to 'get the right people on the bus'. For some. companies, it can get very specific, e.g., Apple ... Sugata Sircar, CEO, Gujarat Gas. mentions, "Research shows that.
HR & BUSINESS I
Creating a
compelling employee value proposition I
BY AKHILESH MANDAL & DR. SANDEEP K. KRISHNAN
mployer Brand' is a concept that has gained popularity in recent times. Organizations across the globe have started taking the term seriously and the trend is ardent in India too. Just as a corporate or product brand symbolizes certain qualities, perceptions, image and experience to its customers, an employer brand represents the same to the employees,
‘E
The employer brand lends an identity to the company, which represents its core values and indicates how it carries on its business and what value it delivers to its customers, partners, employees and other stakeholders. current or prospective. Employee Value Proposition (EVP), the core of an employer brand, defines what you most want people both inside and outside your organization, to associate with you as an employer. It
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encompasses the bouquet of distinctive brand benefits that you offer. The employer branding journey may start from identifying the type of people that you as an employer want in your organization to be successful. As Richard Mosley, a pioneer and authority in Employer Branding, puts it, to 'get the right people on the bus'. For some companies, it can get very specific, e.g., Apple wants people who are 'natural communicators with a passion for technology' or P&G looks for people who 'thrive on challenges'. Many global organizations such as P&G, McDonald's, Coca Cola, Accenture, Johnson and Johnson, Yum, Virgin, and Indian organizations such as RPG, Aditya Birla Group, Tata, Infosys, Genpact, Airtel have invested heavily in employer branding initiatives. Every organization intrinsically has an employer brand whether it realizes it or not. It is there for people and customers at large and as well as for employees. You do not own it but you can influence it. Therefore , the essence is how clearly you define the EVP on which you would build your employer brand. Having defined your brand,
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I HR & BUSINESS communicating the same and managing it on an ongoing basis is way beyond just advertising through clever creative expression. This process actually centers around delivering people experiences in tune with the brand promise, through leadership behaviour and people
focus is to enhance employee experience, reduce image reality gaps and project differently as an employer to both internal and external stakeholders. Secondly, organizations across the globe, maintain consistency in their employer brand experience and it is
anywhere between 12 to 36 months". Sugata Sircar, CEO, Gujarat Gas mentions, "Research shows that people want to be in fulfilling jobs, which offer a set of values, monetary and non-monetary. If you believe this, you would believe in the need for employer branding." Another interesting insight on employee value proposition comes from Samit Aich, Executive Director at Greenpeace, "This is a little complex and we have had numerous discussions, including at the Board level. Our total work proposition is the sum of median market salaries, flexi work,
processes; and in some cases perhaps even business processes, at every touch point between the organization and its people, both external and internal to the organization. So it is far more serious than 'window dressing' to move up the ranking of a 'best employer to work for'. As Mervyn Raphael, Managing Director of People Business mentions, "Employer branding as a concept is evolving in India. I see two prominent trends. First, there is a paradigm shift from the situation when branding was meant only for external communication, now the
reflecting in India too. An employer branding initiative might take anywhere between five to six months to yield short-term results, and different touch points from 'Hire to Retire' will have an impact from
thriving and vibrant internal culture, and huge international exposure, deep functional exposure at an early stage, exciting sabbatical opportunities, international stints, and the most important feeling that
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HR & BUSINESS I
CASE STUDY
AKHILESH MANDAL Akhilesh Mandal, a senior partner with a global consulting firm and an accomplished consultant, has been partnering with several global and Indian organizations in the areas of employer branding and leadership development. With three decades of experience, he brings a rare combination of business and human capital understanding in his approach to craft solutions to enhance organizational performance.
DR. SANDEEP K. KRISHNAN Dr. Krishnan has worked with organizations of repute like IBM, Infosys, RPG Group, and Ernst and Young. He has been a Head of HR and has worked in various HR transformation projects including employer branding projects. He is a certified Global Professional in Human Resources (GPHR) and has a certification in executive coaching from University of Cambridge. He is a fellow of IIMA.
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The Indian organization of this fast growing Quick Service Restaurant MNC was facing severe attrition. There was a need to plan its HR strategy, which would help them to treble the growth over the next four years. A large proportion of employees were in the age group of 18 to 22 years. Attracting people in this age group was not a challenge, however, retaining and engaging the trained employees was getting increasingly difficult, especially with tough competition from the BPO and retail sector. The objective was to look at the unique needs of the target segment and dig below the surface for the main reasons for attrition and the drivers for engagement and retention Another goal was to find and create a distinctive employee experience for the target population. This involved: G Ethnographic study to identify aspirations of the young workforce Deep leadership commitment G Focus on developing life skills and professional skills for GenYers G Identifying and developing signature practices with global impact G Significant increase in retention G Dropping attrition to a one-third
CASE STUDY This organization, with more than two dozen TV channels in India, was re-branding its customer brand including its logo and identity. All of the channels followed a different culture with very little in common with the parent brand. The values of the organization were not clearly articulated too. The organization wanted to unify its various TV channels with a common culture and create a differentiated employee experience. The approach was to look at the 'glue' and the common purpose that binds the organization together. Given the current re-branding of the corporate brand, close alignment of the EVP with values and brand positioning was recommended with new corporate brand commitment. It also looked at how the leadership team could demonstrate forward momentum in translating the current weaknesses into values-driven strengths. G Studied transcripts of the interviews with stakeholders conducted by a global branding agency as part of the re-branding exercise. This was followed by a series of discussions with leaders and FGDs with employees in the organization. G Thematic analysis of inputs from primary and secondary research to arrive at values and behavioural indicators describing the 'values in action'. G Leadership focus to forward momentum in translating current weaknesses into values-driven strengths. G Validation of values and EVP through leadership discussions, employee FGDs and 'proof points'.
