Employment figures take a dive – a rallying call for your employer brand

21 October 2008

The job cuts just keep on getting deeper. Pessimism is the order of the day in Australia with predictions that the ailing economy will see 200,000 jobs disappear in the next 12 months.

Optus is ready to shed 200 jobs, Westpac 450 and Optus 115, on top of recent cuts from Ford, Fairfax Media, Starbucks and Boeing. Even education is not immune, with Victoria University slashing 270 staff and La Trobe University 230.  Predictions from National Australia Bank are that unemployment could jump from 4.3% to 6% by the end of 2009, economic growth will fall to 1.25% by the middle of 2009 and interest rates will dip to around 4.5%. Not a pretty picture. Seems like quite a few Australians won’t be enjoying a happy Christmas this year.

Recruiters will have a hard job placing retrenched workers in new jobs. Only the very best are likely to get back into employment before the New Year – a situation aggravated by the many ex-pats, particularly those from the financial services industries, returning to Oz as a result of the even worse downturn in overseas countries such as the US and UK.

This is an alarm bell for all companies who value their most talented people to ensure that they have in place a strong and active employer brand, are reinforcing their commitment to employees and have great faith in the company’s strengths and opportunities for the future. In times of economic distress your top employees are the essential fabric holding the company together that must be protected at all costs in order for it to weather the storm and be in a position to make a quick recovery once conditions improve.

Although every company has an employer brand, whether they like it or not, many are ill conceived and fail to leverage accepted principles that can provide resilience in bad times and a competitive edge in good times. Challenging times like these will separate those companies with well maintained employer brands from those who are suffering with low employee morale, disengaged employees walking out the door to a more certain future, diminishing reputations, low productivity, negative perceptions of the employment proposition and loss of competitive spirit. Once conditions start to improve, a company in this position will experience extended recovery time to regain lost ground – which will prove time consuming, difficult and expensive, with high recruitment and training costs.

It makes sense for companies to review the competency of their employer brand now – is it really engaging with employees, do they recognise the company’s values and vision, is the employment promise being communicated effectively both internally and externally, are they truly inspired by the company leader, can they see a long term, secure and productive future ahead of them?

Tony Heywood is a Fellow of the Design Institute of Australia, founder of Heywood Innovation in Sydney Australia and joint founder of BrandSynergy in Singapore.
tony@heywood.com.au
www.heywood.com.au
www.brandsynergy.com.sg