Tài liệu Corporate Reputations, Branding and People Management 31 ppt

Also reflecting our discussions of new developments in strate-gic HR architectures and workforce segmentation, they advo-cate targeting customer and employer brand propositions for diffe

employees are made aware of on a daily basis It is also sufficiently detailed in expressing what happens when things go wrong, so that cus-tomers and employees know what to expect and how to behave Employees, for example, are asked to deliver ‘positively outrageous service’ in fulfilling the mission and brand promise

Communication is at the heart of Southwest Airlines’ strategy Their

‘people department’ (not HR department) use the recruitment and selec-tion process to recruit ‘team players’ whose values and attitudes fit the brand; they also use the human resource development process to clarify and reinforce the values, culture and ‘Southwest Spirit’, using a range

of media such as ‘Keeping the Spirit Alive’ videos and other collateral The performance management and rewards systems are also used to communicate the brand through incentive pay, including stock options and profit sharing Interestingly, by linking pay directly to flights, they ensure pilots understand the need for cost efficiency Pfeffer (2005) reported that Southwest Airlines have by far the lowest costs per mile of any comparable airline in the world because pilots have a clear line of sight between how they fly the plane, where they park it, customer service and profitability

Finally, the company is prominent in using the public relations media

to communicate to employees the importance of the mission, and by entering nearly every competition available that reinforces the message

of people driving customer service (e.g Top Performing companies awards, Fortune’s most admired companies, most socially responsible company awards etc.) It is also noted for its advertising to potential employees (and customers) through its ‘Southwest is a symbol of Free-dom’ campaign, which is translated into eight individual freedoms for employees, including learning and growth, to be themselves, etc

In addition to formal communications, Southwest recognize the importance of informal communications between employees, managers, colleagues and customers How employees act and talk about the company helps create its culture, which is made more formal through its Culture Committee structure These committees operate in each Southwest location to examine the problems of culture management and develop solutions Like many US companies, Southwest has an ‘open-door policy’ to enable rapid communications between managers and the workforce, which sits alongside the more formal union–management bargaining structures Employees are also invited and expected to share letters from customers about good and bad service, and to provide

solutions where required However, as Miles and Mangold point out, these solutions are not expected to be delivered at the expense of employees’ freedoms

According to Miles and Mangold, an employee’s psyche is where the knowledge and willingness to project a brand image resides, which Southwest recognize in their use of a covenant between the company and its employees This covenant (similar to our use of the psycho-logical contract) provides a clear understanding of what employees can expect and what is expected from them The extent to which there has been a delivery on the ‘deal’ from the employees’ perspective is deter-mined not only through the appraisal systems, but through informal conversations and lunches with the CEO, Colleen Barrett, for ran-domly selected employees

The employee brand image – the image that employees project to other employees and potential recruits – is determined by communi-cating the brand image consistently and frequently to all employees using the methods previously outlined Second, Southwest makes every attempt to deliver its covenant to employees All communications, for-mal and inforfor-mal, are expected to be ‘on-brand’ to align the employee brand with the desired brand image, both of which stem from the

mis-sion and values of putting people first.

Source : Based on Miles and Mangold, 2005; Pfeffer, 2005

From the consultancy sector, among the most insightful con-tributions to the field is by Simon Barrow and Richard Mosley (2005), directors of People in Business They have been cred-ited with inventing the term ‘employer branding’ and have long experience in applying marketing expertise to HR The core proposition of their approach is the integrated brand model, which closely resembles the one by Gary Davies and his colleagues on reputation management (see Chapter 2) Figure 8.3 offers a summary of their ideas

Employer brand positioning, according to Barrow and Mosley, depends on creating a realistic analysis of the external and internal brand propositions, only aligning them if there is a broad agreement between the two through a core proposition Reflecting what we have discussed so far, they argue credibility is

at the heart of all good external and internal communications,

but the messages also have to be aspirational, embracing a distinctive focal point and ‘big idea’ And, following our initial discussion of old versus new communications and sustainable corporate stories, they have to be consistent and enduring throughout

Also reflecting our discussions of new developments in strate-gic HR architectures and workforce segmentation, they advo-cate targeting customer and employer brand propositions for different audiences (see Figure 8.4) One of the main argu-ments for doing so is to strike a balance between conformity and diversity; between fitting people to values and fitting values

to people This is the same argument raised in Chapter 6 in our discussion of segmenting by lifestyles, exemplified in the Tesco case So while it is necessary to define the overall position of an employer brand, it is also necessary to build in flexibility into the workforce by having distinctive employee value propositions for different types of employees with customized messages and packages for each career segment

The brand people purchase

The brand people work for

Customer brand proposition

CORE PROPOSITION

Employer brand proposition

Benefits

Differentiators

Reasons to

believe

Common focal point

Mission, values and

character

Benefits

Differentiators

Reasons to

believe

Shaping a positive brand experience to capture and retain customers, and drive brand advocacy

Ensuring brand integrity

Shaping a positive brand experience to attract and retain talent, and drive brand advocacy

Figure 8.3

An integrated brand model (adapted from Barrow and Mosley, 2005, p 111)

The example they use to illustrate this customization is drawn from the Microsoft website, which has distinct employee value propositions for each career group, though all reflect the core employer brand logo ‘realize your potential’ (http://www microsoft.com/uk/careers/peoplefirst.mspx) You might want

to explore this site to understand how employee value propos-itions work in practice What might happen if the balance between conformity (to the corporate message) and diversity (in fitting employer value propositions to the needs of the busi-ness) is illustrated in the little example in Box 8.5 concerning talent management in the British Army

