The Age of Talent Empires

Historically, companies have spent a lot of time and effort on developing their consumer brand. Consider brands like Apple, Starbucks or even Amul, there is a level of quality that is attributed to these brands – something that has stayed put over the years. Even in our personal daily lives, we swear by certain brands be it the toothpaste you use or the jeans you wear. Organizations have been successful in getting its brand out there and attract a marketplace, attract consumers. Today, consumers have the ability to build or destroy brands in minutes thanks to the social media reach. The same could be said of the employees even vice versa.

But, it was not until recently that they started applying the same thought process to the workforce. Employees as an audience were forgotten but that didn’t stop the perceptions from building be it in offices, business schools or even restrooms. The employer branding or the corporate branding of a company is based on various intangible features such as perception, image and identity of the company through the employer’s eyes. While companies have focused their efforts on building their employer brand, they forgot another crucial element: That of the talent brand. This cover story aims to find out how companies are working on their talent brand, how that’s different from the employer brand and what can CEOs and HR leaders do to make the transition happen.

Many use the term employer brand and talent brand interchangeably. It is inherently assumed that whatever the organization wants to highlight about itself as an employer will be perceived likewise in the talent market. The reality remains far detached from such perceptions. Social media has made it evident that perceptions of a workplace viewed from the rose-tinted glasses of an organization’s senior management is different from actual ones that exist on the ground. Thus emerges a new management paradigm for an organization—the talent brand.

It is important to note the differences between an organization’s employer brand and talent brand. An organization’s employer brand is a skilfully crafted message conveying how the organization views itself as an employer. The employer brand typically includes positive messaging about its work culture, its commitment to employee welfare, and the benefits of working with the organization. While the employer brand is an aspirational appeal to the market, a talent brand is the actual perception about an organization from the point of view of its employees. While an employer brand can be idealistic and controllable, an organization’s talent brand is grounded in facts and resides mostly outside the realms of direct organizational control. A preferred employer is one which is able to close the gap between the employer brand and the talent brand.

However, in the case of a company like Google, there is no difference between the employer brand and the talent brand. For the tech giant, it is all the same. D. N. Prasad, member of the Google APAC HR Leadership team and Director for People Services in APAC has this to say, “At Google, we don’t have a talent brand that is different from employer brand. We believe that our internal brand, talent brand and the employer (organization) brand are all the same, and, represents what the organization stands for – great people, challenging work, culture of innovation, solving hard problems to make the world a better place. There are three guiding principles for the Google talent brand – that it be Unique, True and Compelling.”

On the other hand, consulting major Accenture feels that the talent brand and the consumer brand actually go hand-in-hand. “Both the talent brand and the consumer brand are important components that need to be driven in conjunction. They are slightly different because of what they address. It is not possible to have two different messaging in two different segments due to the accessibility of information in this age of the knowledge-based industry with knowledge-based workers. There has to be a commonality between them. One can’t be the No. 1 employer of choice and not be present in the consumer brand segment,” says Manoj Biswas Managing Director-HR at Accenture (HR Head-India, Sri Lanka & Bangladesh).

Companies like Google & Accenture, which have strong talent brands, have continued to evade competition and external pressures and are a favourite among the employees. They recognized that the real engines of wealth creation are the knowledge, the relationships, and reputations, which are created by talented people in organizations. Signals indicate that the future industry will revolve around talent empires. Companies will flourish and thrive under established talent brands and not established product brands.

From a marketing lens, branding is an exercise to enhance the reputation of a company’ products and services. As social media has increased the number of degrees of freedom for a consumer, the challenge of managing perceptions has steadily grown more complex. While social media continues to penetrate a wider base of consumers, a brand manager strives to convert challenges into opportunities. A brand no longer relies solely on the projection of a positive image but also depends on the management of perceptions. With growing number of complexities, organizations have started to realize that a branding strategy has to couple external messaging with perception management. The principles of branding for consumer brand, therefore, applies equally to the talent brand.

HR’s role in the organization is consequently evolving into a brand and marketing role where the rules of the consumer market apply equally to the talent market. For an organization’s HR, it is not difficult to predict that a Glassdoor rating will be as much an indicator of talent management effectiveness as hiring and attrition. This calls for a radical shift in the way HR views an employee - to that of a consumer. The experts that we spoke to for the story said that companies with a strong product brand does not necessarily have a strong talent brand.

B. P. Biddappa, Executive Director – Human Resources at Hindustan Unilever Ltd and Vice President – HR, Unilever South Asia says that people like to work for companies whose values they can identify with and who have a strong corporate governance background. When we think of the talent brand, it is not just in terms of aspiring employees but also the employees within the organization. In order to build a talent brand equity, the company must first make the brand accessible.

“People should be able to access, engage and connect with the brand,” he said adding that they should be aware of what a career in the company means and how can it grow and develop, how senior management can lead talent development and ultimately how leaders become leaders. “From an internal perspective, once you have joined the company, you are a part of the talent brand in terms of early leadership, international exposure and opportunity for showing leadership in the job. You also then become part of key talent processes that help build future leaders for the business.”

Across the globe, growth continues to be the golden word for any leadership team. As tough economic conditions continue to prevail, leaders worry about how to sustain a profitable business. Business leaders argue that given these economic conditions, the only way to fuel growth is to get the right people on board and ensure that they are happy. When someone asks the question, ‘what is it about companies that continue to grow despite these tough conditions?’ CEOs unanimously agree that it is talent within these companies that propel growth and profitability. It would be fair to say that the only real engine of growth in such conditions is to have the right set of people on board.

