thousands of employees who have built lives around the prior policy,
investing in homes, schooling and spousal jobs. Many see it as a
thinly veiled move by leadership to hatchet enormous labour costs
after a string of poor quarterly financials. Do you think most IBM
employees are feeling like its most important asset now?
In contrast, leaders such as Garry Ridge, CEO of WD-40
Corporation, have a good track record of leading by example. One
of WD-40’s core values is “owning it and passionately acting on
it.” Ridge is consummate about answering emails quickly and responding
in an honest and proactive way. And the result, according
to Ridge, is that WD-40 has extremely high employee engagement
and customer satisfaction scores on recent surveys. Why?
He believes they have an aligned set of values and behaviours that
everyone – CEO to floor sweeper – are expected to support.
Smart firms are building talent value propositions – what the
company is offering and what they expect from employees – that
are fitted to the times. Here are a few ideas that can help your leaders
build firms that are talent magnets:
1. Identify four to five positive cultural differentiators of your
business and align policies, processes and behaviours with
those differentiators. For example, Zappos CEO, Tony
Hsieh, does everything possible – liberal return policies, welltrained
problem solving service reps and incentives to leave
if employees do not feel aligned with the culture – to foster
alignment with their high service-oriented customer promise.
2. Identify cultural characteristics that will be important to
current and potential employees. What will be attractive
to the talent pool out there? If you are a largely Millennial
organization, such as Groupon, Lyft or a recent biopharma
startup, then attributes such as flexibility, environmental
focus and purpose will be crucial. Fulfillment is desired by all
generations, so investments in growth and development are
likely to be important.
3. Pick attributes that your top leaders can get behind. Will
they be willing to walk the talk? One technical employee at
a large communications company lamented being hired for
innovation, but was given “Stone Age tools” to do his work.
4. Emerging employer brands should be tested. United Airlines
should not have been as surprised as they were. Employee
data from their employee surveys and other tools should
have signaled a forthcoming problem, or they were not using
readily available predictive analytics. Good analytics are
allowing firms to test their talent value proposition – does
it work? Is it leading to desired customer outcomes? Is it
helping to retain employees?
5. Measure impact. Do the “right” employees stay and the
“wrong” employees leave? Is there higher productivity? Are
customers happier? Today, there are many ways to measure
these things.
While these steps may sound simple, they require deep thinking
about your business and culture. This is not dashed off in an
afternoon. The most successful firms engage their employees, customers
and suppliers in these discussions. The more diverse the
input, the stronger the resulting employer brand will be. And the
CEO and other senior leaders need to be engaged from the get-go.
When everyone is on the same page, you can become a powerful
talent magnet. n
William A. Schiemann, Ph.D., is the CEO of Metrus Group.
workplace culture
SMART FIRMS ARE BUILDING TALENT VALUE
PROPOSITIONS – WHAT THE COMPANY IS
OFFERING AND WHAT THEY EXPECT FROM
EMPLOYEES – THAT ARE FITTED TO THE TIMES.
Bloomicon/Shutterstock.com
36 ❚ JULY 2017 ❚ HR PROFESSIONAL
