Antilles Economics and Blueprint Creative Inc. recently completed a pilot study of more than 440 employees in Barbados to shed light on how employees’ views could be influencing their employers’ brands. The concept of the employer brand encompasses all aspects of an organisation’s reputation as an employer, and embodies the idea that companies should have an articulated value proposition for its employees. If we accept that employer brands reflect an organisation’s value proposition for its employees, it is evident that employers should pay attention to three broad areas:
- The experience that prospective employees have with the employer’s brand when job hunting;
- The level of engagement of current employees and their overall attitudes towards their employers; and,
- The response that current employees have to internal communication efforts that reinforce the employer brand.
Job Hunting
In many instances, the first time an employee encounters an organisation’s employer brand is when considering the organisation as a potential employer. Therefore, understanding the needs of job-hunters plays a crucial role in how organisations position their employer brand. The main insight uncovered by the research is that not only are appropriate pay and corporate culture the two most cited criteria when choosing an employer, they are interlinked. 53% of respondents stated that the most important challenge when job hunting is finding a job that pays what they’re worth, while the second most important challenge is finding an organisation with a good corporate culture (38% of respondents). The study further uncovered that companies with poor corporate cultures are more likely to encounter a ‘culture tax’, an unofficial salary premium expected by employees to compensate for the poor corporate culture that they must endure. Together, the results reinforce the importance of the employer brand in attracting the best talent.
Employee Engagement
Employee engagement is an important concern in Barbados, and will become even more so if the country is to produce its way out of its current economic challenges. Apart from a small uptick in 2014 that was the result of decline in total national hours worked, productivity levels in Barbados have been falling since 2011[1]. Boosting employee engagement has the potential to improve productivity levels in Barbados, as more engaged employees would result in a greater return on the investment made in human capital. As an example of the potential rewards that could be received by improving engagement levels, consider a 2013 article published by Gallup on boosting productivity in the United Kingdom. The article estimated that eliminating active disengagement from the U.K. workforce could result in productivity gains between £52 billion and £70 billion per year[2].
In Barbados, addressing employee engagement could provide an immediate boost to productivity, as our research estimates that the employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) for Barbados in 2017 was -52%, i.e. for every employee that is willing to promote their employer to others, there are five more that are detractors that may be damaging their company’s reputation through negative word of mouth. Furthermore, only 51.8% of employees consider their job to be a career, and 43.9% would like to be working somewhere else within the next 12 months. The eNPS score, along with these results, point to notable dissatisfaction amongst workers in the country. The results also raise the possibility that their dissatisfaction could be negatively influencing their employers’ brands.
Internal Communications
An organisation’s internal communication efforts are typically the only formal attempt to articulate the employer brand to current employees. Organisations can use internal communications to drive home messages around its values and culture as well as communicating more practical information about financial performance and strategy. And, in today’s era of widespread social media usage, getting these messages out can be not only interactive and fun, but could also lead to useful insights that could further strengthen employer brands.
The results of the study show, however, that organisations in Barbados may not be fully taking advantage of internal communications to strengthen their employer brands. 40% of employees that took part in the survey stated that their organisation’s management team did not communicate with employees on a regular basis, and 48.6% believed that their personal values and their organisation’s values were not aligned. In both cases, these employees had lower eNPS scores than their counterparts who benefitted from more frequent communications as well as those that believed their personal values and their organisation’s values were aligned.
How to Access the Executive Summary
In the report, we suggest ways in which organisations can strengthen their employer brands by paying attention to these three areas: the employee experience while job hunting, employee engagement and internal communications. To read the entire executive summary, click here. By downloading the report, you will automatically be signed up to receive notification when the full report is available.
To learn more about the Barbados Business Dashboard, a collaborative research undertaking of Antilles Economics and Blueprint Creative, please email Stacia at moc.scimonocesellitna@drawohs.
[1] Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs (2016). Barbados Social and Economic Report 2015.Government of Barbados.
[2] Gallup. 2013. Solving the U.K.’s Productivity Problem. [ONLINE] Available at http://www.gallup.com/businessjournal/165947/solving-productivity-problem.aspx?g_source=productivity&g_medium=search&g_campaign=tiles. [Accessed 4 September 2017].
