The Employer Brand: Bringing the Best of Brand Management to People at Work

3

Investors Awaken

In the previous chapter we showed the pressures on employer brand builders in coping with some of the new factors that are demanding improved employment practice if people of the right quality are going to be successfully recruited, retained and engaged. While the areas for consideration are many, any writer specialising in people at work matters could have written a similar call to arms at any time in the past 30 years.

Why have more of them not been addressed? It’s an important question because any new approach, such as the employer brand, needs to assess why it is that so many people-related ideas do not seem to attract the necessary firepower. It isn’t just the CIPD; look at any conference operator’s mail shot and spot an area that speakers have not been covering in one way or another for years.

The purpose of this chapter is to review what we believe is going to be the major change agent for the people-management business – and that involves the investment community and the shareholders whose funds it invests. Just as the US President Calvin Coolidge once memorably said ‘The business of America is business’, it is the same gut feeling that drives the way things work world wide. Ultimately, business and commercial thinking drive what matters at work, influenced by the ego, ambitions, hopes and fears of the senior executives responsible. No HR best practice papers ever become reality if they are not linked in to these core drivers.

I am indebted to Jeremy ...