Corporate Eye

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Archives for July 2009

Tick Tock: Recruiting Hourly Workers

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I was aware that I didn’t know much about the subject of hourly hiring, but it turns out I knew even less than I thought.  There are a lot of moving parts to the process, including several (such as drug testing, background checks, and physical exams) that aren’t as likely to apply in salaried hiring.  And whereas salaried employees are typically inclined to keep their jobs as long as possible, turnover is a huge issue in the hourly world–so the hiring process tends to be constant rather than cyclic or intermittent.

Other differences I hadn’t thought about:  Walk-ins are an important source of hourly applicants.  Location is often especially important to hourly workers, who are likely to work within five miles of where they live.  And time-to-hire is a key factor for many hourly applicants, who may need to find work quickly.

I also had some misconceptions.  Although it’s true that hourly workers have traditionally tended to be young and either under-educated or still in the process of getting educated, today’s hourly workforce is divided roughly into thirds in terms of age (a little over one-third for the under-25 set, a little under one-third for the over-45s, and the rest in between).  And as for education and experience . . . in today’s economy, teenage dropouts may be standing next to down-sized professionals at the application kiosk.

I gathered my new view of hourly hiring by visiting the websites of several specialized recruiting consultants and niche job boards.  The Job Magnet, a site specifically catering to hourly job seekers, has an overview of candidate sourcing (PDF) in their Employer area.  (And while you’re there, check out the nice way they have matched up the look of their seeker-facing home page and their employer-facing home page.  Each shows five photos of audience representatives across the top, and the difference in depiction of the two groups–job-seekers and employers–is quite instructive in itself!)

Kronos, which provides HR solutions specifically tailored for the hourly workforce, offers a case study and a webinar on the ROI of selection.  (Look in the right-hand navigation pane.)  And HRLogix, which specializes in “strategic talent acquisition strategy” for the gaming and hospitality industries (major employers of hourly workers) provides a nice graphic overview of the whole hiring and onboarding process.

Niche board Snag-a-Job offers helpful information in its Employers section.  There are a variety of short, targeted articles in the Hiring Library, and a good round-up of information and tips in the monthly Recruiting Edge newsletter..

But by far the most interesting and useful resource I found is “How to Find and Recruit the Best Hourly Employees (PDF),” a Workforce Institute white paper by Mel Kleinman of Humetrics.  Among the eye-openers included in this paper is a 2008 survey of hiring managers which found that only 9% regarded the corporate website as one of their best recruiting tools.  And a mere 14% listed the Internet as a top tool.

What’s the problem?  Find out in the next post.

(Thanks to Chris Metcalf for the cleverly framed clock.)

The Huggies Brand Embraces the Social Media in Many Directions

Most everyone who’s a parent is all to familiar with the popular diaper brand Huggies. I’ve used quite my share of them myself with having reared three little ones through numerous boxes, no cases, of diapers over the years. The brand is great and absolutely reliable.

Just recently, an article on the Mashable social media site talked about how Huggies has launched a social media campaign along with the Circle of Moms on Facebook that will give them even more exposure for their brand. When I saw that they were on Facebook, I immediately signed up as a site user, knowing that I likely will never buy another diaper again, but more so that I can still receive emails and offers on their other products that they have. The idea here is to never discount a company because you don’t need the ONE thing that you’ve been buying from them. Check out their other offers and see what other values you can use.

The Huggies brand has made quite a media impact by catering to their UK audience as well. How? Well, I notice that they have 2 Twitter pages that are live. One is at their regular Twitter U.S. based site, and the other one is with their UK based Twitter site. Now while neither one has a particularly huge base of followers, they still have the right resource in place to appeal to a lot of moms. But, when I joined their Facebook based site, there were/are literally thousands and thousands of members there. Perhaps they find things more lucrative via Facebook?

I know to each his own in their social networking selection, but I do think Twitter has a place in Huggies lives. Yes, there are certainly advantages to the Facebook presence, but maybe they should also consider the real time marketing that they could get with Twittering. And not to mention, with a UK based Twitter site along with their US based Twitter site, they have the potential to reach a significant number of moms to market to. What do you think? Is it worth their time and effort to do that?

