We had a recent webcast where we partnered with TNS to bring you valuable research and unique insights on how to utilize your employees to be Talent Brand Ambassadors to drive your talent brand. We also discussed the linkage between employee engagement and cultivating followers on social networks, such as LinkedIn.
1. Cultivating Employees
as Brand
Ambassadors
The Truth About
Followers and
Connections
&
Research insights to drive your
talent brand
Reasons to cultivate your
followers
Top 5 incentives for employees
to become brand ambassadors
Analysis of brand
ambassadorship and how it
relates to talent recruiting
Linkage between employee
engagement and followers
5 reasons employees become
drivers of your brand
&
4 Essential Tips to Convert your
Employees to Talent Brand
Ambassadors
Speaker – AmyIn order to learn more about the audience on the webcast, we are going to start off with a poll question.OPEN POLLPlease answer the poll regarding what function you work in: HR Talent AcquisitionCorporate CommunicationsMarketing OtherAmy Facilitating the pollsMultiple Choice – 2 minutes to answer
Speaker – AmyWith me today, I have two outstanding speakers who are going to share their expertise and perspectives around Employer Brand and Employees as Brand Ambassadors. Mike Schroeder from TNS Employee Insights - Michael J. Schroeder is CEO of TNS Employee Insights. For more than 25 years, he and his team have designed and implemented large-scale employee engagement survey systems for some of the world’s largest organizations. Mike and his team maintain a large global normative database which includes millions of respondents from over 100 countries. This information is used by many organizations to benchmark their performance against high performing organizations. In addition to providing an overview as to how effective employee engagement programs can actively support and energize organizational growth, Mike will be sharing some specific tips on how employees can become ambassadors of your brand. Etienne from LinkedIn –Etienne is Media Solutions Consultant at LinkedIn, helping companies to build and develop their Employer Brand. He has worked with Fortune 100 companies in Europe and advised them on their Employer Value Proposition definition, graduate attraction strategies, and communication channels selection. He will share some of the insights gained from his experience with you today, including how to leverage social media, to make your most valuable assets, your employees your brand ambassadors. I will now hand the presentation over to Mike to give us some background on TNS
Speaker - MikeThank you Amy. I would also like to welcome and thank all of you for attending today. I wanted to start off by providing a little background about TNS. We are the world’s largest provider of custom research, analysis and insights. Our focus is on providing innovative solutions to clients in topics that include: employee engagement, retention of top talent, brand awareness, customer engagement and leadership development. We take pride in supporting many of the world’s leading organizations, whose businesses cover all industries. We work with our clients to deliver actionable and insightful tips to leaders and teams in order to further engage their employees and deliver on the brand promise.We survey millions of employees around the world every year and have one of the largest normative databases available.I am now going to hand the presentation over to Etienne to give us a little more information on linkedin talent solutions.
Speaker – EtienneOn behalf of LinkedIn welcome everyone and thank you for joining today.LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network and helps companies transform the way they source, find and retain the best talent.LinkedIn has now over 200 million members, and we’re now adding more than two members every second. This is the fastest rate of absolute member growth in the company’s history.Talent Solutions - is about connecting the right Talent with the right opportunity for improved success and economic opportunity for your business.LinkedIn connects talent with opportunity at massive scale.
