Great employer branding is not synonymous with great employers. What do you do?

In times of hyper-personalised ads, HR leaders suggest that candidates focus on the overall employee value proposition of an organisation. (Image Credit: Pixabay)

When Anvita Gupta (name changed) managed to land a software developer’s job at a multinational company, it was a moment of euphoria for her. She had always wondered how awesome it would be to work for a company as renowned as Google and Microsoft.

The company had received a bunch of awards for its work culture, flexibility and encouraging an “employee-friendly environment".

Soon after joining the company, Gupta was in for an eye opener. Everything she heard about the company was quite the opposite of the reality.

“The brand building was just a superglass put on to hide the reality,” says Gupta, who is just of the many jobseekers who are left disillusioned after choosing to put strong employer branding over everything else.

Candidates favour companies with strong branding, but is it the ideal way for job seekers to look at their potential employers?

What does branding entail?  

Experts say any branding effort has two key components. The first is doing good and delivering value to stakeholders including customers, employees and the community at large.

This is followed by telling the world that you are doing good and that you are creating value, says Santosh Singh, head of marketing at a multinational tech firm.

“Great brands like Nike and Apple do both,” he says, explaining that both make great products, deliver great service and position themselves as a different kind of brand that attracts employees, customers, and investors.

Not all brands do both in a synchronised fashion. “Some companies focus only on brand campaigns as is evident from their ad spends as a percentage of revenue even though their actual process improvements, accreditations, revenue growth and attrition lag,” Singh says.

The reason is simple. Strong branding helps companies to a great extent. Staffing firm Randstad found that 92 percent of Indian employees would consider changing jobs without a salary hike if the new employer enjoys a better reputation.

Walk the talk  

As strong product advertising needs to be backed by equally strong products, employer branding demands the same.

“Your customers are your best brand ambassadors,” says Kriti Aggarwal, Chief Product Officer at e-commerce firm StoreHippo, comparing employees and customers.

“There's a direct link here. Happy employees equal happy customers and vice versa. It's not quite as simple as that, but as a generalisation, it's not too far off,” says Joel Paul, Managing Director for Asia-Pacific and Japan (APJ) at talent specialist Randstad RiseSmart.

Human Resource experts agree employees are the driving factor behind customer satisfaction – employee interactions set the tone for a positive or negative customer experience. It means when employees aren't happy at work, their interactions with customers can, and almost always will, suffer.

Go beyond company-sponsored branding 

In times of hyper-personalised ads, HR leaders suggest that candidates focus on the overall employee value proposition of an organisation.

“Today, the internet or social media is the go-to place for the organisation for branding as well as for the candidates to deep dive into the brands. I would recommend that one should go beyond the company-sponsored branding messages,” says Namdev More, Senior Director, People Business Partner at software firm Teradata.

More recommends making a list of things you like and admire about the company you currently work for and comparing them with the brand you are considering or pursuing.

“During the interview process, talk to as many people as possible and ask specific, well-prepared questions to validate your perceptions,” he says.

Value and ethics

Paul of Randstad RiseSmart suggests that the tone, quality, and frequency of communications about important issues will show how vital the connection is for a brand with its purported values and ethics.

“How do your interviewer and receptionist interact? How well the interviewer answers about the company, work culture, and delivery expectations, are some of the important aspects to look into,” he adds.

Candidates must invest a lot of time in finding out about internal branding by talking to people who work in the company or have left the company recently, advises Santosh Singh.

“They should look at feedback sites like Indeed and Glassdoor. They should look at ratings at accreditation companies like Great Place to Work,” he adds.

This goes without saying -- always study a company's annual report's employees section to learn about people initiatives, investments and costs associated with employee benefits.

A conversation with a few persons can either make the company seem like utopia or hell! But average work tenure can reflect job satisfaction, the corporate environment and the degree of comfort an individual employee feels within it.

“An employee’s inertia is strengthened or weakened by the degree of compatibility between his work ethic and the values for which the company stands,” says employer branding expert Utkarsh Tripathi.

Before making a final decision, he says candidates should step back and think expansively about their objectives.

Look for CSR 

When 56 percent of employees feel their jobs should help them “contribute more” to society as per Gartner, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) makes even more sense.

“Employees feeling good about an organisation's CSR may lead to positive employee experience (EX) resulting in a more productive and happy workplace,” says Dr Deepak Sharma, Associate Professor at Bengaluru-based Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS).

Employees of today to ‘feel good’ have also to be made to ‘think good’ about the organisation through its systems, processes and actions, he adds.