Thursday, August 14, 2008

Employer of Choice brands can attract talent

... but you need Leaders of Choice to retain them.

Companies believe that becoming an Employer of Choice (EoC) will somehow help attract and retain talent. Unfortunately, only 50% of this hypothesis is true.

It is fairly well established that EoC status helps attraction. Your unsolicited applications will climb by over 40%, your brand image in key talent catchments will improve, and your ability to pull in better people (conversion rates) will see an uptick.

But what confounds companies is that attrition rates prove to be far more stubborn. In fact, with some companies who win such awards, competitors start targeting their people more actively, leading to temporary increases in attrition.

The reality is that 'people join companies but leave managers'. We have known this to be true for decades. The new EoC brand campaign that you just funded will not impress the people who already work for you. What they need is not an EVP statement but better managers / leaders to work with.

What are you doing about that? How many of your people leaders would qualify as 'leaders of choice'. We know that 'leaders of choice' do 5 things exceptionally well :

1. Talent scouting - they regularly network inside the company and across several external communities and scout for good talent. At any given time, they will be able to build a list of people they know that we should be trying to hire.

2. Relationships beyond the team - they are constantly building deep and personal relationships with talent in their team as well as outside. They maintain long and meaningful relationships with subordinates they may have managed a long time ago but have moved on to do other things. They are sought out by young employees as coaches / mentors.

3. Creating authentic and trusting environments - these leaders are able to create open, transparent, authentic and trusting environments at work. They behave in a consistent and open manner, actively seek and provide feedback and are quick to admit mistakes. They talk straight, have clear views on issues and will 'tell it as they see it'. As an employee you will always know where you stand with these leaders.

4. Bias for development - they bring a bias for development over utilization. What this means is that they see their primary role as a leader in developing employees to be the best that they can be rather than simply utilizing employees for their own success. They take this role very seriously ... often being tough on employees who are not performing at full potential.

5. Personalizing the organizational brand - these leaders spend less time making presentations to employees on values , mission etc. and more time on 'living' these values. Over time, these leaders are seen as living examples of the companies values.

Do you have enough of these leaders in your organization?

If you don't, I suggest you take some of your budgets for the 'Employer of Choice' brand campaign and use it to build 'leaders of choice'.

Game for the switch?

2 comments:

Jemma Taylor said...

Thank you so much for this thought provoking article. We really focus on helping employers communicate better with employees.

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