Speaker - EtienneSo now you better understand who TNS & LinkedIn are and what we do, Let’s jump to into the real reason we are here today. How do we enable you to leverage your most valuable and greatest asset – your employees – to be come your #1 brand ambassadors? Talent attracts talent. How do you create, define and utilize your brand ambassadors to do just that. We also want to touch on a recent change- the transition from employer to talent brand. Employer branding referred to a company’s positioning and messaging about what it’s like to work there. But social media has changed this. It is no longer a one way message, a company can no longer own its position, message and be done with it. It’s now a marketplace of interactions, where recruiters, employees, customers and prospects are all listening to one another. The company is no longer the owner of the brand, but one among many participants. The online social world has taken the brand from the hands of the Employer and put it in the hands of the Talent, both past, current and future. We now focus on talent brand - a multi-faceted conversation that addresses the questions of who our employees are, and how they fit in with each other. Today, Mike and I are going to equip and enable you and your company regardless of its size to do just that. Throughout today’s webcast we will be deep diving into how to first get your employees engaged so they WANT to be brand ambassadors. 2. Once you have them engaged how do you educate your employees about your talent brand so that when they are networking, they can become your brand evangelists and comfortably talk about their company as an employer. 3. From there its all about share and tell. Social media allows employees to have a voice which can potentially have an amplification effect. And 4, how do you measure employee engagement? how do you continue to measure and develop action plans that build a foundation of engaged employees and brand ambassadors. As you start to think about employee brand ambassadors, think about endless opportunities and connective tissue that can occur once your brand ambassadors leverage social media to share their story, success, wins etc.Which brings me to my next question…
Speaker – EtienneResearch shows that people follow companies on different social platforms for different reasons. There is a context to these social platforms that you need to be aware of. Missing the signal on context means your business content can be lost among your audiences, or even worse…ignored. On Facebook and Twitter, people follow companies for deals and discounts. This is the context of the site and what people expect to get.Alternatively, on LinkedIn, people follow companies for news, career opportunities,actionable insights, and information. This is the context of the site and what people expect to get.Key Takeaway for you: People expect different things from the companies they follow on the different social platforms. Therefore, makes sure you send the relevant content through the right channel.
AMY PLEASE CLICK TO RELEASE POLL RESULTSSpeaker - EtienneYour employees are your biggest talent brand ambassadors.Let’s set the baseline – What is your Employer Value Proposition ? Your Employer Value Proposition is the attributes that you most want associated with your company. Once that is established, we then layer on the critical piece of branding and ensuring you are delivering your company’s EVP across every relevant communication channel both internal and external. They are equally important.Here are examples of what I always ask my clients – What are you famous for? What differentiates you amongst your competitors? Is it your culture and values? Reputation? Essentially, what makes you unique?We know that companies who showcase their talent brands effectively, help motivate well-qualified prospects to become applicants as well as typically have higher retention rates within their organization.Key takeaway:Leverage your Brand Ambassadors to execute your brand promise and amplify your message and impact.
Speaker – EtienneEstablishing an employer branding value proposition then developing an effective employer branding strategy can be a lot of work. This leads me to our next question: why should you and your company care?
Speaker - EtienneBecause of the impact of social media. This is news. You’re going to hear a lot more about this and how social media can impact your employer brand. When a member identifies themselves as an employee at your company they automatically become “Followers”. Now, this is when it gets really interesting. Your employees are following your company, sounds simple right? It is, however what’s really interesting is that every time you post a company status update with engaging content about your company, the content instantly lands in the hands of your employees. They have now have a wealth of knowledge and content regarding job opportunities within their company, relevant industry and company news at their fingertips which they can push out into their network and not only be brand ambassadors but also help you grow your Follower base. So what’s the value of having Followers? LinkedIn ran a survey to find out why people follow companies. Data coming from there show that followers are an engaged talent pool. Research has shown that 71% of members who follow your company want to hear about career opportunities. Convertpassive talent into new hires. Passive talent takes longer to warm up….Create and build a relationship with them now to ensure your company is top of mind whenthey look for their next career opportunity.Also, we see that Followers tend to follow companies indefinitely. So, keep content relevant, interesting, give people a reason to engage, digest and look forward to your next update.Companies want to be able to guarantee a certain amount of followers – they can grow the community organically. But by investing, companies have the ability to speed up the process grow their Follower base through our targeted media capabilities.Mike will now take you through how to create and utilize your employees as brand ambassadors.
Speaker - MikeThank you Etienne. The linkage between employee engagement and business outcomes is well-established. Research by TNS and many other organizations have identified numerous connections between employee engagement and profitability, product and service quality, HR metrics, and brand and reputation. For example, a study of a global diversified manufacturing firm estimated that disengaged employees cost the company nearly $73 million USdollars a year in terms of lost productivity, poor quality, lower service levels, higher accident rates and absenteeism.
