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INSIDEHow branding works: Startup vs big company

EMPLOYER BRANDING THE PERCEPTION GAP A TimesJobs survey shows that while 74% of employers think their branding strategies have been successful, 67% employees feel otherwise

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Companies like their strategies but employees unconvinced

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Apeksha Kaushik, TimesJobs.com

WHILE there are some great insights that

talk about what goes into creating a compelling employer brand, rarely does any study talk about the gap between how employees perceive the outcome of employer branding vis-a-vis what the organisations think.Having a powerful employer brand has never been this crucial as it is today when majority of India Inc employers are struggling to attract the right talent. Consequently, the need to understand and analyse the gap in the perception of employees and employers has never been greater.The TimesJobs.com survey looked at how organisations across industries plan, execute, and assess their employer branding strategy and how employees think it should be done.

n Increasing popularityThe good news is that 64 per cent of

the surveyed organisations claim to have a clear and well-designed employer branding strategy in place while 20 per cent plan to build one in the next six months.

In 2012, our employer branding study

showed that only 25 per cent employers had a clearly defined strategy in place. This is a big achievement for India Inc.

Moreover, the need to have an employer branding strategy in place is not confined to large organisations. Small organisations too are embracing the practice and acknowledging its benefits.

Of all large companies (with 1,000 or more employees) that took part in the survey, nearly 60 per cent said they have a clear employer branding strategy.

About 75 per cent mid-sized and 63 per cent small-sized companies also claimed to have a winning employer branding strategy in place, reveals the TimesJobs.com survey.

TimesJobs.com survey: Employer Branding

[ THE EMPLOYER PERSPECTIVE ]

33%74%My firm’s employer branding

strategy is successful55% from small and

mid-sized organisations

45% from large organisations

36% from small and mid-sized organisations

64% from large organisations

56%Outsourcing the

strategy would be better38%

56%Social media an effective

branding channel68%

44%32%

30%

Budget is the

biggest challenge62% Shortage of funds

a hinderance

EMPLOYER EMPLOYEE

Career/company rating sites are effective

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What is the biggest benefit of employer branding?

23%

37% 16%

24%Improved retention

Higher job acceptance

Quality hires

Improved engagement

n Employer branding works!Nearly 74 per cent of the surveyed

employers saw their employer branding practices as paying off results. They said it was leading to quality hires, better job acceptance and improved retention and engagement.

Quality hires, in fact, are considered as the biggest advantage of a successful employer branding strategy by nearly 37 per cent of the surveyed oragnisations while 24 per cent consider better job acceptance and 23 per cent consider improvement in retention rates as the biggest advantage of the practice, shows the survey.

About 16 per cent employers feel effective employer branding helps improve engagement rates.

Nearly 42 per cent large, 58 per cent mid and small-sized organisations consider their employer branding strategy is effective in engaging and retaining employees, finds the TimesJobs.com survey.

Interestingly, an increasing number of small and mid-sized organisations found their employer branding strategy to be successful. About 55 per cent of the small and mid-sized organisations term their employer branding strategy successful, finds the study.

n Newer metricsThe survey revealed that it’s not

only numbers that organisation are relying on while calculating return on investment of their employer branding strategies, and most employers go for softer metrics to assess the long-term benefits of the practice.

Nearly 59 per cent organisations are looking at engagement rates and 47 per cent consider quality of hire while calculating return on investment on their employer branding strategy, finds the TimesJobs.com study.

n Overcoming hurdlesAccording to over 70 per cent of

the organisations, budget is no more a constraint for planning and implementing employer branding strategies. This was one of the key roadblocks in successful implementation of an employer branding plan in

2012, as told by nearly 40 per cent of surveyed organisations.

However, what’s constant is the lack of vision and clarity which is seen as the primary challenge in realising the potential of proper employer branding.

Nearly 68 per cent of the organisations feel ambiguity related to vision and objective of the process were the main hurdles to successful implementation and completion of an employer branding plan. This was also the case three years ago, when TimesJobs.com conducted the first employer branding survey.(2012 survey link: http://bit.do/empbranding)

While employers are gung-ho about their employer branding strategies and are even acknowledging success, is there a gap between what employers think and what employees feel about their employer’s brand? Is the intended message crossing over to what employees see and feel?

Perhaps not, shows the TimesJobs survey.

