A Great Company is Easy to Work For

A Reputation that Precedes You

Like attracts like. It’s an old maxim, but true. We draw back to ourselves the very thing we give out. The climate of a workplace, or its “culture,” plays a big role in what attracts and retains good employees. There are any number of reasons why a company gets pegged “a great company to work for.” What kind of message does YOUR company leave behind? Here are six steps to building an employer brand that serves you well.

Assess the Current Reality—What Is It Saying About You?

What are the factors that determine a company’s public reputation? Word gets around pretty quickly. People know when a company has a high turnover rate. They know when a company’s management has a reputation for fairness. They know if the company makes a genuine effort to advance women and other minorities, or when it is simply making token gestures. They know if a company prefers to sidestep its own talent and hire from outside the organization or when they prefer to promote and develop their own people.

As a hiring manager, you may have the best of intentions and a reformer’s zeal, but your company’s reputation didn’t develop overnight, and its positive or negative repercussions can echo for years to come. The following factors have a critically negative impact on the message your company conveys to potential employees:

• Unethical business practices
• High turnover rate
• Prejudicial hiring and firing
• Poor management style
• Chronic employee burnout
• A work environment that’s too casual
• A work environment that’s too rigid
• Not enough work/life balance
• Mediocre benefits
• Compensation that’s below the industry standard
• Not family-friendly
• Lack of diversity
• Unfairness in conflict resolution

A company that’s dominated by turf wars, internal conflict, excessive hierarchical privilege, and inequitable workloads will appeal to no one.

Take Stock of Brand Perceptions

Another aspect of your company’s message involves the way you are perceived within the industry itself. It’s important that you decide not only HOW it is you want to be seen, but to determine if what you want coincides with the current perception. For example, you may view your company as a cost-effective one-stop shop for a wide spectrum of creative services. Yet the perception of your company in the industry is that you are a niche firm providing high-end graphic design. If YOUR perception and CUSTOMER perceptions are different, it’s time to look at ways to “reposition” or brand yourself differently. It’s safe to say that if there is a “disconnect” between what you think about yourself and how others think about you, a potential job candidate is also going to be confused.

Decide What Changes To Make

As a hiring manager, you need to ask yourself if there is a gap between the kind of atmosphere you would like your company to create for employees and the one that currently exists. Then, look for ways to address and change that perception.

For example, perhaps your corporate reputation is a bit stodgy and old-fashioned. Perhaps you are failing to attract the kind of young and energetic employee your company desperately needs to stay innovative and ahead of the curve. Your company’s rigid formality is sending an unappealing message to this younger, hipper demographic. What can you do to change this perception? Here are a few suggestions:

• Relax the dress code
• Offer time off after delivery on a high-pressure project
• Provide free massages to employees on Fridays
• Organize a company softball team or other social sports team
• Provide a “chill” room or lounge for employees to blow off steam and relax
• Offer other creative outlets, such as a film club or season theater tickets
• Institute an “open door policy” that makes senior management more accessible
• Offer your designers a “technology party” where they get to play and experiment with all the latest software innovations

Revising or fine-tuning your corporate culture doesn’t have to be complicated or cost a lost of money. It just requires that you be observant, open and creative. And remember, people see right through window dressing. If you want to create a more caring, “people-friendly” culture, but then cursorily continue to fire long-term employees in order to cut costs, you are sending a hypocritical message. You must back up your efforts with change that’s genuine and meaningful.

Ensure That Senior Management is Leading the Way

Is the culture at your company healthy and dynamic, enabling and engaging? Just as you can’t transform corporate culture overnight, you also can’t do it alone. You must have senior leadership behind you. Senior management must be involved in determining what the ideal corporate culture is and what values can support that ideal. Only then can you begin to translate cultural change at the program or departmental level. As a hiring manager, you have the opportunity to be the model for these new values. If you want a more collaborative, less authoritarian style of line management, the best place to begin is with your own department. People often feel they must see evidence of the positive benefits of change before they’re willing to make the change themselves. Show them it works, and they will come.

Create a Unified Message: Positioning

Positioning is a marketing term. It is based on the simple premise that customers choose products based on the perceived benefits or value they expect the product to deliver. And this applies to employee recruitment and hiring as well. If prospective employees cannot see the benefits of working for you, they probably won’t be interested.

Let’s say you decide that your primary recruitment message is that you are “a progressive company that nurtures and promotes young talent.” Define the benefits associated with being a progressive company. What does your company do to support this image? Do you have a generous benefits package? Do you promote diversity? Do you offer a mentoring program? Tuition assistance? Work swap programs? Make sure you have in place substantive policies and procedures that back up this message.

Then the message must be refined, both in language and image, and conveyed consistently across all advertising mediums. Many recruiters make the mistake of trying to be all things for all people, attracting as many different market segments as possible. This leaves a confusing and mixed message to job hunters. You should make a conscious effort to integrate your web advertising and print advertising into a consistent “look and feel” with a clear, simple message and benefits statement (value proposition.) This single message should be repeated over and over in many different venues until it literally becomes synonymous with your company.

Communicate the Message

As a hiring manager, you have a variety of ways of communicating and reinforcing your organization’s core values and beliefs. You can encourage open discussion and dissemination of such values and beliefs in meetings, internal publications, such as employee handbooks, articles, orientation videos, media coverage, etc. Training also is an effective way organizational beliefs can be absorbed and reinforced.

Other ways to communicate organizational values and beliefs:

• Demonstrate, in conspicuous ways, top management support for cultural change
• Write a “mission” or “vision” statement that captures the essence of an organization’s character, purpose, and aspirations
• Reward employees who live up to the organizational mission with incentives, awards, promotions, etc.
• Communicate the organizational mission during the hiring process and actively seek to hire people who are in sync with the organization’s values and culture
• Use a management style that is consistent with that culture
• Set up systems, procedures, and processes that are compatible with that culture
• Replace or change the responsibilities of employees who do not support the desired cultural values and beliefs
• Assign a manager or group whose primary responsibility is to change or perpetuate the culture

As you begin to address and revise your corporate culture and image, bear in mind that change affects everyone, and some will be more resistant to it than others. You can increase your chances of success by being a sympathetic listener, actively seeking feedback, proactively resolving difficulties that arise, involving employees as much as possible in key decisions, and emphasizing the benefits of cultural change on the organization as a whole. As your future vision becomes a reality, you will begin to see an exciting new kind of employee showing up at interviews.