What is worse for your business – an empty chair or a chair with the wrong person sitting in it?

What will the employment marketplace look like in the first half of 2010? As business confidence improves it looks like it will favour the workers. In other words there will be more positions than qualified candidates, with the result that employers will struggle to create and retain the teams they crave for. Often out of desperation it is all too easy to install the wrong person with catastrophic results.

Candidates, especially professionals, increasingly pose a new question of their potential employers … What’s In It For Me?

So what do candidates want? – increasingly, financial return is not the leading priority. You need to offer much more than this.

“I want advancement, mentoring and inspirational leadership”.
“I want interesting work, flexibility and a respectful and relaxed atmosphere”.
“I prefer to work in a results-driven environment”.
“I need to work in an organisation whose morals and ethics match mine”.
“I want variety and challenges”.
“I need to know that my efforts are valued and stand for something”.
“Where will I be in 1, 3, 5 years … will I stay that long?”

Candidates insist on the truth. An employer’s eloquent and persuasive description of their company and employment opportunity must match the experience of the candidate when they start work. An employment experience is viewed as a transaction – productivity and knowledge traded for a promise.

If the position does not live up to their expectations from day one, if promises are not kept, should anticipated objectives not be achieved, then the deal is off. There is little remorse or loyalty, because other options are coming available. In short, employers are in danger of wasting a lot of time and money in the process of recruiting, hiring and training good people, only to see them walk out the door.

If the keystone to any successful business or enterprise is its people and their combined input, productivity and knowledge, then few things can be more destructive than ‘poor fit’ employees – individuals whose core values, visions, standards and objectives (either personal or professional) do not match those of the business and its leaders.

What has this to do with branding?

What is worse for your business – an empty chair or a chair with the wrong person sitting in it? Creating an effective employer brand, marketing it and believing in it can help minimise or remove both from your list of worries.

A canny employer has to think beyond the traditional job advertisement which details a salary, hours and job description or even relying on a recruitment consultant to solve your problems.

A well considered and executed employer brand will attract the right type of candidate rather than a volume response. It will help market and promote your organisation and add value to your marketing and promotional spend and activity.

Tell the truth. Work out what is truly positive and unique about your employment offer. What do you offer other than a salary and a desk? When they get home, how do you think your employees feel and talk about their day at work? How do they express your brand to family, colleagues and friends?

For many organisations employment branding is a brave step. It requires of them to look within, analyse the truth of who and what they are, listen to the positives and negatives and build a promise around the deliverables. Don’t however promise the earth if you can’t deliver it. People will leave – it will cost you time and money and your business will suffer.



Tony Heywood is a Fellow of the Design Institute of Australia, founder of Heywood Innovation in Sydney Australia with affiliates in Melbourne, Gold Coast, London, Singapore and Mumbai.
tony@heywood.com.au
www.heywood.com.au

Building your employer brand out of your EVP

Put simply, the EVP is the reason people choose to join your organisation and more importantly the reason why they stay.

A compelling EVP is a priority for any organisation looking to attract, engage and retain the cream of talent in their market. Employers known for having an industry beating EVP will become the destination of choice for high performers as we enter the recovering markets in 2010. The employer brand needs to encapsulate and communicate the very essence of the EVP. An employer’s EVP encompasses both functional components (reward and remuneration, hours of work, the physical environment) and emotional ones (“how will I feel about myself working there?”, “how will I be treated?”, “how will the culture manifest?”). Both need to be understood to truly define an organisation’s EVP.

To achieve this clear understanding, our team at Heywood Innovation engages with clients to determine their real EVP and identify areas where they may not be competitive. We achieve this by immersing them in our unique EVP process which divides the reward experience into twelve carefully defined components. When combined, these form the basis of a compelling employment experience for their employees.

Each component is thoroughly probed by a representative selection of employees. We utilise several analysis tools: teleconferencing, online survey, workshops and one-on-one interviews to suit the location and make-up of the participants.

It is this good, bad and ugly, ‘warts and all’, across-the-board insight which allows us to venture deeper. We are able to give the employer a clear view of how employees and candidates perceive their organisation and the employment experience. This provides a platform to create a compelling and effective employer brand, and confidence that all brand promises will be met. This is step one on the road to reduced attrition and positive engagement.



