTradesupdateDecember2004V2.pdf
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Chapter 4
1. Reprinted with permission from International Survey Research LLC,
303 East Ohio Street Suite 2100, Chicago, Illinois
60611, USA
2. Reprinted with permission from 'Work USA 2002 - Weathering the
storm: A study of employee attitudes and opinions', a research paper
prepared by Watson Wyatt Worldwide. For information, visit
www.watsonwyatt.com
3. Barrow, S.,and Mosely, R (2005) 'The Employer Brand : Bringing the
best of brand management to people at work', John Wiley and Sons
Ltd, London
4. The Economist (2003), 'The employer branding survey'.
Hong Kong
6. 'Employer branding: global best practices report 2005', Universum
Communications
7. Rogers, F., Towers Perrin, 'Originally published in Strategic HR
Review', Volume 2 Issue 6, Sept/Oct 2003. For more information see
www.melcrum.com/link/shrr
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Chapter 5
1. P&G: 'Changing the face of consumer marketing (2/5/2000), Harvard
Business School - Working Knowledge',
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item.jhtml?id=1476&t=bizhistory&noseek=one
2. Knapp, DE (2000), 'The brand mindset', McGraw Hill, New York
3. Davis S (2002), Brand asset management - Driving profitable growth
through your Brands', Josey Bass, a Wiley Imprint, San Francisco
4. Sharp, B (1995), 'Brand equity and market-based assets of professional
services firms', Journal of Professional Services Marketing, 13 (1),
pp3-13.
5. Dowling, G (1994), 'Corporate reputations - strategies for developing the
corporate brand', Longman, Melbourne
6. Widing et al (2003) 'Customer behaviour: consumer behaviour and
beyond', Thomson, Melbourne
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Chapter 6
1. Sherry, A. (2000), 'Put some branding iron into your image', Business
Review Weekly, 22(28), p. 66
2. Wolfinbarger, M.E. Gilly, M.C (1991), 'A conceptual model of the
impact of advertising on service employees:, Psychology and Marketing, 8
(Fall), 215-237
3. Gilly, M.C., and Wolfinbarger, M (1998), 'Advertising's internal
audience', Journal of Marketing, 62 (1), pp. 69-88.
4. Watson, R.T., Akselsen, S. & Pitt, L.F (1998), 'Attractors: building
mountains in the flat landscape of the World Wide Web', California
Management Review, 40 (20), 36-56.
5. Agres, S.J. & Dubitsky, T.M (1996), 'Changing needs for brands',
Journal of Advertising Research (January/February), 21-30.
6. Berthon, P., Hulbert, J. & Pitt, L (1999), 'Brand management
prognotications:, Sloan Management Review (Winter), 53-65.
7. Berthon, P., Ewing, M.T. & Hah, L.L (2005), 'Capitavating company:
dimensions of attractiveness in employer branding, International Journal
of Advertising, 24, 2, pp 151-172
8. Soutar, G. N., & Clarke, A (1983). 'Examining business students'
career preferences: a perceptual space approach', Journal of Vocational
Behaviour, 23 (1), 11-21.
9. Gatewood, R.D., Gowan, M.A. and Lautenschlager, G.J., (1993),
'Corporate image, recruitment image and initial job choice decisions',
Academy of Management Journal, 36(2), pp. 414-427.
10. Jurgensen, C.E., (1978) 'Job preferences (What Makes a Job Good or
Bad?)', Journal of Applied Psychology, 63(3), pp. 267-276.
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Reference lists
219
Chapter 6 (cont)
11. Collins, C.J. and Stevens, C.K (2002), 'The relationship between
early recruitment-related activities and the application decisions of new
labor-market entrants: A brand equity approach to recruitment', Journal
of Applied Psychology, 87, 6, 1121-1133.
12. Bergstrom, A., Blumenthal, D. and Crothers, S (2002), 'Why internal
branding matters: The Case of Saab', Journal of Communication
Management, 5(2/3), pp. 133-142
13. Ambler, T. (2000), 'Marketing and the bottom line', Pearson Education
Ltd, UK
14. Mahroum, S (2000), 'Highly skilled globetrotters: Mapping the
international migration of human capital', R&D Management, 30(1),
pp. 23-31.
15. Harari, O (1998), 'Attracting the best minds, Management Review,
87(4), pp. 23-26.
16. Ambler T. and Barrow, S (1996), 'The employer brand', Journal of
Brand Management, 4, 3, 185-206
17. Ritson, M (2002), 'Marketing and HR collaborate to harness
employer brand power', Marketing, 24
18. Hoffman, L (1999), 'Redefining the 'public' in PR', MC Technology
Marketing Intelligence, 19 (1), pp. 62-66.
220
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Page 220
Chapter 7
