In a blog post by Melissa Raffoni on Harvard Business Review blogs she says, "I often have to remind the dedicated, smart CEOs I work with that leading takes time and energy. Directing the feelings, attitudes, actions, and behaviors of a team is a big task. Often, I also hear the secrets of these CEOs' employees, about what truly aggravates them and what they love about their bosses. To keep top executives on track, I've created this list of what employees want their leaders to do."
1) Tell me my role, tell me what to do, and give me the rules. Micromanaging? No, it's called clear direction. Give them parameters so they can work within broad outlines.
In an interesting article by By Andrew Katz | Capital News Service (MCT) on Newsrecord.org that could have implications for employers using social media sites to reference job seekers he writes, some students worried about how their online presence will be perceived by a potential employer are taking the extraordinary security step of changing their names on the social network Facebook.
In this down economy, with heavy competition for jobs, college students and new graduates are among those joining an emerging national trend of modifying account names to elude snooping recruiters.
"I had an internship that required me to do it because I worked for a politician and I couldn't be associated with any kind of organization," said Emily Winchatz, a Capitol Hill intern and senior government and philosophy major at the University of Maryland, College Park.
"(Fellow interns) said my best bet would be to just get off Facebook altogether or change my name so I couldn't be searched," said Winchatz, who replaced her last name with her middle name on the network.
The article also details Sarah Barton, a senior at Stevenson University outside Baltimore, hadn't thought about changing her account name until a law professor recently acknowledged performing client background checks on Facebook.
Although she opted to merely adjust the viewer settings for her photos _ partly because her middle name is so uncommon it could actually draw more attention to her page _ the 21-year-old paralegal studies major said she knew of friends who had altered their names during job searches.
Also an adjunct online journalism professor at UMCP, her alma mater, Sauter had a few extra tips to stay under the radar: adjust your privacy settings to remove profiles from searches, create a second page for professional contacts and restrict access to photos, as they can be "some of the most damning evidence on Facebook to a potential employer."
"There's a way that you can use your presence on a social network to help yourself," she said, "because at the end of the day, you control what information you're putting out there, so you don't really have anyone to blame but yourself if something goes awry."
On the 'Employer Branding Blog' by Tony Heywood he lists 20 key problems that manifest with a disengaged workforce.
He says, "We meet with many HR professionals at our workshops and in our ‘front line’ activities helping organisations deal with employer branding-related challenges – particularly those that are a direct result of disengaged employees. The challenges faced by these HR professionals are so prevalent that we thought it would be useful to record them."
To read the list of 20 key problems please click here>
Douglas R. Conant likes a challenge. The president and CEO of the Campbell Soup Company, Conant picked up the reins nine years ago when the company's share price was down and customer loyalty was on the wane. He knew that he could assemble a team to revitalize the company, revamp the product line, fuel innovation, win back customers, and make Wall Street love soup (and cookies and spaghetti sauce and juice) again.
In part one of a two-part interview on Gallup Management Journal, Conant described how engaging the workforce was integral to his plan. Engagement, he believes, creates trust and inspiration -- and trusting, inspired employees can accomplish extraordinary things. But he knew it would be difficult work. In fact, he predicted that it would take a decade to get the company firing on all cylinders again and the workforce engaged top to bottom.
Human resources professionals can serve as good internal coaches for employees, but they might not get the chance because of trust issues, Jennifer McClure writes on her blog, Cincy Recruiter's World. "I think it's hard for employees not to feel at risk when sharing information with people in a position to influence their careers." The post also attracted some interesting responses.
An interesting article in the Career Builder Community by Mary Lorenz details the growing number of companies using interactive software and video games as employee training and development tools.
Mary provides insights into the use of some of these tools being used for candidate attraction, employee engagement and employee retention.
In a new blog post on HR Search Marketing the author, Nicole Bodem suggests the value of the “Candidate Relationship Manager” over traditional search functions.
Nicole advises, "The candidate relationship manager is different from a recruiter. They are there to be a liaison for your candidates, help to ensure their applicant experience was positive, and ensure that they feel communicated with vs. left in the black hole of death. After all, these candidates own part of your employment brand."
In a recent blog post Libby Sartain provides some useful advice on where your investments in employer branding are likely to involve.
Libby advises, Overall, to brand from the inside, your investment (in hard or soft dollars, depending on your internal resources) will likely include the following:
Employee and leadership research—if you decide you need current data on how your employees and leaders view your talent, brand, and business issues.
Advertising agency support—if your approach to brand from the inside will involve work with your advertising agency to connect to your customer brand work.
HR consultant support—if your approach to brand from inside involves a significant amount of work on your people strategy, issues, programs, and systems.
Change/engagement/communication support—if your implementation of your employer brand represents a significant shift in your employee point of view.
