WHY AN AUTHENTIC EMPLOYMENT

BRAND IS VITAL TO RECRUITING

Five Reasons to Refine Your Employee Value Proposition

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WHY AN AUTHENTIC EMPLOYMENT BRAND IS VITAL TO RECRUITING

Five Reasons to Refine Your Employee Value Proposition

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction....................................................................................................................... 3
Five Reasons to Refine Your Employee Value Proposition............................................. 4
Reason #1: Because the Culture is the Organization...................................................... 4
Reason #2: Because Culture is the Glue Holding the Business Together....................... 5
Reason #3: Because Someone Has to Get to the Truth................................................... 6
Reason #4: Because a Defined Recruiting Process Must Hinge to Something.............. 7
Reason #5: Because Third Party Help May Be Needed When Scaling Up...................... 8
Source Information........................................................................................................... 10

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WHY AN AUTHENTIC EMPLOYMENT BRAND IS VITAL TO RECRUITING

Five Reasons to Refine Your Employee Value Proposition

INTRODUCTION

aving a superior
workforce culture and
inviting employment
brand are the
catchphrases of the moment,
touted as the surest way
to win the war for talent.
Without a distinct culture,
companies will fail to engage
employees in a shared journey,
resulting in a negative impact
on profits. And without a
compelling employment
brand, the odds of hiring the
wrong employees shoot up,
causing unreliable workforce
behaviors.
Certainly, there is much
wisdom in the importance of
a cultural alignment between
an organization and its
employees, as well as an employment brand that markets a company as a desirable place to work. The
challenge is authenticitytruly having a distinct culture and convincing employment brand. Most every
company by now has jumped on the bandwagon and articulated a great culture and employment brand.
But, is this the truth or just fancy wrapping? If its the latter, its bound to backfire.

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WHY AN AUTHENTIC EMPLOYMENT BRAND IS VITAL TO RECRUITING

Five Reasons to Refine Your Employee Value Proposition

REASON

#1
C

BECAUSE THE CULTURE

IS THE ORGANIZATION

ulture is an inherited
philosophy that begins
with the founders
development of
the business. This explains
why two companies in
the same industry selling
the same products in
the same region can be
very different businesses.
Their founders respective
personalities differentiate the
organizations. Each leader
recruits people of similar
substance to work for the
company, who then hire
people with the same beliefs.
Over time, the organization
coalesces into a distinct
culture.
For instance, if a founder
of a company emphasizes innovation as the
management philosophy, this feature will stand
out as a cultural attribute. The same applies to
collaboration or individual performance. When a
new CEO with a different management philosophy
tries to exert it on the organization, it often
fails because employees have different cultural
expectations. Small wonder why so many mergers
and acquisitions are unsustainable.

Miller provides the example of a company whose

culture puts the needs of the Earth ahead of its
revenue-generating ambitions. Say the business
is located in a building designed and built to LEED
specifications, has an aggressive recycling program,
and encourages the use of sustainable practices
with its clients, he explains. The important
variable here is that the company doesnt just
talk the talk, it walks the walk. It has an authentic
culture.

People want to be part of a community of others

that believe in the same things, says Tom Miller,
president of Symbolist, a behavioral influence and
reward company based in Dallas. Businesses offer
the means for people to connect in such ways.
When they have a shared purpose, employees
become more engaged in their work. This drives
productive behaviors that lead to business success.

Its up to HR to discern their organizations unique

cultural traits and how they distinguish the
company in the marketplace. What is it that inspires
employees in their individual and collaborative
effortstheir instinctive behaviors? As one
consultant recently described the elements of a
positive workforce culture, Its the stuff employees
are doing when youre not watching them.