1. Reprinted with permission from International Survey Research LLC,
303 East Ohio Street Suite 2100, Chicago, Illinois 60611, USA
2. Rogers, F., Towers Perrin, 'Originally published in Strategic HR Review,
Volume 2 Issue 6, Sept/Oct 2003. For more information see
www.melcrum.com/link/shrr'
3. Corporate Leadership Council, 2004 Employee engagement survey
4. Clayton Glen (2006), Key Skills retention and motivation: the war for
talent still rages and retention is the high ground, vol. 38 No 1, pp37-45,
Emerald Group Publishing Limited
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Reference lists
Chapter 8
1. The Hudson Report, 'Employment and HR trends, Australia' | April June 2005, Part Two | HR Insights | Understanding Your Employment
Brand
Hong Kong
3. 'Employer branding: Global best practices report 2005', Universum
Communications
4. 'Employer branding is key in fight for talent' (17 May 2005), Personnel
Today, http://www.personneltoday.com/Articles/2005/05/17/
29929/Employer+branding+is+key+in+fight+for+talent.htm
5. www.adenergy.com.au, 2006
6. Copyright 2006, Bernard Hodes Group. Reprinted with permission
from Bernard Hodes Group, 220 East 42 nd Street, New York, NY 10017,
www.hodes.com
221
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222
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Chapter 9
1. 'Employer Branding: Global best practices report 2005', Universum
Communications
2. www.microsoft.com (2006)
3. Barrow, S., Mosley, R (2005) The Employer Brand - Bringing the best to
brand management to people at work, John Wiley & Sons Ltd, London
4. www.theworkfoundation.com/pdf/ethical_intro.pdf (2006)
5. www.thebodyworkshop.com (2006)
6. 'Hurd signs on as new HP chief', (2005)
http://news.com.com/Hurd+signs+on+as+new+HP+chief/2100-1014_35645638.html
7. Thorne K (2005), 'One stop guide to employer branding', Personnel
today management resources
8. http://www.pikeplacefish.com/, 2006
9. Berthon, P., Ewing, M.T. & Hah, L.L (2005), 'Captivating company:
dimensions of attractiveness in employer branding, International Journal
of Advertising, 24,2, pp151-172
10. Estis, R. 'Employment Brand Architecture - 8 steps to becoming an
employer of choice' (2005), article originally appeared on the Electronic
Recruiting Exchange., www.erexchange.com
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Reference lists
223
Case Studies
Thomas Cook
1. Melcrum Publishing. Originally published in Strategic HR Review Vol
3 Issue 5 July/August 2004. For more information e-mail
info@melcrum.com or visit www.melcrum.com
BankSA
1. Brett Minchington's interview with Rob Chapman (Managing
Director of Bank SA) on 21st December 2005.
The Compass Group
1. Michael Hall, Employer Brand, Income Data Survey (IDS), 2005
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Index
226
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Acquisitions 26, 190
Brand ambassadors 68
Adelaide Bank 146
Brand Asset Valuator 93
Advertising 28, 73, 78, 81, 84, 90-1, 94,
Brand awareness 92
97-8, 116, 123, 125, 131, 166,
Brand equity 91, 96,194
171, 200
Brand loyalty 85
Africa 106
Brand Mindset, the 80
Ageing global population 22, 56
Brand Pyramid 84, 85
Agilent Technologies 91, 94
Brazil 59, 102
Air NZ 39
Cadburys 81
Allianz, 95
Canada 102
Alstrom, 94
Canale, Steve 40, 41
American Express 39-40, 142
Career development 73, 141, 144-47, 203
Americas 193, 197, 200
CEDA 182
Anderson Consulting 91
Chevron 91
ANZ 38, 39
China 59, 64, 166
Application value 98
Clayton, Glen 114
Arthur Andersen 130
Coca-Cola 83
Ashcroft, Chris 193
Coca-Cola Amatil 126-28
Asia 106
Cognitive 104
Asia Pacific 30, 70, 106
Collins, C.J. 219
AT&T 132
Collins, Jim 152
Australia 59, 65, 78, 86, 99, 102-3,
Commerzbank, 93
116, 146, 152, 157
Commonwealth Bank 182
Aventis 91, 94
Communication systems 141, 144-45, 149
Baby Boomer 42, 56, 66, 185
Company intranet Site 121
Bank NZ 39
Compass Group 31, 36, 190-200
Bank SA 32, 151, 182-188
Compensation and benefits 46, 47, 141,
Bankruptcies 26
Banner advertising 121
Barrow, Simon 17-19, 22,
212 216, 219
BASF 73, 74
144-45
Competitive advantage 28, 40, 46-50,
136, 147, 154, 167
Conference Board, The 29, 34-35, 68, 71,
119-120, 122, 194
Bayerische Landesbank, 93
Consumer brands 26
Behavioural 103, 104
Core competence 47
Bernard Hodes Group 129-30, 194
Corporate brand 19, 28-29, 40, 73, 81-82,
Berthon Professor Pierre 90, 94
84, 86,140, 149, 155, 161, 184,
Boeing 91
132, 154
Booz Allen & Hamilton 94

