Employer Branding continues to be as hot a topic as ever and we’ve covered it from a few angles different angles on previous podcasts. One aspect I’ve been doing a lot of research into this year is how large companies deal with the issue of EVP and employer brand consistency across different countries and different job types.
My guest this week is John Wilson the CEO and Founder of RPO WilsonHCG. WilsonHCG have offices all over the world and work with many clients on a global basis.
In the interview we discuss:
• How companies can make their employer brands globally consistently but also make sure that they resonate locally
• Which companies do this well
• Dealing with social media in multiple languages
• The difference between C-Suite perceptions and EVP reality
• The role of employee generated content in employer brand engagement
• The global impact of employee review sites
John also gives us his thoughts about the future and the commercial implications of a poor employer brand
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Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
Support for this podcast comes from Guardian Jobs. Guardian Jobs provides a range of recruitment and branding solutions with access to a monthly audience of 149 million users. They offer a range of innovative talent attraction and content options, ranging from the latest programmatic and behavioral targeting to developing content partnerships on themes such as the future of work and women in tech for organizations like Deloitte and Sky. To find out how they can help you, visit recruiters.theguardian.com that’s recruiters.theguardian.Com.
Matt Alder [00:00:58]:
Hi everyone, this is Matt Alder. Welcome to episode 50 of the Recruiting Future podcast. Before I introduce this week’s guest, I just wanted to say a massive thank you to everyone who has helped me get to the 50th episode of this podcast. Thanks to all of my guests, thanks to all of the sponsors for their support, and a huge thanks to you for listening, for sharing, and for sending me your feedback. I’m really looking forward to getting started on the next 50 episodes. So onto this week’s show. I’ve been doing a lot of research this year into the levels of consistency large companies have with their EVP and employer brand across different geographies and different types of role. My guest this week is someone who has a lot of expertise in this area. John Wilson is founder and CEO of RPO Wilson hcg. Listen on to hear his perspective on global employer branding. Hi, John. Welcome to the podcast.
John Wilson [00:02:00]:
Hey, Matt, how are you?
Matt Alder [00:02:02]:
I’m very good, Very good. It’s a nice sunny evening where I am. What about where you are?
John Wilson [00:02:07]:
It is a beautiful sunny day here in Tampa, Florida.
Matt Alder [00:02:12]:
Cool. Fantastic. Could you just start off by introducing yourself and your company so everyone can get a sense of who you are and what you do?
John Wilson [00:02:21]:
Sure. My name’s John Wilson. I am the CEO and founder of Wilson hcg. We are a global recruitment process outsourcing firm as well as a talent consulting firm based in the States. And Tampa, Florida is our global headquarters and our MIA headquarters in London.
Matt Alder [00:02:43]:
Cool. Fantastic. And what we’re sort of, sort of talking about on this episode of the show is employer branding. Because I know that’s something that you guys have, you know, do a lot of work in, have a lot of opinions, have a lot of opinions about what, what, what, what does employer branding look like in 2016? I mean, how do you think it’s changing and what, what are the sort of key issues that you’re, that you’re seeing.
John Wilson [00:03:10]:
Yeah, it’s a great question. I think a lot of that is regionally based, where some organizations have been spending money on employment branding for years and others are just in the infancy of figuring out what their strategy is. But I think the companies that really do it well, there will be a move in 2016 to evolve employment branding to be more specific as that relates to whether it be regionally based or based on function. It all comes down to how you are, how you’re perceived by the market. And lastly, I think the most important piece is organizations are starting to understand the impact on their top and bottom line of having a good versus bad employment brand.
Matt Alder [00:04:01]:
And you sort of mentioned the global thing there, which I think is. Which I think is quite interesting. I mean, I sort of talk to a lot of companies who potentially kind of have an issue with how do they get global consistency in their employer brand, but actually make it, make it resonate and be relevant on a, on a local, on a, on a local level. What in your experience is working? What are people, what are people doing to implement these global strategies in multiple markets?