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WHY AN AUTHENTIC EMPLOYMENT BRAND IS VITAL TO RECRUITING

Five Reasons to Refine Your Employee Value Proposition

REASON

#2
E

BECAUSE CULTURE IS THE

GLUE HOLDING THE BUSINESS
TOGETHER

mployees are everything in

businessmore important
than a companys
products, services,
markets and even customers.
Unfortunately, the global
financial crisis and ongoing
pressures on the bottom line
have caused many organizations
to overlook this fact. More work
is heaped upon overburdened
employees, who dread the
prospect of unemployment if
they fail to put in the hours.
Not surprisingly, a recent
survey of more than 32,000
fulltime workers indicates
that workplace pressures are
overwhelming four out of ten
employees. More than half the
respondents believe their senior
leaders dont have a sincere interest in their wellbeing.
[i] Another study paints an equally bleak picture,
asserting that only 30 percent of employees in the
U.S. have a strong connection to their employers.[ii]
Globally the situation is worse, with a paltry 13 percent
of employees feeling engaged in their work.[iii]
Employee engagement is often described as the
additional efforts that a worker will voluntarily
expend on behalf of the employer, fueled by feelings
of meaningful work and job satisfaction. When
employees are engaged in their tasks, the business
benefits are profound, including 22 percent higher
profitability, 21 percent higher productivity and
10 percent higher customer acquisition metrics.[iv]
Altogether, companies that score high in employee
engagement achieve 147 percent higher earnings per
share on average compared to companies with low
scores.

Without a vibrant workforce culture that prioritizes

certain behaviors over others, employee engagement
will be elusive. Workers will be unsure what is
important to the success of the business and what is
less important.
A candidates inability to do the job they are hired
for is almost never the cause of employee failure and
turnover, said Mike Mayeux, CEO of Novotus. What
defines success in the recruitment process is the ability
to determine whether or not the individual will do
the job in `our environment, within our culture and
company.
In the early days of business, this was not a concern, A
companys founder cultivated others who shared in his
or her beliefs in the value of the business. Interestingly,
the word company derives from the word
companion (compaignon in Middle English)people
who serve as partners with others in a shared exercise.

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WHY AN AUTHENTIC EMPLOYMENT BRAND IS VITAL TO RECRUITING

Five Reasons to Refine Your Employee Value Proposition
Its up to HR to partner with the company leadership
team to identify and nurture the companys authentic
culture, an effort that will result in more engaged
and productive employees achieving the outcomes
their organizations seek. By leveraging the companys

REASON

#3
A

culture in the employment brand, HR will ensure that

hiring managers recruit and hire talented people who
truly believe in the organizations business purpose.
Such individuals will be eager to partner with likeminded companions in this journey.

BECAUSE SOMEONE HAS TO

GET TO THE TRUTH

uthenticity is so
crucial in defining the
corporate culture that it
cannot be understated.
Ingrained workforce behaviors
coalesce into principles that set
the organization apart from
its competitors. This mindset
can be transformed into the
companys employment brand,
guiding the recruitment effort
to ensure that talented but also
like-minded individuals join in
the business mission.
Identifying and understanding
the culture of the organization
is one of the most important
tasks of talent acquisition
leaders, said Mayeux.
When we come in to help
an organization solve their
recruiting problems, our teams spend a lot of time
first understanding what these problems are. In
many cases, it is due to a misalignment between
the companys management philosophy and its
recruitment strategy.
Why is it important that prospective employees share
in the organizations management philosophy? The
answer is you cant fit a round peg into a square hole.
If someone does not have the same convictions in the
value or the business, theyre not going to expend
the efforts required to make it successful. They will
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become disengaged with their work and ultimately

unproductive, which will require their dismissal and
the hiring of someone else to replace them.
This unfortunate situation occurs more often than one
would think. An astonishing 69 percent of American
companies suffer from bad hiring decisions.[v] The
costs in such mistakes are significant, equaling 30
percent of the bad hires first years potential earnings.
[vi] Inferior hires also weaken their colleagues morale,
have a negative impact on clients, and result in both
fewer sales and legal problems.[vii]

