Employer branding A no-nonsense approach - CIPD

Ideally, the audit will include some telephone
conversations with recent starters and some applicants
who, for whatever reason, didn’t complete the process.
The audit will discover those reasons.
What does it achieve? A graphic, comprehensive picture
of how it actually feels to make the journey towards
becoming an employee of your organisation – the
formative stages of an individual’s relationship with your
employer brand.
Points to watch. You need an objective view of your
application process and materials, and of the
applicant journey; you and your own people might
be too close. If you’re giving the task to an outside
consultant, make sure that all the necessary material
really is forthcoming.
Internal focus groups
What are they? Carefully managed discussions among
employees representing different roles and locations.
The groups can also include some of the exercises and
projective techniques we described in the senior
management workshop.
What do they achieve? A spontaneous, graphic picture
of how your people feel about working for your
organisation. The numbers won’t be high, but the
insights can be very deep.
Points to watch. Limit numbers to around eight and
remember that most people’s attention runs into the
buffers after about an hour. Emphasise absolute
confidentiality, and encourage participants to say what
they really feel.
External focus groups
What are they? (Should be obvious!)
What do they achieve? External focus groups can
yield deep insights into how your organisation is
perceived as an employer among key target
audiences – anyone from graduates to people in
specific professions or business or technical
disciplines. Focus groups are classic qualitative
research tools and it’s the quality of insight they yield
that makes them so valuable. Focus groups, both
internal and external, can also come into their own
to test the initial creative expression of the brand.
Points to watch. Recruitment costs can be high, and
you need to find a good fieldwork company to source
relevant people. External groups only work if the
participants have some familiarity with your
organisation. Incentives can range from around £40 per
person to £80 or more. Very senior people will have
neither the time nor the inclination to attend.
In their own words
It’s a fascinating and invaluable experience,
listening to focus group participants give their
honest, off-the-cuff responses to questions. An
extensive series of groups for one of the UK’s
most prominent public organisations put its
finger bang on the huge cultural divide that
was bedevilling the organisation. The issue was
the conflict between the motivated, engaged
newcomers ready to put in their own fair share
of discretionary effort, and those who had
joined the organisation just as another job (‘My
wife stuck an ad under my nose,’ was how one
participant described his initial contact).
‘My face doesn’t fit any more’ complained one
long-serving employee ruefully, while a more
recent arrival had this to say of the old guard:
‘The dinosaurs are still around – they’ve been
here for 20 or 30 years. They’re set in their
ways, not willing to change and they have a
negative attitude.’
Another recent arrival (‘I’m proud of what I do
and I don’t mind admitting it’) complained: ‘If
you look like you want to help, or do too
much, it’s like you’re the class swot – a “care
bear”.’
Those two opposing descriptors – ‘care bears’
and ‘dinosaurs’ came to summarise the whole
battle for the soul of the organisation. They
made a huge contribution to the development
of the brand and, as with most aspects of the
brand development process, yielded insights
and value in their own right.
Employer branding