Employer branding A no-nonsense approach - CIPD

‘We’re not Mars or Nestlé – we’re an NHS trust.’
The techniques and methodologies by which employer
brands are developed are the same as those that
create and sustain great consumer and corporate
brands. The terminology is much the same (although
anyone involved in developing employer brands should
strive to keep that discipline a jargon-free zone). The
only real difference is the number of noughts on the
price tag.
Mars or Nestlé work hard to develop, nurture and
protect their brands (in the case of Nestlé, to wrestle
with some serious and deep-seated image problems,
particularly in the eyes of the student audience) and to
give themselves competitive advantage. It’s no different
for a typical NHS trust, particularly when the advent of
patient choice makes marketing an increasingly
important corporate function. Big organisations
recognise that there’s a relationship, a congruence,
between their brands as suppliers of goods or services
and as employers: the more forward-looking NHS trusts
(and indeed a great many public sector and third-sector
organisations) are waking up to the same connection,
and are determined to make it work for them.
‘Shouldn’t we be giving this to some strategic HR
consultancy?’
From well-known management consultancies to
strategically focused actuarial practices, there’s no
shortage of them waiting for the plum projects to fall
into their laps. And they do have plenty to offer,
particularly in fixing, defining or managing the
employment product itself – the issues such as
compensation, benefits, the whole basis of assessment,
reward and recognition. To use an automotive analogy,
they’re the engineers making sure that the suspension,
the braking system, the sequential gearbox all work
perfectly and meet the market’s expectations. But the
product isn’t the brand, and those talented engineers
wouldn’t for one second claim their ability to articulate
and communicate a brand proposition like ‘Vorsprung
durch Technik’, let alone use it as the basis for some
amazing marketing communications and the creation of
a powerful brand identity and personality.
The whole issue of the relationship between employer
brand and employment product, and the impact the
brand can have on broader, more strategic HR issues is
something we cover in greater detail later in this guide.
‘We’re simply too small.’
When we were putting together the online survey that
provided such valuable insight into this guide, one of the
questions asked respondents to select from a lengthy list
the most appropriate descriptor for their type of
organisation. One of the categories we seriously thought
of including was ‘domestic households’.
It’s not as crazy or fanciful as it seems: if you’re a Russian
oligarch seeking to employ a full-time butler on a salary in
excess of £100,000 (and, apparently, this is yet another
employment category where demand far outstrips
supply), you’d need a good reputation as an employer to
attract and retain the services of your latter-day Jeeves.
On a slightly more realistic level, reputation will be
all-important if you’re a new, ambitious small or
medium-sized enterprise or start-up operation that’s
grown out of some cutting-edge scientific research. You
need to attract good people – disproportionately good
people bearing in mind the modest scale of your
enterprise – on the basis of what working with your
team and its distinctive, passionately held vision for the
enterprise will actually feel like.
Defining that experience – fixing and communicating
that vision so it becomes one of the reasons your
people come to work and that will help them over the
inevitable choppy waters that all small enterprises
experience – couldn’t be easier. A simple senior
management workshop (one of the classic brand research
techniques we describe more fully in a later section) will
help you resolve your distinctive vision in colour and
depth, and ensure that everyone in your top team shares
it totally. Simple, brand-based communications will ensure
that everyone joining you will share that vision from
day one, and know just what it demands of them and
offers them in return.
Employer branding