John Wilson [00:04:37]:
Yeah, it’s a great question and something that we hear from our clients all the time on how do we do this? And the company is different in Singapore than it is in New York, and how do we make sure that we take those things and have the proper brand in this specific market? And what we’ve noticed in many of the companies is when we look at the employee value proposition, there usually isn’t too much variance. It really boils down to what the company stands for and what it’s like to be an employee there. However, understanding the local nuances of it. So if I have a call center in Malaysia and I have a tech center in Silicon Valley, the way that that brand should be portrayed is different. The things that would attract me to a company if I’m that software developer is different than what it would track me if I was a customer service rep in Manila. And so I think making sure you understand who your target market is and who you want to reach is key, but also making sure you’re authentic. The values that would drive people to be interested in an organization don’t have to vary as much as it’s how the message is sent and broadcast.
Matt Alder [00:06:00]:
Which companies do this? Well, do you think, do you have any examples of people who are overcoming these challenges and are resonating in the different markets?
John Wilson [00:06:14]:
Johnson and Johnson is one that I think we admire. We put out a top hundred Employment brands report every year and Johnson Johnson was number one on that list this year. And they made a pretty big jump from where they were the prior year. But a lot of things that they’re doing that I think is really impressive. One is that they lay out expectations of each role and lay out expectations of what the process is going to be like, what it will entail. They’re very consistent with the way that they talk about their innovation and their growth regardless of where it is in the world. And I think that that’s a key is that as we talked about the call center rep in Manila versus the software engineer in Silicon Valley, when you talk about innovation and growth, that’s interesting to both people. Even if their careers are very different. I think it’s important. And then one other thing that they do that I like quite a bit is the job descriptions and how they have them on their website and really has a. Goes through their entire brand is almost country specific as well as role specific. So I would say lingo or the language is very specific to the group of people that they’re trying to attract, whether that be functionally based or regionally based.
Matt Alder [00:07:44]:
And I suppose just sort of following on from that. With social media being such a big, such a big platform to, to use in the kind of employer branding messages and feedback and that kind of thing. Are you noticing, I mean, how are people doing that on a global basis in multiple languages? Is there anything that you’re seeing that’s interesting?
John Wilson [00:08:09]:
That’s a big challenge that companies face because what. And just from the different nuances in language, something can mean one thing somewhere and something very different somewhere else. And so I think that that is something that organizations will continually have to address in 2016 and beyond. But I think the key for that is to have your social media being pushed out. If it’s direct to a local market, having someone in market or who has the knowledge of that market rather than it come from a corporate office somewhere in the world and trying to drive a message to people on the other side of when language gives language could be very different and mean very different things.
Matt Alder [00:08:58]:
Yeah, I think that’s, that’s definitely a very sort of sensible approach continuing that theme a little bit. I suppose one of the things that, that I find when I’m talking to lots of companies about employer branding is that content from the employees themselves stories, you know, authentic stories about what it’s like to work there user generated from employees is playing a bigger and bigger role in the kind of employer brand engagement is that something that you’re seeing? And what would be your advice to companies in terms of how they do that and how they get more of it?
John Wilson [00:09:41]:
Yeah, without a doubt. I think the employment value proposition is the number one most important thing. And that has to be created by your employees. That’s not created by HR or marketing. It has to be created by your employees. We’ve used a tool, brandamper, that we’ve liked quite a bit, where all our employees could tell their own story. And when you take all these hundreds of stories and merge it into what is our evp, what you find out is a lot of people are telling the same story. And that was a great way we were able to develop our evp. And we have companies that have come to us in the past. One that I’ll share with you was a large furniture retailer. And when we met with their C Suite, they said, we don’t know what our employee value proposition is. All we know is what we read on Glassdoor. And what they had on Glassdoor was not very positive. So we had pushed out concepts throughout their whole organization to try to understand what their EVP was and who they were as a company. And it was amazing because most C Suite individuals think they have this great employee value proposition and everybody’s bought in. And then when you go down to the employees, it’s not. This was the opposite. The C suite thought they didn’t have one. And when the employees came back and told their story, it was so interesting because this place was this phenomenal employer that the people at the top didn’t have any clue about. So I think it’s really important to go back, talk to your employees, understand who the company is. And if you do that, the employees become not only your biggest advocates, but they become the source of authenticity and transparency. And to take that to another level is that we see companies that do talent communities very well. And many of our clients, this is an absolute must when we engage with them, is to build out a talent community. And what that means is not just for pipelining wrecks or pipelining people or putting passive candidates into something for future growth, but really what it is is an interactive community where you see people who are hired and 2014 that are interacting in the talent community with prospective candidates in 2016. And that is where an employee becomes so valuable in them being the spokesperson rather than a recruiter. Your employees become your best recruiters and your best salespeople. And often it’s not the ones that have the job title salespeople and Recruiter.
