Blog: How will Employer Branding emerge post Covid-19?

It’s a question of much heft and one to which it’s difficult to attach genuinely confident answers. Whilst many of us have worked through recessions and come out the other side, scarred to varying extents, no one has a Covid-19 playbook or case study.

Right now, there are no proven right or wrong answers – rather answers that will subsequently be looked back upon either admiringly or with quizzical looks. Clearly, however, that doesn’t stop us from future-musing a little. Here are some of my thoughts. They may have something in common with other Employer Branding stakeholders and, indeed, utterly contradict the thoughts of others. I’ve also asked a number of key industry practitioners - Michelle Clarke, Rob Farace, Ben Gledhill, Julie Griggs and Mark Williams - to post their own views on some of the positions taken. Your own views would be equally valued and appreciated. 

The value attached to your Employer Brand

Let’s start big. For me, there are two opposing outcomes around how the construct of an employer brand will fare whenever Covid-19 lifts and whatever form this takes. A more negative stance is that many organisations emerge with balance sheets battered and bruised. Recruitment won’t have gone away but it might be skulking mournfully in the corner somewhere. Leaders might take the view that talent acquisition is now much more straightforward given the very likely lengthening of unemployment lines. Therefore, employer branding budgets might be facing some awkward conversations. The alternative view is, very simply, that your Employer Brand emerges as your brand. How you behaved towards your people will shape how customer audiences, just as much as candidates, perceive you moving forward. The likes of Timpsons, the NHS, the food retailers and Bet 365 will benefit, conversely, a lot of others – and you can build your own list – will struggle to cope with the reputational Employer Brand/brand challenge. 

“No amount of gloss will improve the reputation of those businesses that didn’t behave with empathy”, Julie Griggs, Consultant at Greenhill HR and Talent.

“Now, more than ever, your actions will have a significant impact upon your brand and people applying to, never mind joining, your organisation. Your reputation is being shaped everyday through your actions”, Rob Farace, Head of Recruitment and Progression, Imperial College London

Psychological safety and confidence

I’ve blogged about psychological safety very recently. Having the confidence to speak up and out, to share, to comment, to call out, to challenge, is critical for high performing teams. Ask Google, ask Dr Amy Edmondson. I can’t think of anything better designed – with its fear, its distance, its doubt, its isolation, its lack of transparency – than Covid-19 and the lockdown to destroy such psychological safety. Whatever working environment people ultimately return to, employers need to work on the assumption that many of their people will be less confident, more wary, more suspicious, more cautious, less keen on sharing than pre-Covid-19. Addressing such confidence issues and providing reassurance will be critical to the productivity and output of high performing teams.

“I think the way that teams have had to work harder to work together has enabled us to build trust which should endure when we return”, Mark Williams, Recruitment Specialist – Talent Attraction, University of Nottingham.

Workplace pace

Part of me senses that some of the initiatives we have seen to counter Covid-19 – such as the repurposing of Excel to create the London Nightingale Hospital, the pace at which scientists are looking at a vaccine – suggest that this will be transferred back into workplace culture as we begin to return. However, that contrasts significantly with what we hear from the likes of Bentley, which confirmed that it was introducing around 250 comprehensive and wide-ranging new hygiene and social distancing measures under an employee programme called ‘Come Back Stronger’, as it phases employee’s return to the workplace in early May. Well-meaning entirely, but unlikely to accelerate the production of luxury automobiles.

Again, creating a sense of a safe, confident, engaged workforce will be critical to organisations wishing to return with momentum and purpose. 

The volume of Employer Branding

How will candidates respond to a raising of the Covid-19 lockdown restrictions? Will they be looking at how their employer conducted themselves and responded to the virus and seek pastures new? Or just the opposite? Will potential leavers look at the employment market, opt to keep their heads down and adopt a better-the-devil-they-know attitude? 

“People are going to be wary about moving – an important employer message to them will be about how you are positioned to weather the storm”, for Julie Griggs.

“Candidates will be far more sceptical and CSR and wider economic issues will play massively in their decision-making processes”, Ben Gledhill, Interim Head of Resourcing Transformation, Thames Water.

Will they choose caution over career mobility? I think this is linked to another likely post-virus implication. Because of the damage to employment markets across the globe, and the media attention this has received, will prospective candidates rather assume that no employer is hiring? Will they take the view that recruitment has gone into hibernation and that career moves are simply not an option for months, if not years? Will, therefore, employers who are seeking to take on headcount have to make their career messaging work harder, louder and more clearly?

