Employer Branding Trends in 2020 / Post-COVID Revised Edition

Petr Hovorka ・ Employer Branding Trends in 2020 / Looking Back After the Pandemic 2
In light of this unusual, and challenging year for our world, I reviewed
my predicted trends for Employer Branding in 2020 (which I published
in December 2019). After all we’ve been through with quarantine,
global economies shutting down, close to 400,000 lives lost in the past
six months, I needed to evaluate whether my initial predictions
remained relevant, even throughout this pandemic.
The first sentence, and my positive naivete, of the original article
amused me: "The magical year of 2020 awaits us. Full of changes, not
only in the field of Employer Branding." One thing remains true of that
statement at least, it has been a year full of changes.
I predicted that the attitude and actions of corporations towards
their employees - their acceptance, leadership and motivation - would
evolve, as was already indicated at the end of 2019. And what direction
did I mean? Holistic, long-term, and strategic. I expected the topic of
Employer Branding to become further integrated into corporate
cultures through their lived values, shared long-term visions and
strategies, and diversions from recruitment campaigns, career sites and
social networks.
I had no idea how much something as unexpected as a global pandemic
would grow this trend.
For each of the 5 predicted trends, I have added a paragraph reflecting
on the trend from a post-COVID perspective.

1. VIRTUE SIGNALLING –> MANAGERIAL ALIGNMENT
It’s likely that you have been at a company where the management
plasters a new vision and corporate values all over its corridors,
restrooms, and common spaces. Employees see the new
materials, read them and shake their heads in disbelief. They don’t
understand them, and the values don’t resonate with them. They do
not know how to manifest the imposed values in their personal or team
work, much less in their long-term strategies. I'm not surprised. Often
these are meaningless statements created by wordsmith’s, which even
the management itself is not ready to implement. Such conflicts often
arise in a management team whose members do not trust each other,
play games, defend their positions and ego, and certainly do not pursue
a common goal.
In 2020, the dysfunctional failure of these tactics will finally surface as
the mood in the market changes. Companies will need to encourage
people (employees), and develop motivating strategies to guide them.
What else should that be other than absolute clarity of intentions and
plans, the clarity created by answering 6 key questions:
1. What does the company do (product and story)?
2. What is the purpose / meaning of the company's existence
(mission)?
3. What does the company want to achieve in the long run (vision)?
4. According to what rules does the company play (corporate
values)?
5. What makes the company unique, who is its key customer (brand
promise)?
6. What does the company build on as an employer (Employer Value
Proposition)?

Directors who are dedicated to their self-development will be ready to
achieve greater alignment with their teams by eliminating the
dysfunctions brilliantly described in the book, The 5 dysfunctions of a
team, by Patrick Lencioni. Workplace dysfunction begins with the
absence of trust and fear of conflict, continues with a lack of
determination and avoidance of responsibility, and ends with
indifference to results.
Post-COVID reflection: The problem of uncoordinated,
dysfunctional teams is even more exacerbated and crystallized in the
post-COVID workplace. Dysfunction in work teams and relationships
will expose itself through the necessity of quick reactions, clear steps,
firm decisions, and intensive communication. All of these variables will
be made even more difficult through increasingly remote workplaces -
further highlighting the need for alignment. Although sometimes in
sports, weak teams can manage to unite and make extraordinary
efforts, they usually do not last long and eventually crumble.

2. IMPLEMENTATION PLANNING –> STRATEGIC THINKING
In business we are constantly fighting fires – big, medium and small, all
the time. Many management teams are subject to this task and forced
to constantly focus on extinguishing their immediate problems. They
only seem to have the capacity to look to the end of the year at most,
sometimes only the end of the next quarter. They are stuck in daily
operations and burn all their energy on immediate activities. They
create tactical plans to squash the biggest fires to achieve fast results.
They put out one fire and hurry to another, while in the meantime
another ignites. They are fully dedicated to implementation planning.
Eventually, people tasked with firefighting in organizations can’t see the
light at the end of the tunnel, at the end of the next quarter, they slowly
lose hope and their own fire burns out. Endless extinguishing does not
pour energy into their soul.
In 2020, the country will be faced with challenges. The automotive
industry will cut back on gas, which will be reflected in other industries
over time. People inside of companies will become uneasy, and will
seek reassurance that the future of their company is stable, and they
will want to know in whose hands that responsibility ultimately lies. The
need to create a long-term vision (5, 10, 15 years) will become an
urgent matter for many companies. Of course, I don't mean idealistic
visions which are just good for annual reports and company
publications. I refer to long-term goals which break into medium-term
(3-5 years), annual and quarterly goals between individual teams. By
the way, a great article on this topic called Many Strategies Fail Because
They Aren't Actually Strategies was recently published in the Harvard
Business Review.

Post-COVID Reflection: Clearly, in the first weeks of quarantine, the
increased rate of immediate, and tactical adjustments was
understandable. Now, as we gain understanding of the virus, its impacts
and management techniques, there is a growing need to see beyond
the end of this year. Both because of the need for smart resource
utilization (which some companies will now have less), and because of
the need for people to know what the world will now look like. And do
you have a better idea of giving people "security and peace of mind"
than showing them that you know the way?

