Reputation Gurus

As the global director of GCI’s Corporate Practice, I have the fortune of working with corporate reputation expert all over the world, and there are many best practices to share. 

For example, something that is coming out of the Nordic region is the concept of employer branding — an area that will, I’m sure, catch on soon in both the UK and the US, in addition to other countries.  It’s based on the very true reality that the ability to attract and retain the best and brightest has become a challenge for employee communications experts, who find themselves working with HR people struggling with the same challenge. 

This is where the concept of “employer branding” comes in, a communications discipline that changes how the company communicates to current and prospective employees.  With Gen Y comes the fastest growing pool of talent, and they expect to be communicated to in a different way – including a heavy emphasis on online networking.  At the same time, there are plenty of Boomers and Gen Xers out there who want to be recruited in a different way. 

The “employer branding” concept examines the types of employees that companies want to attract and retain, and then markets the company to those groups in the way they want to be courted, through a mix of external and internal communications tools.  It’s an interesting approach that we’re excited to bring to other parts of the world.