Specific customer

and employer

brand

propositions

Definitions of target audience

Novel, compelling and credible value propositions

Benefits: why each should choose and advocate the brand

Different employee segments

Different customer segments

Figure 8.4

Employee value propositions and segmentation (based on Barrow and Mosley, 2005)

Box 8.5 Talent management in the British Army

Consider this example from the British military, which provides evidence

of a potential problem in striking a balance between a strong corporate message and targeted employee value propositions In 2004 the UK Ministry of Defence and Army chiefs announced their intentions to rationalize the British Army for operational reasons to turn it into a

more streamlined fighting force In doing so, they proposed a merger of

a number of regiments that had a long and distinguished history These included merging a number of well-known Scottish Regiments, which had formed a significant part of Britain’s fighting force for two centuries and which would form the largest single regiment in the British Army Supporters of these regiments, including many existing and former officers and Scottish politicians, put up spirited resistance to the pro-posed mergers, at one point describing them as an ‘act of lunacy’ Part

of their argument was based on the strong emotional ties between these regiments and the regions that they were drawn from, which formed their traditional recruiting grounds They argued that the strong family ties between these regiments and the local region would be damaged irreparably Despite these arguments, the Scottish regiments were merged to form the Royal Regiment of Scotland In October 2005, however, the news media broadcast a story, based on research, which showed recruitment to the army in Scotland was at dangerously low levels, some 10% below target and 18% lower than in previous years These poor recruitment figures were forecast to have an important impact on the fighting potential of the British Army at a period when

it was being called on to support a number of conflicts in different parts of the world, including Iraq and Afghanistan One Scottish politician summarized the argument against the merger:

What the Government and defence chiefs fail to appreciate is that there is no affinity nor goodwill towards the Royal Regiment of Scotland from the people

of Scotland – that is amply demonstrated with the collapse in recruiting …

(Peter Duncan, MSP, quoted in the Dundee Courier, 2 November 2005)

Army officials were beginning to recognize that these historically low levels of new recruits in Scotland could be attributed in part to the fail-ure to attract young people from the traditional regional recruiting grounds They also believed it was due to other reasons connected with image, including an unpopular war in Iraq, poor image of the British generally following well-publicized incidences of bullying and mysteri-ous deaths at Deepcut Barracks, and competition from private sector security companies that have been ‘poaching’ SAS, Marines and Special Forces troops with offers of much higher pay Their response has been

to create a 147-strong recruiting team, with its headquarters in central Scotland, to mount a ‘charm offensive’

Employer brand equity

Creating employers brands requires organizations to make esti-mates of how successful they have been, just as they would in creating customer brands In Chapter 2, we explained how understanding strong brands requires a measure of relative value and used the ideas of brand equity to identify the poten-tial of a brand to add value We can apply this idea to measur-ing the relative employer brand equity comprismeasur-ing four similar components Measuring brand equity in this way can provide evidence of how deeply embedded and sustainable the corpor-ate story is in the organization (see Table 8.3)

Table 8.3

Measuring employer brand equity

Components What is it? Creates value by:

Perceptions of An emotional link Reducing costs of psychological between the brand and gaining new contract and employees that cause employees engagement them to be attracted Creating brand

to and remain with ‘ambassadors’

the organization Gives breathing

space when the organization is undergoing change Awareness of Employees and Potential employees Employer brand propositions potential employees’ prefer the

brand equity familiarity with brand familiar/well-known

over the unknown Enables people to compose a quick mental shortlist of potential employers Perceived quality Assessment of People more likely to

of the employer expected quality work for an brand that an employer organization they

brand will deliver believe to be of

higher quality and recommend to others Launch-pad for

(continued)

Table 8.3

(Continued )

Components What is it? Creates value by:

asking employees to work in new ventures/projects, e.g overseas Associations The images and ideas Creates interest and

connected with the relevance to Employer employer brand – employees

brand equity what it means to Helps differentiate

employees and from competitor potential employees employers

Sends signals to employees’ significant others – says something good about the employee

to others

Conclusions

In this chapter we have attempted to show how corporate com-munications can help produce change in the quality of employ-ment relationships by shaping psychological contracts and increasing levels of individual identification and internalization

of the corporate messages on reputations and brands We have used a model of strategic change through communication applied to multinational or multidivisional companies to show how the processes of change are linked to more or less receptive contexts for change We have also evaluated some of the ideas connected with employer of choice and employer branding programmes, concluding that, in line with our argument in Chapter 6, corporate messages usually need to be accompanied

by a more segmented approach through employee value propos-itions to different target audiences to be effective

These conclusions are very much in line with research on the distinctive role of communications in managing psychological contracts (Guest and Conway, 2002) They found that three categories of corporate communications were associated with

different outcomes for psychological contracts Job-related com-munications, which refer to the ongoing interaction between the employer and employee in the job, e.g during appraisal, career development etc., and communications during the recruitment process were associated with ‘contract explicitness, lower levels

of breach, fairer exchanges and management perceptions of the impact of the psychological contract on employee-related out-comes’ (p 35) Top-down communications from management, for example mission and values statements, were rated the least effective by managers in the study, which is consistent with other evidence and with the arguments in this chapter

The study also showed that senior managements were well aware that their organizations quite frequently were unable to keep their promises and commitments, and were aware of the potential impact such breach may have on psychological con-tracts Yet, they recognized the importance of communications and psychological contracts to the success of their organizations Such an apparent contradiction raised the question of why they make such promises in the first place

One answer is that they do not have a good enough under-standing of the communications process, and the role of sustain-able corporate stories in creating better reputations and brands

We hope the model and discussion on employer branding, seg-mentation and employer value propositions may have helped

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