What I learnt from Randstad Employer Brand Research REBR (2022) Awards Event

Took part in the exclusive session on 21st July, 2022, designed by #ETHRWorld in partnership with #Randstad to facilitate and showcase the inspirational stories of the winners of Randstad Employer Brand Research (2022) award. It was a productive one-and-half-hour session where I got an opportunity to listen to the champions of the top employer brands of 2022. Before I share my learnings, I would like to congratulate the winners:

Microsoft | Mercedes-Benz | Amazon - Congratulations to be chosen as India’s most attractive employer brands at Randstad Employer Brand Research (REBR) 2022. Microsoft India scored very high on?financial health, strong reputation and attractive salary & benefits?– the top 3 Employee Value?Proposition (EVP) drivers for the organization, as per the survey. Mercedes Benz India?climbed up rankings this year?to emerge as the?first runner-up, followed by?Amazon India,?the e-commerce giant.

Here are the excerpts from the session:

The Big Debate was about - "Is Employer Branding an Answer to the Great Reshuffle? In an era where organizations are re-imagining the meaning of work, workplace, and workforce, a bigger quest is to assess if our employer branding initiatives are up to the mark? Needless to say in 2022 and beyond employer branding will be more important than ever. As organizations reel under the pressure of winning the talent war, focusing on creating a sustainable and scalable employer brand will be an imperative and not an option. Having said that, an interesting perspective would be to decipher if investing in the employer brand will really make a cut?"

There were three key discussion points:

(1) What are the trends that will pave way for combating the Great Reshuffle?

Top trends that caught everyone's eye are:

• Work-life-balance - 1st on employees agenda but 8th on employers
• Job loss fear is real, 51%?of employees who are?afraid of losing their job,?plan to?change their?job in the first half of 2022.
• As much as 92% would consider changing jobs without salary hike if the employer reputation is higher.
• 9 out of 10 Indian employees?consider?training and personal career growth very important?to them.

(You can checkout the full report here - Randstad.in)

What did the leaders on the panel had to say about these trends:

• Anjali Raghuvanshi, Chief People Officer, Randstad India said, "The trend is maturing and mid-large companies are still figuring out the importance of Employer Branding. In the post-pandemic world, 60-70% of offer dropouts are because there's no option of flexibility of WFH. Candidates do look upon things like employer's core values towards giving back to society (CSR), employee-well-being etc., before they make their choice.
• Mahesh Medhekar, Vice President Human Resources at Mercedes-Benz Research and Development India, made an interesting point. He pointed out that consumer's (candidates in this case) perception of the offering from a brand, whether the product or service or employment drive the story of the brand. There is difference and we need to look at Product Perceptions v/s Employer Perception from Consumer's shoes. Perceptions become emotions become the choice and the trends are the reflection of how these perceptions of brands play at the back.
• Deepti Varma, HR Leader- Corporate, APAC and MENA at Amazon, said "Employers are still scratching the surface when it comes to Employer Branding. Multigenerational experiences are going to take the center stage. Working backwards from employees needs is the way and that makes EVP to keep evolving.?
• Ira Gupta, HR Head, Microsoft India, said, "Key is authenticity. The whole ecosystem (customers, employees, suppliers) must experience authenticity of a company's culture. Employees are reevaluating their work ethos and flexibility, work-life-balance and well being are going to set the stage.

(2) How organizations can plan and prepare to triumph in the talent war?

Leaders shared their views:

• ?Deepti - Happy employees are the best advocates.?
• ?Ira - Its' a journey, leaders and managers need to become role-models living the culture, making it a collective reality.
• ?Anjali - Everyone needs to own it. Every touchpoint from CEO to folks at the front office creating experience for the ecosystem.
• ?Mahesh - The Brand, EVP and Communication Process - all have to work collectively.

(3) How do you see Employer branding evolving as the key to winning the 'war for talent'?