While most organisations think they have a winning employer branding strategy at hand, nearly 67 per cent surveyed employees don’t feel so.

These employees rate their organisation’s branding strategy as not much convincing. About 23 per cent rate it as convincing, while 10 per cent label it as poor, finds the TimesJobs.com study.

In fact, only 42 per cent of the surveyed employees said they will recommend their company to a friend.

While 56 per cent employees from tier I and II cities find their employer branding successful, only 32 per cent employees from large organisations feel so.

The current branding strategies appeal to experienced professionals but entry and mid-level candidates are not quite happy with them.

[ The Employee Take ]

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74%

5%

21%

Yes

No

Not sure

Do you have a clear employer branding strategy?

Are you content with your company’s employer branding strategy?

67% 33%

YesNo

64%

16%

20%

Yes

No

In the pipeline

Do you have a clear employer branding strategy?

Would you recommend your employer to a friend?

58% 42%

YesNo

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Employer Branding: Startup vs Big Company

‘Entrepreneurial experience attracts talent to startups’

‘EVP should be aspirational but authentic’

THERE is a lot of difference between employer branding for a startup and an established company. In an established company, customers (or prospective

employees) have a product brand to instantly connect with. Their employer brand and employee value proposition is derived from the consumer brands. When we started Urban Ladder, the biggest challenge was that nobody knew about it. It has no product in the market to derive the employer brand. What attracted talent to startups is the whole entrepreneurial experience. The workforce in general was in a state of fatigue because of doing the same job again and again. But in a startup, the contents of the job change on an hourly or a weekly basis. It’s the ecosystem and environment of startups that eventually become employee value propositions (EVP).

Employer branding tools What has worked best for us in terms of employer branding is reaching out to campuses early. For lateral hires, we used channels/forums such as Quora and LinkedIn. Most importantly, we’ve used word-of-mouth to reach out to the desired talent. We highlight our work culture and opportunity of working with passionate and like-minded people as our unique EVP.

The perception gap There can never be 100 per cent match in an employer’s projection and in the employees’ expectations. As there are many finer elements to judge and explain from either sides. For instance, you would never able to judge a company’s culture till you join them. And no matter how much you maximise your assessment, a 10-15 per cent grey area remains. I will say the larger the organisation, the longer it will take to bridge the gap to make best hire decision for employers and choose the right employer.

EMPLOYER branding is actually unique to every organisation. While it is not an issue with established companies to create a brand connect with consumers

(talent), startups take more time to articulate their brand. While the overall approach towards talent remains same for startups and established organisations, the difference

comes in communication. It is easier for startups to manage the change internally and in external communication and get aligned with the brand.

In an established company, there should be no dissonance in the how brand is lived and perceived internally. The brand has to be alive internally to be promoted through word-of-mouth by employees. Managing communication internally and externally and authenticating the brand is essential in employer branding strategy for an established company.

Employee value propositionWhile crafting our branding strategy and employee value proposition a year ago, we kept all elements which have made brand Godrej successful. We still kept flexibility of changing it as per our needs. We considered what people are looking for, used data to get trends and engaged leadership team in designing it. The success mantra of creating a unique EVP is to keep it aspirational but authentic.

Branding tools We have three pillars as part of our strategy:First, our employees can choose a career from across our businesses in FMCG, real estate, agri, chemicals and gourmet retail in 18 countries. Second, we bet on potential, not experience, and so an employee will get a variety of challenging opportunities early on. Third, we believe that passionate, rounded individuals with diverse interests make for better Godrejites. For instance, we have not determined the number of sick leaves an employee can take in a year.

(As told to Neha Singh Verma)

Sumit Mitra, Head-Group HR, Godrej

Geetika Mehta, Director HR, Urban Ladder

VIEWPOINT

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THE Indian market, especially the e-commerce market, is expanding at a fast pace. It has not only generated new jobs but also perked up

salaries. This evolving market has led to a war for talent too and companies do not have an option but to brand themselves in an innovative way if they want to attract and retain top talent.

There has been a seismic shift in the business environment and human capital is increasingly replacing financial capital as the primary promoter of growth and profitability. For companies, this has meant that attracting, developing and retaining talent has become the primary imperative.

However, high performers have virtually unlimited opportunities and as demand outstrips supply, it has become increasingly difficult to motivate and retain them. To enhance their value chain and bring value to the customer, the companies should understand the following: Why do people stay with your company? Why do people want to work for your company?

