Employer Brand

Many organizations are fatally undermining their recruitment and retention efforts because inept or downright rude interviewers are making a negative first impression with job seekers.

For all the talk about the importance of employer brands and the difficulty in attracting talented staff, the depressing reality is that a quarter of job seekers believe that they have been badly treated by a prospective employer.

Short-sighted hiring practices are meaning that U.S companies are shooting themselves in the feet when it comes to attracting talented staff.

A company's reputation and its workplace culture are more important than pay and benefits when it comes to attracting top talent, new research has suggested.

Almost a quarter of British graduates hunting for jobs have walked away from potential employer because they had been put off by the organisation's behaviour during the recruitment process.

If you really want prepare your organisation to deal with the havoc that the newest generation of workers is causing in offices across the globe, try taking your leadership team and the HR Director shopping.

Companies are just beginning to wake up to the havoc that the newest generation of workers is causing in offices across the globe. And adapt they must, because it is they who will dominate the workforce for the next 70 years or so.

As a new study is published suggesting that working at McDonald's has a positive impact on the development of young people, the fast food giant is also using the iconic location of Piccadilly Circus in London to promote itself as a good employer.

British workplaces are becoming infested with aggressive, rude, bullying behaviour at all levels, a new study has suggested.

Private and public sector organisations in Britain are failing to keep pace with their customers' complaints, at a time when the volume of complaints and sense of urgency are rising sharply.

Hidden behind the endless talk of organisational values are profit-driven, high-pressure labour camps trading paychecks - and diminishing perks – for your soul. All of which means that uncovering a company's corporate culture is a critical task for today's job searcher. As important as the job itself.

Being able to show you have green credentials is becoming increasingly important for employers looking to become a destination of choice for today's job-seekers, new research has suggested.

As UK Businesses battle it out for the title of Best Employer, the message is that benefits, policies and mission statements mean very little if organisations don't create an authentic atmosphere of trust and communication.

Retailers looking for answers as to why holiday sales were not as high as expected this Christmas might want to look at their management styles and ask themselves why so many of their staff give their companies the thumbs down as places to work.

The immediate outlook for job-seekers may not be the only casualty following the recent, somewhat surprising nudge upwards in the unemployment figures in the UK. It could also be that the priorities for motivation and the 'employer brand' take a knock.

Now that we have identified the key drivers of employee engagement, how can we start to create – and implement - a road map for achieving outstanding organisational performance?

Employee engagement is the new Holy Grail for organisations worldwide. But what exactly does it mean? Why is it so important? And if you haven't got enough of it, how can you get some more?

Employers need to become much clearer and consistent about how they manage their workers and what they want from them if they are to make the most of their employer brand, the man who coined the term has warned.

The days of sweltering through the summer in a suit – whether male or female – may be numbered as an increasing proportion of workers are using the excuse of hot weather to dress down in offices.

Workers in the private sector have more confidence in where their organisation is going and feel greater pride in the job it is doing for customers and clients than their public sector counterparts.

For an excellent précis what our working future will look like, take a look at the 23 Theses about the future of work over on the Future of Work Blog.

Hot on the heals of a recent survey revealing that almost six out of 10 employees in the telecoms sector have experienced symptoms of over-work or burnout in the last six months, it seems that UK mobile telecoms company, O2, is doing its best to prove the grim findings right.

Traditional employment is coming under increasing pressure from the flexibility, personal convenience and personal satisfaction offered by "free agent" and entrepreneurial lifestyles.

Take a page of job ads; cut off the company logos and corporate flannel surrounding each and just read the copy relating to the job ads. You'll find it almost impossible to differentiate between them.

Last week a report from Age Wave and The Concours Group concluded that a growing number of young Americans are dissatisfied, disengaged and unproductive, to the extent that many constitute a negative influence in the workforce.

So what about brand energy? It should be all about building a 'platform of meaning' between customers and organisations. Most of what I experience however - service, communications or both - creates the sinking feeling of brand entropy.

This is the end, not the beginning or middle, of the Information Age. What comes next? It's The Age of Meaning.

In 1977, the year that Elvis died, there were 150 impersonators in the USA. Now the figure has swollen to 85,000 (including the ten member "Flying Elvi" skydiving team!) If the same rate of growth continues, Elvis impersonators will account for a third of the world's population by 2019.

As the graduate recruitment season moves into full swing, new research reveals that far too many British employers are damaging their reputations thanks to shockingly poor graduate recruitment practices.

