Inspirational people

If you think really, really hard (so hard it hurts) - who is the person you most admire and look up to?

Richard Branson?
Barack Obama?

Mother Theresa?

Because the thing is, my heros are all people who go to extremes, who look beyond the everyday and achieve extraordinary (and often stupid) things for no other reason than, well, they can.

Take the example of Martin Strel, an endurance swimmer I recently saw (in person) after the showing of Big River Man at the Sydney Film Festival. Here's this great, hulking 50-odd year-old who:

• downs two bottles of wine a night,
• drink-drives while learning English and 'power-breathing',
• is the sole possessor of a key to a cave he likes to spend time in,
• swims for 5 hours a day, and
• pretty much has freedom to whatever he likes in the Slovenian city of Ljubijana.

Oh, and Martin has swam the entire length of the Yangtzee, Danube, Mississippi and Amazon rivers. He also holds the record for the longest uninterrupted swim, going for 162.5km in 55 hours 11 minutes without sleep.

It would be an understatement to say Martin has been tickled with the Bonkers Stick. Here's a video featuring him:



"That's all very well," you might say, "But what the hell has this got to do with employer branding or recruitment advertising?". Well, this example is all pretty relevant to what inspires us in our work and leads to employment-related decisions.

Where I work, we do a lot of research and analysis in working out the ideas and influences that motivate people to adopt certain behaviours, and using that information to influence them in more positive and/or productive ways.

What is often hard to get across, is that the strongest behavioural drivers in choosing employment are often unconscious, emotion-based and, as such, difficult for individuals to articulate. Just because someone states that they work somewhere 'for the money' or because 'it's close to home' this is only an outer layer of the decision-making process. Our research and analysis peals away those layers to understand the inights that an individual may not even be aware of. These are the kinds of things you won't discover in a staff survey.

Once we've uncovered these insights, we use them to develop communications strategies that will promote the behaviours we want, and dissuade unwanted behaviours. For the employers we work for, this boils down to something simple as attracting more of the right people who join for the right reasons, and therefore stay - and engaging key performers so they are highly motivated and productive (and they, too, stay).

So, someone like Martin Strel probably can't articulate precisely why he takes on challenges like this. Yes, there is a bit of a waffle about environmental issues (and the film touches on him being abused as a child), but ulimately nobody chooses to go to such extremes without having a real passion to do it first. It's easy to see that Martin's behaviour is compelled by unconscious drivers that go above and beyond the environmental issues.

And it's exactly this principle that influences any of our decisions - even when we're looking to stay at a currently job (and work hard) or leave and work elsewhere.

P.S. Check out this new website around the Employer Branding space, should be good to see this develop: http://www.employerbrandingonline.com/

Where have all the thinkers gone?

You know, being a settled Pom over here in this fantastic country, some things really make me seethe.

I can put up with the laid-back attitude. I'm at home with blue skies. I can just about cope with the endlessly enticing beaches. But I simply can't fathom the way this downturn is being managed by employers.

The way I see it, a downturn like this is part of healthy economic cycle. Businesses should look to come out the other end (note to employers: There will be an end to the downturn.) leaner, meaner and more innovative. Markets have shifted, so they need to adapt, take stock and come up with new ideas. So where are these ideas coming from? Their employees?

Working for an advertising agency, we trade in the business of ideas. But are employers listening to us, mulling it over, and thinking of ways to make it work? No. They're restructuring and cutting costs. I repeat: Restructure. Cut costs. Duh. Duh. Same. Same. Who told them that this was the only way to justify HR's existence in a downturn?

In the olden days of advertising, an advert served as a rather pleasant notice: This is my product. It's rather nice. I think you should buy it.

As competition increased, new ways were developed to increase sales: This is my product. It's rather nice. It's has certain features that are better than other brands. You should stick to buying my product.

Times marched onwards, and advertising starting selling ideas: Buy my product and become the person you want to be.

In Australia, many employers are still placing recruitment advertisements like rather pleasant notices. They pay lip service to terms like 'employer branding', but don't invest in the areas that they will, eventually, need to. Let me make it clear: People will still want to work for a certain organisation because of their beliefs about them - and how closely this matches their desires of who they want to be. And employers still need to work hard at reinforcing the messages that accurately reflect them. Want to be seen as innovative, forward-thinking, young, vibrant, quirky? Go work for Virgin.

I'm not saying to employers: "Hey! You! Keep advertising or the future targets won't know why they'd want to work for you!" (although this may be the case).

What I am saying is that the businesses that come out of this downturn in the best shape, will be those that continue to attract more of the right people for the right reasons. The reputation employers have built will continue to decline the less their message is repeated and the less control they have over the ideas and beliefs people have about them.

So here's my rallying cry to employers: First, look to the people at your organisation. The people who have chosen to work for you. The people who believe that your organisation says something about who they are. These people are your spokespeople, your advocates, your evangelists.

Engage them, inspire them, encourage new ideas. Get them to talk to others, and share their experiences about why they work for you. In times of downturn, look to ways to build a fortress from within.

And talk to recruitment strategy experts to help you do it. Don't just react to every cost-cutting measure.

Using PR to attract

Today, I've been having a number of conversations about the use of PR in promoting an employer, or a particular role. It's an approach with huge potential, yet one I've never seen offered by agencies other than on a 'by-the-job' approach.

However. Isn't it one of the most important aspects of promoting your employer brand? Ensuring that, in the long-term, newsworthy outlets accurately communicate aspects of the organisational culture, and not rely on hearsay or assumption, or someone they've grabbed off the street who will say something controversial?

And won't using PR effectively ultimately mean that employers get more of the right people - people who are more engaged and more productive because they've joined for the right reasons?

I say this on the back of then noticing this on the BBC news website. It's a rather sombre assessment of the state of Social Worker recruitment in the UK. Those of us who have worked in this area know that attraction and retention doesn't get much more challenging.

So why has this story broken without there being one iota of positive news about it? If I was interested in in social issues - which I must be since I was reading the story - what are the positive things that get me thinking "Jeez, that sounds like tough work - but on the other hand...".

Put simply, this article paints a grey and dismal picture - there's no speak of reward, support, kudos, or even any stories of the amazing people who have made such a big difference to peoples' lives.

You need to be newsworthy to succeed in PR. But you need to use it to your advantage too.