Putting people first The key is to put people first, to drive

employee engagement and profitability. Employer branding not just attracts

new talent but also creates satisfaction for current employees and making them your brand ambassadors.

Organisations should not assume that hefty pay checks and regular bonuses would be the most important things for employees. Today, employees are more entrepreneurial in nature; what they want most is a chance to make a difference. And thus, along with the changing employee value proposition, the parameters for employer branding need to change.

Employees now want a purpose at work; they want clearly defined goals and the autonomy and trust to achieve

those goals. Thus by enhancing the bar on employer branding, we are actually putting pressure on ourselves to be the employer of choice. Also, employer branding should no longer be a HR-driven initiative but everyone’s responsibility, starting with the organisation’s leadership.

Bridging the gap To bridge the gap between what the

employer gives and what the employees perceive, everyone in the organisation - from the leadership team to the frontline managers - should live the brand in both words and action.

At Jabong, the major chunk of hiring includes more of college graduates and less of laterals. These are graduates from tier 1 technology and MBA institutes who are in no dearth of opportunities. We have to offer them the right environment, include them as members and provide them the full freedom to challenge the status quo, work towards creating new solutions, be proactive and this has to start with the existing employees first.

We have to work hard to make them our brand ambassadors as both positive and negative impressions of the organisation would be carried by employees, friends, connections and complete strangers on Twitter to Facebook to LinkedIn.

Empowering employees At our company, we have included this

as one of our core values to empower the

employees. Our employees are not only our torchbearers but they also actively participate in the referral programme to refer their friends.

We have introduced various initiatives where we try to connect with employees and understand them. Even small steps such as going to the employees proactively and understanding their issues create a big difference.

The young generation is also looking for more cross functional bonding. Hence we have organised sports activities such as Jabong Premier League (cricket competition), Smash It (badminton competition) and outbound training.

Providing platform Also, we are connecting with our future

and former employees. For the young graduates who are selected from campus we have the Young Leadership Program where we send them communication from senior leadership and have several competitions to provide a platform for them to connect among themselves and with the organisation before joining.

We have also launched an alumni club for our ex-employees where we keep them posted on the latest happenings at the company through a Facebook page. This not only helps us to connect with ex-employees but also provides a great platform for employer branding particularly for re-hires or referrals.

Employer branding should not just be a marketing gimmick. It should be sustainable. To do this successfully, we have to innovate in our measures to create an employer brand and engage employees effectively. It should reflect in the way we do our business, interact with customers, engage with our employees and do our business.

Ashu Malhotra

is senior VP-HR, Jabong.com

Why employer branding matters now more than ever

Guest column

Employees now want a purpose at work; they want clearly

defined goals and the autonomy and trust to

achieve those goals

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TimesJobs.com Bureau

WHAT are the challenges employers face today in terms of learning and development of employees? To explore

how companies and their HR leaderships are finding solutions, TimesJobs organised a Learning & Employee Development Conclave 2015 in association with ITM Executive Education Centre in Mumbai on May 22.

HR leaders from petrochemical, banking, IT, hospitality and education spoke at the event and interacted with audience members comprising of HR managers from across industries.

Starting off the discussion, Harsh Bhosale, senior vice president and head- Human Resources, Essar Oil, said the challenges in his sector included managing talent in senior level as well as junior level given the nature of the oil business.

He also said the aim is to create an urge within employees to learn. “Learning is more inside-out. The challenge is to create that urge to learn and convert training into learning. Then the value additions come,” he said.

Arvind N. Agrawal, management board member and president-Corporate Development & Human Resources, RPG Enterprises, said the challenge was

coming from global markets. “So making mindsets (of employees) global is the single biggest challenge. The second is preparing people for managing scale and complexities and the third is the rising cost of the people -- whether it’s labour or skill management.”

RV Balasubramaniam Iyer, VP-Learning & Development, Reliance Jio Infocomm, said companies are still not sure how to deal with the learning audience. He said there is a need for a universal learning management system that works for everybody across the country.

For Mayur Satyavrat, senior vice president and head-learning and organisation development, RBL Bank, the battle is to find and train people for the unique roles within the company. “”What is my strategy that will cater to these roles multiplied by that many skill metrics? One has to find the answer to build the competitive advantage.”

