This shift in employee expectation both opens up new markets of candidate opportunity and asks its customers to challenge long-held biases and beliefs of what that brand should “look” like. 

It was, of course, the news that Virgin Airways are letting people with visible tattoos become cabin crew. 

• “Virgin Atlantic has lifted its ban on cabin crew having visible tattoos, the first airline to do so. Virgin said that the rule change reflected that “many people use tattoos to express their unique identities” and was in line with its policy on inclusion”.

Tattoos have, traditionally, never been accepted as legitimate “self-expression” in some workplaces, and many, many employers simply refuse to countenance being seen as a workplace that allows such alternative lifestyle choices. 

But Virgin, like many employers across a multitude of industries, are flying the flag for change, and while that change still doesn’t include neck or face tattoos (or prison-style tattoos), it proves that the aviation industry is reassessing what it sees as visible “professionalism”.

This echoes the feeling in many other workplaces and many other industries. Times are indeed a-changing, and tattoos aren’t the only thing brands are now incorporating into more inclusive hiring policies.

The value and importance of communicating these cultural changes.

The vast majority of the recruitment world is fixated on efficiencies, candidate attraction in a pressured market, how to best integrate the right tech, ATS, onboarding software and more, and for the right reason – the candidate market is savage, and critical staff shortages exist in almost every industry, from tech to hospitality. 

But forget the power of workplace culture – and how workplace cultures are changing – at your peril. 

We don’t want to pull the cultural attraction to staff retention and recruitment thread again – there are enough resources and plenty of data to prove that companies and agencies who clearly and consistently communicate a company’s culture during the recruitment process (and while in-work) have improved rates of staff retention and a much more attractive recruitment process.

However, adding in narratives of positive change over a company’s life cycle to date – much like what Virgin have done – will only improve this process. Your candidates will see your brand growth in real-time, and be able to contextualise their place in your changing environment and company history. This is hiring fuel. 

So, here we wanted to highlight how some of the world’s leading brands have changed their workplace cultures in light of changing norms and expectations, and the results of such changes!

Virgin Airways, visible tattoos, and their evolving policy of what cabin crew should look like.

• “The airline is to announce the change in policy to its staff, a month after it launched a branding campaign “championing individuality” – and as the aviation industry scrambles to recruit more people in key roles as demand bounces back after the pandemic”.
• Virgin have incorporated a raft of changes over the last few years, including being “one of the first airlines to relax strict makeup rules for cabin crew”. 
• This move to tattoo inclusivity works alongside their wider brand culture change to less “tradition” heavy policies, and toward modernity. Staff hiring, naturally, has gone up, even as the aviation industry suffers from staff shortages. 

Bolt, and the 4 day work week. 

• Although there is a massive country-wide study ongoing in the UK, many leading brands have already incorporated a 4-day working week into their workplaces, echoing studies that prove efficiencies and productivity rise in teams working reduced hours. 
• Bolt represents a typical 4 day week brand mover-and-shaker, and the reasons are less to do with hiring shortages, and more to do with reducing burnout and giving people more time to live, rather than work – “That’s the motivation behind our company’s experiment with a four-day workweek. We’re turning Fridays into something more like Saturdays or Sundays — genuine time off, with no planned meetings or work. Our Board, Leadership Team, and People Ops team have been supportive, and we’re eager to see how the pilot goes”.
• “The results were clear: employee well-being, morale and productivity improved. A survey taken at the end of the three-month trial period suggested healthier and happier employees, and the decision to make the policy permanent was a “no brainer”.

Dryt and working from anywhere. 

• We’ve covered the rise of “digital nativism” in another blog, but the attraction and effectiveness of operations on the road cannot be ignored. 
• The owners of Dyrt, a camping app, “managed to secure $11 million in funding while on the road…extended that same philosophy to their 44 employees, who are scattered around the country. The startup is still hiring for 14 open positions and plans to add more after its most recent round of funding”.

The American Red Cross and the power of humour.

• Although “having a sense of humour” may not rank high in the recruiters’ toolbelt of attractive working propositions, companies are actually finding their PR and marketing position is vastly improved if they take a little step back from rigorous company policy and filter in a few laughs. 
• The case of the American Red Cross and a rogue Twitter post is one of the more fun-filled escapades of HR taking a long view of what happens when social media goes wrong, and how to turn it into both a positive (net increases in donations) and a bit of company employer brand leveraging, as the mistake was turned into a small company win. 

A quick, responsive process is what you need to attract and engage the best talent.

At Rectec we help organisations to find the best Applicant Tracking System or best Recruitment CRM to suit your needs, accompanied by our unique complementary technology marketplace, to help you build the perfect recruitment tech stack for your business.

You can click here to register for Rectec Compare – and best of all, it’s completely free of charge.