Speaker – MikeSo how does Employee Engagement relate to Brand Ambassadorship?Etienne did a great job in helping us understand what an employee value proposition is and what employer branding is. Just to reiterate, the employee value proposition are the attributes that you want associated with your company and employer branding is the delivery of your employee value proposition across every communication touch point – both internally and externally. Employee engagement is, in part, an evaluation of the employer brand as it is lived within the organization. Engaged employees are better suited to deliver on your brand promise, in terms of service and most importantly, advocacy. Therefore, a highly engaged employee is a brand ambassador and these are the employees that you want representing your brand.As you can see from the graphical display on the left hand side of the slide, high performing organizations have strong leadership, set the goals and direction of the organization while clearly communicating the brand promise. These organizations provide the resources and have the capability of engaging employees and converting these highly engaged employees into ambassadors for the organization. On the right hand side of the slide you can see how this impacts customer engagement and the ability to attract and hire top talent. Our research has shown that high performing organizations that excel in these areas see an increase in customer loyalty and financial performance.
Speaker - MikeSo how do we know if we have brand ambassadors in our organization?LinkedIn and TNS research converge on two key findings: engaged employees are less likely to leave which lowers overall costs of recruitment and training of employees. Also, engaged employees are more likely to be your brand ambassadors for high quality potential hires. Yet, our research suggests that employee brand ambassadorship is hardly rampant within organizations. Only 53% of employees would recommend their company to others as a good place to work and only 58% are proud of their company and gladly tell people about it through social media channels such as LinkedIn. When looking at our normative database, we see that ambassadors are much higher, at 85% plus to both of these questions. On the contrary, disengaged employees are much lower, around 25% favorable to both questions.
Speaker - MikeBased upon a global study that TNS conducted across 21 countries, we found that brand ambassadors are supported through strong leadership and effective brand training initiatives.the following 5 items emerged as the top reasons employees become brand ambassadors:The company brand experience sets us apartThere is trust in senior leadershipThe work that employees do provides them a feeling of accomplishmentThecompany is environmentally responsibleAnd, employees feeling valued by the organizationAdditionally, this research suggests that there are four key drivers of ambassadorship efforts. Our brand experience sets us apart from the competitionMy supervisor supports brand experience efforts Employees have had effective coaching and training on how to deliver the brand experienceAnd,employees understand the behaviors needed to deliver the brand experience
Speaker – MikeResearch conducted by LinkedIn displays the impact of connections via the LinkedIn network. There is a 129% difference in knowledge about companies where individuals have a first degree connection. Individuals are 22% more likely to have a positive impression of companies where they have first degree connection and are 29% more likely to consider a job with companies where they have a connection. As this data suggests, professional connections alone have a significant impact on all aspects of talent management, having more brand ambassadors in your organization will improve these perceptions.
Speaker – MikeSo far during our presentation we have covered the impact of social networks and employee engagement and how these relate to creating and utilizing talent brand ambassadors. Now Etienne and I will dive into greater detail on how to convert your employees to talent brand ambassadors and how to implement these 4 tips throughout your organization.The four tips that we are going to take you through are:Focusing on employee engagement, educating your employees on the employee value proposition, encouraging employees to utilize social networks such as LinkedIn to share company stories and measuring and monitoring your initiatives to gauge success.
Speaker – MikeOur first tip focuses on employee engagement. Highly engaged employees are brand ambassadors, the brand experience they deliver separates high vs. low performing organizations. Organizations need to communicate the brand promise and how it relates to the goals of the organization, how it differentiates them from the competition and how individual teams can contribute to these goalsThere are some key drivers of Employee Engagement that I would like to touch on.In order to be high performing, organizations need to set the direction of what employees should be engaged in and manage this performance. Top talent wants to understand how their individual objectives fit into the overall goals of the organization. Career development is a consistent key driver of employee engagement. Companies need to communicate a clear career path, prepare employees for the next role and provide lateral growth opportunities for top talent. The key here is the immediate manager engaging and empowering their employees. Recognition is a ‘basic’ area but extremely important to employee engagement. The senior leadership team sets the goals and direction of the organization. Top talent wants to work for organizations that have good reputations and are considered ‘best employers’. Senior leaders need to connect employees to the company mission, vision, goals and brand promise. Most importantly, leaders need to instill confidence in the employees that the direction and changes being made in the organization will help the company grow and prosper in the future. One of our clients, International Hotels Groups (IHG) is the world’s largest hotel company with 350,000 employees around the globe and recent recipient of one of the “Best Places to Work” as named by the Atlanta Journal. As a long standing TNS employee research client, IHG leaders regularly use employee surveys to help hotel managers improve engagement. They have done a great job of implementing an engagement program and tying it into the mission, vision, values and employee value proposition. They were successful because they had executive support in implementing an engagement program. This support is absolutely necessary for their continued success. Research shows that hotels with high levels of employee engagement deliver higher levels of Gross Operating Profit.
