Posts Tagged ‘hr’

Over the past few years I’ve had lots of discussions with friends and ex-colleagues about  whether their employers see value in their blogging efforts, networking efforts or whether they see it as a distraction from the commercial elements of the role.  Even in today’s social and search driven world, many companies don’t seem to “get” the value that their company’s brand can get from the individual brands held by their rising stars.

This article from Jay Fry at Poynter, examines just that.  Jay focuses on media organisations (but much of it is applicable to PR agencies IMO) :

The age of the individual brand was inevitable, a natural consequence of the way digital media has remade our reading habits. In print, columns have a home on a section front or on the opinion page, but online the basic unit of reader consumption isn’t the section or page, but an article — or a video or podcast.

When readers search for or share columns, what’s found or shared is a single article. Meanwhile, writers spotlight links to their own work on their Tumblrs, share them with their Twitter followers, and hope for comments on their Facebook fan pages — all activity that spotlights their individual brands and pushes the institutional brand deeper into the shadows.

How then can smart employers ensure that their agency’s brand benefits from the halo effect created by individuals?

…in the print era, there was no such thing as a reader who picked up the paper, turned instantly to C3, read one article and threw the rest in the trash. And the higher individual brands rise, the more likely someone will try to pick them off, or that individual will begin to think of himself or herself as distinct from the institution.

How then can smart employers ensure that their agency’s brand benefits from the halo effect created by individuals?Jay identifies four ways in his original article and I think they can all apply to the PR world….here’s how:

Identify your most valuable individual brands.

For PR agencies, this means identifying who are your most well-connected account staff and who has developed a solid (on and offline) network around them of contacts that could benefit the wider organisation?

Turn centrifugal force into centripetal force, or at least balance them.

See how you can accommodate the interests, passions and direction your rising stars want to go in within the business.  How can their hobbies/external interests be applied within their jobs? Be interested in their interests. Look for commercial ways to support their ideas and digital personalities.

Make your individual brands into institutional gateways.

Work with your high-profile employees to become links to your organisation’s brand. Encourage them to explore ideas across both blogs or sites, look at ways you can cross-post or feed content into the company homepage and LinkedIn pages, share materials across the individual’s own and the company’s Slideshare accounts. Involve your rising stars in the agency’s ’s social media strategy so they get to input and co-develop how their own brand interacts with the wider agency footprint. Don’t scare employees off with guidelines and rules, ultimately, search is driving people to your site so look at ways that the two parties can collaborate and share traffic and content.

Get really good at building brands.

Help your existing employees build their brands to levels of those you’d target were you hiring/replacing them.  it is cheaper to build up the people you have than hire new, agencies are always looking at ways to retain staff and keep retention levels high. It is also great practice to work with staff on their personal brands encouraging the halo effect to spread throughout the organisation.  People remember people, not company names so prospects will often search down an individual and not an agency anyway. Help your staff become easy to find and impressive in digital terms and it will only benefit you as an employer in the long run.

Important to remember though that just as you gravitate to people with high public visibility, so do others in the market so make sure you are looking after these people from an HR perspective too. Don’t underestimate the importance of good HR practice, appraisals, remuneration and above all, interesting projects to work on. Building the brand is one thing but keeping the value high relies on relevant and recent achievements so make sure your staff are getting the opportunities, support and clients they need to stay high-profile.

This is cross posted with my own personal blog

I am often sceptical of newspaper supplements as just ending up as train floor fodder but yesterday’s Barclays sponsored guide called “The Road to Recovery: A blueprint for business” had some interesting stuff in it. 

A piece by Stefan Stern (of whom I am a big fan) caught my eye as it focused on boosting morale following corporate upheaval.  There are few companies who haven’t seen some sort of change in the past 2 years be it growth in new areas, changes in management or for the more unlucky folks, redundancies and closures. 

One of the main areas of management that has always fascinated me is how to build and maintain a team ethic as you business grows and changes and Stefan provided some interesting pointers that can be adapted to suit the PR industry and the economy we are in right now.

• Structure your strategy around (re)building and (re)assuring
• Make employees proud of where they work
• Clever and creative people want fun at work
• Stamp out gloomy environments
• Don’t change the message/goals before they have really got through to staff
• Be honest and straight talking
• Be calm, don’t panic and handle situations with openness and backbone
• Get involved, don’t run the business from the spreadsheets: get out and meet staff and clients
• Don’t apologise for decisions, explain why they are necessary and stand by them

Cross posted with my own blog

The class system in the UK interests me. It’s the whole football vs. rugby, union vs. league, blue or white collar, north/south divide that makes this country so rich in culture - or perhaps I’m a bit naive to think it, not coming from a country that has such distinct social stratification?

This week the government published the report on fair access to the professions. I haven’t read the report in full, but amongst its most publicised findings are the “forgotten middle classes”, lack of aspiration amongst the younger generation, nepotism, and the widening gap.

I’d like to ask the question: what do the “middle classes” and those less better off really aspire to, and are there resources out there to help young people achieve their goals?

I have to admit the issue of “who you know” does play a significant part in getting internships or work experience, especially in certain industries such as the media. But nothing has changed there - why is there such an outcry now? Is it because the gap has widened despite 12 years of a Labour Government continually promising to do something about it?

Call me idealistic, but I happen to believe that the UK is a meritocracy - if you are ambitious, has genuine talent and is resourceful, you will achieve what you want. As mentioned in Question Time last night, look at the last few prime ministers (with the exception of Tony Blair), and that demonstrates class should play no part in achieving one’s highest ambition.

So the next question is, how do we cultivate ambition?

The global population is rapidly ageing; by 2020, about 719.4m people - 9.4% of the world’s inhabitants - will be 65 or more, compared with 477.4m (7.3%) in 2005.  We constantly hear about the strain this is putting on healthcare systems, pensions and the economy generally as we struggle to support a growing number of retired people but what about those people that don’t want to retire at 65 or, in today’s credit crunch, have found they can’t afford to?

Last night’s Dispatches addressed the issue of ageism amongst employers and recruiters. It seems older workers are more likely to lose their jobs and fail to secure another position frequently being told that they are ‘overqualified’ for the roles they are applying for.  The programme  followed the stories of people forced to retire at 65 by their employers, thanks to the Default Retirement Age introduced in 2006, and those who when made redundant later in life - some as young as 50 - struggled to even get recruiters to register them never mind get in front of prospective employers.  It made compelling but depressing viewing.  It seems we no longer value experience rather we see people of a certain age as a liability believing that they will be less driven or enthusiastic and take more time off work than their younger counterparts.  This of course is often not the case.  B&Q and Asda are among the few companies that have recognised the potential of older workers but how many of us would like to be told that our only work option is to take a lower paid job on a checkout purely because of our age?

What constitutes being an older worker can also be determined by the industry you are in.  Apparently, the average age of staff at The Times top 100 companies is 34. This made me think about my own industry.  I would hazard a guess that the average age of agency communications consultants is around 35 with the majority of staff being in their 20s.  A common topic of conversation is ‘what happens to people over 40 in our industry?’.  I’m not sure I know the answer but, until we find the fountain of youth, perhaps it is time we reconsider our attitudes towards older workers and see the value in balancing the enthusiasm and adaptability of a young workforce with keeping and attracting a few more experienced grey hairs.

Personally, I hope to be retired and travelling the world at 65 but I’d like to have the choice…