Your Employment Brand
Whether you know it or not, your organization already has an employment brand. If you’ve already developed your formal employment brand, you are ahead of most. If not, now is the time to start. Here are a few examples taken from the “2009 list of Best Companies to Work For” to get you thinking:
NetApp
At NetApp we pride ourselves on our innovation and creating an environment where people can make a difference. We embrace creativity, risk taking and continuous improvement. Our company culture is defined by our core values - trust and integrity, leadership, simplicity, teamwork and synergy, going beyond, to get things done - these aspirations are at the heart of NetApp. A key differentiator for NetApp is that our employees live these values every day. These values are the strength and foundation of our culture.
Edward Jones
At Edward Jones, we're guided by a set of long-standing principles. We serve individual investors, like you. We opt for proven, long-term investing strategies instead of the latest investment fads. And, while we share information on our Web site, we believe it's more important to provide personalized attention and build relationships face to face in our local, community-based offices. Our firm was built on a foundation of principles that help guide us every day. Take a look at how these principles guide our investment decisions and client relationships. Our financial advisors make every effort to build one-on-one relationships with clients, offering personalized attention and financial guidance
Boston Consulting Group
We partner with our clients to deliver customized solutions that resolve their most significant issues and create lasting competitive advantage. Utilizing decades of industry experience and functional expertise, BCG looks beyond standard solutions to develop new insights, mobilize organizations, drive tangible results, and make companies more capable. We seek to be agents of change—for our clients, our people, and society broadly.
Google
At Google, we understand that our worldwide success results from our globally diverse workforce. In every Google office, you will find challenging projects and smart people with potential to change the world. Googlers relish the freedom to create the next generation of web technologies in an environment designed to foster collaboration, creativity, health, and happiness. Google is not a conventional company, and we don’t intend to become one. True, we share attributes with the world’s most successful organizations – a focus on innovation and smart business practices comes to mind – but even as we continue to grow, we’re committed to retaining a small-company feel. At Google, we know that every employee has something important to say, and that every employee is integral to our success. We provide individually-tailored compensation packages that can be comprised of competitive salary, bonus, and equity components, along with the opportunity to earn further financial bonuses and rewards.
Wegman’s Food Market
At Wegmans, we believe that good people, working toward a common goal, can accomplish anything they set out to do. We care about the well-being and success of every person. High standards are a way of life. We pursue excellence in everything we do.We make a difference in every community we serve. We respect and listen to our people. We empower our people to make decisions that improve their work and benefit our customers and our company.
Cisco Systems
At Cisco customers come first and an integral part of our DNA is creating long-lasting customer partnerships and working with them to identify their needs and provide solutions that support their success. The concept of solutions being driven to address specific customer challenges has been with Cisco since its inception.
Genentech
Our employees cite the chance to make a difference in the lives of patients as the number one reason they enjoy working at Genentech. In hiring new employees, we look for people who are inspired by this mission and who would fit in well with the collaborative, rigorous and entrepreneurial spirit of the company culture. Because we know that employees are critical to our success in bringing novel medicines to patients, we are dedicated to remaining a great place to work and to providing employees with programs, services and benefits that allow them to bring the best to the business and to their personal lives.
Methodist Hospital System
The Methodist Hospital is a place where your compassion gives comfort, your talent drives innovation, and your care makes a difference. Our mission is to provide high quality, cost-effective health care that delivers the best value to the people we serve in a spiritual environment of caring in association with internationally recognized teaching and research.
Goldman Sachs
Our primary responsibility is clear – to succeed on our clients’ behalf. We constantly strive to anticipate our clients’ rapidly changing needs and to develop new services to meet them. We stress creativity and imagination in everything we do, and always look for a better solution to a client’s problem. People create success, which is why we go to great lengths to attract, inspire and reward creativity and talent. As a global business, our people come from all over the world and represent different nationalities, educational backgrounds and life experiences. We welcome their unique perspectives, their energy and ideas and their willingness to learn as well as to teach. A commitment to integrity, team work and the pursuit of excellence is at the core of everything we do. As with so many who have come before us, we believe you will find at Goldman Sachs some of the richest opportunities and most interesting challenges of your life.
Nugget Market
At Nugget, nothing is as important to us as quality. (Except maybe exceptional guest service. And low prices. And huge selection. OK, so a lot of things are important to us here.) It doesn’t matter if it’s our produce, our meats, our deli foods or our grocery products. If it’s not the highest quality, it doesn’t belong in our stores. That’s one reason for our almost unreasonably lenient return policy. If you’re not happy with a product you purchase in our stores, simply bring it back, and we will replace it or give you a full refund, no questions asked. We hope our guests never have to use this policy, but we’re happy to provide it.
Today’s candidates rank brand as the second most influential factor when deciding whether to accept an offer.
Just five years ago, less than one in ten Fortune 200 companies had a dedicated role to manage the employment brand, yet today more than 25% of Fortune 200 companies have dedicated headcount and budget to the practice.
Employment branding is the practice of managing your firm’s image or reputation as an excellent place to work. Because so many factors influence how an organization is perceived, employment branding is loosely defined, yet must be addressed in today’s world.
If you haven’t sufficiently answered the question: What is it about my company that will cause A Players to jump ship and come to work for me? You have work to do.