The recruitment video used to be a wonderful thing. There would be an internal debate as to whose responsibility it is. Marketing would hear the word ‘video production’ and would get onto their contact at the production agency that recently did the TV ad for their latest product launch. They would come back and quote them thousands of pounds, a 40-man TV crew would turn up, Peter Purvis would present the overview to the company and introduce Molly in accounts and at some point down the line the tapes would be ready for distribution. If we were lucky there would have been some view as to who the target audience was – usually it was only graduates worthy of this scale of introduction to the company.
We live in a different world now. Online video has taken over and new channels of distribution have opened up alongside decreasing scale and cost of production. What this means for the future of film in the recruitment world is that we have to stop just talking about recruitment.
Employer branding films are going to thread throughout the employment lifecycle. A one-off ‘recruitment video’ is not really a recruitment video at all – unless it is a call to action. Which means we will see the introduction and increasing use of filmed pieces that are used with a mix of bite-sized chunks, replacing traditional text pages to complement the higher-production employer branding films that position the organisation as an employer.
To illustrate, we recently worked on a campaign where we filmed extensively over a period of weeks. We wanted to work with the client to embrace film throughout the process from initial ‘touch’ through to application, on-boarding, induction and internal engagement. Their suite of films includes those used for recruitment alongside their employer branding films. It also means we have raw footage that can easily be re-edited and tailored for individual campaigns. Another organisation has asked us to look at how they can use film from recruitment to training so that it has the same tone, style and messages as all their employee engagement work and representing a cost-saving in the process.
The filmed recruitment message is something we are also finding an increased appetite for as recruiters are realising that there are comparable costs for a bespoke creative advert produced by their agency to producing a short film about the role – visually showing aspects around the location and what the day-to-day involvement may look like. There’s a balance here – and some debate – as to the level of production that should be allowed for this, but this is probably closest to the true sense of a ‘recruitment video’ in that it is something directly used for recruitment as opposed to a positioning as an employer. It also is going to raise challenges and provide new opportunities across the various job boards as the media mix is shifted to allow more extensive film capacity.
We are also working on ‘MicroFilms’ which are highly transitory and disposable films used to drive traffic to other films and content along the candidate and employee journey. With microblogging and technology that needs to be accessed quickly and easily on-the-move, this is a natural progression to the mix. As with all of these components they need to have the right fit and energy to sit with how the whole employer brand is positioned as a whole to get the desired reaction from the candidate.
I would also add that I’m finding the whole terminology of ‘video’ something rooted in the past. Even with ‘online’ in front of it, it still makes me think of VHS tapes and clunky video machines, and whilst at times I will still refer to it I prefer to think ‘film’ rather than ‘video’. Films tell a story. If you really want interaction and engagement there has to be a story behind it and this requires thinking and understanding of the big picture as well as the immediate objectives. If many different people wrote the scenes to a film in isolation without knowing what the others were up to it wouldn’t be a very good story and no one would want to sit through it. When looking at embracing film, think of the big picture and treat it as a central way of doing things not just as a one-off project. There’s absolutely no reason not to.
The view the original article post by Nick Price please click here>
About the author
Nick has extensive experience in many areas of employer branding, recruitment research, diversity issues and internal communications. Having begun his career in recruitment research with TMP Worldwide in the late nineties, he then moved to communications agency ThirtyThree to take on the role as Head of Research where he was responsible for a number of ground-breaking projects. Nick set up his own business in 2006 specialising in employer branding research and communications.
He has worked with a wide variety of clients in a range of sectors, including the Metropolitan Police, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Oxfam, Central Government and a number of NHS Trusts. He has also worked internationally, travelling to India for a graduate recruitment project with Oxfam and led a team in five countries across Eastern Europe for a graduate research project for a top five accountancy firm.
Having established Nick Price Research in 2006 (www.nickpriceresearch.com), Working Films (www.workingfilms.co.uk) was founded in 2009 to take film and online video to the heart of how organisation's manage and communicate all components within their employer brand. Passionate about work and film, Working Films was a logical progression. Nick also has his own blog called WhatEverYouThink.com.
According to Personnel Today UK article, Toyota's HR department could have a mammoth task on its hands in repairing the damage caused to its employer brand in the wake of the recall scandal, leading brand experts have warned........Consultancy Brand Finance, which publishes a rank of leading brands, warned that if the aftermath of the recall was not handled well, as much as 20% could be wiped off the brand's value, leading to a negative impact on Toyota's reputation.
A spokesman said: "Clearly, a recall on this scale will have a detrimental impact on the employer brand. Potential employees will be less attracted to an automotive company that produces faulty cars, particularly when the technical faults can have potentially fatal consequences.
Articles
Nick has extensive experience in many areas of employer branding, recruitment research, diversity issues and internal communications. Having begun his career in recruitment research with TMP Worldwide in the late nineties, he then moved to communications agency ThirtyThree to take on the role as Head of Research where he was responsible for a number of ground-breaking projects. Nick set up his own business in 2006 specialising in employer branding research and communications.
