Canadian HR Reporter

CANADIAN HR REPORTER October 5, 2015 NEWS 3 "It's not so much about control- ling the messaging as it is about collaborating across areas of the business to ensure a common un- derstanding of our brand strategy at a high level — and then let the individual countries customize the strategy to help them meet the brand gaps that they see in market." It is challenging to ensure the understanding is there, she said. "We use wikis, social commu- nities to continuously share brand strategy, best practices… and to continuously evolve our thinking on the topic." Social media While employers once used so- cial media simply as another job board, top employers are strategi- cally using it to truly engage job seekers and help them learn about the workplace culture, career op- portunities and key reasons why they would want to work with them, according to Blu Ivy. ere's also been a shift in employers em- powering employees with social sharing tools so they can act as brand ambassadors to share ap- proved employer culture stories through personal accounts on so- cial media sites. And when it comes to investing in sites for the branding, LinkedIn is easily ahead (88.89 per cent), followed by Twitter (68.52 per cent), Facebook (64.81 per cent), intranet (62.96 per cent), YouTube (44.44 per cent), Glassdoor (42.59 per cent) and Instagram (22.22 per cent). "Ultimately, your employees will become brand ambassadors, if they're having a great experi- ence, and they'll start to volun- tarily post more positive things in the vernacular that you want them to talk about... on sites like Indeed and Glassdoor," said Parker. Way back in 1997, IBM ac- tively recommended employ- ees use the Internet, at a time when many others were seek- ing to restrict such access, said Faichnie. And in 2003, it made a strategic decision to embrace the blogosphere and encouraged IBMers to participate. Since then, the company has continued to advocate IBMers' responsible involvement in social media, in- ternally and externally via third party applications (such as Face- book), for sales, communication, marketing and recruiting efforts. "e goal is to make informa- tion about our company more shareable, so IBMers will amplify, comment, create content around it, contribute their expertise, en- gage with each other, their com- pany and in the communities they live and work," she said. It's important for employers to understand what are they trying to do with social media — either to take an audience that already knows them and give them a bet- ter understanding of the company or to reach people who haven't heard of them, said Donald. "And that's more of an out- reach... because if nobody has heard of you, it doesn't matter what you do through social en- gagement, they're not going to be part of that conversation unless you're doing some outreach." en, it's about figuring out the right social media platform to use for the audience you're trying to reach, and figuring out how much can be managed, he said. "Organizations often leap into social media recruiting and find they just can't maintain the inter- action or they don't have the right skills for it... so (it's about) 'How do we maintain a good, consistent flow of exchange through social?'" Measurement When it comes to measuring the return on investment of employer brand work, traditionally employ- ers have looked at markers around talent acquisition. But there are a number of metrics employers are beginning to measure around employer branding, said the re- port, such as employee engage- ment (measured by 79.1 per cent of employers), new hire retention (62.5 per cent), turnover (62.5 per cent), recognition as a top em- ployer (58.33 per cent), new hire quality (41.67 per cent), customer satisfaction (31.25 per cent), pro- ductivity (18.75 per cent), profit- ability (16.67 per cent) and market share (14.58 per cent). Employee engagement isn't necessarily a good measure, though low engagement will ob- viously have a negative impact on the brand, said Donald. "Employee engagement often has to do with what people's ex- pectations are, which aren't neces- sarily aligned, so the actual brand impression is just a little bit of a different thing." Having IBMers take responsi- bility for brand stewardship lets the company be defined not by a product or service but instead by: leadership in its markets; be- ing held in high esteem by all its audiences; corporate ethics and trust; work in support of society and communities; and the will- ingness to reinvent and transform our business, said Faichnie. "is way, everyone in the com- pany shares responsibility for the brand's success in the market. Em- ployees feel like they have a stake in that success — and a shared responsibility for brand health," she said. "We don't try to manage the brand… but we do manage our character as a business." "e goal is to make information about our company more shareable." 'It's not so much about control as collaboration' BRANDING < pg. 2

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