Tony Heywood is a Fellow of the Design Institute of Australia, founder of Heywood Innovation in Sydney Australia with affiliates in Melbourne, Gold Coast, London, Singapore and Mumbai.
tony@heywood.com.au
www.heywood.com.au

What you don’t know will hurt you the most

Over two thirds of companies survey their employees to measure engagement and identify key employee concerns or issues which may exist. A relevant and well designed survey will not only provide an employer with invaluable insight and a platform for developing HR plans but will illustrate that employee input and concerns are important – this in turn fosters loyalty and engagement.

Keeping your employees engaged in an economic downturn is critical – engaged employees perform better, are more loyal and contribute more to the organisation’s bottom line. In such times you need to work harder to motivate and retain your best people. The best talent remains mobile in spite of economic uncertainty – losing key performers, experience and intellectual property at this time can be very costly.

Getting answers to the following questions is vitally important right now and will largely determine your organisation’s ability to make real headway in 2010.

• Do you know how engaged your people are?
• Do you know who’s generating the most revenue?
• Do you know who’s thinking about leaving?
• Do you know who’s looking after your customers properly?
• Do you know who’s taking best care of delivery and customer service?
• Do you know who’s building your brand, and who’s devaluing it?
• Do you know who’s loyal and engaged?
• Do you know your longest serving employees and why?
• Do you really understand the current mood within the organisation?
• Do you really know your people well and how they perceive you and the organisation for whom they work?

During challenging times it is critical that any new employer branding initiative or change of direction can be justified in terms of ROI. Gaining insight from employees, new hires and leavers clarifies what people really like about working for your organisation. This baseline information will indicate the current state of engagement and appropriate courses of action for employers wishing to optimise productivity.

The online survey is a cost-effective and easy way to gain real insight and data from which to generate a bullet proof activity plan.

“But we only just surveyed our employees 12 months ago” you say. Employee surveys conducted more than 12 months ago are likely to now be meaningless. Markets have changed and you need to understand how the resulting insecurities have affected your employees so you can plan accordingly. Focussed insight will enable you to understand their worst fears and what it will take to win back their confidence and loyalty.

Act now, to re-engage with your workforce and find out what they are thinking. Call Tony Heywood on 02 8256 3999 or email tony@heywood.com.au for further information.



Tony Heywood is a Fellow of the Design Institute of Australia, founder of Heywood Innovation in Sydney Australia with affiliates in Melbourne, Gold Coast, London, Singapore and Mumbai.
tony@heywood.com.au
www.heywood.com.au

Mass exodus on the cards – or just media hype?

Articles appearing in the mainstream business press and various business websites are claiming that large numbers of employees, restrained and disengaged by the events of 2008/2009, are going to do some walking and head for greener pastures. They’ll do it after they’ve trawled Seek, scanned a few job ads in the paper and visited a few of those recruiting people still suffering from the great drought of 2009. It seems that a whole stream of employees will be giving their bosses the wry smile and pushing the dreaded envelope across the table in their direction. Many employers will be skeptical of the prospect of a mass exodus of employees but some surveys from the past few months suggest the situation is serious.

The ‘Chandler Macleod Post GFC Candidate Study’ suggests that 95% of employees post GFC are looking for work

The Hudson 20:20 Series report Talent Tightrope: Managing the Workplace through the Downturn, which involved 3,000 employees across Australia and New Zealand, came up with these statistics:

• 44 percent of employees indicated that employee morale had plummeted
• 32 percent of employees are genuinely concerned about losing their jobs
• 42 percent of employees said they feel their job is less secure than the same time last year
• 47 percent of employees are seeking a new role
• 56 percent of employees would consider roles they previously would not have looked at

Mark Steyn, CEO of Hudson A/NZ stated that “If employees are disgruntled or unhappy with their current roles, the moment a better opportunity presents itself they will leave. It is this danger of a mass exodus that employers must be aware of and take urgent steps to avoid.”

But wait, there’s more...

Another survey by recruitment firm Aequalis Consulting gleaned the following from 280 job seekers...

• only 22 percent are not planning to move jobs when economic recovery happens

Another survey by global recruitment consultancy Robert Half has found...

• 77 percent of professional workers expect a pay increase once the market recovers

The Corporate Leadership Council believes...

• 25 percent of high potential employees plan to quit their jobs when the upturn happens

So there you have it. Bad news for employers who can’t afford to lose good people, good news for employers wanting to recruit new talent and possibly even better news for recruitment agencies after an ‘annus horribilis’.

What does this mean for employers?