Leaders answered:

• ?Mahesh - Employer Branding definitely helps and the need is more apparent post pandemic. He insisted at looking at the brand inside-out and shared how they started the journey. To know how to go about from point A to Point B, one needs to know where they stand. Hence they started from getting the brand audit done and then moved to target how the brand needs to be seen by 2025.
• ?Ira - Companies need to be more intentional about reinforcing the mission of the organization, making it meaningful and purposeful for employees in the virtual world.
• ?Deepti - Introduced a leadership principle, Earth's Best Employer - Safe, Productive, Fun environment for employees. Surveyed, employees of different levels within the organization. Figured 6 themes to focus that need attention making sure that experience is the key as its always evolving.
• ?Anjali - Authenticity for everyone in the ecosystem, hence carefully crafted EVP. You cant be everything for everyone, hence prioritize.

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Sabeena Ladak, Global Head-TA, Employer Brand & ALIVE Programs, Cipla was also present and she shared her experience and views around the faculty of Employer Branding. She said, "There is a clear shift in the conversations she used to have during interviews in the Pre-pandemic times v/s the interviews now in the Post Pandemic time. People are taking more time talking about Purpose, Values and Culture of the organization in the interviews, that used to be 10-15 minutes in the pre-pandemic times to now more than 30 minutes". That clearly shows the shift in what's important for the candidates. She added, the Employer Brand shouldn't be built keeping employees as focal point but for the the whole ecosystem. She laid out the 4 Pillars of employer branding:

• ?Employee Experience - fair pay, learning, respectful workplace, overall well-being not just organizing activities like fun-fridays.
• ?Adaptive Leadership - Caring and supportive on the complex issues.?
• ?Auditing Brands - Career Website, Job Descriptions and every touchpoint must convey the cultural values and core beliefs of the organization.?
• ?Consistent feedback system to be placed and attending employees' issues in the most transparent way.

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Bidisha Banerjee, Group HR, Sr VP Talent, Culture & Employer Branding, Welspun Group was present and spoke about the 8 pillars of Employer Branding:

• ?Treat employees as customers
• ?Get the company culture transformation story post pandemic
• ?Having clear EVP post pandemic
• ?Imbibing organization values into employee experience
• ?Data driven decisions constantly seeking improvements
• ?Layout constant feedback process and make it transparent
• ?Creating brands that develops multigenerational workforce
• ?Bring employee wellbeing centre-stage

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Great learnings! To summarize it all, guess almost everyone really knows what's missing in the post-pandemic era (various research reports gives you a fair idea apart from your own experiences) and what's to be done. Its just how you strategize your execution:

• Re-define your EVP - considering what's unique about your organization and which persona (beyond skill sets) would fit the bill. You don't want anyone and everyone from the entire pool to be part of the journey, while you chase your vision. Easier said than done, trick is to bring about the balance considering the target audience is multigenerational. The answer is clearly in gathering Talent Intelligence from internal and external sources which would give you the data around the demographics, the likes/dislikes, aspirations and fears of your target audience.
• Once you've the balanced EVP in place then you go to next step of creating the messaging and selecting media channels to reach the right person at the right time and right place. The trick is in creating a consistent communication (internal and external) strategy without missing out any touchpoint of the candidate / employee lifecycle.
• Once you have designed and delivered the first set of campaigns attending different demographics (freshers, laterals, leadership) across the lifecycle, its absolutely important to track the success of the campaigns to be able to optimize the effort and $ spend. This data would help build further campaigns. As the faculty is evolving, create your employer branding strategy with a Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) based execution plan.

Here are some of my earlier articles which should help in deep diving the faculty of Employer Branding:

• Rethinking Employer Branding - a step-by-step guide
• Skills one should develop to fit into the role handling Employer Branding

Concluding, I would like to thank ETHR and Randstad to organize the event, bringing the leaders together on one platform. Am sure it helped 400+ HR and Marketing folks who attended the event, learning the latest trends and listening to leaders about how they're driving Employer Branding in their respective organizations.