The demands of growth in services and infrastructure have stretched the market for talent and skills to an extent where even the ‘staid industries’ are no longer safe from large-scale attrition. The main story from May explored the idea of how an attractive employer brand, based on a solid culture of empowerment, achievement and honest positioning can help in attracting and retaining the right talent

A powerful and attractive ‘employer brand’ today has the capacity to attract and retain talent and represent quality to customers with the goal of gaining global recognition in a sustainable manner. A simple count of the number of wall-street bankers waiting for that call from Goldman Sachs or the number of graduates from MIT / Stanford / IITs aspiring to work at the innovation labs of Apple and Google would reveal the power of this ‘attraction’.
At the cornerstone of such branding is the success of the organization itself. Being part of some of the most profitable, successful and powerful corporations is an attraction on its own. Other contributors to the employer brand include opportunities for empowerment (responsibility and power), a culture of grooming and development, a feeling of community and achievement, iconic leadership and obviously, a history of large compensation packages. Over the past two decades, many companies in India, especially in the IT services segment, have managed to build an employer brand based on their productive workplaces and global footprint.
Under normal circumstances, there is a clear distinction between companies that need to invest heavily in an employer brand and companies that do not. Factors like the levels of innovation needed, the kind of sector the company operates in (manufacturing vs services) and the level of ‘employee expense’ that keeps the company’s stock attractive as an investment pretty much decide whether a company needs to spend on building an employer brand for attracting the brightest and the best.
But these are no ordinary times – the Indian economy is going through a period of unprecedented growth while the supply of skills and talent is just not able to keep pace with this growth. Companies are competing intensely with each other for talent and there have been multiple instances in the recent past when an entire industry has lost key professionals as a result of the emergence of other sectors – like the FMCG sector losing people to telecom and healthcare in the last five years or the hospitality industry losing younger professionals to BPO companies.
In such a backdrop, employee branding becomes a forced norm for most companies and the ability to recruit and retain employees is heavily influenced by an attractive employer proposition.
The financial tsunami that hit the world economy two years back not only crashed huge business houses, but also ruptured the global talent industry by its unmatched velocity of lay-offs. India Inc. too had to face the ripple effect of a tumbling global economy and pulled back from hiring and followed a cautious approach in attracting and recruiting talent. While it is undisputed that India Inc. is back on a hiring spree, HR managers and recruiters should not dismiss the fact that the scenario has dramatically changed post-downturn as organizations and candidates have become more mature and realistic in their expectations. During the high-growth period of 2003-2008, organizations went overboard with not only their expectations from the economy but also with their ambitious expansion plans and growth strategies. Companies posted 30-40% and at times even 100% growth in every industry, resulting in the creation of a lot of excess in terms of headcount, compensation costs and outrageous terms and conditions. However, the economic slowdown has put the economy and the job market into a self correction mode. What the downturn has taught most businesses is the regularization of excess with employees being more realistic in their expectations after having understood the importance of employers’ overall ‘value proposition’, which includes factors like job stability, business prospects, culture and other factors affecting people-orientation.

The Rules of Attraction
The first step towards harnessing the power of an employer brand is to understand that it’s not just about glossy advertisements and ‘employee-branding billboards’. While these do add to the cause, it is the complete employee experience with the employer – its talent and experience management framework – that builds the case for an employer’s appeal.
At the most basic level of employee attraction lie the factors that influence outsiders – employer reputation, leadership reputation and compensation. While these are the factors that get a prospective employee interested, they are not necessarily the same things that keep an employee there. Those retention factors include employee empowerment for decision-making, a feeling of community and achievement, grooming and training. The factors that make an employer attractive to outsiders need to be reinforced by the advocacy of insiders who vouch for the promises being followed through.
The drivers of employer attractiveness have evolved with the economy over the last two decades. While the company’s brand, job content and job security were the driving factors in the 90s, compensation and titles began to matter soon enough. These drivers for employer attractiveness have now evolved into a more complex and demanding set – financial capability of the company, customized approach to employee needs, growth in terms of the industry it belongs to and level of empowerment given to employees.
Today’s professionals need a career and experience and not just a job. In line with this changing mindset, companies need to provide exciting growth opportunities and customized fast track growth programs so that employees can hone their existing skill-sets and add new facets to their skills at the same time.
However, to think that there is a sure-shot formula to attract talent will be a fallacy on the part of companies. Each company is unique in terms of the value proposition it offers just as each employee is different in their expectations vis-a-vis career development, compensation and empowerment. Communicating the company’s value proposition along with maintaining transparency is just the first step in attracting talent. At the end of the day, execution of the promises made is what will retain the employee.
It is important for the positioning of the employer brand to be realistic and reflect what the company really has to offer – not what an industry leader or another attractive employer has to offer. This honesty in positioning combined with a solid culture of empowerment and achievement is what creates a sustainable loop of an attractive brand, ability to recruit better candidates, higher productivity and the most important element – better retention of top-performers.
At the end of the day, it is the existing employees who are the best advocates and sellers of a brand. Hence, getting a workforce to sell the company’s attractiveness is the best employer branding campaign one could hope for.