• The potential for skyrocketing recruitment and training costs.
• A need to acquire deep insight to what employees are thinking and planning right now in order to find ways to re-engage them.
• Now is the time to consider new employer brand building activities to reinvigorate positive perceptions of the employment experience and potential.

What are the priorities for employers?

Conduct an online employee survey

• discover what’s going on in employees’ minds with an online employee survey, the sooner the better

Improve internal communication

• communicate more effectively with employees to keep them informed of where the organisation is heading and its future prospects

Create a cut-through awareness and recruitment campaign

• now is the time to be ‘out there’ on candidates’ radar before the rush for talent begins and the market becomes once more highly competitive

Introduce a competent careers section on your website

• careers sections on websites will be under increasing scrutiny and must create a positive impression in the minds of candidates and graduates

Tony Heywood is a Fellow of the Design Institute of Australia, founder of Heywood Innovation in Sydney Australia with affiliates in Melbourne, Gold Coast, London, Singapore and Mumbai.
tony@heywood.com.au
www.heywood.com.au

They’ll always call Australia home

Australia’s robust economy has defied the financial downturn that has savaged many other countries around the world. The brain drain of Australian talent that escaped these shores in pursuit of fame and fortune overseas is now looking over its shoulders and recalling fond memories of home. The reality is that as more Australian companies commit to re-hiring after a long market drought the expats now see bigger employment opportunities back here while the US and Europe in the main are still floundering in a financial black hole. And so the tide turns. Recruitment agencies here are starting to receive accelerating numbers of enquiries from expats seeking new opportunities of better jobs, higher paid jobs, more job security and the opportunity to soak up the sun on a decent beach once again. Yes, there is always a seasonal shift to these shores but the expats now have more reason to return.

With new job numbers increasing by 40,000 in October pushing the unemployment rate down to 5.7 percent compared to 7.9 percent in the UK and 9.5 percent in the US, there is good reason for them to pack their bags. The Australian Bureau of Statistics claims we worked an additional 13.4 million hours last month.

Helping them in their quest to head home are Australian employers who battened down the hatches during the economic storm, hid beneath their desks, stopped communicating and ignored the golden rules of employee engagement. These are the ones whose employer brand strength has been diminishing over the months, leading to disengaged employees who are now heading for the door. Many employers are waking up to the fact that the investment needed to build a robust employer brand is far less than the cost of replacing valuable staff. An employee exodus in the coming months has even been suggested by the more notorious media commentators. Expats here they come.


Tony Heywood is a Fellow of the Design Institute of Australia, founder of Heywood Innovation in Sydney Australia with affiliates in Melbourne, Gold Coast, London, Singapore and Mumbai.
tony@heywood.com.au
www.heywood.com.au

Don’t say we didn’t tell you

I would have thought it was pretty obvious really. You should have seen it coming a mile away. You didn’t need tea leaves to give you a sign. If you’d read only a little bit of the material we’ve been pumping out these last 12 months you’d have got an inkling of what is now starting to happen. And it took those good people down at Hudson to spell it out for us. Employees are going to do some walking. Yes, you heard it first right here, unless you’ve already visited the Hudson website, read the papers today and scanned twenty or so Google-friendly blogs. They’ll do it after they’ve trawled Seek, checked out a few job ads in the paper and visited a few of those nice recruiting people. So if you’re a boss or one of those HR types, don’t come complaining to me that a whole stream of employees are giving you the wry smile and pushing the dreaded envelope across the table in your direction. I warned you. I told you 12 months ago that those organisations who build and maintain a strong employer brand will come out smelling of roses once the market recovery happens. Those who didn’t heed the warning would rue the day they stopped communicating with their employees, hid under their desk, went on a long fishing holiday and scribbled a note about a clampdown on pay rises and had their secretary pin it on the canteen notice board when everyone had gone home. Tsk tsk. For employers the news isn’t good. Evidently the Hudson 20:20 Series report Talent Tightrope: Managing the Workplace through the Downturn involved 3,000 employees (and 247 employers) across Australia and New Zealand, and goes something like this:

The good news for employers...
> more than a third of employees said they would consider a pay freeze or reducing or losing a bonus