Speaker – MikeBefore we move onto our second tip in regards to educating your employees we would like the audience participate in two poll questions and we will share the results with everyone later in the presentation. The first question is: Are your highly engaged employees part of your talent acquisition process?And, the second poll question is: Are your highly engaged employees currently sharing on social media?Amy Facilitating the polls2 minutesAre your highly engaged employee part of your talent management process?YES, NO, MAYBEAre your highly engaged employees currently sharing on social media?YES, NO, MAYBEPOLL RESULTS WILL TALK ABOUT BY MIKE ON SLIDE 26, please release the results by slide 25
Speaker – MikeIn order for highly engaged employees to be converted into brand ambassadors they need some guidance and questions answered by the organization.First, why is this organization a great place to work?What is the value proposition for prospective, new and current employees?Why does this organization exist? What differentiates us from the competition?What type of talent does this organization need to continue to grow?Finally, what resources and training is available to help with this effort? What are the policies of the organization in terms of utilizing social media?This last question leads us directly into a case study that I would like to share with you. A Fortune 500 organization found that almost 40% of its employees feel restricted by the organization’s social media policy and more than half would share company stories given more flexible social media guidelines. After adding social media to their intranet, over 60% of its employees engage in intranet social media sites either daily or weekly.What this case study shows us is that establishing a social media policy that is easy to understand is very important. This study also shows that more than half of the employees are willing to share company stories. Employee engagement programs tie into this directly because we want has many engaged employees on the social media sites as possible, being advocates of the organization and attracting additional top talent. In order to attract the best talent and be successful, employees need answers and guidance on these questions that I have presented to you.Etienne is now going to discuss how to encourage employees to share company stories.
Speaker - EtienneThanks Mike. We are now going to take a look at tactical ways to educate your employees.How to Build Brand Ambassadorship in your Organization??The answer is : Encourage ‘share and tell’Firstly, develop and communicate a social media policySecondly, bring cross-functional teams togetherFinally, use intranets and social media platformsEarlier, Mike took you through some tips on how to focus on employee engagement as well as educating your employees on your talent brand. So, what Iwould like to share with you today is a success story of a client who has successfully leveraged their employees and seen results across the board.
Speaker - EtienneFirst example. Salesforce.com has had a strong and established partnership with LinkedIn and have seen great success to date. Now, just to set the stage Saleforce.com came to LinkedIn with the business challenge of having to hire hundreds of account execs and sales engineers in a short amount of time, which I am sure is not a foreign business challenge for some of you. So what did Salesforce.com do? They looked in their own backyard and leveraged their greatest asset – their employees as well as ensuring they leveraged their leadership team to get the word out. So once the strategy was developed and a playbook was outlined Salesforce.com, CEO Marc Benioff led the charge by sending out a template with 3 distinct posts that employees could share in their network promoting Salesforce.com as an employer of choice and a link to career opportunities within Saleforce.com. Salesforce.com had a clear and distinct playbook that they shared with their employees ensuring they got buy-in and support.Let’s see the impact of this initiative was
Speaker – EtienneSalesforce.com saw impressive results, beyond what was first understood. Overall, 60% increase in employee referrals in the first week, and they also saw great success in building awareness about their hiring efforts as well as successfully communicating their talent brand.350 links were shared by SFDC employees which is more than double the daily average seen in month prior, and 128% increase compared to prior monthsOf members sharing links just on the one day, Saleforce.com employees’ posts were visible to ~159K professionals at over ~40K companies+70% more ‘likes’ were generated at the peak of the week compared to the daily average of the month priorIncluding members who were exposed to the employees posts via “likes”, had a total potential audience of ~275K professionals at over ~63K companies.What is really key was that Salesforce.com got the right message in front of the right audience at the right time. The targeted audience was highly relevant for this campaign, potentially reaching ~38K sales professionals at Saleforce.com’s target companies and peers.To summarize, Salesforce transformed they way they find, recruit and retain the best talent!
