Do You Have a Lovemark?

I had the opportunity to talk to a student group on Employer Branding. When I asked them to name their number one choice of an employer, the overwhelming majority voted in favour of Google. Then I ask them for details that one would be expected to know about a potential employer eg the office location, the number of employees they have in India etc. All these queries draw blanks. I ask the group about what specific jobs at Google they wished to apply for. Except for three students, no one really cared and yet they wanted to be a part of an organization they had very limited information on. We proceeded to pick some more possible employers. The group had strong points of view about many organizations – most of which were not necessarily based on information or data. That is what Employer Brand does to your attractiveness as an employer.

The Employer Brand is what people believe is the promise of an organization as an employer. In a competitive talent market, that is the reason why someone chooses to put your organization's name as an employer on their resume - at least for a while. The existing employees' perception of the employment proposition has an equally strong impact on what the employer brand would be seen as. That is the reason why the existing employee decides to hang up when the headhunter calls. It is the reason why a newbie feels good or regrets the decision to join the organization, especially if they had a choice. It is what the employee says about the organization to friends and family when HR people are not listening.

Kevin Roberts (author of Lovemarks: The Future Beyond Brands) talks about some brands that go beyond and become what he calls "Lovemarks". When you plot brands on a 2x2 matrix of Love and Respect, there are some brands that inspire love AND build respect for themselves. Those in that hallowed zone are called Lovemarks. When a brand achieves Lovemark status, the consumers becomes evangelists for a brand. The relationship between the brand and the individual is beyond the realm of logic. Being a Lovemark does not automatically make it a top choice as an employer but it probably helps. That is because our needs as employees are different from those that we may have as consumers. The sobering thought is that, the No 1 Lovemark in the list of top 200 Lovemarks is not a corporation but Shah Rukh Khan. Apple at number 4 trails Kajol and Google is at number 9 followed by Rani Mukherjee.

Employer Branding is the sweet spot where Human Resources meets Marketing (and feels inferior). Marketing people spend money, time and resources building consumer insights so that they know who buys their brand, when do they buy it, why do they buy it or why not, where do they buy it and how do they consume it. Based on this research they can decide how to communicate with their Target Audience. These are the same questions the HR person needs to answer about existing and potential employees.

The number of vacancies that the organization fills through employee referrals is rough measure of the strength of the Employer Brand - at least as far as the existing employees is concerned. Finding out what potential employees are saying about you as an employer is equally important. Sometimes that information floats in the most unlikely places. The social networking sites such as Orkut, Facebook, MySpace etc have communities that feature organizations. Chances are that your organization has a presence there and you don't know it yet. Doing a search on blogs will sometimes reveal what the buzz is about your employer brand. The quiet little kid in that corner might the most widely read blogger on the internet who is writing stuff about what it feels like to be working in this organization. I hope you read his blogs. Unfortunately in many cases, perceptions about the organization as an employer are being built and most top executives don't even have a web presence.

At a recent gathering, a hundred top HR professionals from around the world were asked if they were members of sites like Orkut or Facebook. Only three embarrassed hands went up. That was stuff for teeny boppers most of them said. Yet if you are fishing in a shrinking talent pool would you rather know what the buzz was about you or would you turn a blind eye (or ear) to it? If you did not know what people were saying about you wouldn't be in a position to impact that opinion. Banning blogging and social networking sites is not a solution. I hope the HR people embrace this change and actually begin to leverage the opportunity to turn their Employer Brand into a Lovemark.

Coach Coach Hota Hai

I am currently reading Sun After Dark by Pico Iyer. He writes about the Dalai Lama who is considered to be the spiritual Coach to a nation and to many world leaders. He says though the Dalai Lama is "increasingly famous as a speaker, his real gift, you see as soon as you begin talking to him, is for listening." That ability to listen makes him a true Coach. The world leaders listen to him because he in turn is a world leader who listens.

Organizations want to see their managers become one, each employee wants to become one and the parents want to be one to their kids. While one half of the world is looking for an effective Coach, the other half is trying to reach that sweet spot and proclaim themselves as experts while the fog is still thick. Every HR professional is not the de-facto Coach of the organization. They ought to be - but in all likelihood they are not equipped to be. One test is to ask the person to differentiate between the role of a Mentor and that of a Coach. Some organizations use the term Mentor and Coach interchangeably. No wonder they say if you don’t know where you are going, you can’t get lost.

