How can you create strong employer brands in the face of changing economic and business environments?\u00a0 Sometimes creating and maintaining a positive employer brand are uphill battles because of business decisions operational managers make.\u00a0 Other times, employer brands are easily created and maintained.<\/p>\n
The couple of examples that come to mind are Nike and 3M.\u00a0 Nike has suffered for quite some time with their employer branding even though their commercial and product brands are among the strongest in the industry.\u00a0 The impact of revelations of\u00a0 substandard labor practices in their Asian factories a decade ago continue to have an impact on how potential employees see Nike as an employer.\u00a0 Conversely (no pun intended) Converse shoes have always been made in America.\u00a0 Only recently did they offshore production because their ability to compete with higher cost structures had eroded.\u00a0 But the \u201cmade in America\u201d branding still sticks with them today.\u00a0 Interestingly enough, Nike purchased Converse in 2003 (I think that was the year).<\/p>\n
Other organizations like 3M easily ride a wave of good employer branding.\u00a0 When Post-it notes came out, 3M was heralded as an organization where innovation was held high and employees were allowed much leeway to exercise their creative juices.\u00a0 Years after the Post-it note was introduced, potential employees still remember this example.<\/p>\n
Similarly, the Ritz-Carlton hotel seems to not have been negatively impacted by the acquisition (Marriott purchased them \u2013 I\u2019m not sure when).\u00a0 The Ritz\u2019s employer brand has long been \u201cWe are ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen.\u201d\u00a0 Not that the Marriott has a weak employer brand, but the fact is that I don\u2019t know what their employer brand is, but I do know what the Ritz\u2019s is.\u00a0 And the fact is that their high levels of service quality and customer satisfaction are clearly part of an integrated product and employer brand strategy.<\/p>\n
I suppose that\u2019s my point with these 3 examples.\u00a0 You can create and work on your employer brand all you want.\u00a0 If your employer brand is in sync with your product brand, you\u2019re good to go \u2013 the two brands will reinforce each other.\u00a0 However, if your employer brand is running contrary to your product strategy or financial needs, your employer brand is going to suffer.\u00a0 We constantly talk about the integration of HR practices with the business.\u00a0 This is really just another area where integration needs to happen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
How can you create strong employer brands in the face of changing economic and business environments?\u00a0 Sometimes creating and maintaining a positive employer brand are uphill battles because of business decisions operational managers make.\u00a0 Other times, employer brands are easily…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-branding","category-strategies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}