Julian Richer, boss of Richer Sounds, was on Radio 4 recently talking about what he thinks makes for a happy company. Julian’s a well-known corporate philanthropist – he literally wrote the book on it when he published the Ethical Capitalist in 2019. But I’d forgotten that he’s given his employees a 60% stake in the business and has several luxury holiday homes that they can rent for £10 a night.
My immediate reaction was: ‘I want to buy something from a company that thinks like that.’
The way a business treats its employees has always contributed to its overall brand image, because most of us want to buy from a company that aligns with what we hope are our personal values.
But until recently, employer reputation was only a small element of brand identity. However, that’s been changing. Conversations I’ve had with clients at HR and broader C-suite level suggest that it’s getting harder for a company to separate what it does as an employer from its brand overall, especially with younger people. And for some of the most innovative clients we work with, brand and employer reputation are now the same thing.
Why? Because in the old days, it was easier to compartmentalise different parts of a business. Recruitment advertising used to go into specialist media, brand-building ads went somewhere else and conversations about the two rarely overlapped. Now people report their experience of working for you on Twitter or Glass Door or Instagram. Social media makes every member of your staff a secret shopper, especially if they are under 30.
A company’s behaviour towards staff has become a marketing touchpoint – and that raises all sorts of questions for HR professionals. How does what you do affect your company’s brand image? Is there anything you can do to turn it to your advantage? And ultimately, does it matter?
The answer to the last question is an emphatic ‘yes’ because if you can deliver a working environment that is attractive to young people, they will tell those stories for you. With the help of marketing colleagues, their messages can be amplified, boosting recruiting, retention and your company’s brand as a whole. That’s important because the number of 15-24-year-olds is set to rise by 11% by 2030 and they are a very particular cohort to attract.
So what can you do to make work so inspiring to Gen Z that they not only want to work for you but become your brand advocates? Listening to them is crucial. A lot’s been written about what they want but our recent Social Impact Barometer report gives a slightly different perspective. It analysed how 16-24-year-olds judge the social impact of 100 leading brands and showed that working for an organisation that ‘does the right thing’ is a huge lure. In fact 66% wanted companies to spend less on TV, radio and digital marketing campaigns and more on initiatives that had a ‘positive impact’ on their lives.
Many of these initiatives can be – and are – delivered in the workplace. Young people want fairness – diversity, equity and inclusivity; support for mental health, the local community and the environment. 93% said it was important for an employer to ‘give them opportunities to drive positive environmental or social change’. 82% wanted to work for someone with inclusivity policies for the LGBTQ+ community. These can be used to good marketing effect, turning an employer into what we call a ‘career maker’ rather than just a hirer of bodies. It’s something HR professionals are uniquely placed to steward.
So how do you start maximising an employer’s potential as a career maker? One of the first things is for HR and marketing to sit down and talk to each other to discover synergies and develop them. Often the departments don’t want to or don’t know how to, which is where a third-party agency can be useful. But this shouldn’t need a marriage broker because the risks of getting it wrong is bad for the whole business. Sometimes, the initiative needs to come from higher up.
The good news is that there are opportunities for joint working, especially if a brand sees employer reputation as part of its social impact strategy. What are you doing well as an employer? Do you genuinely champion diversity? Is mentoring and career development embedded in what you do? Show how, explain why and find staff champions. These are brand assets which both staff and marketing colleagues can disseminate.
And for the companies who are already aware of the marketing value of being perceived as a career maker, the work starts before most young people are looking for a job. 96% of young people in our Barometer said they wanted brands to offer training programmes in workplace and life skills. There are many big brands already actioning initiatives at school and university level, putting them ahead of the curve when it comes to recruitment and brand reputation. And there is scope for real creativity in these initiatives so that the bond with a young person isn’t just transactional, it’s emotional.
And that after all is what good branding is all about.
