Marketing people will not necessarily be pleased with such a statement, but let’s think about it for a moment; if you can convince your customers to promote your products, why not try to convince them to promote you as an employer?
As Davide Scialpi says, “Employer Branding is fundamentally a marketing strategy applied to Human Resources. Just as companies create marketing and communication activities to attract and retain high value clients, at the same time communication and marketing strategies can be created in order to attract and retain high value people for their own business performances”.
So let’s market our employer assets as if they were a product!
Apple and Google have always been the kings in this field. The values transmitted through their products - love and appreciation for their founders, high quality design, advanced thinking, and the strong belief in their employees - have made these two companies successful as products sellers and also highly attractive to the young (and not-so-young) professionals. Just the fact of working for Apple or Google would make most people think that you’re extremely cool and connected; many would even idealise your work life. For example, I would expect an employment with Google to allow me to have a pizza delivered right to my desk, spend 20% of my time playing baby-foot, access to a free canteen, and the opportunity to play with all kinds of innovative, geeky and high-tech gadgets made freely available. And if employed with Apple, I would surely be Tim Cook’s (RIP Steve) best friend…
This is where the catch comes in. As per a recent article on Google’s working conditions, it seems not all that glitters is gold.
Google’s popularity and prestigious image, combined with very attractive Comp&Ben packages, has enabled the company to attract the best talents. As seen in the June 2013 edition of The Harvard Business review, Reid Hoffman (founder of LinkedIn), Ben Casnocha and Chris Yeh develop on the “New Employer-Employee Compact”. They mention the importance of having “entrepreneurial” employees; however, when this type of employee becomes the new standard, who does the day-to-day jobs? Transported in Google’s HR, this resulted in overly-qualified employees doing common maintenance for current apps instead of developing new ones. Even with more than decent Comp&Ben packages, the outcome still resulted in very low employee motivation.
The same concept applies to the impact a new employee thinks they can have on the company. The truth is that when a company achieves a 10 billion net income in 2012, it is no longer a start-up looking for new ideas. Forget about the idea that “people don’t work at Google for the money; they work at Google because they want to change the world!” It has definitely become a profit-oriented, shareholder-dependant money machine. In such a situation, frustration can touch high ceilings.
Apple is no better. This company, though it seems like a dream to work for due to its lead in the industry, charismatic leader, and top-of-the-line products, has been hit by the Foxconn scandal. If a company is going to pretend to be a world changer with its products, it had better be a world changer with its business environment as well. It’s not possible (thanks to 2.0 communication channels) to sell one image on one side of the world while delivering the worst possible working conditions on the other. In other words, Apple is directly experiencing the Nike sweat-shops effect from years ago. In the beginning of the 1990s, I would have loved to have worked for Nike, the best sportswear marketing company at the time; it would have been a social and economic boost. But by the mid-1990s, working for Nike would have felt… wrong, especially in front of my social tribe of very environmentally-friendly people (you did not want to work for ExxonMobil when the ExxonValdes sank, either). Apple’s implementation of this type of work environment has cost them more than money; it also cost them their perfect image and fictitious good-will.
So what to do and whom to believe? As said before, all that glitters isn’t gold and if it seems too nice, the company is most likely trying to blind you with their sparkling image. Google always manages to rank at the top of Universum and other opinion surveys, no doubt due to their flawless overall image. But when you start talking to the employees, the reality differs quite a lot.
Most companies are now trying to integrate their employer brand in their overall strategy, making sure that, from product development, to manufacturing, vendor selection, marketing, to sales, the whole chain is consistent with the final goal: to have happy repetitive customers, make sure you have happy employees, working with happy providers. Embark and engage them all in your values.
In short, I think that making the best products can be a perfect way to ensure high profit, but does not always ensure that your customers will want to work for you. This is why, today, HR and Communication (internal, obviously, but ALSO external) shall merge due to the fact that the perceived effects on one side can definitely have some impact on the other. If you produce good products but don’t have the best HR policies, you are working against yourself. To conclude, I will use the main words to be remembered when talking about employer brand: align, be consistent, and align again.
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