BP 91, 124
Corporate Leadership Council, The 108
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227
Index
Corporate reputation and culture 141,

150, 152
Employer Brand Identity 143-44

Employer Brand Strategic platform TM 144,
Corporate Social Responsibility 141,

150-51, 155
149, 150
Employer Value Proposition 42, 116, 142,
Crdit Agricole, 93
143, 147, 167, 185
Credit Suisse First Boston 93
Estis, Ryan 159
Customer satisfaction 74, 156, 187
Europe 59, 65, 106
Daimler Chrysler 92
Ewing, Professor Mike 97,132, 157
Dalby, Colin 170
External environment 26, 47
Davis, Scott 80, 84
Flashpoint Effect 156
De Bussy, Dr. Nigel 90
Ford 49
Development value 98
Fortune 74, 93, 152
Differentiation 49, 80, 94, 123
Fortune Magazine 74
Direct mail 121
France 102-103, 194
Diversity 39-41, 175-176, 179,
GE 40-41, 122
185, 191-192, 196
General Motors 130
Dowling, G. 81, 217
Generation X 185
Du-Pont 73, 91
Generation Y 145, 157-58, 185
Economic growth 60, 62-63, 155
Generation Z 56
Economist, The 29-33, 68, 70, 92,
Germany 102, 112
93, 167
GlaxoSmithKline 142
E-Marketing 122
GMH 49
E-Marketing campaigns 121
Goldman Sachs 94, 146-47
Emergent Self Organisation 46, 51
Goodman Steven Dr 43, 45
EmpAt 96, 98-99
Government 38-39, 42-43
Employee absenteeism 188
Hah, Li Lian 90, 218
Employee communications 121
Hamel, Gary 47
Employee engagement 32, 68, 102-105,
Hays 38
108, 112, 147, 151, 188, 187

Employee research 38, 105, 110, 141, 144,
147, 190, 194, 195, 203
Head count 107

Heterogeneous 48
Hewitt Associates 68, 194
Employee surveys 107, 142,
Hong Kong 102
Employee turnover 158, 176, 188, 193
HSBC 93
Employer attractiveness 71, 89-99
Hubbard, G 47, 51
Hudson 116, 117, 118
144, 149
21, 139-149, 163
Hudson Report, the 116

Human Capital Measures 106, 109
Hunt, Edith 146
Hyundai 94
228
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IBM 39 ,94
Pat Rafter 86
Iceland 58
People In Business 17-19, 22
IDS 194, 197
People management policies and practices
Image advertising 122

India 59
141, 150, 152-53

Performance management 75, 113, 141-42,
Innovation 21, 26, 108, 141, 150,

154-55, 163
150, 153-54
Perpetual, Pictet, 93
Intangible Assets 47
Personnel Today 27-28, 167
Intelsat, 94
Pfizer 32
Interest value 97
Pitt Professor Leyland 90
Internal communication 21, 163, 192,
Porter, Michael 46, 48-49
194, 198
Prahalad 47
Ireland 170, 197, 200
Price Waterhouse Coopers 39
ISR 68, 69, 102-107
Procter and Gamble 78
Japan 59, 112
Prospective employees 29, 84, 92, 112,
JP Morgan 94
117, 118, 126, 141, 149, 152, 154,
L.L.Bean 29
157, 170, 173, 177
Leadership 141, 150-51

Linde 94
London 110
Market Forces 154-55
Recruitment advertising 56, 91, 116, 121,

126, 171, 197
Recruitment and induction 132, 141, 144,
202
McDonalds 83
Referral program 126, 157
McElroy, Neil 78
Reinke, Melissa 122
Mergers 26
Restructuring 37
Mexico 58
Reward and recognition 121, 141, 144,
Microsoft 39, 83, 143, 147
148, 153
Middle East 106
Reward and recognition program 121
Mission 32, 50, 53, 141, 150
Robbins,Tracy 193
Morgan Stanley Dean Witter 93
Russell, Frank Company 69
Motorola 94
Shareholder value 80
Nanotechnology 51
Shell 91, 124
NAS Recruitment Communication 159
Singapore 102-103
National Bank 39
Skills shortage 29, 64, 154
Netherlands, The 102
Slattery, Tara 73
New Zealand 38-39, 99
Small, Tim 192, 195, 199
Nokia 94
South Africa 99
Novartis 94
Southwest Airlines 29, 74
OCED 58
St George Bank 182, 186
Optus 39
Strategic Thinking 46
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229
Index
Telecom NZ 38-39
Telstra 38-39
The Financial Times 152
The Sunday Times 152, 200
Thomas Cook 169-179
Towers Perrin 105
Turkey 58
UBS 93
UK 27, 30, 68-69, 102-103, 106, 110-112,
125, 152, 167, 170, 175, 177, 190,
197, 200
Unilever 123
United Nations 59
United Technologies, 94
Universum Communications 32-33,
35-36, 39, 72-73, 122-123, 146,
158-159
US 30, 36-37, 58- 59, 102
Value Proposition 20, 29, 187
Viatel 94
Virgin 39
Vodafone 38-39, 149
Watson Wyatt 36, 38, 69
Westpac 38-39
Williams Elaine 32
Work environment 97, 111, 141, 144,
149, 154
Work-Life Balance 111, 153, 196, 200
Xerox 130
Zurich 93
230
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Notes
Notes
Notes
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231
232
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Notes

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