Feature Article

Leadership and Employer Branding

by David Parks - Senior Associate Employer Brand Institute

In the agrarian age, a brand was a mark on cattle to denote ownership. In the
industrial age, a brand was an imprint on machinery to denote a level of quality.
Fast-forward to today’s consumer driven, information age and branding has
become far more complex. Branding today is a strategic tool that helps companies
cut through the clutter and sea of sameness in the marketplace for products and for
people. A strong brand commands attention and evokes a connection both with
customers and employees.

It becomes the shorthand for making good choices in a complex, risky, and
confusing marketplace.

Ten years ago, the term Employer Branding was not even part of our vocabulary. My
early experience in this evolving arena was with a program called ‘Brand You’
developed by my former business partner, Tom Peters. The goal was to help
employees be the very best version of themselves through focusing on their strengths
in the workplace. Unfortunately the market interpretation was very different from
what was expected. The general perception among cautious and skeptical HR and
training buyers was that instead of building a stronger brand, ‘Brand You’ would
have a negative internal effect by helping valuable employees dust off resumes,
market themselves and get new jobs. As an early arrival to the scene of employer
branding, ‘Brand You’ had a fatal flaw - it failed to make the connection between
the individual brand and the organizational brand.

The Business Case for Employer Branding

Today, the landscape has changed dramatically; Employer Branding is now widely
accepted as a vital component of organizational success. The collective thinking of
business has matured and a clear line has been drawn between ROI and employer
branding. In 2005, Watson Wyatt conducted a study on internal communications
which found:

• Companies that communicate more effectively have a 19.4% higher market

premium.
• Shareholder returns for organizations with the most effective communications
were 57% higher then for firms with less effective communications.

The business world demands facts and figures; it needs to know the ROI before it will
invest. But here’s the paradox – brand choices are almost always determined by
emotions, not by facts and figures. Colin Mitchell captured this well in his Harvard
Business Review article ‘Selling the Brand Inside’ when he said:

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“The goal of an internal branding campaign is very similar to that of an external
campaign: to create an emotional connection to your company.”

Leaders Walk and Talk the Brand

Organization leaders play the biggest role, both strategically and behaviorally, in
defining the brand and setting the stage for delivering on the brand promise.
Leaders are - or should be - the walking talking examples of the brand values of an
organization. When Microsoft launched their external brand campaign ‘Realizing
Potential’ back in 2002, they simultaneously launched an internal leadership
development initiative. The program, spearheaded by CEO Steve Ballmer, was
called the Microsoft Leadership Bench Program. The program started with executives
examining personal values and then making connections back to the organizational
values at Microsoft. Ballmer himself set the stage for change by saying, “This is a
good time to take stock ourselves and our mission, to understand how others
perceive us, and think about how we can do a better job explaining who we are
and what matters to us.”

There is the external brand, which

“The goal of an internal branding campaign is is what customers, clients,
very similar to that of an external campaign: to shareholders, suppliers and
create an emotional connection to your prospective employees
company.” experience, and then there is the
internal. The two should be
synchronous. In a research study
exploring the interplay between personal and organizational values, clarity of
personal values was found to have most significant impact on employees’
commitment to the organization. When employee commitment is high, job
satisfaction rises correspondingly (Posner & Schmidt, 1993). With ‘Brand You’ we were
definitely on to something by starting with a personal exploration of values. Today,
the line between individual success and delivering organizational impact is very
clear.

For leaders, personal values serve as ‘guideposts.’ They shape judgments, responses
to others, and commitment to goals. They are effectively ‘Brand You.’ Your brand is
your reputation; it is what you’re known for. Think of it as a bank account – you build
credit (credibility) when you are consistent to your values. When you stray from your
values or fail to deliver on your promise, you create a debit. It denigrates your
personal brand and impacts your employer brand negatively because it affects
colleagues and customers. Studying leadership and Employer Branding counts for
little if you haven’t studied yourself and don’t know what you stand for. Leadership
development is self-development. Effective leaders show up every day and create
their brand, moment-by-moment and interaction-by-interaction.

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The Big Three
The strength of employer branding is directly linked to an organization’s ability to
gain leverage in three big areas: Attraction, Retention, and Engagement of
employees. According to a 2005 Global Workforce Study by Towers Perrin the single
biggest ‘driver’ resulting in employee satisfaction is “reputation of the company as a
good employer.” Here are three examples of companies in different industries that
illustrate the power of employer branding in action.

1. Attraction Starbucks CEO Jim Donald said in a recent NPR interview, “getting
people is our biggest challenge as we plot our growth over the next five years.”