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WHY AN AUTHENTIC EMPLOYMENT BRAND IS VITAL TO RECRUITING

Five Reasons to Refine Your Employee Value Proposition
To reduce the risk of substandard hiring decisions, HR
must establish an employment brand deriving from
its authentic culture. Only then can this employee
value proposition be put it into words and images.
Photographs of employees engaged in teamwork
initiatives when the organization actually is more of
a command and control-type management structure
stressing individual performance will send the wrong
message to prospective hires.
HR must ensure that a job applicant receives truthful
information on the companys actual employment
brandthe good, the bad and the ugly, says Joel
Passen, head of sales and marketing at Newton
Software Inc., a San Francisco-based provider of
recruitment software solutions. Too many companies
try to make themselves attractive in ways that
they arent. They talk about their Ping Pong tables
and caf-style meeting rooms to suggest theyre
collaborative, when in fact the company emphasizes

REASON

#4
A

individual performance. They may hire extremely

talented people, just the wrong ones.
To make informed decisions, job candidates need
to have as much information as possible on the
workforce culture. It needs to be a concise story of
what the company is all about, what the employees
are like, the kind of work they do, how the employees
feel about the organizations strategic objectives, and
what the applicant can expect if he or she comes on
board, says Passen. You have to tell them the truth
and not sell them a bunch of nonsense.
While the truth may dissuade some desirable
candidates, others will become excited about the
prospect of working for an organization whose
workforce culture neatly aligns with their own sense
of purposeful work. These are the individuals who
will make a difference through their dedication to the
companys mission and success.

BECAUSE A DEFINED
RECRUITING PROCESS MUST
HINGE TO SOMETHING

recent study indicates

that the need to
develop innovative
ways to attract,
source, recruit and select
talent is one of the top three
critical HR needs within an
organization.[viii] To do this
effectively, companies need
a foundation upon which to
build their recruitment plans
and tactics. This foundation is
the employment brand.
Working in concert with hiring
managers, HR can ensure
that the right messages are
reaching the right people
the future employees who
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WHY AN AUTHENTIC EMPLOYMENT BRAND IS VITAL TO RECRUITING

Five Reasons to Refine Your Employee Value Proposition
will become deeply involved in the work of the
organization. This is why the candidate experience
is so important. It drives the persons understanding
of the company and the expectations of what it
would be like to work for it. The applicant is then
able to make an informed decision, comparing and
contrasting the employer to other possible career
paths, with the goal of finding the right fit.
This fit is a two-way street, i.e., both parties should
come away from the table with strong feelings of
cultural alignment. Job candidate are encouraged
about working for a company whose mission is
in line with their hopes for a meaningful career,
and the employer has greater assurance that the
new hire is someone who firmly believes in the
organizations management philosophy, values and
business purpose.

REASON

#5
T

For this to happen, recruitment tactics must

be driven by an authentic employment brand.
Innovation without this legitimacy is meaningless.
The job candidate has to completely believe that
if they hire on at a company, they will connect with
others in very human ways for that company, says
Miller.
HR is the guardian of a truthful employment brand,
and hiring managers are its spokespeople. It all
comes down to the hiring manager, since they
have to make the decision yes or no, says Passen.
Thats why they have to tell the true story (of
the company) with all its elementsthe risks and
rewards of what it would be like to work here. If
this narrative resonates with someone whose skills
are desired, thats a good match.

BECAUSE THIRD PARTY HELP

MAY BE NEEDED WHEN
SCALING UP

here are times when

a companys fast-track
growth objectives
jeopardize the hiring
of new employees aligned
with its culture. Say the
organization plans to open
a new plant or enter a new
market, requiring it to scale
up employment sizably. The
pressure to hire dozens if not
hundreds of individuals in a
short timeframe increases the
odds of recruitment failure
hiring people that dont fit the
culture. In such cases, HR can
depend on the consultative
and transactional assistance
of RPO (recruitment process
outsourcing) service providers.
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WHY AN AUTHENTIC EMPLOYMENT BRAND IS VITAL TO RECRUITING