The bad news for employers...
> in 2008 63 percent stated that an insufficient salary was the main reason for them to leave a job... in 2009 it was only 45 percent
> ‘career development considerations’ were far more important to the majority as the reason they quit their jobs
> 44 percent of employees indicated that employee morale had plummeted
> 26 percent of employers thought that workplace morale had dropped
> 35 percent of employees are increasingly concerned about the impact of the downturn on their personal circumstances
> 32 percent of employees are genuinely concerned about losing their jobs
> 42 percent of employees said they feel their job is less secure than the same time last year
> 47 percent of employees are seeking a new role
> 56 percent of employees would consider roles they previously would not have looked at

In the words of Mark Steyn, CEO of Hudson A/NZ...  “In every aspect of current workplace sentiment, whether job satisfaction, motivation, morale, perceived stress levels or job security, employers are clearly unaware of their employees’ frame of mind”. He went on to say “If employees are disgruntled or unhappy with their current roles, the moment a better opportunity presents itself they will leave. It is this danger of a mass exodus that employers must be aware of and take urgent steps to avoid.”

But wait, there’s more...

Another survey by recruitment firm Aequalis Consulting just happened. This is what they gleaned from 280 job seekers.

> 45 percent lack trust in senior management
> 62 percent were experiencing lower morale
> only 22 percent are not planning to move jobs when economic recovery happens

But wait, there’s even more... another survey by global recruitment consultancy Robert Half has found
> 77 percent of professional workers expect a pay increase once the market recovers

So there you have it. The good news for recruitment agencies is that 47 per cent of employees are seeking a new role. The bad news for employers is that 47 per cent of employees are seeking a new role. The good news for job seekers is that those plum jobs of 12 months ago are going to come back again pretty soon. The bad news for many employers is that they’re going to have plenty of envelopes sliding across the table if they haven’t got their act together.

The good news for employer branding consultants like Heywood Innovation is that...
> those organisations who fear what’s going on in employees minds had better commission an online employee survey quick smart while they’re still in their seats
> those cut-through recruitment campaigns are going to be needed again
> employers are going to need to communicate with staff again
> organisations who aren’t perceived as a good employer are going to need lots of help
> tired old intranets will need a rethink
> there is a need to create competent careers sections on many websites

As an employment branding professional I’m banking on the fact that most employers are just waking up to these facts and will probably be starting to feel a bit uneasy that bad things may be about to start happening to them. Their biggest fear is that they don’t know what employees are thinking right now.

I’ve been saying for quite a few months that “What you don’t know will hurt you the most”.

So what do I recommend you consider first?

If you’re one of these employers I recommend that you give serious consideration to an online employee survey to get inside your employees’ heads and figure out what they’re thinking and how happy they are. It may just save you from getting trodden underfoot by the stampede.

If you’re in Sydney or not too far away call me on 8256 3999 and we’ll work up a solution for you.


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

Let’s get back to business

In these recovering markets, I anticipate the following:

1 Employer emphasis is now shifting back to recruitment. After some of the toughest business conditions many organisations have ever experienced, employers realise more than ever that employees are the life blood of their organisation and can make the difference between success and failure. There is a fear however that employees have been ‘biding their time’ for the past year and may be now keen to test the recovering jobs market. A case for some urgent focus on employee engagement.

2 The ongoing strength of an organisation’s employer brand relies heavily on an ability to maintain communication with employees and address their concerns regarding the future and ongoing job security.

3 Companies are looking for ways to reduce recruitment costs. They are loathe to tolerate the high recruitment costs of previous years. Reducing costs however, is not about less communication and less marketing. It is about finding ways to be more capable and perform more recruitment tasks in-house.

4 The upturn will advantage those organisations that have used their time and resources wisely, to keep their employees informed and engaged with the company’s vision and confidence in the future.

5 A new style of company leader is emerging who is people-focused and can inspire a workforce to make deeper commitments to its employer. These newly engaged and motivated companies will be the new leaders in 2010.

6 Employer branding is increasingly recognised as an essential complement to a company’s corporate brand. An increasing proportion of advertising and marketing budgets will consequently be channelled into employee-focused activities.

7 Companies who define and strengthen their employment proposition will be favourably positioned ahead of competitors in recovering markets.

8 Recruitment companies will increasingly realise the value of employer branding to themselves and to their clients. They will stimulate closer relationships with practitioners of employer branding, particularly those with end-to-end service offerings.

9 Employees will expect their employer to be open and truthful about the employment experience and keep the promise that was made at the point of recruitment.

10 Organisations will realise that people are the essential fabric of their business and critical to future business success. Consequently they will have a deep desire to know employees’ present perception of the employment experience.



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