Many new management disciplines have risen to prominence over the last 20 years. The pattern is now familiar. First there is the seminal book heralding a new dawn of management effectiveness. Consultancies appear on the market with well-packaged implementation programmes. There are a flurry of articles, conferences and guidebooks featuring competing models and pioneering case studies. In some cases there may even be an awards programme. And then, just as people are settling down to await the results, the fickle wheel of management fortune takes another turn, and there’s a new game in town.

Employer branding is one of the new games in town. Two years ago, I made a note of the number of page references ‘employer branding’ elicited from Google. It was around 250. A few months ago I revisited Google and typed the same phrase in again. The result was 2500. A recent study by the Economist (see ‘Employer branding survey’) indicates that the concept has reached significant levels of awareness. There is also widespread evidence from the US and UK that many major companies have begun to embark on some form of employer branding programme.

In the context of my opening paragraph, the question is how long is this interest in employer branding likely to last? Is this just a fad or is it here to stay?

The fact that we have launched this site provides an obvious indication of our point of view. I would like to offer you three fundamental reasons why we believe employer branding is here to stay.

(1) Organisations increasingly recognise that they cannot take the commitment and loyalty of their employees for granted. Despite the desire to ensure that employees are broadly satisfied with their working conditions, it has largely been taken for granted that if you give people a decent job they will gratefully do your bidding. This is not so. Leading companies are fast realising that valued employees, like profitable customers, are free to make choices, to join, to engage, to commit, to stay. They are also beginning to realise that to attract the right kind of people, to encourage them to remain loyal and to perform to the best of their abilities requires a far more focused, coherent and benefit-led approach than companies have been used to providing. Given the long term trend for organisations to treat their valued employees more like valued customers, we believe that the logical conclusion for most will be to sharpen up the way in which they manage the brand that these people work for – the employer brand.

(2) Employer branding provides an effective commercial bridge between HR, internal communications and marketing. People management has long been the poor cousin of marketing management, with HR regarded by many organisations as an administrative cost centre rather than as a vital component in the creation and delivery of business value. This is fast changing. Most businesses have woken up to the vital importance to the business of recruiting, retaining and developing the right people. The service sector, particularly, has woken up to the fundamental importance of engaging employee commitment in delivering customer satisfaction and loyalty. The growing commercial emphasis of these activities is bringing HR and internal communication practice increasingly in line with the approaches and disciplines more commonly applied to the creation and delivery of external value, namely marketing and brand management.

(3) Employer branding draws on a discipline that has proven lasting value in the marketplace. Branding and brand management have evolved over time, but the central tenets of the discipline: close attention to the needs and aspirations of the target audience; focus on benefits; competitive differentiation; and the marshalling of a coherent and consistent brand experience; are as central to brand management today as they have ever been. The foremost reason why employer branding is here to stay is that in driving and sustaining people’s commitment and loyalty there has been no more effective approach than brand management. No doubt it will involve a further evolution in brand management practice. We believe that HR has as much to offer marketing as marketing to HR. Both sides can learn, both sides will benefit, and if, as we believe, the greatest net benefit will ultimately be to the business, employer branding will be here to stay.

For more guidance on how to put employer branding into practice, please visit:
www.pib.co.uk or contact richard@pib.co.uk