HR - Branding

Nov 10, 2010 By sekar 532 Views

Introduction: Human Resource: Human Resource is increasingly

receiving attention as critical strategic partner, assuming
stunningly different, far reaching transformational roles and
responsibilities. Human asset is having most important priority
in the organization and it integrates all human resource policies
and programmes the frame work of the company strategy.
Human resources help in transforming the lifeless factors of
production into useful products.

Branding:

Branding is endowing products and services with the

Power of the brand. Branding is all about creating differences.
To brand a product it is necessary to teach consumers by
"WHO" the product is, "WHAT" the product does and "WHY"
consumers should care. Branding involves creating mental
structure and helping consumer organize their knowledge about
product and services in a way that clarifies their decision making
and in the process provides value to the firm.

Human Resource Branding:

Branding in Human Resource has traditionally been a

limited to the employment function. The Human Resource
Branding has become a concept of great interest. The
importance of mastering the concepts and skills behind branding
has a greater implication for Human professionals. Now a day's
more and more eyes are looking towards Human resource as the
call for need.

Customers differentiate firms by their products.

Marketers have traditionally used "The 4 Ps" (product, price,
position and promotion) to set the products of their firm apart
from those of the competitor in the market place. Employees
now differentiate their jobs by HR branding .The 4 Ps of HR are
People, Pay, Position and Prospects.

As the functions of HR started spreading across the

organization, the services rendered by the HR department to the
employees can be treated as the same thing as selling services to
the external customer. Hence, the HR department should care
about its brand identity.

For a company to be successful, it has to attract, motivate and

retain the best and brightest, making it competitive in the race.
As organizations are complex, open systems, single
interventions are not enough. The best organizations have
compelling people strategies that are perfectly aligned with the
organization's business strategy. Once the people strategy is
aligned with the business strategy, you can begin creating a great
place to work. The HR brand has to be aligned congruently with
what the company delivers to the employee, customer, public
and shareholder.

In today's knowledge driven economy, HR plays a

strategic role in bringing in the right kind of people into the
organization. In a sense, HR is the first face of an organisation
for a new prospective employee. Market research has revealed
that strong brands contribute to strong competitive presence. In
this way, the HR in its new avatar, the importance of branding
HR follows quite as a corollary.

The brand 'HR' can be well built by concentrating on the factors,

which directly or indirectly influence the expectations of an
employee. HR department should take decisions that would not
discourage employees from being aligned to the brand behavior.

The factors that impact the employer brand are:

1. Reputation/ integrity
2. Culture
3. Recruitment / orientation
4. Pay and benefits
5. Work /Life balance
6. Leadership and management
7. Performance management, growth and development
Of these seven factors in the employer branding model,
four have proven to be crucial for a large majority of high
performing employees. These are:
Culture
Pay and benefits
Leadership and management
Performance management, growth and development.
Only two of these four factors form a crucial part of the
employer brands of majority companies:
A highly developed culture and outstanding leadership
Management qualities.

Why an employee/employer prefer to brand their job:

Brand as a System

We can consider brand as a system. The brand system has four

components which are inextricably tied and interdependent.

Offer: It is the service or a group of services that the brand

renders to its customers, and if the offer is complex or it is
difficult to explain, then it would be very difficult to
communicate the offer to the target segment. Hence, the offer
should be clearly described for a brand to be successful.

Example: Compensation packages, Training programs,

Employee assistance programs, a good working environment,
etc.

Identity: Identity is defined as every thing that assists in

attracting attention, setting expectations and making an
impression. Names, logos, slogans, advertising, packaging,
vision and mission statement of the HR department make up the

brand identity. This provides information to employees to

determine an impression on the HR department.

Experience: Brand experience is the aggregate of all the

perceptions that result from the interactions with a brand. But all
the experiences are not equal. Employees assign different levels
of importance to different facets of their experience.

Image: Brand Image is what people think of the brand. This is

primarily based on the interactions with the HR department.

We define a job brand as the employment value at the jobspecific level. A good job brand clearly articulates and
demonstrates how a specific position fulfills on a company's
brand

Promise to its customers and how a company's employment

promise is delivered back to its employees for that particular
position.

A good job brand delivers a message to its audience

communicating what is the job, what

does it take to perform, how does it deliver on a company's

brand promise, and what does it

mean to the people doing the job.

Job brands have the ability to:

Increase candidate pipeline

Differentiate your opportunity from the competition
Attract new talent at the job level
Increase performance through highly engaged employees
Increase retention rates through better alignment with your
culture
Tell a compelling story that generates interest in your
opportunity.

6 Steps to an Employer Brand Strategy:


Determine how employer branding is viewed inside your
company

Define employer brand objectives and project scope

The relationship between HR, marketing, and

communications

Discovering your employer brand

CEO and senior management engagement

Communications planning

Determine how employer branding is viewed inside your

company
You should define what employer branding means to your
company.

Your employer brand is "the image of your organization as a

great place to work' in the mind of current employees and key
stakeholders in the external market (active and
passivecandidates,
clients, customers, and other key
stakeholders)." Employer branding is therefore concerned with
the attraction, engagement, and retention initiatives targeted at
enhancing your company's employer brand.

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If you take too narrow a focus on employer branding, it is likely

to end up as a departmental project that's not aligned with the
overall business strategy. For example, if you believe employer
branding is only about recruitment, it is likely your organization
will have already closed up shop on employer branding as a
result of the economic downturn while competitors who
understand the concept are continuing to invest resources as part
of a long-term employer branding strategy to attract and retain
talent.