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I HR & BUSINESS they have the opportunity to bring about systemic change at the highest levels in the country." Each employer branding initiative is unique. There are various business reasons to define or re-align the employer brand proposition to attract and retain the desired talent and continue to deliver high performance business results. Some of the typical reasons are: a) Growth in business requires employers to clarify their value proposition. For example, Manappuram Finance limited has grown rapidly in the past decade. As Dr. V. M. Manoharan, Director mentions, "There has been a concerted effort to build a strong trusted brand with its customers. Along with that we wanted employees to be a key partner and have made considerable efforts in communicating and introducing practices that are employee friendly. The transformation of employee perceptions and their productive engagement are to be in the desired direction." b) Change management requires employers to redefine the value proposition to a diverse set of business or regions or talent profiles; this is often true for but not necessarily limited to, companies growing inorganically through the M&A route. c) Re-invigorate the changing competition / context require employers to articulate the value proposition better. d) Realignment of the core value proposition in a complex context where multiple entities work separately but need a common outlook for employees. As Dr. Arvind N. Agrawal, President HR and Corporate Development at RPG Group articulates, "Employer branding ensures people have consistent experiences across businesses and geography, which is vital for talent management in large businesses". A typical employer branding engagement starts with business need assessment followed by research in terms of evaluating the current brand proposition. This looks at the perception regarding the employer in multiple areas related to business, culture, career, HR practices, opportunities, benefits, etc. A good research unravels the subtle challenges of engagement and employee value proposition. Inputs are taken from internal and external stakeholders - new employees, long- time employees, middle management, vendors, campuses, head hunters, media. This helps to get a full 360 degree view of the organization. The key element then is to distill the key differentiators for the organization both current and future that the organization needs to build. Downstream activities are to be aligned to the key employee value propositions.
Benefits of employer branding Organizational identity: Employees strongly identify with the unique proposition provided through both tangible and intangible benefits. This leads to a healthier psychological contract and helps in the creation of a single identity during phases of changes/growth G Better articulation: Consistent articulation and G
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HR & BUSINESS I communication of employee value proposition both internally and externally helps greatly G Gap identification: It helps to brings clarity in areas of improvement for the organization G Aligned efforts: Efforts are put in key areas of improvement/ segments that requires action G Attraction and retention: Helps in better attraction and retention of talent by identifying top drivers G Overall cost of engagement: Overall cost of engaging employees reduces as efforts are more aligned and clearly articulated, as the organization delivers what it promises As Prof. P. Vijayakumar, Chairperson of Center for Social and Organizational Leadership, TISS mentions, " An effective EVP not only helps in attracting the right talent, but it can also be a strategic tool for aligning personal goals of employees with the organizational goals. This alignment enhances 'employee embeddedness' and contributes significantly to retaining the employees. Communication too must be consistent both internally and externally, and managers must ensure that indicators that represent EVP are operationalized periodically to make EVP relevant and effective."
Ways to improve EVP Having got the core value proposition right, the internal and external messaging and change management is the key. This will be an effort from 'Hire to Retire'. For example, one of the organizations wanted 'Youthful outlook' as a key employee value proposition. This meant that the organization was able to attract young talent, had a supportive work environment for them, their aspirations regarding careers were met, and they would stay and grow. This was a stretch for the organization as it had a legacy of more than 30 years and the average age was well over 35. The organization focused on bringing in more talent from management and engineering campuses and employees were given higher responsibilities from
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The book “The Employer Brand – Bringing the best of brand management to people at work” is a seminal work in the area. Written by Simon Barrow and Richard Mosley, the book brings in various concepts of employer branding and substantiates with case studies of well-known global employer brands. Readers can get a good idea of how the concept has evolved. Starting from the business case for employer brand management, this book will give a 360 Degree view of implementing an employer branding exercise. the start of their career. The induction program was revamped to make it appealing to the target audience -outbound programs, week end partying, movie based learning, that made it more contemporary. Senior leaders were given mentoring responsibilities so that the new talent easily navigated the organization. More efforts were put to change the work environment and its facilities. The workplace was made more colorful and new, number of cabins was reduced and there were more collaboration and meeting rooms, a play zone that allowed employees to have recreation events, play pool or foosball, and conduct Friday gettogether was built. An internal employee portal and careers section of the company website was revamped to send the right messages. During communication with management, the new joinees were assured of fast track career opportunities if they showed promising performance and potential. Interestingly, this helped retain more than 90 per cent of the young talent and created a new culture in the organization. In the quick service restaurant case, one of the critical aspects that appealed to the youth was the opportunity to invest in life skills. Since they came from the lower strata of society, they believed that a career with the
restaurant would be an investment in building their competencies to make them job-ready for life.
To conclude It is critical that in an employer branding exercise, all 'brand signatures,' i.e., the processes which reinforce the proposition in a distinctive manner, all 'brand busters', i.e., the processes which undermine the proposition, and the 'hygiene factors' must be identified and acted upon. Employer branding as a concept and new age practice has evolved over the years and has become the umbrella and focus for development of core employee contract and engagement. EVP has become the guiding light for aligning values, culture, engagement, communication, and HR processes and practices. The key is to understand that employer branding is an effort to understand the reality of current value proposition, amplifying the strengths and working towards achieving the stretch areas. Richard Mosley, stresses the point that the internal and external branding should be in sync to meet and exceed the expectation of employees. A wellresearched and developed employee value proposition and effective activation and implementation of the same can truly build an HC employer of choice.
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