So all those who believed that you were the first Mentors to walk the earth, sorry, the prize goes to Odyssesus. According to Greek mythology Odysseus entrusted his son Telemachus to guide the young man into adulthood in the absence of his father. A Coach is different from a Mentor. While Coaching is task related, Mentoring is about life itself. The role of a Mentor is to link up all the roles of the mentee - as an employee, as a parent, as a spouse, a sibling etc and then identify the patterns of dysfunctional behavior that the individual displays. A Mentor guides you through the journey of life. The reward is learning and insights for both. The Mentor is best selected by the individual himself or herself rather than assigned by the organization. So when organizations launch a "Be Mentor to a Young Mind" campaign, they need to leave the choice of the Mentor to the "Young Mind".

The Coach needs to be able to diagnose various group processes that are happening in the organization and craft their interventions accordingly. The measure of success of a Coach is to finally make a difference to the functioning of the individual and the organization. The executive Coach when successful will impact the performance of the executive. While the Human Resources folks will hand over the 360 degree reports and other state secrets to the Coach to get a headstart in identifying areas of development, the main deliverable for the Coach should be to help the individual learn new processes. There is always the danger that the Coach becomes yet another manager in the organization because of the power this relationship has. So periodically remind them that the football Coach teaches new techniques, based on the insights they have about the psychological makeup of the players they coach. Their job is not to take the ball during a tough moment and score the goal themselves, no matter how tempting that is.

Bunty Aur Babli in the Corporation

The workplace has always been a safe haven. This had always been a place where the regular folks came to work. They all spoke English with the same fake accents and chewed gum while moving their jaws sideways and wore their underwear like a fashion statement. They all used "kewl" and not just a simple "Yass" like the wannabes. The regular folks all had been to similar schools and had seen similar films and read the same set of books while growing up. It was not surprising that their world view was also the same. They all had similar nicknames too. So Harmeet or Harpreet were all called Harry or something that sounded Western. Then when they came into the workplace, they all hung around with the regular people in the office cafeteria and on weekends socialized with each other over imported wine and cheese. Their progeny played "Scrabble" in the next room.

Then the talent crunch happened and all this changed. The regular folks had to come to the workplace and rub shoulders with a diverse employee population. The talent crunch forced organizations to look beyond those who spoke the Queens English. The social change in the office has been palpable. Slowly but surely, the workplace has been adapting to the new inhabitants of cubicles. Over the last few years, there has been a steady dilution of the number of "regular" folks in the offices. The "Buntys and Bablis" - the people from small towns and rural areas have ecome a growing minority that we have to learn to include. The movie Bunty Aur Babli was about the dreams of young men and women from the small towns of India. In the workplace Bunty and Babli represent the archetype of the talent pool corporate India has to integrate into the somewhat homogeneous and insular workplace that we had got used to. I don't know when this insignificant minority began to forge ahead and move into corporate offices, but today you cannot ignore them any more. The people from small villages, the second tier towns, from the not so prosperous end of the great Indian middle class have started becoming noticeable. Maybe it was triggered by the BPOs and now Retail who were desperately looking for more and more employees just to make their business model work.

Many Human Resources people still believe that Diversity and Inclusion programs is just a passing fad. Wrong. Diversity is the answer to the talent crunch in any organization. The BPOs have been doing this for a while. So while they started off with their offices in the Metros, they have quickly discovered that to attract and retain talent they need to take the opportunity closer to those for whom that job is an aspirational job. Frustrated at their failure to attract fresh graduates of the top few Engineering colleges or Business Schools, many top Employers are opting for the next layer of institutes. The time is running out there too as the demand supply imbalance is offering options to the Bunty Aur Babli institutes. Having acquired diverse talent, the bigger challenge is to build an inclusive environment that enables the people who are “different”, to feel engaged enough to give their best. Therein lies the business case for making Diversity and Inclusion a part of the HR professionals’ list of challenges.

The inhabitants of Bharat have stepped forward and are now ready to lead India on their own terms. The Bharat-ization of corporate India is inevitable.