Employer Branding has changed significantly in the last few years. Challenges round talent availability and evolving communication trends are forcing companies to think more strategically about the way they get their message out to their markets.
We often hear about Employer Brand innovation in technology companies but how are things now working in more traditional companies? My guest this week is Euan McNair, Talent Acquisition and Employer Brand Consultant at Standard Life who are based in Edinburgh. Standard Life have been doing some interesting employer branding work recently and I know you’ll find the insights that Euan shares fascinating.
In the interview we discuss:
• Why Euan is so passionate about Employer Branding and how he defines it
• The end of job adverts and the rise of employee story telling
• Who owns Employer Brand
• Channels, data and formats
• Having a candidate centric approach
Euan also shares his view on the likely future of the Employer Brand space
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Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
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Matt Alder [00:01:08]:
Hi everyone, this is Matt Alder. Welcome to episode 97 of the Recruiting Future podcast. Employer branding has changed significantly in the last few years. Talent availability and evolving communication trends are forcing companies to think more strategically about the way they get their message out to their markets. We often hear about employer brand innovation in technology companies, but how are things working out in more traditional businesses? My guest this week is Euan McNair, Talent Acquisition and employer brand consultant at Standard Life, who are based in Edinburgh. Standard Life have been doing some really interesting employer brand work recently and I know you’ll find Euan’s insights fascinating. Hi Euan, how are you?
Euan McNair [00:01:57]:
I’m very well, thank you. How are you?
Matt Alder [00:01:59]:
Very good. Could you introduce yourself and tell everyone what you do?
Euan McNair [00:02:04]:
Sure. Hi, I’m Euan McNair. I currently work at Standard Life, do a bit of work at Standard Life Investments as well. I look after part of talent acquisition for digital and technology roles and also look after our employer brand.
Matt Alder [00:02:17]:
Now I’ve seen you sort of published and spoken a lot about employer brand recently. Why are you so passionate about employer branding?
Euan McNair [00:02:27]:
I think for me, really passionate about it because I can see the value add. It affects the bottom line of a business for me and I think traditionally, I guess hr, we always talk about bringing the outside in. I think employer brand plays a huge role in taking the inside out. And I think lucky enough to work for a business like Standard Life, the people are incredible. They’re our best asset. So let’s take them out to the marketplace and see how that resonates. So that’s worked very well. I’m sure we’ll go into that in a bit more detail, but I think for me the days are gone of simply posting a job advert and hoping that that lands in a really crowded global talent marketplace. Job ads by their very nature are inherently quite Dull and boring. So actually, can we paint a bigger picture and allow people to self select? Actually that’s a culture I could work in and I could really thrive in. Or do you know what? Actually that sector is maybe not for me. So I think the value add is. And it’s really, really easy to be passionate about it for me because when you see and hear some of the stories and some of the incredible work that some of our people do, in all honesty, it’s a real privilege to be able to take that story out. And for me it’s not just about brand, it ties into employee engagement, it’s given somebody that recognition as well. So really privileged to do it for a business like this.
Matt Alder [00:03:47]:
So could you tell us a little bit more about what the recruitment challenges.
Matt Alder [00:03:51]:
Are at Standard Life?
Euan McNair [00:03:53]:
Yeah, of course. I think the, one of the key challenges we have is a financial services institution. It’s over 190 years old and I think the way that the connotations that go with that are that actually do you know what, the offices won’t be very nice and it’s a very slow place to work and everybody’s walking about all suited and booted. It’s actually not the case. That’s why I think the employer brand aspect of what I do is even more important. It’s actually a bit of a, an upskilling of an external marketplace, but also dispelling some myths. We actually have no dress code. We have incredible offices. You said this morning, you know, the sun’s out, it’s quite rare, obviously. Look out on Edinburgh Castle. They’re in the city centre. A real diverse group of people from different backgrounds. So it’s been able to take all of that out. So there are some challenges. Yes, but if we dispel the myths correctly then that’s great. The thing that, that does though for me, and I think we spoke about it off as well as who do we compete with? So yes, we do compete with other FS organizations, investment firms, asset managers. However, we do compete against quite a lot of startups in Edinburgh. From a fintech perspective, it’s huge. And we do have, we do come up against companies like Diageo and Sky. Perhaps not what you would just assume Standard Life to compete with, but in a number of areas we do.
Matt Alder [00:05:17]:
Now I can confirm these are really nice offices and I’ve seen several people in genes. So what you’re saying is 100% in terms of employer brand? What is employer brand? What’s your definition of it?
