What will be your employer reputation after the pandemic? Are you ready to answer those hard questions?

These are questions for you - CEO, Crisis Committees, HR Directors, Talent and Employer Branding teams.

One truth is known, it takes a huge amount of time to build a remarkable institutional and employer brand, and it’s even better when they are the same or match in the right way. Nevertheless, we also know reputation can be destroyed or at least shaken up in days or minutes.

Since the beginning of the pandemics we have seen companies pioneering in offering support and new ways of working all around the world – being it related to remote work or physical and mental well-being while they also guaranteed their own financial health through different levers, internal and external, as government incentives. A lot of them manage to transform their business, find a way to profit and keep their headcounts, with realistic measures that employees engage to.

I know you are familiar with some of them, like the famous Silicon Valley ones that seemed to be ahead of governments – if you are curious just take a look at the measures that Google, Facebook, Netflix and other have taken to support their employees.

But are future candidates or talents concerned about how companies have positioned themselves during this period?

I have asked my network on Linkedin the questions below few weeks ago:

Have you taken into account the employers’ positioning during Covid-19 pandemic in your job search for new opportunities?

How they answered:

•   24%  said “Yes, then I decide to apply or not”
• 14% said “Yes, but after my application”
• 37% said “Yes but merely as an information, it does not impact my application”
• 25% said “No”

Most of the survey participants have optioned for some type of information around the companies positioning and actions, even if that did not necessarily impact their decision on applying to a role. It is not possible to affirm if the economic crises and the high unemployment rates all around the world have pushed candidates to be less judicious, but this definitely shows that people will look for information about what you as a company has implemented in these last 7 to 8 months to keep your employees safe, healthy and your business also operating. This just shows, once again, that information is key on today’s recruitment funnel.

In this period, we have also seen entrepreneurship and autonomous employment as a way to support income or generate income in emerging markets.

HOW TO PROTECT AND TAKE CARE OF YOUR INSTITUTIONAL AND EMPLOYER BRAND

The answer is quite simple: understand what you have delivered to your employees – how was their own experience. To help with that, find below some additional suggestions:

-         Focus on your corporate culture and creating a sense of belonging – employees should feel part of a community even if online;

-         Communication and information should be constant and transparent, preferably sent on a weekly format;

-         Never use internal or external communication to oversell your actions – self promoting changes in internal policies, benefits and programs are perceived very badly among employees unless they are true to all of them;

-         Valorize majors taken that were aligned with the government but if you have gone one level up to what’s required or suggested by the government - this is a great opportunity to customize benefits and perks for the pandemic period.

-         On the external side, redefine your recruitment process for a 100% online approach - communicate about through your social media accounts and career website;

-         You are the one to judge if it’s the right time to over communicate about recruitment and opportunities if you might be in a redundancy process – be cautious as this can also harm your reputation;

-         Adjust your tone of voice, wording and imagines to promote this new ways of working and the special care you have with your employees. You can find some examples below;

-         Invite your employees to send testimonials about their social distancing and remote work period through photos and motivational quotes that would resonate well in your company;

-         Invite your employees to contribute through surveys or live town hall events where they share openly their view on the companies’ actions to make this period easier.

HOW TO PREPARE YOUR LEADERS?

All leaders, not only HR or Recruitment, are your companies’ face for new talents and should be ready to answer hard questions about Covid-19 anytime from the attraction phase to the hands-on recruitment process. I gathered some example of questions that might come up:

-         How the company did define the protocols and procedures to answer Covid-19?

-         Have you already started discussing about possible second or third waves?

-         Have you considered the possibility of new pandemics and new protocols?

-         How was the overall employee experience with home-office and remote work?

Did you already have a policy?

-         How the company did prepare itself for business continuity?

-         Did you have the chance to analyses what is your corporate culture supported to sustain this period and what was harmful?

-         What were the customized procedures the management and the crises committee team had to come up with to solve issues in na agile manner?

What can we ask more? What would you ask yourself?

This article has no ending as we are not sure yet when the pandemic will end or how we will need to adjust in the months to come. It’s truely a learning process where agile mindset is one of the key behaviours to take on.

I would love to know more about what you and companies are doing.

Please feel free to write additional suggestions and comments below.

Kind Regards,

Diogo Castro

Human Resources Executive and Consultant with extensive experience in the FMCG, Retail, Technology and Consulting sectors.