HUL’s Biddappa believes that the ownership of a talent brand must lie with the top management and not on an HR person or a talent manager. It is essential for the top leadership to be committed to the process as it would lend credibility to the process. But Biswas begs to differ. He feels that the ownership should be jointly held by the Business and HR. If either the business or HR alone own it, then the translation of the strategy would be difficult.

Several compelling reasons exist as to why companies and HR need to redefine their focus on talent branding for sustenance in the future. Among them, the most important reason for growth is the need for innovation. The absence of innovation has seen several exceptional brands meet their demise in an age when the competitive landscape has become a pervasive threat. Himanshu Saxena, Head Strategic Alignment, Leadership Management and Internal Coach at the IT service company TCS says, “In recent times, several noteworthy brands have perished due to lack of innovation. Research in Motion and Kodak are classic examples of consumer brands which enjoyed high equity but succumbed very quickly to competitive pressures. They key issue that both these consumer brands were unable to address is the issue of innovation. While their competitors were sharpening their axe by building a strong base of innovators within the company, they failed to foresee the future by basking in the equity of their current consumer brand. Over time, newer and better products emerged in the consumer market and both the brands continue to shrink to this day.” Both these industries, in fact, have seen the emergence of strong talent empires that are threatening to polarise the entire talent market in their respective segments globally.

Accenture’s Biswas believes that the culture of inclusion should be made part of the talent development of leaders and supervisors. “How the leader behaves translates on the ground is what an employee perceives Accenture to be. For example, when we started the culture journey and translated that into culture essentials for India, we asked our senior leaders to take this program once a quarter and weave their personal stories to deliver the message of culture. Two kinds of learning takes place then. On the one hand, the employee undergoes a very elevated learning experience and on the other the senior leadership also come to us saying that “I learnt something different”,” he said.

Martin Seligman, an American psychologist’s seminal work on organizational psychology discussed the concept of positive psychology. Positive psychology is an organization’s investment in happiness, human flourishing, exceptional wellbeing, energy and vitality, and meaningfulness and achievement. While most CEOs and talent heads talk about it, the real test of an organization’s commitment to positive wellbeing is in the times of crisis. Are CEOs in Indian corporations really committed toward employee wellbeing? The leading management consulting firm McKinsey Corporation in a recent research study argues, “The vast majority of companies still gauge their performance using systems that measure internal financial results —systems based on metrics that don’t take sufficient notice of the real engines of wealth creation today: the knowledge, relationships, reputations, and other intangibles created by talented people and represented by investments in such activities as R&D, marketing, and training.”

Tough times reveal the real cracks in a company’s resource plans. Companies with strong talent brands are more prepared now for economic uncertainties of the future. Data from Fortune magazine’s top 100 best places to work companies in the last 10 years have consistently demonstrated a near 10 per cent difference in year-over-year growth than the market average despite these low-growth economic conditions. The renowned business author, Noelle Nelson, in his book ‘Make More Money by Making Your Employees Happy,’ quotes from the findings of a global employee survey which says that companies that effectively appreciate employee value enjoy a return on equity and assets more than triple that experienced firms enjoy. Is it possibly what differentiates an iconic brand from the rest?

As companies continue to face the consequence of economic corrections, the ability of an organization to acquire and retain talent will be the single-most factor separating brands that exist and the ones that perish. Some progressive talent brands have already prepared their war strategy for the coming times. Talking about the company’s rigorous hiring processes, Google’s Prasad said, “We want to hire people who have shared values with Google so that the ‘walk the talk’ is easy when they come into the organization.”

What makes some of the smartest talent across the globe flock to a Facebook, PepsiCo or Google brand? Is it their choice drive by the consumer brand or have these brands successfully created a strong perception as employers? Naveen Narayanan, Global Head of Talent Acquisition at HCL says, “Google is an example of a company that has very effectively balanced the consumer brand with the talent brand. While the future is uncertain, it is only logical that the importance of a talent brand will increase in the next 10 years. Every business corporation is staring at the face of inevitability – the need to gain positive equity in the talent market. Southwest Airlines is a typical example of a brand where employee live and breathe the brand. In the tough and competitive low-cost airline market, its talent brand is a strong driver of its product brand.”

While companies brace themselves for the future, it will be only fair to say that a company which enjoys a strong talent brand will be able to attract talent from a larger global talent pool and make them stay longer. But once in, the employee is no longer awed by the brand rather he/she is looking to see what career growth can take place in the company. Especially from a GenY perspective, if the organization does not offer a career, then its talent brand will see erosion. Google is not just a good talent brand, but an aspirational brand.

The linear correlation between growth and talent will never cease and thus, a company’s market share will be strongly linked to its talent market share. Such radical polarisation of preferences will likely lead to the creation of talent empires. While it is up for argument on whether the establishment of these talent empires is a step in the right direction for the global economy, one thing is certain— talent will be the bigger war field for business corporations compared to the consumer brand. At the centre of the war will be the CEO who will likely lead the aggression against its talent competitors, and will be a living proponent of the company’s employment values. Perhaps it would not be too farfetched to imagine the future CEO holding the talent brand and leading the aggression for talent market share.