Define employer brand objectives and project scope

Defining your objectives up front will save you time and money
in the long run and keep your program on time and on budget.
Companies have different lifecycle stages and therefore will
have different objectives at various stages. Your objectives may
be related to the whole employer brand program or a specific
employer brand project (e.g. establishing an alumni program or
employee referral program). Your objectives may include

integrating the cultures of two companies during a merger,

decreasing staff turnover rates, increasing volume of hires for a
summer recruiting campaign, improving candidate quality, or
reviewing and updating your career website to appeal to
graduates.

The relationship between HR, marketing, and communications

Ownership of the employer brand strategy is often a

gray area that should be clearly defined so all key stakeholders
achieve consensus and are united in the objectives. To obtain
both budget and buy-in, human resources often has to drive
employer branding through internal education and awareness
building.

While some level of oversight or standards adherence is natural

and may vary depending on the organization, the employer
brand is a long-term, strategic talent management endeavor. The
strategy and messaging are designed to attract/engage/retain
talent, which clearly sets up a strong case for collaboration
between human resources, marketing, and communications (e.g.
marketing/communications can offer some compelling strategic

support such
segmentation).

as

website

analytics

and

target-market

In instances where there is a lack of collaboration, power

struggles ensue, projects can be delayed, and creativity/strategy
minimized to the detriment of the outcome.

Discovering your employer brand

The key to developing your employer brand strategy is to arrive

at a comprehensive understanding of the organizational culture,
work experience, key talent drivers (engagement factors),
external perceptions, leadership vision, and management
practices. Operating from this position of intelligence supports
the construct of a message platform that is authentic,
compelling, differentiated, and that will be internally embraced,
appropriately received in the external market and consistently
delivered upon by the organization.

This can be supported through quantitative research (e.g. survey

mechanisms) and qualitative research (e.g. focus groups,
leadership interviews, roundtable meetings). It's also an ideal
phase to do some competitive intelligence gathering and

benchmark against available insights. In this era of increasing

transparency, the organization's external reputation can be
considered through both external focus groups and/or some level
of online reputation audit to determine what is being said' about
the organization via web channels (blogs, social networks, and
corporate rating sites).

CEO and senior management engagement

It pays to have conversations about your employer brand with

the CEO and senior managers in the early stages of developing
your strategy. The Employer Brand Institute's global survey
found engaging with these key stakeholders is very important in
achieving employer branding objectives (see figure 1) and could
be conducted using a roundtable forum on employer branding.
Areas for discussion could include:

How will a stronger employer brand support our business

strategy M&A's, growth, consolidation?
What kind of culture do we have? How consistent is it across
geographical and divisional boundaries?

What behaviors are felt to be most characteristic of the

organization? What are the moments of truth when your
organization is at its best (and worse?)
What is the most useful way of segmenting the employee
population in terms of their cultural characteristics and
distinctive needs?
How consistent are the messages we are communicating
internally and externally about our organization as a place to
work? How do we inform our vendors?
What are the most effective channels
communication, both top-down and bottom-up?

of

employee

Which positions are most critical to our success and what are we
currently doing/need to do to attract, engage, and retain them?
Communications planning

There is a plethora of offline and online media channels

available to communicate your employer value proposition to
your target audience, including web, print, social networks,
events, PR, alumni events, etc. The rate of growth of these
channels can be mind-boggling and while their use may not fit
the stereotype of a conservative company that has been around
for 100 years, it pays to test these sites for benefits or risk losing
ground to your competitors. Who would have thought three
years ago a micro-blogging platform where only 140 characters

can be used in communicating a message would be used

successfully by companies such as Zappos (the CEO has over
590,000 followers!) to communicate with their target audience.
Taking a strategic approach toward your employer brand will
ensure your team is able to assess these innovations as they
appear while maintaining focus on the longer-term objectives.

The key is to test and trial these channels and arrive at a

communications strategy that provides maximum impact and
efficiency for minimum investment. There is no point building a
presence on Facebook if you don't allocate the resources to
respond to messages from the community that has joined your
fan base!

Companies like Standard Chartered Bank and Phillips ensure a

consistent brand is communicated globally through recruitment
communications with changes for local nuances such as
language. This not only ensures clarity in brand positioning; it
saves on design costs and increases campaign speed to market.

Have a solid understanding of cultural diversity in

communicating your brand to your target audience. Just because
the messages were tried, tested, and validate by your U.S.
workforce doesn't mean you'll get the same level of buy-in when

suggesting to regional offices they use the same set of

communication collateral. Your own workforce can be helpful in
determining what works best in their region and the assistance
from a local vendor may also add value.

Benefits of Building a Brand for HR Department

1. It improves credibility and strengthens the bonds of trust

between HR department and the employees.
2. It acts as a catalyst for pushing change.
3. It is communications shorthand for getting the message out.

Limitation:

1. Employees perception at all times is not same.

2. There is no appropriate method for prioritizing things.
3. People may not have proper knowledge towards branding.
4. Marketing and branding always overlap and create confusion.

Conclusion:

Why do we go for brands? The answer is simple -.reliability. It's

the popular brands which provide this reliability. Attracting
knowledge workers has become a Herculean task for the HR
department. Only the best practices and the best environment
can assure their interest in working for the organization. The
practices and policies of the HR department and its outlook
create a certain brand for the HR. The better the brand, better are
the chances that will attract the best talent. The focus in this
review paper outlines all that are required to make HR the best
brand