Five Reasons to Refine Your Employee Value Proposition
Peak 10, an IT infrastructure solutions provider, did
just that as it launched an aggressive workforce
expansion in 2014. Like many startups, Charlotte,
NC-based Peak 10 was experiencing double digit
revenue growth and needed to staff up quickly to
address rising demand for its services. Altogether, it
planned to hire 120 new employees within twelve
months.
We needed to rapidly recruit folks in our technical
assistance center, as well as network engineers,
software developers and even general managers,
says Karin Davies, senior vice president of HR.
About a third of our workforce is cutting edge IT
services personnel.
The company considers its culture to be highly
innovative, open, collaborative and values-based.
We needed an RPO partner who truly understood
our culture and could communicate it effectively to
job candidates, Davies says. This was extremely
important to us. We wanted to be sure they had
deep personal relationships with the management
team to be able to convey what working here is all
about.
By becoming a virtual extension of Davies staff,
the RPO providers personnel not only experienced
the companys culture in action, they were able
to define the types of individuals that would be
at home in this environment. This helped them
convey our employment brand with the right
images and language in our e-brochures, says
Davies.

as its emphasis on collaborative teamwork and

camaraderie. Our employee value proposition is
that we can promise them a very high technical
experience touching a variety of different software
and hardware because they will be working to
service our many different clients, says Davies.
Today, Peak 10 counts 400 employees. They feel part
of something bigger than themselvesa shared
journey to engage in work that is important to
them, and to their employer.
Your business also can leverage an authentic culture
in its employment brand to recruit the desired skill
sets providing longstanding competitive advantage.
In this regard, having a third party perspective can
be very helpful to an organization in the midst of a
recruitment surge.
The leadership team is often so close to the
companys culture, which is ingrained in their DNA
as leaders, that they find it tough sometimes to
determine how to successfully integrate it into the
candidate selection process, Mayeux said. When
you see high turnover or high levels of poorly
engaged employees, often this is the disconnect.
Dont let the risk of a disengaged workforce spread
its malaise to the detriment of your organizations
bottom line. Just like traditional company founders
selected employees who shared their values and
believed in the organizations mission, your business
can extend this wisdom in its recruitment strategy.

The recruitment strategy succeeded in the hiring

of young military veterans and IT professionals
with superb technical IT skills. These individuals
shared the values-based culture of Peak 10, as well

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WHY AN AUTHENTIC EMPLOYMENT BRAND IS VITAL TO RECRUITING

Five Reasons to Refine Your Employee Value Proposition

ABOUT THE SPONSOR

Novotus (www.novotus.com) partners with fast growing, mid-market companies to build and execute
customized recruiting solutions from sourcing services to end-to-end Recruitment Process Outsourcing
(RPO) with assurances. A founding member of the Recruitment Process Outsourcing Association,
Novotus helps clients with thousands of hires across all skills levels and industries. Proud to be recognized
in 2014 as the number one mid-market RPO provider on the HRO Today Bakers Dozen List and one of
the top recruitment outsourcing providers by The Outsourcing Institute/Human Resource Executive.

SOURCE INFORMATION
[i] http://www.towerswatson.com/assets/pdf/2012-Towers-Watson-Global-Workforce-Study.pdf
[ii] http://www.gallup.com/strategicconsulting/161459/engagement-work-effect-performance-continues-tough-economic-times.aspx
[iii] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/01/opinion/sunday/why-you-hate-work.html?_r=0
[iv] http://www.gallup.com/strategicconsulting/161459/engagement-work-effect-performance-continues-tough-economic-times.aspx
[v] http://thehiringsite.careerbuilder.com/2012/12/13/cost-of-a-bad-hire/
[vi] https://books.google.com/books?id=_nPvBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA6&lpg=PA6&dq=Department+of+Labor+30+percent+of+the+bad+hire%E
2%80%99s+first+year%E2%80%99s+earnings.&source=bl&ots=Eo4qd10VK6&sig=ZMeRrNRdTKMhB5z4GLWoiqgqR8s&hl=en&sa=X&ei=6
PsOVf_3KIjeoATAy4LQCA&ved=0CEcQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=Department%20of%20Labor%2030%20percent%20of%20the%20bad%20
hire%E2%80%99s%20first%20year%E2%80%99s%20earnings.&f=false
[vii] http://thehiringsite.careerbuilder.com/2012/12/13/cost-of-a-bad-hire/
[viii] http://www.deloitte.com/assets/Dcom-Argentina/Local%20Assets/Documents/consultoria/human_capital/arg_hc_global-human-capitaltrends-2014_09062014.pdf

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