3. FRIENDS CULTURE –> CULTURE OF RESPONSIBILITY
Most likely, you have worked in a company where people clap each
other on the shoulders, go for beers together, and office days feel more
like parties than work, but the company does not progress. In such an
environment, new projects, innovations and strategies are created, but
hardly any change or progress is actually implemented. Although the
problems are named, they are not solved in the long run. “Culture eats
strategy for lunch”, said management guru Peter Drucker, before
correcting himself later to say, Culture eats strategy for breakfast”. And
he was right. The best strategies, new products, and internal processes
do not come to life in a company without clear individual responsibility.
In 2020, companies will need to change that kind of behaviour. They
will realize that friendship is a nice thing, but without a culture of
responsibility, they cannot achieve results. Responsibility within
companies can be divided between accountability and responsibility.
The difference is that guarantees can be shared, while liability cannot.
Being responsible means not only being responsible for an outcome,
but also for one's actions. In companies there are always functions such
as business, marketing, finance, for which someone is
responsible. Additionally, the processes that run in tandem through
these functions such as development, internal communications,
introduction of new products must have responsible task leaders. If it
is not clear who is responsible for what, and the right measures are not
assigned, the strategies will progress only on paper.

Post-COVID Reflection: I know from experience that this point is very
closely connected with the previous one - implementation planning.
When plans are not connected with a clear who-what-when-how plan,
the plans are just hallucinations. In the coming time, there will be far
less room for companies who struggle to clearly establish responsibility
across their teams.

4. TRICKLE-DOWN ORDERS –> BOTTOM-UP MOTIVATION
Which form of communication is more impactful than simply passing
along information? Inspiration. Presenting meaningful advice, stories
and support that can help employees in their daily work and even life
outside the office. But now I switch to another important facet of
inspiration at the workplace - employee involvement. Co-creation and
investment in the present and the future of the company. Today's
typical format is "about us, without us". It is usually a two-stage, top-
down process, in which higher-level managers decide what happens for
everyone else, and then implement the decision and communicate it
through internal departments with the help of internal communication.
However, such a detached and hierarchical process does not deliver the
desired effect.
In 2020, workplaces will become more involved and integrated
between their leaders, management and employees. Instead of just
making decisions and informing people, companies will start to create
decisions and processes with them. And I don't mean in the way of
management simply asking employees, evaluating the feedback
ourselves, and preparing action steps, plans, measures in a vacuum.
Instead, it will be much more about creating solutions in a process that
fully involves people. The goal then is not only to end up gathering
opinions, but to continue cooperating in subsequent steps. Stanford
University professor, Robert Burgelman, wrote: "Successful companies
are characterized by maintaining internal experiments and selection
processes from the bottom up while respecting the strategic intent set
by the management team." To put it simply: management should
outline a strategic framework, establish sound processes for internal
feedback, and allow autonomy for inspired people to materialize their
intentions to meaningful action. .

Post-COVID Reflection: this point concerns both the finding the
motivations of people, and the ability to turn those into action as part
of a larger strategic plan. When people are involved in building plans
and feel motivated to take part in and implement them, their chances
of success will be several times higher. And this is nothing new -
companies needed it before the pandemic and will need it after it.

5. HAPPINESS MANAGERS –> HOLISTIC MANAGERS
Buzzwords are powerful, they can attract attention and inspire
ambitions. I see “happiness” in the context of work as one of these
common attention-grabbers, and it manifests into creating happiness
managers to implement “happiness-building” in the office. However, I
think that ambitions do not include employee happiness. Happiness
takes place on the inner level of every person, it is a state of mind and
unity of spirit, and there companies can hardly achieve. The ambitions
of companies should end at the creation of clarity of their importance,
role, and responsibility in the company, a context that can help
motivate people and their subsequent fulfillment.
In 2020, some companies will jump on the trend of managers who will
be individually and truly interested in paying real attention to “their
people”. I would like to quote Štěpán Lukeš, HR head of IBM ČR, when
he said: "We are moving from assigning a task to understanding the task
processor". Maybe we can call them caring or holistic managers,
depending on how they focus on meaningfully understanding the
work of individuals. Individualization is not only a trend in business
operations, it will also be a trend in HR management and development.
In addition to programs aimed at all employees or individual teams,
there will be far more activities targeted at individuals. How do we
create meaningful work (<= clarity created by management teams) in a
caring environment (<= attention of holistic managers).

Post-COVID Reflection: quarantine conditions that created both the
opportunity, and necessity for deeper interpersonal connection in the
workplace will not (hopefully) be present for a long period of time.
However, we can hope that the positive take-aways will last. Managers
have been able to come out of their shells and take an interest in "their"
people far more than before, paying attention to them. There’s been a
little more time for personal interaction. Maybe some have touched on
how to calm and encourage people, send them some positive energy,
contribute to their satisfaction or ease their nerves. I doubt any of them
were thinking how to simply make people happy ;-)

CONCLUSION
I have been predicting Employer Branding trends in the Czech Republic
for 5 years. I also now, along with most of the rest of the world, have
experienced my first pandemic and quarantine too. What will be next?
For me, the journey begins with companies that want to be more
successful thanks to their people. This is how I named the new
leadership concept – STEEPLE / More Successful Thanks to People
– which is based on branding, leadership and the business /
management aspect and puts it in the hands of directors and
management teams of companies. This is where strategies must be
born that are meant to influence the meaning embedded into the
names and logos of companies.
I'm looking forward to summing up and underlining this year to see how
many companies have invested in aligning management teams that
have started to focus fully on strategic thinking, creating a culture of
responsibility, drawing people into the game at the right time and
enabling their managers to be caring, and care for people.
I wish you all the best in the second half of 2020.

“If you look at the financial statements,
you'll see how you've been in the past.
If you look into the corporate culture,
you’ll see how you’ll do in the years to come.”
Petr Hovorka
Management Consultant & Employer Brand Baker @ BrandBakers
+420 602 271 011
petr.hovorka@brandbakers.cz
https://www.linkedin.com/in/petrhovorka1/

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