Euan McNair [00:05:31]:
That’s a really Good question. I was actually asked that a few weeks ago as well. I think it is really just, in a word, it should just be transparency for me. I think when you look or you read anything about employer brand at the moment, a lot of people say it needs to be authentic. But I still think at some point, somebody along the line, at times, you can see certain businesses, there’s somebody who sanitizes that. It’s either something from comms or somebody employer brand. But actually I would just like to have the employees empowered to have a voice. That’s the real part for me is I think you can break employer brand down into a few different segments. But that last part for me is the most important, which is that talent brand of how do we encourage our own employees to have a voice, feel empowered to share their stories and not always do it internally, but really take that out to the external market. That, for me is the real value. And again, employer brand, I guess it is just the strategic positioning of your business to be an employer of choice, a lot of people say. But actually it’s just about that authenticity and that transparency, I think, coming through.
Matt Alder [00:06:44]:
And who kind of owns the employer brand, who should look after it, who should drive it forward.
Euan McNair [00:06:51]:
Again, another good question. I think, to be really honest, I think it should be talent acquisition. Certainly talent and od. I mean, the way that I look at it is who’s judged on an effective employer brand, I would say would be talent acquisition because we would look for more candidates, we’d look for a higher calibre, we want to affect retention. All those parts sit in our space. So I think we should own it. We know the message that we should be taking out. We know what should land. And it’s no disrespect to my colleagues and columns worked really well with them on joint projects. But I think we know our marketplace better than anybody else because we’re closer to it. So I do think that talent acquisition should own that wholly.
Matt Alder [00:07:35]:
How do you take the concept of what you’ve talked about as an employer brand and actually sort of put that into practice? How does that work?
Euan McNair [00:07:43]:
I think what we’ve done here at Standard Life is we’ve done a number of sessions with areas of the business to upskill them on what good content looks like and what really authentic content could achieve. So we’ve done that in a number of different areas. So we’ve recently relaunched some of our early careers initiatives and rather than using the job descriptions, we’ve used stories, and what we’ve done is Link that back to what our purpose is as a business, which is to invest for a better future. So especially in early careers, you can’t, you know, that strap plane sits and resonates so well in that space. And we can demonstrate that, yes, we do that for customers, but we also do it for employees. So what does you know, Joining us at the age of 16, 17, as a school leaver, what does that mean? And then being paid the living wage, how has that impacted you in and out of work? And again, the feedback that we get from people that we showcase is really strong, so it can tie into their employee engagement as well, as I mentioned. So that works really, really well. I think I’ve been, again, lucky enough to work with people in the business that actually they get what we’re trying to achieve. And it is. We need to do a bit more to attract different people from different backgrounds. Or can we cause a bit of disruption in the Edinburgh marketplace or further afield if we’re recruiting for London or globally and really just showcase some of our employees? Because again, I mentioned that earlier on, they’re our best asset. So how do we put them out there effectively so that people can actually, you know, I think you’re more inclined to read a story or watch a video about somebody’s journey than you are to read a job description, which again, inherently boring, but sometimes just a wish list of bullet points. And how realistic is it that you’re going to get someone to do 100% of that? Maybe, maybe never. So let’s tell a story and bring it to life. And I think you’ve got to bring the D and I angle into all of that as well and just really open up our business. So that’s where we, we go with it all. And again, tracking all the results at the back end, all the data from LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, any of our pages backs all of that up. And we’ve been able to, over the last two years, tweak our approach to suit, be it different times to post or different content to share, we now have a more informed view of things, which really helps shape the process.
Matt Alder [00:09:59]:
So you mentioned a few of the channels that you use there. Can you elaborate on that a little bit? So we’re sort of talking about storytelling. How does that actually work in practice? What do you do rather than advertising a job description? What’s different?
Euan McNair [00:10:18]:
Sure. So some of the things that we have done, we have given some of our employees exactly like this. We’ve interviewed them and asked them, you know, what was your Background, where did you come from and get under the skin of it a little bit. Other areas. What we’ve done is we have given people some questions and then like them, let them tell their story through answering some of those questions and been really agile in that way. And we’ve advertised jobs using these stories rather than the traditional. Please click here to apply. So we give the story and I think what we’re starting to see is a real strong caliber of people applying, but really strong engagement on all of these platforms because it is something slightly different. It’s caused a little bit of disruption. It’s not something that Standard Life had done before. And again, back to my previous point, I think people are more, well, people are inherently nosy and a little bit, you know, intrigued as to why has an FS organization just posted a blog about somebody working in customer ops? Why have they not just, you know, it’s a normal campaign, why haven’t they just put out a job advert? So it’s that intrigue as well. And I think there’s a lot of psychology and everything that we do, be IT employer, brand, talent acquisition, there’s people at the heart of it all. And actually, I think as a sector we need to do more of putting the candidate at the centre of everything we do. What do they want from us and we need to give it to them. I think HR at times can be quite guilty of this is a policy and it’s coming down from this area of the business. And you now must feel this actually, let’s empower our people again and let’s get feedback from candidates successful or unsuccessful. Did this work for you? What was your takeaway from it and help that build and evolve the proposition.