“There will inevitably be some strong talent become available in the labour market – such people will be snapped up by fast moving, nimble employers” Mark Williams

People stories

How easily, how intuitively are these currently shared within an organisation? Are such stories years out of date, relating to the organisation as it was, rather than how it is? Do such stories conjure up a pre-virus landscape, rather than one emerging from Covid-19? One of our collective coping mechanisms of the last two months has been through the telling of stories. Both positive and negative. Whilst few of us had previously heard of Captain (now Colonel, just a shame it wasn’t Major) Tom Moore, he now has a number one single, he’s raised goodness how many millions and has secured a place in the nation’s heart. There are, too, plenty of stories circulating about, for example, undeserving million/billionaires, by way of balance. This will be about internal people recognition. How best to recognise the sacrifices, worry, uncertainty, even tragedies, that an organisation’s employee base will have gone through during the last two months. It’s absolutely right that we are exchanging positive stories about the fantastic efforts of healthcare professionals – clearly and others – employers need to share openly and enthusiastically what their people have gone through. 

Leadership visibility

People want to see visible leadership – either face to face or via tools such as Zoom – during this period. And that won’t change as and when we return to work. Political leaders have either shone or been shunned. The likes of Angela Merkel and Jacinda Ardern have been decisive, front of mind and a source of clarity, confidence and hope. That will apply just as tangibly when organisations return to work and to working. Employees will want to understand their leaders both as people – how did they cope, what were their challenges, what about the people around them – and how they see the future. Employees crave a degree of relative certainty about the future. In many ways, this will be a massive challenge for many organisations. However, an employer outlining with honesty what the immediate future looks like and how its people can personally contribute to that will differentiate both that place of work and their employer brand.

“Visible and supportive leadership has always been critical, but today it is more important than ever. The behaviour of your leaders during this crisis will influence the organisational culture for years to come. Make sure it is a positive influence”, Rob Farace.

Listening to the voice of your employees

It feels as though there has been an entirely binary response to the virus. Organisations, just as much as individuals, have behaved in either in an exemplary fashion or an egregious one. Of the middle ground, there has been little sign. Employee bases have either been rushed off their feet dealing with patients or customers or they’ve been isolated in lockdown. For both employee sets, they have had little in the way of a voice. Given the technology available, employers have both an opportunity and an obligation to listen to their people. Using focus groups, interviews and survey technology, they need to understand the extent to which employees felt supported, backed and considered during this time. What did an employer do right and what could it have done differently? People will have felt out of sight, out of mind, out of consideration. It’s important both now and on a return to relative normality that such people are given regular opportunity to express themselves. And that great employers respond to such views and act accordingly. Employees want a voice, they want that voice expressed and that it makes a difference.

Better not normal

Having conducted a brief recent survey on this, a significant majority of employees want to return to a better way of working, rather than a simple return to normality. They have seen highs and lows in terms of employer behaviour and response, and they want more of the former and none of the latter. 

“We’re analysing how to create shorter meetings with fewer people and replacing that with greater collaboration and more meaningful interactions”, Michelle Clarke, Resourcing Manager, Resourcing Manager, Wesleyan.

Although there is likely to be a pressure on budgets, those employers that want to enhance their Employer Brand and reputation need to be clear about how tomorrow’s employee experience is going to be better. The level of the experience expectancy bar is rising. 

“There’s a real opportunity for organisations to be more agile and to encourage more open behaviours”, Julie Griggs.

Mental and physical health considerations

For many employees – again both those at, for example, medical frontlines, or those spending it behind locked doors – there is more than likely to be both physical and mental health collateral damage. People will have their own coping mechanisms and, in many cases, too much drink, too many calories will have been taken on board, whilst the sense of impotence, fear and isolation will have sat well with very few of us. 

“We have focused hugely on building meaningful communications around mental health and wellbeing amongst our people”, in Michelle Clarke’s words.

For organisations to welcome their people back into the workplace without a far more front of mind consideration of occupational health feels tone deaf and misguided. 

“Focusing on mental wellbeing has been a key priority for us and something we will need to continue, as there will be heightened employee nervousness around social distancing and germophobia in the work place” Mark Williams.