Matt Alder [00:12:37]:
That’s really interesting and interesting that you sort of talk about employees from, you know, people who sort of have been in talent communities since 2014 and all that sort of stuff. What do you think the lifespan is of a talent community? Are these literally people employers could hire years after their sort of first engagement or is there, is there a shorter lifespan?
John Wilson [00:13:00]:
Yeah, we have clients that they’re three, four years in before even knew it was called a talent community. But really set up these groups where you see companies that do it really well, join my talent community and then they go in and then next thing you know they can chat with somebody who’s a current employee of the company that’s opted into this talent community, probably when they were an applicant or looking at evaluating that company to potentially work there and whether that is through the system being able to just have a chat with them or through message board posts, but that piece of being able to interact and talk to someone who’s potentially doing the job you would be doing if you decided to work at an organization is I think extremely valuable and very, very powerful.
Matt Alder [00:13:51]:
And what role. You sort of mentioned Glassdoor already. What role do you think review sites play in employer brand and particularly kind of employer brand globally? Do you think that they are listened to more in certain countries than others? Do they play an important role? What’s your kind of view on it?
John Wilson [00:14:12]:
That’s a great question. I think it depends on, like you said, location is key in Western Europe, in the United States, North America. Overall it is, I think it’s pretty important. However, I do think it also depends on the level of role that you’re trying to recruit for. You’re looking for when you somebody’s entry level or young earlier in their career. A website like Glassdoor is extremely influential on whether they’re going to have a engage in a process and want to proceed. However, I think that we have a society that’s also smart enough to understand that good reviews and bad reviews don’t always tell the right story. I hear companies say to me all the time, well, all these people who wrote bad things about us don’t work here anymore. And they’re angry and upset and try to explain to me the situation or why they have bad reviews. And at the end of the day, I think reviews are one part of an employment brand and they have to be taken with a grain of salt, but they also should be read and understand and then the applicant should be able to ask questions. I read this on Glassdoor. Explain this to me. Is this True. Why did this happen? It’s all about transparency in a recruitment process. And that goes back to the the major pillar of an employment brand is being authentic and also being able to give access, being able to talk to an employee that currently works there, or having a recruiter that’s open to talking about things that may be online that aren’t positive. Those are all things that I think organizations need to focus on.
Matt Alder [00:16:19]:
Yeah, I completely agree with you there. Sort of Final question, final thought. What’s next? Where are things going in the future? What’s kind of on your radar when it comes to employer brand?
John Wilson [00:16:34]:
Yeah, I think we’re going to see organizations change their employment brands as we what you do in 2016 and your employment brand in 2020 may be very different. We’ve seen a client recently where we did some work for them to understand what it was in 2014 and how it’s changed so much in two years. And it’s not necessarily good or bad. It’s more on your organization evolves, the younger generation coming into the workplace, what’s driving them and how is your organization responding. So I think we need to make sure organization, I think many are is thinking of their employment brand as something dynamic rather than static. And then I also believe that your leaders inside organizations will help drive the distribution of employment brand as again they realize how important it is for their top and bottom line as an organization. I was on a call with a company yesterday and I asked the question, I said, so when I Google your company, the fifth thing that comes up on Google is your poor rating on Glassdoor. And so if I’m selecting between you and a competitor to buy it services from and your competitor has a great employment brand, I will probably select that other company because I think they treat their people better. So companies in 2016 and beyond need to understand the correlation between their revenue and profits and their employment brand.
Matt Alder [00:18:24]:
That makes perfect sense. John, thank you very much for talking to me.
John Wilson [00:18:28]:
Matt, thank you very much for having me. I really appreciate it.
Matt Alder [00:18:32]:
My thanks to John Wilson. You can subscribe to this podcast on itunes and on Stitcher. You can find all the past episodes of the show at www on that site. You can also subscribe to the mailing list and find out more about working with me. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next week with episode 51 and I hope you’ll join me.
