New Zealand’s top companies and their CEOs: Are they leading the way on LinkedIn?

LinkedIn recently published its list of the top companies to work for in New Zealand for career progression.

The top four spots all went to banks. Also represented were accounting firms, design companies and management consultants. A wide range of other industries made an appearance but conspicuous by their absence were law firms and insurance companies.

Here are LinkedIn’s top ranked 25 New Zealand companies:

?? Bank of New Zealand

?? ASB Bank

?? Westpac New Zealand

?? ANZ New Zealand

?? Spark New Zealand

?? Fonterra

?? Datacom

?? St John New Zealand

?? Countdown

?? PwC

?? Stantec

?? Les Mills International

?? Fletcher Building

?? Beca

?? BDO

?? Aurecon

?? Barfoot & Thompson

?? NZ Post

?? Deloitte

?? The New Zealand institute for Plant and Food Research

?? Fisher & Paykel Healthcare

?? Xero

?? Genesis

?? Tonkin + Taylor

?? EY

Full details of the top 25 companies in NZ can be found at https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/top-companies-2022-25-best-workplaces-grow-your-/

To compile the list, LinkedIn looked at data across seven pillars:

?? Ability to advance – tracks employee promotions within a company and when they move to a new company.

?? Skills growth – looks at how employees across the company are gaining skills while employed at the company, using standardised LinkedIn skills.

?? Company stability – tracks attrition over the past year, as well as the percentage of employees that stay at the company at least three years.

?? External opportunity – looks at?the outreach on the LinkedIn Recruiter platform across employees at the company, signalling demand for workers coming from these companies.

?? Company affinity – seeks to measure how supportive a company’s culture is and looks at connection volume on LinkedIn among employees, controlled for company size.

?? Gender diversity – measures gender parity within a company and its subsidiaries.

?? Spread of educational backgrounds – examines the variety of educational attainment among employees, from no degree up to Ph.D. levels, reflecting a commitment to recruiting a wide range of professionals.?

To be eligible, companies must have had at least 500 employees at the end of 2021 and an attrition rate no higher than 10%. Results were based on data from January to December of last year.

As a LinkedIn practitioner, I’m interested in how these companies are using LinkedIn and how well their CEOs represent them.

I’ve examined the profiles and activity of the CEOs of the first 15 of these companies, and the company pages of each – and the results were not what you would expect.

Of the CEOs of the top 15 companies in New Zealand as ranked by LinkedIn:

? Not 1 has an even adequate profile, let alone a complete one or one with the wow factor.

? Only 3 have banners on their profile – an obvious place to promote their brand.

? Only 2 could raise any recommendations and they had only one each.

? None are using the Featured section to promote their companies or their brand.

? 2 have fewer than 1000 followers and only one, Phillip Mills of Les Mills Fitness, had more than 10,000. He has a healthy 11,600+.

? Only 2 appear to be posting regularly and the posts are not great quality.

For such top-level leaders, these are less than stellar results. LinkedIn is THE social media platform for business across the globe and the leaders of every company should have the best possible presence there to represent their organisations well.

Top UK LinkedIn trainer Mark Williams said in a recent podcast and subsequent article that the personal brand of the CEO is critical to the success of most organisations and LinkedIn is the perfect place to build and maintain that brand.

He believes, and I agree, that leaders should be leading the way on LinkedIn. Doing so helps their organisations compete for talent, both new recruits and retaining their existing talent.

Andreas Jonsson, CCO of Shield, the world’s leading LinkedIn analytics?company, uses his LinkedIn profile to publicly communicate with his team and the organisation’s customers and users.

Given that our LinkedIn profiles contribute to our personal brands, having a poor one on such a highly visible platform speaks volumes about each of us.

And let’s not forget that anytime a CEO is tagged in a post, it takes people to their (poor) profile, perpetuating the message that their personal brand on LinkedIn is of no importance to them.

As leading US LinkedIn specialist, Kevin D Turner says: ‘Our digital actions now have global visibility, digital collectivity, and analytically solidify our reputation, our genuine Personal Brand.’

In terms of the LinkedIn activity of the 15 CEOs, I was interested to see:

? How many are communicating directly with their staff or customers.

? How many are posting quality content on a regular basis.

? How many are using the publishing platform to enhance their own personal brand and by extension, their public profile to advance their own careers.

? How many are promoting their companies well in their posts.

Here are my findings:

?? Only 2 are posting content regularly, the remainder are inconsistent and infrequent.

?? None are posting original thought leadership content or making any real effort to communicate to their staff or customers.

?? Most posts are reshares from the company page, promo posts or job vacancies.

?? 3 have either never posted or their last post was 2 years ago.

?? 5 have not posted in the past year.

?? 3 have never posted.

?? Ironically one person’s post, their most recent – 8 months ago – was just 3 words long. Those words? Never give up.

In short, none of the CEOs of the top 15 companies to work for in New Zealand are using the LinkedIn publishing platform with any degree of competency or skill. And the posts they are uploading are often simply re-shares with a few additional words.

Reasons this may be the case:

?? They don’t understand the power of LinkedIn.

?? They don’t see what’s in it for them so don’t see the value of the effort required.

?? They feel everyone already knows who they are and what they stand for. (If asked, I couldn’t have even named most of these CEOs which indicates they don’t have high profiles among the general population.)

?? They have teams who manage LinkedIn for the company and don’t see the need to get personally involved.

?? They don’t wish to communicate directly to their customers or staff. Or they have other channels available and don’t see the need to use LinkedIn for this.

?? They have no interest in their personal brand or don’t care what people think about them.

Andreas Jonsson of Shield says: ‘Publishing content is equal parts brand awareness and personal branding, as well as internal comms, leadership, and community at scale in public.’

In other words, ignore LinkedIn at your peril – no matter whether you are a top CEO or starting out in your career.

When it comes to the LinkedIn company pages of the top 15 organisations, I’m happier to say they are better than might have been expected given the CEOs’ profiles and activity. In fact, they bear little resemblance although they are all missing one vital element.

First, the good news:

? All companies have a strong company page.

? Follower numbers ranged from 13,000 (Beca) up to 212,000 (Fonterra), acceptable numbers.

? All pages published a good mix of interesting and visual posts. Reports were common but product or promo posts did not dominate.

? Fewer job vacancies were listed than expected.

Now, the bad news

? 2 had no local company page, instead relying on their international head office.

? 1 CEO wasn’t even connected to his company’s page.

? Only about half mentioned being on the LinkedIn Top Companies list.

? Only 2, Les Mills and Countdown, have even passable levels of engagement on posts. The rest were abysmal although shares were more common than is usual in personal posting.

? There’s no evidence any CEOs are actively involved in their company’s posts even to congratulate staff or the company on award wins or other achievements.

Assessment

The CEOs of New Zealand’s top companies as ranked by LinkedIn are making a poor job of communicating with their customers, clients, suppliers and employees. They seem to be relying on their marketing departments to do the heavy lifting.

What a gamechanger it would be if they themselves stepped up to the LinkedIn plate!

Yes, of course they’re busy. But leadership is about communication and LinkedIn is the one platform where all their stakeholders are in one place. It’s the ideal opportunity to talk about company values, their vision for the future, how they’re helping make the world a better place ?. . . and so many other topics top leaders should be discussing with their audience.

In summary, examining the performance behind the LinkedIn award has been illuminating. It’s clear there is room for considerable improvement in the presence, personal branding, activity and involvement of the CEOs on this platform.?

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