The post Brand modernisation, candidate inclusivity and how workplaces are changing. appeared first on Rectec.

Employer branding is a company bellwether in a world riven by COVID related flux and the great resignation. However, doing a brand MOT does not need to take an inordinate amount of effort – it just takes a little time investment, and a studious approach to involving the right people in your analysis.

Employer brand management marries traditional brand management in the execution – often well communicated employer brand messaging is wrapped up marketing, social media management and consumer advocacy. People like working for companies they like engaging with, where they see themselves reflected in the ethos, products or services they buy.

But EBM differs somewhat from traditional brand management in the operational analysis and, crucially, in the audience it’s designed for.

Your brand MOT shouldn’t be a sprawling mega-assessment. It needs to be targeted, meaningful, relevant and most importantly focused on results and improvement in the audience group that matters – your existing staff, and your potential future staff.

So we say focus on three, perennially important and agile parts of your employer brand – your community, digital alignment, and your operations.

Community: Seek community advocacy, and speak to your staff

Your employer brand cheerleaders should first and foremost be your staff. No matter the sector you work in, your staff should be the living, breathing embodiment of your EB, your purpose and your corporate culture.

However, company cultures are not linear environments and people are people, after all. Whether it’s disaffection with work loads, burnout, arguments between employees, bad customer interactions or being overseen for promotion, your team’s morale and belief in their purpose can fluctuate.

• It’s on every manager up and down the hierarchy to do their part in engaging and empowering their staff to represent the overall brand, products, services and purpose better and more effectively.

Your first port of call in your brand MOT should be seeking out a broad church of opinion on your brand as it is. Seek feedback from the people that live within your brand day in, day out – and most importantly, do they know your employer value proposition and the difference between that and your employer brand placement in the market?

• Ask your teams targeted questions on a variety of subjects, from brand logos and identity, to marketing, sales, corporate culture, work/life balance and more. Use their feedback, especially in regards to EVP and EB communications.
• Get a sense of how they feel about the company in its entirety, and make a summary document pulling together the points of commonality between staff, management and board.

Lastly, publish it internally. Keep any team feedback anonymous, but make a concerted effort to acknowledge where you’re doing well, and where you need to improve. This alone will do wonders for staff interactivity, and will help you grow a culture of staff empowerment.

Your Brand MOT Goal: to honour your staff, and create more meaningful cultures of feedback and employee engagement.

Digital: Are you digitally aligned?

Let’s talk about marketing. Marketing is a multidimensional, fast paced, digitally dominant universe of brand building and promotion. But throwing money at a marketing department won’t do the job of evaluating your employer brand performance. The only way you can do that is through alignment, and seeking results based on how well your company works as a unit.

In this regard, targeted investment in the right digital channels will speak volumes of your control of your brand.

• If the current state of consumer play is that trust in brands is hard won (mirroring that of EB), and that brand success hinges more and more on community/employee advocacy, the influencer economy and the relevance of consumer/peer/employee reviews, your digital presence has to pass muster across the whole company, and across every employee/prospective employee touch-point.

Your EB and EVP needs to align in person, in communities, online and in the palm of peoples hands, consistently.

Your Brand MOT Goal: A well invested-in digital strategy is good business and recruitment management. Making a good digital employer brand is the difference between whether that strategy works or not.

Operations: Don’t forget the little things

Some of the simplest aspects of maintaining a competitive employer brand, and brand building, are overlooked, such as: claiming your company profiles on Google; monitoring your company reviews on Glassdoor, Yelp, and LinkedIn; monitoring SEO and backlinks; monitoring your performance review systems and systematically including your teams in company brand building and policy; improving remuneration packages and communicating how and why you’re doing so…the list goes on.

• But investing time in maintaining these small things then builds an operational skeleton for your wider employer brand to build on.

It gives your existing teams an awareness you’re covering every recruitment, brand visibility and marketing base; it helps new recruits find you better and more effectively; and it shows that you are focused on brand detail and the cumulative effects of each small element of your brand on the whole.

• What we want companies to do is focus on the small things. The culmination of these seemingly minor executive decisions or company culture tweaks adds up to a seismic shift in employer brand commitments over time.

Your Brand MOT Goal: Consider your employer brand environment as both an actively curated list of tasks to maintain and a more passive, organic system that grows of its own accord. Let it grow, but don’t forget to care after the little things!

A quick, responsive process is what you need to attract and engage the best talent.

At Rectec we help organisations to find the best Applicant Tracking System or best Recruitment CRM to suit your needs, accompanied by our unique complimentary tech marketplace, to help you build the perfect recruitment tech stack for your business.

You can click here to register for Rectec Compare – and best of all, it’s completely free of charge.

The post How to do an Employer Brand MOT. appeared first on Rectec.