Changes to the sector, business or economic market can impact an employer brand. Brittany Golob explores how Carphone Warehouse and Oxfam responded to these changes 

Ask any internal communicator or human resources professional about the value of employees and they’re likely to reply along the lines of, “Our employees are our brand ambassadors.” The word brand is bandied around as shorthand for different concepts when dealing with employer brand management. Kate Shanks, deputy MD for client services at internal comms and PR agency theblueballroom, says, “Your corporate brand won’t necessarily come from your people and your employer brand must.”

Rebrands, on the corporate level, are often the result of change elsewhere in the business: a merger, leadership change, crisis or shifts in the wider market. Employer brand initiatives are little different. They have, for years, responded to shifts in the recruitment market and shifts in the different needs of jobseekers. They also respond to change on the internal level: mergers, leadership changes, crisis and shifts in the wider market. But, as Shanks points out, where a corporate brand is how the company projects itself to the outside world, the employer brand is focused on employees, their culture and their assets.

When a new CEO took over at Oxfam from a predecessor who had been around for over a decade, he prompted change on an organisational level, not just to enable Oxfam to become a more efficient business, but to change the employee culture. Saskia Jones, head of internal communications at Oxfam GB, worked closely with CEO Mark Goldring on the change programme. She says changes to the business were inevitable as Oxfam faced lay offs and cost efficiency measures that had a negative affect on morale and the internal culture.

From Goldring’s first day, however, Jones knew what to do, “For me, it’s all about leadership. If you get that relationship with leadership right, everything else will follow,” Jones says. “He’s a natural storyteller and I make the most of that.” Goldring immediately began speaking with employees and creating videos and blogs from his visits to Oxfam projects around the world with the aim of enhancing the leadership team’s communications with staff. That resulted in a huge change in culture. “People really believe in him and believe in what he’s saying. They trust him,” Jones adds. “Even with the massive changes, it was ‘If Mark is at the helm, we believe in him and we’ll do what he says.’”

Shanks says leaders play an instrumental role in creating an emotional connection between an employer and employees. “The leadership team needs to play a part in it. And it’s about listening to employees. I think some companies get the whole employer brand thing wrong because it’s not an honest employer brand. Your employer brand really needs to reflect and be absolutely honest about what it’s like to work in the business.” 

Carphone Warehouse faced a different kind of leadership challenge. Its owner, Sir Charles Dunstone, had repurchased the company from Best Buy Europe shortly before announcing the recent merger with technology retailer Dixons. Employees were on board with the changes, as Helen Durkin, employer brand manager at Carphone Warehouse says, change is Carphone Warehouse. But the organisational changes meant Carphone’s employer brand had to be redefined to reflect the state of the modern business.

“We are fast-paced, we change a lot, we’re very entrepreneurial and that’s just how we’re going to be,” Durkin says. “Now we need to go out now and be honest about it. It’s our culture.”

For Carphone, the association with Dixons has solidified something that has always been part of the business – a culture of entrepreneurialism, adaptability and teamwork. The Carphone team, alongside employer brand agency Hodes Group, drove the employer brand from the bottom up. Simon Phillips, practice lead for future & experienced talent at Hodes says intensive employee research allowed them to determine what mattered to employees. He says they had to match the expectations of leaders to the reality within the organisation. From there, it was a matter of developing an EVP that bridged the gap between the current state of the business to what the leadership hoped to achieve as well as determining how that EVP would work in parallel with the corporate positioning and consumer proposition, he says.

Shifts in both the charity and consumer technology markets prompted these different organisations to reevaluate their internal cultures with an eye toward defining an employer brand. This requires cooperation from different areas within the business, from internal comms to HR and corporate brand to management. 

Shanks says, to get an honest portrayal of a company, employer brand needs to work alongside marketing, internal comms and HR. This encourages authenticity and, ultimately, staff retention “It’s no good saying you’re something that you’re not because you won’t keep anyone.”

For Jones and Goldring, authenticity, particularly in regards to the latter’s storytelling approach to communications, has been both a tool and an outcome. “The storytelling reminds people of why they work for the firm and, for Oxfam, that’s really crucial,” Jones says, “It’s so important that staff have that emotional connection as well.” Klavs Valskov, managing partner of Agenda Strategies, which partnered with Oxfam, says, “The team, led by Saskia, has focused on getting the right things right during a very difficult period. Despite operating on a small budget, they’ve made it a success, by working hard and taking a directive role with key stakeholders.”

That relationship helped when Oxfam had to lose 125 people, 10% of the UK workforce as income had dropped by £18m year-on-year. Minimising the impact on morale was Jones’ responsibility and she called Goldring into action, relying on the foundation they’d built on the employer brand in the previous months. “In the charity sector, accountability is so important and it’s so important to treat staff in the right way.” This, Jones says, is a way to safeguard reputation as well.

Jones and Goldring ensured that the leadership team was communicating consistent messages to employees about the changes. “I can produce the most beautiful intranet pages, but at the end of the day, it’s what they say and do that’s going to make the most difference. It’s all about them communicating with their teams and listening to their staff,” Jones says. 

For Carphone, the Dixons deal marks not a consolidation, but a period of massive growth. “With the 400 stores that we’ve got to recruit in the next year, that’s a whole new Carphone. That’s half our estate again. So for us, that’s going to be a real opportunity to go out with an attraction strategy that can go out to all these generations, but to make sure that we are saying the same thing across all touchpoints externally as well,” Durkin says. The growth will be the true test of the new EVP externally. The company has to engage prospective employees of all age groups, a daunting prospect in consumer technology as Carphone attempts to communicate to the sales-oriented older generations and individual, tech-savvy younger recruits.

Phillips adds, “In the last six or seven years it’s the generational segmentation as well. and how different Gen Y and Gen Z are compared to Gen X and the baby boomers. We now need to consider how individuals engage with content, engage with brands, engage with life and careers in general.”

When companies look to the external audience, the employer brand is equally important as for those within the business. “It’s all about communication and managing expectations,” says Shanks. “It’s about giving people a really really good experience right from the moment that they apply for a job with you and communicating it.” She says companies must not only pay attention to new recruits, but to those who apply for jobs and are not hired as well as alumni. “Our aim with [a client] company is to have everyone leaving, saying, ‘I want my son, daughter, husband, wife, best friend to have an experience working at a place like that. To leave with that kind of energy that you want to go back or you’ve left on a high.”

For employer brand managers, it’s a balancing act between the internal and external audiences, but if the message is authentic and simple, the employer brand should work for itself.

Oxfam, though it went through a period of downsizing, communicated with its employees throughout that process. Jones says the spectre of a lay off did not change the passion or drive with which people worked at Oxfam. During the Philippines crisis last Christmas, not long after the announcement of job cuts, Jones says employees “Went the extra mile even though they knew their jobs were on the line.” The low point in terms of morale hit Oxfam in January, but staff still said they understood why changes had to be made, largely due to the effective emotional and rational communications from Goldring and the rest of the leadership team throughout the process. She said liaising with the marketing team allowed for internal communicators to make staff “Feel like insiders, rather than outsiders. By involving them and listening to them, they’re much more likely to be ambassadors for us and speak on our behalf because they feel much more involved and committed to who we are.”

Like a corporate brand, the employer brand is never finished. It’s a process, not a project, says Durkin. “Because of our DNA and because of our employer brand itself, we can’t ever stop. We’re always going to look at new opportunities in the market...This never finishes because you constantly have to evaluate if it’s working. We’re learning from mistakes. So it’s a journey that just keeps going.”