Matt Alder [00:12:00]:
You mentioned you’ve been tracking your results and optimizing what you do for a couple of years now. What surprised you the most in terms of what’s worked or what hasn’t worked?
Euan McNair [00:12:11]:
I think I was always confident that it would work. I didn’t know it would be to such an extent. So I think now where we were at probably two years ago was trying to extract content from the business, trying to raise awareness of just actually some of the things that we do, you know, we give you three days a year to go volunteering. We’ll pay you for that. Some of the stories that were coming out of that, that people were volunteering, giving something back, really, really rich, really strong young persons development network and some of the networks have been set up, LGBT allies. There’s some really, really rich content in there, some of our people. Again, this is not a promotion for Standard Life at all, but we have incredible people that do some great stuff. Can we just tell people? And I think it surprised me how quickly quite a lot of this has come out the woodwork. How many people want their story to be told. I think that’s been surprising, but also very comforting. And I think the huge takeaway for us and a lot of the time people talk about employer brands. How do you talk about the roi, how do you quantify it? We now have all of these channels that we own within talent acquisition we’re doing. We don’t really need to go through comms for any sign off. We own them from end to end and report on them. And I think where we were, so beginning of 2015 to where we are now, we had a 65% agency, Reliance, it’s now less than 5%. Our cost avoidance last year was close to one and a half million pounds on agency fees. We’ve taken a lot of our brand aspects back in house. So just having that control, it just enabled us to make really informed decisions and ones that have added value in a number of different ways.
Matt Alder [00:13:58]:
So you mentioned putting candidates at the center of everything that you do. Could you tell us a bit more about that?
Euan McNair [00:14:04]:
Yeah, sure. I don’t know if this comes from when I was at university, I always worked in customer service and retail. I don’t know if I sort of get it from there, but the way I look at a lot of attraction or engagement with talent, a lot of it for me sometimes feels like a bit of a jumbo sale or a car boot sale. We put everything out there at the one time and actually we make our candidates work really hard to go and find it. And yes, absolutely, you will get a gem along the way, but make it really hard. And I think the interesting part for me is one of the sort of analogies or stories I tell, I think, is ikea. When you go to ikea, I mean, let’s be honest, you’re going to come out with something that you never went in for. You always come out with candles. But when you go into ikea, you inherently follow their story. They take you on a journey, they show you what you probably don’t want, don’t need, and you can self select and you say, actually, I’m still going to go on this journey. And you never really get annoyed. You go on it, you go with it. But then the beauty of it, I think you see the really shiny. This is what, your living room, this is what your bedroom could look like and then you drop down and you go to the warehouse part of it where it is warts and all and you need to go and pick up what you need and take it and go and scan it. I think that’s what sort of employer brand and candidate journey and experience should be for me of this is it at very high level. You know what you could have here and this is the career development you can have and all the networks that you can join. But actually here it is told in its truest sense and here’s the warts and all. So working on both those levels I think would be the absolute ideal for any sort of brand or candidate engagement.
Matt Alder [00:15:38]:
Okay, so final question.
Matt Alder [00:15:40]:
What’s next? Where do you think the future of employer brand is? Where are you guys going next?
Matt Alder [00:15:48]:
What’s on your radar? What do the next couple of years look like?
Euan McNair [00:15:50]:
I think for me it’s a really exciting time. Again from a standard life perspective. We are going through a merger at the moment, so that will be really interesting and very exciting. As we merge with Aberdeen Asset Management, we will become a huge global player from a world class investment company perspective. So that’s what the future holds for us. It’s going to be a few years of integrating that. So that will be interesting from a brand perspective. Personally, future on the whole, I think we’re going to see a real shift in this talent brand becoming even more important and employees really shaping some of their traction strategies. I think one of the things we want to do from my graduate and intern perspective is really let some of the graduates and interns drive that attraction strategy days in the life and let them actually post what they’re doing on a day to day basis and drive it and help shape that strategy with us. So again, back to the point I made earlier on about do we ask candidates what it’s like again? I can write a great blog or a great job advert. It’s a bit of a sales pitch and people can see through it. And let’s just be honest, let’s get one of the grads doing a video blog writing pieces on what it’s actually like and what their first year has been like. So that’s where we’re going to try and take some of our early careers engagement. But I think it will become really interesting over the next two or three years and I think employees really need to be engaged in the right way to drive this forward. So really interesting few years ahead.
Matt Alder [00:17:23]:
Thank you very much for talking to me.
Euan McNair [00:17:24]:
Thank you very much.
Matt Alder [00:17:26]:
My thanks to Euan. You can subscribe to this podcast on itunes on Stitcher, or download the show app on your smartphone. Just search for Recruiting Future in your app Store. You can find all the past episodes@www.rfpodcast.com 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 and I hope you’ll join me.
