Has Australian recruitment become a ‘beauty contest?
Through no fault of your own, your organisation may appear as the ‘wallflower’ to the very people you want to attract to your business. Contrary to popular belief, there is not a decrease in demand for talent because of rising unemployment. Even amongst young people, with the highest unemployment levels, good people are hard to find and even harder to hold. In the last few years, you may have even appeared to ‘let yourself go’ to the people who are already part of your organisation. Maybe it’s time for a HR ‘makeover.’
The law of attraction
If you are serious about attracting the best people to your organisation, then you need to develop a strategy to make your organisation an ‘appealing’ place to work. The best way to achieve this result is to implement an ‘employer brand strategy.’
Do the best people even know you exist?
Employers who are successfully attracting the best talent understand where they need to be to find that desired talent and how they need to communicate with them. There has been a fundamental change in the way that organisations communicate and attract potential employees of different generations. Considering that newspapers, online job sites and professional recruitment agencies may be on your radar, you may have overlooked the importance of social media to younger generations. Gen Y not only interacts with friends and colleagues on social media, they also use it as a forum to discuss the organisations they wish to work with. Experienced & highly educated Gen X’s have turned to LinkedIn to network and advance their careers. The question you need to ask yourself (if you haven’t already asked it) is ‘what impression does our social media profile create of our organisation?’
Building an employer brand profile in an era of frictionless communication
People talk. If not face-to-face, they use social media. This can work to your advantage if you’re an employer who recognises and rewards effort, as well as an employer who invests in your employee’s careers. You’d be surprised how quickly the word will get out if you’re doing the best by your employees.
Of course, the inverse is also true. If you don’t have the policies and practices in place that motivate your people, then word will get out. If that happens, you can expect aggressive recruiters to use mediums such as social media to lure away your best people.
Don’t ever let yourself be lulled into a false sense of security about how attractive your organisation is to both your existing and potential employees.
You must always be testing and maintaining your profile and (more importantly) reevaluating internal policies and processes to ensure they are in keeping with the latest best practices employed by the best employers.
What are the foundation stones of a modern employer brand strategy?
Do you have a clearly communicated internal Succession & Career Planning process? Is it supported by a Performance Management process? If not, how are you ensuring your people are not looking elsewhere for career advancement? Survey after survey indicates that learning & development opportunities are important ranking factors for employees, as well as those who are looking for career advancement outside their current organisation. Little will change in the way your employees (and potential employees) view your organisation until you start addressing these issues.
How much will this all cost?
If that’s your first question, you’re looking at this the wrong way. The question you need to be asking yourself is ‘what is the cost to my organisation not having an employer brand strategy?’ If you are like most Australian organisations, your employees are both your most valuable assets and costliest overhead, yet many organisations don’t see developing their people as key to retention and recruitment. This is a dangerously, outdated view of the employment environment. The fact is the investment required to develop and retain your people is a fraction of the cost of trying to recruit new people. What’s more losing people often results in a loss of organisational knowledge and skills.
Should I focus on team or individual development?
The answer is both. Even if your organisation doesn’t have the internal resources or experience to develop and implement your training and development solutions, organisations such as DST people do. DST people have a large, highly qualified and experience national network of trainers with an extraordinary range of specialised training packages. These packages are proven to deliver measurable change in business outcomes, as well as employee and management sentiment.
From workplace conflict management to succession planning, and almost everything in between DST people provides possibly Australia’s most comprehensive range of training and development packages delivered by arguably Australia’s largest, most experienced and highly qualified facilitators. DST people provide solutions that cover both team and individual development & training.
What should be my primary focus of my employer brand strategy?
This will change from organisation to organisation, however one option to begin this process is to meet with an organisation such as DST people to begin the review process. Sometimes it takes someone outside your organisation to give an accurate and frank evaluation of how you currently look to your employees and potential employees. If you would like to find out more call DST people now on 03 9555 9050.
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