While I will most likely keep my Huggies Facebook account (yes, because I absolutely love Facebook), I do wish they would consider beefing up their Twitter account as well. It’s a convenience that is quick, direct, and to the point for those moms who are pressed for time and may not be able to view photos, leave comments, etc. like on Facebook.

Just an idea for Huggies to consider. Do you agree?

Chocolate, Cadbury and the Corporate Site

I’ve been thinking a lot about chocolate recently…

Not much new there, obviously, chocolate featuring as one of the major food groups in our house. But in particular, I’ve been thinking about Cadbury.

we love chocolateThe Cadbury corporate site has long been one that I would visit regularly when benchmarking… “need an example of X done well? Nip over to the Cadbury site to see how they deal with X”. Their graduate site, for instance, did a lot of innovative things with videos and blogs before others were very active in this area.

Things have changed a bit; their redesign slimmed the site down a lot, and other major corporate sites have worked hard to add innovative and useful functionality over the last couple of years.

However, Cadbury have continued their innovative work – but off the corporate site. The Cadbury approach seems to be to maximise the brand benefits they can get from their customer-facing social media outposts, while retaining the static and more corporate information on the corporate site.

There are hundreds of thousands of fans of Cadbury fans on Facebook. These are mostly brand pages (Dairy Milk: two pages with over 400,000 fans; Creme Eggs: two pages, with over 500,000 fans; Mini Eggs: two pages with over 300,000 fans … and that’s just on the first page of results). But there is also a corporate page with over 248,000 fans, and even a page for their recent Eyebrows advertisement campaign with nearly 225,000 fans. That is more than a glass and a half of customer love…

Cadbury is clearly doing something very right here; Facebook works well for them, and they are making the most of their advertising successes, and welcoming the mashups and spoofs that their loyal customers create. (You’ll no doubt remember the Mars/Snickers episode from a few months ago).

But it isn’t just Facebook: there are many Cadbury inspired videos on YouTube, and there’s at least one Cadbury channel. There also seem to be several Cadbury-owned Twitter accounts (such as @ButtonsFOTF, @haveyouearnedit, @Cadbury_Gorilla and @GoingFairTrade).

And Cadbury’s new Fairtrade blog links out to Flickr, YouTube and Twitter.

But the main corporate site doesn’t make a point of linking to the social media outposts – or only to the FairTrade blog, and to a CEO video on YouTube. So why have Cadbury chosen not to link out from the corporate site to these waves of customer love that come their way on Facebook and Twitter?

I’ve one thought, and one question…

The thought is about the authentication of social media outposts. I found the many Cadbury social media outposts by searching, and by making an educated guess as to whether they were corporate-owned or customer-owned. Here’s what I look for:

  • using the company brand (logo and colours) on all the social media outposts
  • linking from the main corporate site to the social media outposts
  • linking back from the social media outposts to the corporate site, if possible
  • identifying someone in the company who is responsible for that social media outpost
  • providing content that supports the aims of the company
  • using any of the verification methods that some outposts (e.g. Twitter) are setting up for corporates.

If a company doesn’t authenticate its social media outposts, then they run the risk of being brand-jacked, with all the knock-on brand and reputation risks that this creates.

This doesn’t need to be intrusive. Kodak do this well, creating links out to their outposts from one dedicated page, but it could be done by a related links section in the sidebar.

The Cadbury outposts I’ve mentioned seem to be genuine, in that they meet at least 3 of the 6 checks I list above, but they aren’t authenticated by the corporate site. Given Cadbury’s skill at managing its corporate web estate, this must be deliberate. Perhaps because they think it unnecessary, or because of the risk of losing control of the message, or even that it just detracts from the formality of the corporate site?

And here’s the question: what do you think of the strategy of keeping the two elements of corporate web estate distinct in this way? Is the main Cadbury site missing out on the benefits of the innovative and entertaining work that is being done at the outposts, or is it better to keep the traditional static corporate material well-structured, easy to find and easy to use?

Are Cadbury once again at the forefront of a new trend, and redistributing the workload across the whole corporate web estate: their corporate site and their social media outposts?

Talking to yourself: is your intranet really communicating to your employees?

