An interview with the creator of ‘Employer Brand’ - Simon Barrow

By Robert Peasnell , Head of Growth

Simon Barrow is the undisputed ‘father’ of Employer Brand – writing the first academic paper on the subject in 1996, ?with Professor Tim Ambler from London Business School. His aim from the start has been to bring the best of brand management to people at work

It was based on his experience as a FMCG brand manager, working for Knorr now a Unilever brand and then Colgate-Palmolive, where he learnt the craft of classic brand management, founded on a deep knowledge of the business and its products.

I met with Simon to get his views on how the concept of Employer Brand has evolved, its potential for business advantage and how employers needed to approach it differently.

We started by discussing differences between consumer and employer brands. Simon was clear that in the world of marketing there’s much more empirical measurement, with a greater focus on data to influence decision-making.

Despite being CEO of an advertising agency in his past, Simon is passionate that the employer brand is based on the reality of the employee experience, driven? by outstanding leadership’. In his words, “you can’t spin your way to an employer brand”.

To underline the point, he shared his dislike of the phrase ‘employer branding’ – “it has a tinge of spin and superficiality”.

We discussed how people use language loosely – referring to ‘Employer Branding’ when they really mean recruitment marketing.

Simon highlighted how the best FMCG brand managers are naturally curious with a desire to understand the wider aspects of the business they’re in and how these impact on the brands they manage. What’s more, this prepares them well for senior leadership; Simon cited several Chief Executives who started off in Brand Management.

Consumer Brand Managers have influence but no line management power and report usually to? a Marketing Director. ?In a competitive and changing world, brand management is not without risk but their mindset is to learn from these they’ll learn from these and improve.

By comparison, he believes that the HR community, while they have critical role, are often intensely risk averse which restricts their preparedness to think and act more boldly.

They need to be less insular and look to gain knowledge and experiences outside the HR function. He contests that HR runs by the rule book and established practice and yet needs to play a more powerful role in identifying the need for change across all that makes up the employment experience. They have a vital role to play in Employer Brand Management alongside other relevant functions and a close C suite relationship. A decision on who should lead EB management must depend on individual character, energy, personality and ability to earn the trust and respect? of all functions and? business units plus of course the senior team.

Simon’s very clear that in a small business it must invariably be the owner or CEO and says he leant that in in his leadership of 130 people in the ad agency. His golden rule was to achieve something very positive for the team every six weeks!

He’s seeing more companies going through M&A activity and investors starting to take much more interest in the leadership of business and the people dimension; often a critical but undervalued factor in company valuations and sale consideration.

I shared that, in my experience, employers don’t do enough around establishing baseline data and tracking impact of EB – results are often light. Did he agree and how do businesses need to change their approach?

Simon was adamant that organisations need to track and measure more.

Not just standard recruitment metrics - time to hire, cost per hire etc - but a broader range of indices including:

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• % of acceptances vs offers
• Sentiment scores eg. Glassdoor rankings
• Employee turnover – by level, business unit and function
• % of management roles filled internally.
• Organisational trust levels
• Sickness/absence levels

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To round off, we talked about HR Brand Managers needing to be experts across the employee experience, with strong views and persuasive within the business, as this is the big topic now.

The Employer Brand is a powerful differentiator when shaped by teams looking to drive radical change, not play it safe.

If you’ve any questions for Simon, he’s happy to talk: [email protected]