The forces that shape consumer brands are changing. And if the Employer Brand is subjected to similar forces, we might soon be witnessing developments which will have a profound effect upon the people strategies of organisations of all sizes.

The "bowler hats and bureaucrats" image of the public sector – and the view that job cuts can be made without having a negative impact on services – is a myth, unions have argued.

The main political parties may have started whipping themselves into a fever ahead of the May 5 General Election, but a new poll has suggested that if people elected a company rather than politicians, would choose Tesco.

The reputation, brand and emotional capital of organisations is becoming increasingly important as employees begin to demand a similar level of service as they have come to expect as consumers, says employer brand specialist, Nicola Hunt.

The Sunday Times published its annual "Best Companies to Work For" list at the weekend.

The International Transport Workers' Federation has set up a website - www.ryan-be-fair.org - to offer the staff of the strongly anti-union airline Ryanair "the freedom to discuss their work, conditions and any problems they have".

Tomorrow's workers will be serial job-hoppers, more focused on quality of life than ambition and making career choices on moral and ethical grounds as much as on salary, a survey has predicted.

Being able to engage your employers really can give you an edge over your competitors, research has suggested.

Thanks to today’s Sunday Telegraph for news of the onset of hamper hostilities between arch retail rivals Carphone Warehouse and Phones4U.

Seven out of 10 UK companies have had to discipline staff because they have been viewing pornographic images on their company computers, a survey has found.

So much for 'trendy' human resource strategies. A new survey suggests that if bosses want to hang on to their talent, all they need to offer is decent pay, career progression, and a stimulating working environment.

It's nothing personal (honestly!), but as Sainsbury's are finding, once you are in the headlines for all the wrong reasons, it is very hard to get out of them (at least until the next corporate disaster comes along).

Insurance giant Legal & General has been dubbed Britain's best employer because it retains a good pension scheme, has refused to offshore jobs to India and consults with its staff on business decisions.

A hard core of employers look set to keep their final salary pension scheme open to new employees because they believe it fits their organisational culture and gives them a competitive advantage.

Corporate blogging is gaining increasing acceptance in the United States, according to a story in Business Week, and the trend looks likely to keep growing as consumers demand information in a more unvarnished way.

Ailing supermarket Sainsbury’s has provided a stark demonstration of why it is loosing market share by scrapping its staff Christmas bonus while making huge payouts to executives.

Previously the domain of consumer goods marketing, HR Directors are being initiated into concept of brand management as part of a better understanding of how to successfully create and implement employer brand strategies.

Many employers in the UK are undermining their chances of recruiting top talent by making a bad impression on potential employees during the recruitment process.

Too many workplaces in Britain are boring and unchallenging places that inspire little pride or commitment in their disenchanted employees. Little wonder so many of them want to quit.

From the Times comes this big plug for the recruitment policies of pharmaceuticals giant Glaxo Smith Kline and their radical (at least compared to many other organisations) concept of treating every job-seeker who comes their way with courtesy and respect.

Up to half of young employees recruited via graduate recruitment ‘Milk rounds’ leave UK firms within only two years according to a new study, highlighting a damaging communications gap between young workers and their managers.

Half of the world's CEOs now believe that unethical corporate behaviour poses as great a threat to their corporate reputation as having major product or service problems.

Companies in the USA are waking up to the realisation that doing more to promote work-life balance by offering flexible working, reduced work weeks and other benefits is one of the most effective ways to recruit and retain the best employees.

The first article in what looks like being a very useful three-part series looking at the role HR can play in corporate branding has just been published by the Electronic Recruiting Exchange.

If anybody needs reminding about the importance of an organisation's employees to its brand and to the bottom line, this excellent piece in the Electronic Recruiting Exchange serves as a pretty comprehensive overview.

As the job market continues to become more about ‘survival of the fittest’ rather than a ‘job for life’, loyalty is becoming a thing of the past and many people seem more prepared to do things they don’t want to do to stay in the hunt.

US brand consultancy CoreBrand and The Bank of New York are to start distributing investment research that uses brand reputation as one of the criteria for recommendations.

An organisation’s people management practices can significantly affect how its brand is perceived, according to a new report.

Employers still aren't getting it right when it comes to online recruitment. New research has revealed a startling disparity between between jobseekers' use of the web and what is actually provided by employers.

Organisations which treat candidates badly during the recruitment process have been warned that they could face a backlash affecting their business and their brands.

Increasing numbers of organisations in the UK are taking the negative impact of damaged employer branding and reputation more seriously than profitability or recession, according to a new survey.