❯❯ Get buy-in and a commitment to support your efforts from these same stakeholders.
In this chapter, we set you on the path to building a strong employer brand by preparing yourself and other stakeholders in the organization for the difficult but rewarding work ahead.
Finding Your Fit within the Overall Company Strategy
Employer branding success depends on coordinated action throughout the organization. An employer brand should work within the broader strategic hierarchy, as shown in Figure 2-1.
© John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
FIGURE 2-1: The integrated strategy model.
This illustration of corporate brand and business strategy places employer brand strategy at the intersection between human resources (HR) and talent management and marketing, because employer brand strategy is part of all three:
❯❯ Corporate brand: Your employer brand must reflect the corporate and customer brand promises and ambitions of your company.
❯❯ HR and talent: Your employer brand must support the kind of talent capabilities required for the organization to compete effectively, and it must align with the way HR and talent management operate within the organization.
❯❯ Marketing: Marketing efforts must reinforce the corporate, customer, and employer brand while eliminating any confusion or conflict among the three.
In the following sections, we explain how to position employer branding in the organization to optimize success.
The term corporate brand is generally used to describe the overall reputation of the company, as opposed to its more specific reputation as an employer. In addition to finding your fit within the strategic hierarchy, you need to clarify your place within the brand hierarchy, as shown in Figure 2-2.
© John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
FIGURE 2-2: The integrated brand model.
From a management perspective, the most discernible manifestation of the corporate brand is its visual identity – the corporate logo, colors, fonts, and design elements used to present a consistent face to the world. (For more about this aspect of corporate branding, see Chapter 5.) Many companies also try to define some of the more intangible components of identity, including the following:
❯❯ Purpose: The organization’s reason for existence beyond making money – what the organization does. Google provides a great example of purpose: “To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
❯❯ Vision: The organization’s current end goal – what the organization is striving to achieve within a given time frame, “a dream with a deadline.” A powerful historical example of this is Microsoft’s original company vision (when access to computers was still highly limited): “To put a computer on every desk in every home.”
❯❯ Values: The organization’s guiding principles – how the organization does what it does. A few examples from Southwest Airlines are “Work hard,” “Have FUN,” and “Treat others with respect.”
If your organization has a defined purpose, vision, and values, these statements provide an important starting point for defining your employment offer and employer brand strategy, with clear alignment between the company’s core beliefs and the more specific proposition you’re setting out for current and potential employees.
TAKING AN INSIDE-OUT APPROACH
In Built to Last, James Collins and Jerry Porras shared the results from their study of 18 enduringly successful companies, commonly referred to by other CEOs as “visionary,” including P&G, American Express, Boeing, Walt Disney, and HP. One of the clearest characteristics they found within these companies was a very clear sense of purpose and shared values:
Like the fundamental ideals of a great nation, core ideology in a visionary company is a set of basic precepts that plant a fixed stake in the ground: “This is who we are, this is what we stand for.” Like the guiding principles embodied in the American Declaration of Independence (“We hold these truths to be self-evident …”) and echoed 87 years later in the Gettysburg Address (“A nation conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal”).
From a corporate brand perspective, this core ideology can also be described as the organization’s core proposition. This ideally combines the organization’s statement of purpose and its core values, which Collins and Porras define as follows:
Purpose: The organization’s fundamental reasons for existence beyond just making money – a perpetual guiding star on the horizon; not to be confused with specific goals or business strategies.
Core Values: The organization’s essential and enduring tenets – a small set of general guiding principles; not to be compromised for financial gain or short-term expediency.
You can find plenty of other definitions of purpose and value, but from our perspective, these are the clearest and most useful. Employer brand development should always start with a clear understanding of corporate purpose and values, because these core elements of the corporate ethos should be reflected throughout everything the organization says and does.
Maintaining consistency with the customer brand depends on how closely the corporate and customer brands are associated:
❯❯ Corporate and customer brands are identical or nearly identical. In many organizations the corporate brand name is carried by the company’s products and services, as is the case with Apple, Shell, Vodafone, and Deloitte.
❯❯ The corporate brand name is carried by a leading product. In some cases, the company name is carried by the leading product or service within a wider product portfolio (for example, L’Oréal, Coca-Cola, and Ferrero).
❯❯ The corporate brand name is loosely, if at all, associated with products. The corporate brand name may not be used directly in naming any of the company’s products or services, as is the case with Unilever and