Job hunters get to pick and choose

Your organisation's branding is more than just your logo and outward image - it is your company's identity, which is reflected as much through the culture of your workforce as through the products or services you offer.

Geoff Smith, founder and CEO of True HR Integrates, says that having a good established employment brand is the modern way to attract talent to your organisation.

"It's no longer about putting a help wanted advert up. It's about saying I have something that you, the job hunter, might well be interested in.

"Not only can you apply your talent here, but this is a great place to work and we understand what your expectations of life are and we want to be a partner in that."

Smith says that employers can't just sit back and expect highly skilled workers to come to them anymore.

"We no longer can say, 'I'm here, I've got a job. You should be pleased'. We actually have to go out and market our organisations out there in the talent marketplace to attract the right people because they are very discerning these days."

While organisations look for new ways to sell themselves to prospective employees, employment branding can help. The tight labour market means top job applicants are comparing the attributes of the different organisations they want to work for.

"The usual process is that you interview them and at the end of the interview you give them five minutes to ask a few questions. What happens now is talented, good people, will say: 'Thank you for that interview, now I have one'. They then go through a similar process that the employer did and that is to define the whole culture and process and values of that organisation."

Having a good employment brand can make all the difference in the world when it comes time to ask someone to work for you. Smith says this is particularly important when trying to recruit younger workers because they want a better lifestyle than they saw their parents live.

"These are the next generation of people who saw their parents disappear, certainly one of their parents if not two, disappear early, drop them off at school, sometimes even go before that and be gone all day and come home exhausted and tired after working long hours."

Young workers have a different set of priorities and are being very selective to maintain a more balanced lifestyle.

"They're making conscious decisions. They have decided for example that they will compromise very high incomes to insure some quality of working life, so they will not work all hours that are available or an employer would want them to.

"I believe it is a reaction of children who grew up and saw their parents slog their guts out all hours of the day."

But building an organisation's identity is no overnight project. Employment culture can't be accomplished through an internal memo and Friday pizzas. It takes a concerted and dedicated effort similar to that used to create the external brand.

But, if successful, the results can be huge. Smith says at one organisation the improvement was dramatic.

"We spent a considerable amount of money and research and it was a major project of ours and it probably took us a year before we finally got to roll everything out and put something together with confidence. And we knew that we had got it right when we were winning the top candidates."

Smith says that for an employment branding exercise to work you should start with the staff you have and ask them what it is they like about the work culture.

"It's really important to understand what staff are looking for in employment with your organisation, so a good place to start is with the existing staff and find out what their priorities are and pitch toward those."

Successful employees can provide some of the best insight into what may be preventing them from doing their best.

"Look at who you regard as your top performing employees - that top 10 or 15 per cent. What is it about them that makes them the top performers and what do they need to be able to perform."

Smith says these steps are necessary because you can no longer just put out a help wanted advertisement and be sure of finding an appropriate applicant.

"The talent that is available is being very selective about whom they work for. These factors are the things like having family-friendly workplaces."

Having family-friendly workplaces is a vital lifestyle factor that contributes to a positive employment brand. Flexible working hours, provisions for day care and good annual leave policies can all make for a better work-life balance.

But the opportunity for personal development is also important. Employees who know they are obtaining vital experience to enhance their CV will feel better about their workplace.

"Candidates say, 'I've got skills, I want to be able to deploy those meaningfully. I want the opportunity to learn more and develop those and maybe even get the opportunity to spread the scope of my talent'."

Allowing workers to build up their skills base and feel valued will build the employment brand. One of the most important aspects of employment branding is how employees feel when they show up for work every day. Workers in organisations with positive employment brands like their jobs.

"They enjoy coming there to work and that really often comes down to the development of a culture. That comes down at the end of the day to the quality of managers in the organisation. Research has shown us that the main reason that people leave jobs is, as the saying goes, they don't leave companies they divorce managers."

But the personality of organisations can be as varied as the personalities of the people who work in them. Just how an organisation comes to identify with certain values and beliefs rather than others can be difficult to engineer.

"Sometimes in some specialist areas, the organisations probably hire the top ten performers of that industry in their organisation and that becomes an aspect of their employment brand. We only take the top people, so the attraction and the stimulation of really good talent is to be in an environment of equals of great peers.

"Those that are rated as high performing organisations generally show, and research over the years has confirmed this, that having the right kind of people policies and approach to finding and retaining talent has a direct positive correlation and impact on the overall performance of the organisation - certainly the much hallowed bottom line."

But for organisations flailing around and failing to identify their internal culture or employment brand, Smith has a dire warning.

"They're going to be doomed to maybe even not having enough of the right people to continue in business or having people who are mediocre. It's always going to be a struggle for them. They may continue to exist, but it may be a mediocre existence."