Speaker - EtienneAnother inspiring story of how employees can be your talent ambassadors, from a smaller company, Rapid 7, a software security firm facing the challenge of building a team that can scale to the massive 50% employee growth rate. The challenge came with an uphill battle of Rapid 7 having no tools, process, or planning in place to address the targeted growth. Their strategy was focused on agencies with a reactionary ‘hurry up and wait’ mentality, and no social media presence to share their employer brand.
AMY PLEASE CLICK TO RELEASE POLL RESULTSSpeaker - EtienneRapid 7 started with baby steps – focusing on employees and ensuring they had a voice to speak about the company. Next, they invested in the tools and process to ensure hiring 100 employees in a year was scalable through developing a consistent process across functions and as a result improved hiring manager’s overall satisfaction. Rapid 7 created a talent scout model, since they were looking for the brightest candidates. Lastly, they strengthened their social media, ensuring it was a two way street, encouraging dialogue. As a result, Rapid 7 enjoyed the success of: 70% to 100% of employees on LinkedInFrom 1,000 to over 4,000 Company Page FollowersVoted in 2012 as one of Boston’s Best Places to workInternally, 94% of employees had an employee satisfaction of “high”And now, Mike will walk you through how to measure and monitor your initiatives to judge success.
Speaker - MikeThank you Etiennefor sharing those two case studies. During our presentation we’ve learned how to engage our employees and why it’s important, educate them, and encourage them to share company stories. A critical area in change management is the measurement of programs and learning what you are doing well and what areas need to be improved. Once we understand what needs to be improved, we can implement action plans to ensure continued improvement in the programs that have been developed. Strengths should also be communicated and leveraged in your action planning initiatives.In relation to what we have discussed today, there are three main areas that we should be measuring and monitoring.The first area is our employee engagement program. As we have discussed, a highly engaged employee is your best ambassador. Employee Engagement programs are never ending, meaning, companies need to make employee engagement a priority and continually monitor engagement levels. Within the survey should be questions that assess the communication, coaching and delivery of the brand promise. Analysis of this information will help identify the key drivers of brand ambassadorship within your organization.By measuring and monitoring your engagement program you are able to demonstrate ROI and value to the organization. With one of our clients that utilize our employee engagement program, we have found that increases in employee engagement reported a savings of lost productivity by $30 million dollars per year. The company was able to accomplish this by improving employee engagement and implementing actions plans that made the most impact throughout the company. The second area is the training and coaching of brand ambassadors. Organizations need to know if the information, training and coaching is working.The third area that we should be monitoring are the ‘share and tell’ programs that are being implemented. An example could be what Etienne shared with us when looking at Salesforce and Rapid7’s success stories. They were able to monitor and gauge the success of these initiatives. Before I pass the presentation back to Etienne,I would like to briefly review the poll results with you.When asked: Are your highly engaged employees part of your talent acquisition process?XX% answered Yes, XX% answered No and XX% answered MaybeWhen asked: Are your highly engaged employees currently sharing on social media?XX% answered Yes, XX% answered No and XX% answered MaybeEtienne will now recap the important areas that we should take away from this webinar.
Speaker – EtienneSo what's next? Where do you go from here?A question I am often asked is “what are my competitors doing today?” “How can I leverage my brand ambassadors to find and attract the best talent?”Our best in class clients see the most success in showcasing and promoting their Talent Brand Ambassadors by leveraging the LinkedIn platform and our dynamic media solutions.
Speaker – Etienne'You may not know this, but 50% of applications to jobs on LinkedIn come from recommendations and routes other than actual job search. One of those ways is through seeing a job in your status updates as posted by colleagues and connections which lands in their networks homepage feed.Another fun fact which you may not know is the #1 activity on LinkedIn is viewing member’s profiles, LinkedIn now gives the opportunity for companies to lockdown the advertising unit on their employees profiles ensuring that a relevant job opportunity or targeted message is served up to the member every time they network with your employees, allowing you to not only own 100% share of voice but also remain top of mind to passive candidates.Remember employees automatically follow your company when they list you as an employer, we see best-in-class companies frequently engage their followers with relevant and targeted company status updates and I always recommend the 30/30/30 rule – 30% of your content should be about your company, 30% about your industry and 30% about career opportunities.Develop a targeted and dynamic Career Page to showcase your employer brand and ensure your messaging is relevant and targeted every time active and passive talent visit your Career page.Most importantly, develop your own playbook, follow Salesforce.com and Rapid 7’s already proven success and leverage our 4 Tips to Convert Your Employees to Talent Brand Ambassadors.