Transparency around remuneration

Again, this is a subject generating plenty of fear and concern. For those people still in possession of a job, there will be worries about pay cuts. In the absence of clarity from employers, people will naturally fear the worse. There have already been a small number of organisations who have been up front about leaders not taking pay increases or indeed forfeiting any payment for a period, whilst committing not to cut the pay of their people. Organisations such as Severn Trent and Korn Ferry about been particularly prominent in this regard. Others, again, have adopted a less empathetic stance. 

What does the workplace of tomorrow look like?

This is a massive question. Will there be a huge shift in terms of people wanting to work from home and employers realising that this is much more possible than they, pre-Covid-19 understood? Or, indeed, do people want the comfort and the collaboration of company. Whilst people might like the idea of working from home, this has been forced upon us, and was not a choice people made. 

For Michelle Clarke, “These times have underlined the recognition that remote or flexible working is possible for all. This is going to mean a much wider and more diverse talent pool in the future”.

There are so many conflicting views around this. That physical places of work will need to be larger to take into account social distancing at work. Or, indeed, that there will be a gradual reduction of permanent employees, and a corresponding increase in consultants and gig workers, leading to a significant reduction in necessary office space. Whichever way employers go, clarity of communication is key. 

Behavioural sign posts

This sort of subject has generated a lot of comment. Surely an organisation’s values and EVP will remain the same post Covid-19? I’m really not so sure at all. Employers’ behaviour during this period will have such a massive influence on the way they are perceived from both internal and external people audiences. The way people interact with each other – with more wariness and more caution – is likely to impact on culture. Quite apart from any other consideration, there are any number of organisations who have not reviewed their EVP in the last two to three years. What better time to put a new line in the sand? To review comprehensively the purpose, the attraction, the interconnection between employer and employee. To misquote Simon Sinek, assuming that an organisation’s why and its where will emerge entirely unscathed and unaltered from what is happening feels a bold call. 

“Things will have changed – employee feelings towards their employer, the way work is completed and where it is completed – and an EVP has to be reviewed to reflect that” Mark Williams.

Internal mobility

It’s equally unlikely that the business landscape for many organisations will remain the same. Markets and consumers have been re-set, perhaps temporarily, perhaps permanently. Will organisations require both the volume of people they currently have? Just as important, will their balance of roles remain the same? Are employers ready and able to move people around the business rather than look at redundancies and the subsequent hiring of different skill sets? Employees – given the challenges they will have faced over the last two months – are likely, in many cases, to have developed new interests, new motivations and new skills. How will these then be reflected and recognised back in the workplace?

“As recruitment budgets reduce, the need to move people around to reflect a different business model and different consumer expectations becomes clearer” Mark Williams.

Entry level talent

This is a massive dilemma. There are some deeply concerning statistics about how well school leavers and graduates fare when they leave education during a downturn – 2008 is a point in case. Clearly, Covid-19’s immediate aftermath is likely to be more ferocious (we can only hope its impact will not be so long lasting) than the global financial recession of the last decade. However, what course of action should employers take around internships and graduate joiners? Business as usual? Slash and burn? Again, how an employer engages with such audiences is likely to be a major influence on how their Employer Brand fares over the next few years. In terms of both business need and societal responsibilities, we will judge employers on how they treated entry level talent at this unique moment.

Collaboration

We have witnessed some lovely and important examples of collaboration during the last two months. Those laid off or furloughed have been helping the NHS or driving food retail vans. We’ve seen private hospitals sharing both equipment and people with the NHS. Is there a sense that barriers between organisations may be less impermeable moving forward? Particularly if they function as an alternative to redundancies, will we see people continuing to straddle two or more employees or workplaces? Will commercial organisations continue to encourage their people to help the likes of the NHS? 

“This is a real positive to emerge from Covid-19, new relationships are being built and it would be great to see a legacy of the virus being a more inter-connected working world” Mark Williams. 

About
Neil Harrison is the immersive. lead on all things employer brand.

He creates insights and actionable intelligence around key people audiences. Internal employee communities as well as external talent pools. These are insights which will help drive informed EVPs and their associated employer brands. Factors such as Brexit, as well as a tightening labour market, mean that organisations serious about talent acquisition need to act based on knowledge rather than guesswork.

This is understanding arrived at by delivering workshops and interviews at the highest levels amongst client organisations, as well as spending time with key internal audiences to get under the skin of what makes an organisation tick, as well as what could be done differently and more smartly.