Interview with Helen Rosethorn

Development and Learning in Organizations

ISSN: 1477-7282

Article publication date: 5 January 2010

186

Citation

(2010), "Interview with Helen Rosethorn", Development and Learning in Organizations, Vol. 24 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/dlo.2010.08124aaf.001

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2010, Emerald Group Publishing Limited


Interview with Helen Rosethorn

Article Type: Leading edge From: Development and Learning in Organizations, Volume 24, Issue 1

A pioneer of employer branding practice in the UK, Helen Rosenthorn is CEO of the Barnard Hodes Group. After successfully integrating the group into the Omnicom network a decade ago, she has built it into one of the UK’s leading employment marketing and talent specialists. An MBA at Bradford Management School crystallised Helen’s long-standing interest in the people dimension and cultural dynamics of organizational success. It was here that Hodes’ distinctive approach to employer branding had its origins. Develop and refined during more than ten years’ practice with blue-chip clients, including GSK, Phillips and Nokia, the Hodes’ model examines the unwritten deal between employers and employees. A member of Hodes’ Global Network Executive Board, Helen is also principal HR/Brand Strategy Consultant on talent, branding, engagement and communications projects. She speaks widely about all these issues.

Can you tell us about your current role?

I am the CEO of Bernard Hodes group in the UK, one of the leading specialists in employment marketing and employee engagement. I run a company of very talented people but I also consult with many of our clients on managing their employer brands and driving improved levels of employee engagement.

Could you tell us a little bit about the types of organizations you work with?

We work with organizations large and small, global and local – our work is very varied. We have helped Hertfordshire Constabulary find hundreds of new police officers over the last ten years. Contrast this with our work in 2008/2009 with Anglo American to energise 6,000 of its top managers with the new ambition for the business, to understand the changes that this heralded and to introduce a new set of guiding values.

Your recent book, The Employer Brand, focuses on the experiences and perspectives of organizations that have applied employer brand practices. How can a strong employer brand improve levels of employee engagement?

Every brand offers a promise of a product or service experience. What is particularly special about an employer brand is that there is something very distinctly “two way” about what lies at the heart of the brand – what an employer offers and what an employee needs to bring. We use the expression “the deal” to encapsulate this. Distinctive and strong employer brands understand their deal intimately and they evidence it in compelling and memorable ways – marketers might call these brand rituals. What is important to understand is that this deal is not something static. It underpins the reason to join and the reason to stay throughout the employee lifecycle and the varying factors that impact the deal are naturally therefore factors that drive engagement.

One thing that shines through when looking closely at the factors that impact the deal, is that in day to day working life many of these are influenced by the relationship an employee has with their line manager. We coined the phrase “people join brands and leave managers” – which really does point at the pivotal factor of management behaviour when it comes to employee engagement.

What would you say are some of the shortcomings of employer branding initiatives to date?

There are four things I would highlight.

First, every organization has an employer brand. So the question really is “do you want to manage it and build your employer reputation” rather than do you want to launch an employer branding initiative. This leads to the second point which is that employer brand management is a way of life not a project. Yes it might be a project to do the work to understand it, its strength and its weaknesses, how you might need to address “your deal” to attract and retain the talent you need. But it’s not something you can start and stop, park when the going gets tough and pick up when things are better.

The third major shortcoming of the work we see on employer brands is the focus is purely on recruitment and is not used to inform and evolve people practices. This happens in particular because organizations get diverted by the creative aspect of branding and not the behavioural agenda. Back to my earlier point around the importance of management behaviours – if you agree with this then it is essential that employer brand management is something across the entire employee lifecycle.

Finally –as a result of everything already said – this is something that any CEO should be concerned about – not just his or her HR team. The question of ownership can get emotional within organizations. Is it marketing? Is it HR? It is lived by everyone but ultimately owned at the top – so get your CEOs educated – this is something they should be interested in, talking about and measuring – because it is a way to delivering business returns.

In The Employer Brand, you talk about “Generation Y” as being people born between 1977 and 1995, and their high expectations of work and in particular the work-life balance. Do you see this as a positive development?

The key question here is the definition of “work-life balance”. Don’t get side tracked with a traditional take on this. It’s not about flexi working – it’s about a more holistic world view. Some things are different from prior generations – for example concern about the impact of business on the world in which we operate and a preparedness to walk away from an employer if there is a values conflict. But interestingly some things around “the deal” are the same as the baby boomers who proceeded them such as the eventual desire to “settle down”, albeit that it might come a little later in life than the generation before. Above all there is an interest in the “me brand”. There’s a great quote in the book which came from an article in Fortune magazine about Gen Y – a young employee of KPMG in the US speaking about “hiring their skills out to their employer” as their take on the deal.

You mention companies such as BMW and Tesco as having very strong branding cultures. Are there any other companies that you think are really getting in right?

The various “Virgin” companies consistently emerge in our research as strong on brand and in clarity of their employee deal. The style of the Virgin brand does allow a creativity of expression of the deal for sure – and this is reinforced through the leader who encapsulates the brand – Richard Branson. But they have been clear about what they stand for and confidently reinforced this in their behaviors internally and externally for years. In fact the recent 25 year anniversary TV commercial for Virgin Atlantic says it all – not everyone’s cup of tea as an employee – but absolutely clear about what the brand means to its people and its customers.

What has been the biggest challenge in your current role?

When you operate as a consultant and specialist in best practice in the workplace, you have to be sure that you live up to what you advise and recommend to clients within your own organization. It is so easy to fall into the trap of “cobbler’s children” i.e. no shoes! We are not as good as we need to be but the biggest difference this year has been the use of regular “pulse checks” on our own employee engagement – more organizations should consider this rather than one major annual survey moment!

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