Speaker – EtienneKnowing the Brand => Living the Brand => Spreading the WordIn its own work with clients and as confirmed in the TNS global panel data, it has been noted that employees outside the marketing department are generally unaware of what a brand is (it’s the logo, right?) much less what their company’s brand is. For example, less than half (47%) report they understand the behaviors required to deliver the brand promise to customers. As such, it is probably hard for employees to be brand ambassadors if they don’t know what a brand is, much less what YOUR brand is. LinkedIn and TNS Employee Insights research converge on two key findings: engaged employees are less likely to leave, lowering overall costs of recruiting and training and engaged employees are more likely to be your brand ambassadors for high quality potential hires. Additional analysis of TNS global panel data suggests that employees need to be actively supported in brand awareness and how to express the brand in their interactions with others. Based upon statistical analyses, specifically focusing on brand behaviors, coaching and training around what your brand is and what the brand experience means in practical terms emerged as particularly important for employer brand ambassadorship. Your brand, employer or corporate, is really a reflection of the culture, values, and norms of your company. When we talk about culture, we often talk about enacted (the one appearing in mission statements or posters on the wall) and espoused (the one that happens in the hallways). In regards to the difference between enacted versus espoused brands – if your established employee brand starts diverging too far from your employee brand reality, employees and prospective talent will become increasingly distrusting and disturbed by this lack of congruence. This distrust will manifest in subtle and not so subtle ways: Why aren’t we getting the best applicants for our jobs? In order to positively influence word on the digital street, it is crucial to properly train and engage your employees, which will ultimately lower your organization’s costs of recruiting. I will now hand the presentation back over to Amy
(AMY/ETIENNE PLEASE ADD YOUR ANSWERS TO THE QUESTIONS BELOW)Speaker –AmyThank you Mike and Etienne. We received a lot of great questions from our audience today and it looks like we have time to review a few of them. Please feel free to send any additional or confidential questions to the email addresses on the screen and our team will work to get them answered as soon as possible.It looks like our first question is for Etienne:Do companies have the ability to target a specific audience when doing company status updates?”ETIENNE’S ANSWERCompany Status updates can be targeted to give companies the ability to tailor content to specific audiences. Updates are targeted based on followers' rich profile data. Only Company Page administrators can post Targeted Status Updates.The targeting parameters include Company size, Industry, Function, Seniority, and Geography. Companies can also target non-employee followers with these same targeting parameters.Thanks Etienne. our next question appears to be directed at Mike and is ….What impact does the C-Suite have on creating brand ambassadors?MIKE’S ANSWER: The C-Suite drives the unification process. There are connections that need to be made across employee, customer and brand initiatives at the strategic level, not merely at the tactical levels. Decisions and behaviors need to be aligned to your brand promise and this starts at the top of the organization.Here is another question for Mike: How do you recommend a company measure employee engagement?MIKE’S ANSWER: The design of an engagement program is done in collaboration with our clients to ensure alignment to the organizations mission, vision, values and goals. It is important to align the engagement program to these areas to ensure that you are engaging employees to focus on areas that are important to the organization. In most of the engagement surveys we include items that asses pride, advocacy, leadership, etc. We have also been including brand ambassadorship items as we have discussed today.I think we have time for one more question forEtienne: How have you seen companies adapt culturally to the shift from employment to talent brand? ETIENNE’S ANSWERWhat’s talent brand? The term “employer brand” has been around for awhile, but social media has radically changed the game. Your talent brand is the highly social, totally public version of your employer brand that incorporates what talent thinks, feels, and shares about your company
(AMY/ETIENNE add in Etienne’s contact information on slide)Speaker – AmyThank you for joining us today on this webcast. A key takeaway for me is how leveraging employees as talent brand ambassadors is more tangible than expected and a win-win for employees, potential candidates, and companies as a whole To continue this discussion you can stay in touch with TNS through: Their website at www.tnsei.comTheir blog at: blog.tnsei.comOr through twitter at tns_insightsAnd with LinkedIn through:OurTwitter at:Our Slideshare at: Our Website at: Our Blog at:That wraps things up for our webcast today, thanks again for joining us.