The other challenge, Satyavrat said, was to make learning and skilling affordable, real-time and cost-effective. “Business is becoming impatient. Every day is an opportunity cost for them,” he said.

Prof RSS Mani, vice president - Institutional Development, ITM Group of Institutions, said companies need to build emotional bonds with the employees. “Many companies have this feeling: I often train employees but

they leave. But what if you don’t train them and they don’t leave. So you are left with a set of people who are not able to contribute productively to the organisation.” He said that Gen Z was also looking for certification for learning.

Speaking about the hospitality industry, Prashant Khullar, VP-HR, Mahindra Holidays, said their domain was about people serving people. “So our USP is to make every moment magical.”

He said that to achieve this, the group has set up academies that address skills and competencies across the business.

“We are expanding into rural areas and we send recruitment teams to smallest villages to find right talent, bring them on board and put them through the programmes.”

Nitinchandra Shende, global head-Talent Management, Persistent Systems, said in their company, the focus is on making individuals take up ownerships. “The aim is to make them learn on their own; how they are employing the skills on the job. The individuals are given a problem statement and they contest among themselves. So we give ownership of learning,” he said.

The speakers agreed that effective and timely employee training and learning and skill development was fast becoming vital for the growth of organisations.

Employee skilling and learning vital for business growth, say HR leaders

Learning & Employee Development Conclave 2015, Mumbai

How does employer branding differ for a startup and an established company?Employer branding is essentially your reputation or image as an employer. So every company has an employer brand whether you invest in it or not (big-small, old-new or social-unsocial does not matter). There is no difference between a startup and an established company except that the scale of employer brand advertising or its awareness varies. There was a time when startups had to struggle to build their brands. But in today’s fast-paced, entrepreneurial and venture capitalist-funded world, startups have the money and the media mileage. They should capitalise on this opportunity and start very early on their employer branding journey.

What are the branding tools your company has been using? Have they given the desired results?We have been effectively using thought leadership events and PR as our engine for employer branding. Our biggest employer value proposition was our hold on trends, our culture and path-breaking work. We brought all of these on one stage and launched our premium thought leadership forums ‘Xperience Infinite’ and ‘Redefining Perspectives’ and claimed the white-spot in the new breed agency and capital and

commodities industry. We have seen a five-fold increase in

applicants, a 45 per cent increase in referral hiring, a 60 per cent

reduction in hiring costs, a 50 per cent reduction in hire loss, a 3 per cent reduction in new hire attrition and a

25 per cent spike in diversity hiring.

Do you see a gap between how employees see a company and how the company projects itself as an employer?In the age of social media, this gap is blurred. Companies have to work doubly hard on maintaining their employer brand. In today’s times, you cannot claim an employer branding story that is not supported by your employees. We only communicate things that are true, core and unique to us – our people, breakthrough work and world-renowned culture. Whether you see it inside-out or outside-in, they will be the same.

What are the new employer branding tools you want to employ?We are planning to digitise our employer branding strategy. We are think mobile first and we are building our social media hiring plan. We already have a mobile career site, an events app, a host of employee apps and we will soon launch a mobile self-scheduling app for our candidates.

How can companies maintain good employee value proposition?When a company truly focuses on nurturing and developing their employees, when it is committed to their success, and when it builds a high-performance culture where employees feel valued and rewarded, they inadvertently maintain a good proposition. Employer branding starts from telling employees what you, as a company, stand for and ends with what they say about your company to their friends, family, and now social network.

(As told to Neha Singh Verma)

Interview Prashant Bhatnagar VP- Hiring & Staffing,

SapientNitro India

‘Don’t leave your employer branding channel unattended’

The Dosn Identify three things unique to your companyn Define your focused talent and their driversn Decide the engine you’ll use to talk about your

employer brand n Set up a core team to manage your employer branding The Don’tsn Don’t leave your employer branding

channel unattendedn Don’t just use employer branding for talent acquisitionn Don’t wait for dollar investment from the CFO; repurpose your budget

Disclaimer: Information provided in this newsletter shall not be reproduced, published, re-sold or otherwise distributed inany medium without the prior written permission of TimesJobs.com and a clear acknowledgement to TimesJobs.com.Contact: TJinsite, TimesJobs.com, Plot No 6, Sector 16A, Film City, Noida, 201301. Write in to editor@timesjobs.com

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In today’s times, you cannot claim an employer branding story that is not supported by your employees”