NH237 Consulting and WDAD Communications - Research on the future intentions and challenges facing the UK’s employers

Employer branding challenges and opportunities The opportunities for the Employer Branding profession have never been greater and neither have the challenges 13 A subject that has prompted much current dialogue is around the potential convergence of consumer/institutional branding with an organisation’s employer branding. Personally, I think that the pandemic has accelerated this. We now look at organisations through the lens of how they treated their people during Covid. There is much emotion and sensitivity around what we view as employee abuse. Would we want to shop and buy from organisations which have been less than supportive, less than empathetic, less than inclusive? The answer, increasingly, suggests not. A view backed up by two very recent pieces of research: • 9 0% of consumers want organisations to apply their best efforts into safeguarding the health and financial security of their employees (Edelman Trust); • 6 2% of consumers have stopped buying from an organisation which treats its employees poorly (CareerArc). The point has been made regularly over the last 12 months that your Employer Brand is how you have treated your people during Covid and lockdown. And there’s a lot to be said that such treatment influences not only your reputation as an employer but your reputation full stop. “We have certainly seen a priority shift amongst our target candidate population, across the world. They are placing more emphasis on company values and culture, and want to see more content that relates to what we stand for and how we treat our people. At a time when all interactions with prospective and current candidates are virtual , organisations need to be really careful to ensure that what they say or portray in their employer branding is echoed in the interactions such people have with the individuals in that organisation. And that such interactions reflect what the employees from that organisation are saying themselves on social media. Employee advocacy (or its absence) has become extremely important over the last 18 months. According to LinkedIn, people are 16 times more likely to read a post from a friend about a brand/organisation than from the brand/organisation itself ”. Sarah Langton Global Head of Recruitment, Clifford Chance Hence one of the questions we put to this audience was around the future relationship between employer brand and its consumer cousin.