Remember the old printed company newsletter? If you were responsible for writing the monthly articles back then, you were probably stuck listing employee anniversaries and pushing what one former journalist has called “corporate propaganda.”

intranet-sCorporate intranet sites have assumed many of the editorial features of the old monthly newsletters. But almost a decade into the transition, many corporate intranet sites have lost their power to communicate in a relevant, personalized, and effective way with their employee readers. For those corporate communicators who are responsible for maintaining the editorial freshness of their intranets, it’s critical that they keep in mind the needs, interests and reading habits of their audience.

While many complaints about intranets can be technical or navigational in nature, some are just plain communication blunders. Editors and writers seem to have forgotten that the same rules that apply to making an external internet site effective –being easy to read, full of current and interesting information -– apply equally to employees who aren’t always going to their intranet just to find the HR Department’s phone number.

One major pharmaceutical company allowed their intranet for their field sales staff site to become the equivalent of a corporate “kitchen junk drawer,” containing every link to every department across the company, cluttering the chance for any clear communications. It’s what the former CMO of a major consulting firm called a “Link-a-rama.”

According to the web site Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox, many of the winners of the 10 Best Intranets of 2009 show that “intranet personalization is becoming increasingly sophisticated.” Says Nielson, the lead application of personalization is “to provide each employee with news updates focused on their job role and personal interests. If intranets show everyone everything, information overload ensues and people either ignore the news area or squander their time reading irrelevant stories.”

Today’s intranets can go beyond being the link to the company directory or security bulletins. One company that made the top 10 best sites is the COWI Group A/S, a Danish engineering, environmental science, and economics consulting firm. They enhanced their company employee profiles to highlight common users and created an interesting combination of personalization, social networking, along with the traditional staff directory.

The epitome of personalization for an intranet site is one that was developed by a major west coast networking company. They created an internal social network —taking the intranet model to its full potential. This employee experience network does everything from informing employees on the latest brand corporate positioning information to inviting employees to share stories, videos, experiences, thoughts and ideas about working with the company.

Intranet sites must now contend with the myriad of social network tools—Yammer, iChat, Facebook, Twitter, and an influx of software tools like SocialGo and Sixtent that allow corporations to build their own social network communities, replacing some of the older functions of intranet news.

In the end, intranets must be as topical and current in the way they communicate to employees as any external form of communication. If not, they risk just talking to themselves with no one listening.

I recently invited Larry Oakner to write this guest post for us about the corporate intranet. Larry is Senior Partner, Engagement, at Tenet Partners, a branding consultancy headquartered in New York, and has spent more than 30 years building brands, positioning companies, and managing strategic marketing projects. He has helped nearly four dozen Fortune 1500 companies implement their branding programmes internally throughout their organisations. Who better to talk to about internal corporate communications?

Brand Longevity – The Message Consumers Need to Hear

aig_empty_parking_lotConsumers have never been faced with so many failing companies that were once perceived as infallible industry leaders as they have in the last several years (at least not in our lifetimes).  As a result, consumers have become less willing to believe marketing messages and have begun to rely more on word-of-mouth marketing to make buying decisions (particularly fueled by the social Web) than ever before. 

We’re living in a time when consumers are looking for a sense of security.  One of the most important factors of customer loyalty is creating a sense of security and sustainability — meaning the brand is perceived to be one that will be around for a long time, or at least a predetermined amount of time with a specific end. ( I’ve written about customer loyalty on Corporate Eye before, and you can read that post here for more information.)

It seems to me that the economic struggles of the world, the folding of major brands, and the prevailing sense of insecurity, distrust and fear is actually a huge opportunity for brands.  In other words, now is the time to flood your market with messages of longevity, stability, trust, and honesty.  These are the messages consumers are looking for, and if you can communicate them in a believable manner, you’re on your way to significant long-term success.

Brands that position themselves in a power position now, while times are still tough for consumers, will reap the benefits when our economies turn around and get back on track.  Think of it this way — what can you do now that will get your customers to say, “I could really count on them when times were tough,” later?

It’s not often that the world around us gives us the perfect brand message.  Take advantage of it, and deliver the messages people want to hear.

Your thoughts?

Image: Flickr