Branding – Why Human Resources Care

by Ian Meagan, Principal Consultant, Human Resources at Executive Connections

We are all Branding?
For years organisations have been spending on branding their products through various mediums – we are all familiar with those advertisement on TV or billboards and the feelings they evoked.

Employees in the marketplace are constantly being bombarded with branded advertising to work here, join us, best jobs, etc.

But, are you communicating your distinct value proposition to future hires?

What is your Brand?
Human resource experts within organisations are focusing a great deal of their energies developing a strong employee value proposition (EVP), to attract the best talent in the marketplace.

Employees are wanting and expecting a more enjoyable working experience that represents not only their core skills, but core working values.

The challenge for HR teams is to adjust their organisations brand to facilitate employee expectations. HR teams must focus on their engagement, performance management and culture propositions, combining the organisations and employee value propositions.

How to achieve employee core value expectations
Firstly, can an organisation realistically achieve such a task, secondly why care?

The answer to both, has been the challenge and success of many organisations. The Human Resource teams across the McDonalds brand have had huge success developing unique EVP’s.

The core to achieving employee’s expectations, is to analyse data gathered through simple employee evaluations – include the recruitment process, onboarding, expectation versus reality, my job, my career needs, my unique development requirements.

The challenge for HR now is to, disseminate this information into digital data that can provide quick fire analysis for management to allow precise and realistic construction of an effective value proposition which will achieve organisation goals and customer needs/expectations.

HR must have accurate data to understand what will attract staff and retain them for the future benefit and growth of an organisation – added to the mix will be attitude, adaptability, integrity and self-motivation – core values for any employee hire.

Adaptation of future branding tools for HR
People analytics is fast becoming the most accurate tool in measuring effective EVP principles, combined with structured branding.

When used effectively by HR, data analytics provides measured dash boards that will provide effective scored information to assist and enhance effective management tools for team managers right up to Senior management/board – the result, tangible evidence and insights to provide accurate people making decisions.

The branding journey for organisations creates many challenges and investment, however, the results far outweigh any of these issues.

If you review any of the top companies to work for, the common theme will always be how the employees feel valued and respected, these companies have worked in tandem with their HR teams to achieve an effective brand image to attract talent.

2018 is in many ways a springboard for change within HR departments to challenge the employee marketplace and evoke the core values of potential employees. Organisations will be rewarded with increased productivity and far greater employee loyalty.

About the author
Ian Meagan is a high performing Human Resources consultant with over 10 year’s experience running his own business. He joined Executive Connections to grow out the HR division by assisting companies of all sizes and across all sectors with their HR recruitment requirements. Ian specialises in recruiting HR professionals at management level through to executive roles, also focusing on the following areas recruitment coordination: training/learning & development and employee engagement/compensation & benefits.
The Human Resources division has expansive and focused market knowledge, while providing a dedicated support and delivery structure from experienced HR professionals.

Executive Connections is a niche recruitment consultancy which is agile, creative and disciplined. They are constantly innovating and renovating their suite of services and range of customers. They provide a knowledgeable workforce who adopt a culture of efficiency and resilience who are internally aligned to predicted growth.