In any given week Starbucks will open between 20 and 40 stores worldwide.
Recruiting new partners [employees] is critical to fuel this growth. The power of the
Starbucks brand and its commercial success is dazzling. Chairman Howard Schultz
best articulates it in his letter to shareholders in the 2005 annual report: “The human
connection – it’s the foundation of everything we do at Starbucks. One customer,
one barista, one community, one great cup of coffee at a time.”

What’s clear is that the strength of the Starbucks brand lies in its people.
Underscoring their commitment to employer branding, Starbucks launched a new
leadership initiative that would further enhance their leaders’ ability to live the brand
and grow the next generation of leaders. The Authentic Leader At Starbucks
launched in 2005 and is currently being deployed to its population of 140 Vice
Presidents.

2. Retention St. Agnes Medical Center employs over 2,800 in Fresno, California.
There are few industries where the pinch for attracting and retaining talent is
more acute than in health care, particularly in California.

Rick Bolton, former Senior VP of People at St. Agnes took a unique approach to
attracting and retaining talent. While his competitors were offering RNs hiring
bonuses of $6,000-8,000 or jetting off to international recruitment fairs, he put a stake
in the ground and worked on making St Agnes a “magnet for talent.” His strategy
was to focus on the reason why people leave their jobs. According to Gallup’s
ongoing research, 71% of employees leave their job due to the lack of quality of
relationship with their boss.

Bolton set to work creating a leadership development platform for managers and
executives at St Agnes. Call it leadership development or building better bosses, the
strategy paid off. In a four-year time frame, turnover reduced dramatically and St
Agnes achieved a record breaking retention rate of 93%.

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3. Engagement
One of the best examples I’ve ever witnessed of employee engagement in action
was at a tech trade show. Walking the aisles, I was suffering from brand overload as
competitors clamored to command attention. As I walked toward one particular
stand I felt a distinct change in environment. The music had a cool rhythmic beat;
the gigantic super white expo stand provided a clean backdrop highlighting the
brand in an almost temple-like way. However the thing that impressed me most was
the animated, passionate and engaging discussions taking place between
employees and prospective customers. Who was it? I am sure you’ve already
guessed - Apple Computer.

Apple has a magic touch when it comes to creating a culture where employees are
missionary driven. Extreme engagement, as illustrated by this quote from an Apple
blogger, reverses the traditional role of managers and leaders: “For many years, the
most challenging management task at Apple was keeping the employees from
working themselves to death.”

The original vision from Steve Jobs at Apple was "Man is the creator of change in this
world. As such he should be above systems and structures, and not subordinate to
them." It is no wonder that the advertising tag line of recent years is ‘Think Different.’
This captures Apple's philosophy and the leadership vision provides a license for
innovation. Vision provides meaning. Day-in-day-out leaders who articulate a clear
vision will help employees understand where the organization is headed ensure a
higher level of engagement.

Building Better Bosses

Early in my leadership development career, I acquired a term that captures precisely
the hollow version of Employer Branding. It’s called “Leadership by Lamination”. This
is when employees are given nicely laminated cards with values printed on them
that are often at odds with the actions and behaviors of their managers and leaders.
‘Pictures and poetry’ is the easy part - the hard part is consistently living the brand
values.

The role of a leader can be summarized in many ways but essentially it boils down to
four key areas:

1. Leading by example and being their true, honest and authentic selves.
2. Having a vision that engages and compels employees to go the extra mile for
the organization.
3. Enabling others by providing the tools, direction and information to do their
jobs effectively.
4. Building a community that shares and strives for the same common values.
Leaders effectively provide the ‘corporate glue’ that bonds people together.

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All four areas are vital for organizational leaders to impact and strengthen Employer
Branding. My contention is that building better bosses is indeed the key to success in
the Employer Branding arena. Executive leaders who focus a large part of their
strategy, time and budget on building better bosses will ultimately create strong, vital,
organizations that attract, retain and engage top talent.

The last word goes to my old pal Tom Peters who eloquently summarized the essence
of Employer Branding when he said: “When the brand is clearly understood by
employees, valued by employees, and embodied and expressed on a daily basis,
then you've achieved Brand Inside.“

About the author

David Parks is Vice President at Bluepoint Leadership Development and Senior

Associate of the Employer Brand Institute.

He is based in San Francisco, CA and can be reached at

[email protected]

Bluepoint Leadership Development ignites the passion and accelerates the

development of leaders at many of the world’s best known global brands such as
Microsoft, DHL, Starbucks, and Siemens. www.bluepointleadership.com

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