Southwest Airlines are “Work hard,” “Have FUN,” and “Treat others with respect.”
If your organization has a defined purpose, vision, and values, these statements provide an important starting point for defining your employment offer and employer brand strategy, with clear alignment between the company’s core beliefs and the more specific proposition you’re setting out for current and potential employees.
TAKING AN INSIDE-OUT APPROACH
In Built to Last, James Collins and Jerry Porras shared the results from their study of 18 enduringly successful companies, commonly referred to by other CEOs as “visionary,” including P&G, American Express, Boeing, Walt Disney, and HP. One of the clearest characteristics they found within these companies was a very clear sense of purpose and shared values:
Like the fundamental ideals of a great nation, core ideology in a visionary company is a set of basic precepts that plant a fixed stake in the ground: “This is who we are, this is what we stand for.” Like the guiding principles embodied in the American Declaration of Independence (“We hold these truths to be self-evident …”) and echoed 87 years later in the Gettysburg Address (“A nation conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal”).
From a corporate brand perspective, this core ideology can also be described as the organization’s core proposition. This ideally combines the organization’s statement of purpose and its core values, which Collins and Porras define as follows:
Purpose: The organization’s fundamental reasons for existence beyond just making money – a perpetual guiding star on the horizon; not to be confused with specific goals or business strategies.
Core Values: The organization’s essential and enduring tenets – a small set of general guiding principles; not to be compromised for financial gain or short-term expediency.
You can find plenty of other definitions of purpose and value, but from our perspective, these are the clearest and most useful. Employer brand development should always start with a clear understanding of corporate purpose and values, because these core elements of the corporate ethos should be reflected throughout everything the organization says and does.
Maintaining consistency with the customer brand depends on how closely the corporate and customer brands are associated:
❯❯ Corporate and customer brands are identical or nearly identical. In many organizations the corporate brand name is carried by the company’s products and services, as is the case with Apple, Shell, Vodafone, and Deloitte.
❯❯ The corporate brand name is carried by a leading product. In some cases, the company name is carried by the leading product or service within a wider product portfolio (for example, L’Oréal, Coca-Cola, and Ferrero).
❯❯ The corporate brand name is loosely, if at all, associated with products. The corporate brand name may not be used directly in naming any of the company’s products or services, as is the case with Unilever and P&G.
After recognizing the relationship between your organization’s corporate and customer brands, you’re ready to start thinking about how closely you want to align your employer brand with the existing brand associations.
When corporate and customer brands overlap to some degree, start with an understanding of how the products and services are perceived and the kind of brand associations the customer brand marketing team is trying to promote. Then decide how closely your organization’s employer brand should be associated with its existing corporate and customer brand identities.
To build an employer brand that’s closely associated with your organization’s corporate and customer brand identities, develop a relationship with the customer brand marketing team to agree how you can support each other in building a brand reputation that works for both employees and customers.
If your employees have needs that differ from those of your customers, create an EVP, as explained in Chapter 4. The EVP draws focus to the attributes of your organization that are most relevant to the talent you’re recruiting. Identify which brand attributes the customer and employer brands can and should share. For example, at McDonald’s, certain brand associations are shared between customers and employees, while others are not:
❯❯ Family feel: Shared by customers and employees
❯❯ Low prices: Valued by customers, but likely to discourage candidates
❯❯ Future focused: Valued by employees, but neutral for customers
If your organization has a corporate brand along with multiple customer brands, consider the degree to which you want to align your employer brand marketing within specific business units with the overall corporate brand or with the more immediate customer brand that those employees will be working for. For example, would candidates prefer to work for Bentley or Volkswagen (the parent company)? Would they prefer to work for Ben & Jerry’s or Unilever?
Discuss the options with your organization’s senior management team. A strong desire to build the corporate brand may influence you to align your employer brand more closely with the corporate brand. On the other hand, a desire to maintain the distinct character of individual brands within the portfolio (including strong employee identification with the customer brand) may encourage you to create a range of employer brands with the corporate employer brand playing a more supporting role.
