An “employer brand” denotes an organization’s reputation as an employer – the image of an organization as “a great place to work.”  Employer branding is the process of creating this image.

In an article titled “Mission: Brand Alignment,” HRO Today explores how employer branding aligned with a company’s corporate or product brand can produce great business results.

Linking salient corporate/product brand elements with your employer branding strategy gives an organization the ability to communicate the employer brand to various talent segments – candidate prospects, and current and former employees – across the business.

Many HR groups within organizations are realizing that an effective brand strategy can enhance their talent acquisition efforts.  Signaling your company message on several levels can resonate with job candidates.

Consequently, just as marketing executives leverage a wide variety of tactics and initiatives to drive awareness for product portfolios, many successful HR leaders are taking advantage of various branding elements traditionally found in a marketer’s toolbox.

Where to Start? Compare & Understand

One of the first steps toward aligning your employer brand with your product or corporate brand is to have an open and honest assessment of what your brand really stands for and means. One method that marketers use — in order to achieve a deeper understanding of essence — is to perform a brand alignment analysis.

Source and Attract

As you source and attract candidates in the early stages, one of the goals is to make sure that the different vehicles you utilize, such as job postings, employment advertisements, career portals, recruitment videos, social media, word-of-mouth and other tactics, reinforce your employer brand positioning and messaging.

Employer Branding Alignment Tips

• Collaboration between HR and Marketing is critical.  Learn what aspects of your corporate or product brand will translate well to your employer brand strategy. Many organizations are tasking marketing professionals to head their employer branding efforts and bridge the gap between the two functional areas.
• Focus more on brand engagement over brand communications. This is especially true when designing an employer branding program during your onboarding and employment stages. Think about the influencing and net promoter type brand attributes you can harness from an engaged group of employees. Dialogue and engagement are more powerful and relevant during this stage compared to monologue messaging.
• Assess all candidate touch points. Your employer brand reaches prospective candidates at many intersections. Make sure you’ve identified all of them and that your employer brand messaging is clear and relevant at each juncture.

And a word of caution: don’t assume that just because candidates easily identify with a great product brand that they will assume it’s also a great organization to be employed with.  The burden of proof is on the employer.

“Female leadership systematically underestimated” is from Human Capital Magazine, Australia’s first magazine targeted at senior human resource professionals and top corporate decision-makers.

According to the article, contrary to popular belief and even previous studies, researchers have discovered women may actually outperform in areas traditionally considered to be the domain of men.

The findings were arrived at by Utah-based leadership consultancy firm Zenger Folkman after surveying more than 7,000 business leaders. It was found that across 16 core competencies, the leaders who were consistently found to come out on top were all women. Their skills included:

• Inspirational leadership
• Motivating and developing others
• Building relationships
• Collaboration and teamwork

The researchers found that while stereotypes have assumed that men are stronger in driving for results, championing change, taking initiative, and problem solving, women actually received higher scores on all those points than did their male counterparts.

Women vs. Men

“Study Finds Few Differences Between Men and Women Business Leaders” is from Roxanne Joffe, president of CAP Brand Marketing of Sarasota, Fla.

According to Joffe, despite a long-held myth to the contrary, women business leaders are as successful as men in starting new high tech companies.  Here’s why:

The stereotypical entrepreneur – particularly the Silicon Valley version – is a 20-something, single white male who dropped out of college to work 24/7 and take enormous risks for a shot at becoming the next Mark Zuckerberg.

Women entrepreneurs, on the other hand, are thought to be overrepresented in “lifestyle” industries and more focused on raising families than founding the next Facebook.

A study of more than 600 start-up founders and 500+ fast-growth companies published in TechCrunch deflates these myths. Entrepreneur-turned-academic Vivek Wadhwa and his team studied both men and women business leaders and their companies and found the following:

• Men and women start-up founders are motivated by the same goals – both men and women business leaders are driven by a desire to build wealth, chart their own destinies and capitalize on their business ideas.
• Men and women business leaders largely share life circumstances.  Wadhwa found that most entrepreneurs are closer to 40 than 20 when founding their companies and that most are married with children. Men were slightly more likely than women to be married.

However, Wadhwa’s team did discover some interesting differences about the business climate in which male and female entrepreneurs operate:

• Women business leaders receive more encouragement from co-founders.  According to the research, women entrepreneurs were significantly more likely than men to report that their co-founders urged them to enter into a partnership to launch a new business.
• Women start-up founders are more likely to cite a role model.  Women entrepreneurs more often reported being inspired by an entrepreneurial friend or family member than their male counterparts.

Let us know what you think by commenting below.

Skinner’s recommendations get the “Good Job Hunting Seal of Approval” from the Global Human Resources Outsourcing (GHRO) team.

Organizations seeking to hire top talent now have the responsibility for owning their online career advertising presence through syndication and one-to-one engagement via social media, notably Facebook and LinkedIn. A savvy organization, employing social media intelligently, can quickly get in front of highly targeted passive talent. For instance, setting up an employment page on Facebook means that every time a new opening posts to the page, it will display in all fans’ home feeds.

Old job boards are boring. They’re one-way, mass communication devices largely bereft of personalization and interactivity, attractive only to the most desperate of job seekers.

“Old-think” job boards are on the wrong side of history. But job boards are anything but becoming extinct. “New-think” boards just look a lot different from their predecessors.

Simply Hired and other job boards fall under the category of aggregators. These, along with Monster, are large boards that display job ads pertaining to as many industries as possible. Their scope is national, even international, and they have countless regional counterparts.

Then there are the niche job boards—narrowly focused on single industries, professions, or needs. For example, this category includes FlexJobs, which posts to its board only jobs that are work-from-home friendly—a larger and more dynamic constellation of jobs than conventional wisdom might suggest.

The future of job boards requires that they integrate social media, help hiring companies leverage search engine marketing to optimize postings for a longer shelf life, and build a talent community wherein they help candidates grow and evolve in their jobs.

Managers of the job boards that will flourish must understand that they reside at a confluence of variables, all exerting an influence on the changing nature of the job hunt. These factors include employer brand, job seeker engagement, search engine-driven sourcing and more.

In the end, they’re all seeking the Good Job Hunting Seal of Approval.

Talent management systems focus on providing strategic assistance to organizations in the accomplishment of long-term enterprise goals with respect to talent, aka “human capital.”

HRO Today has announced its 2012 TMS Baker’s Dozen Customer Satisfaction Ratings.

The Global Human Resources Outsourcing (GHRO) team took a look at the Top Five apps on the list:

1. 1.     Lumesse
2. 2.     myStaffingPro
3. 3.     Kenexa
4. 4.     iCIMS
5. 5.     SilkRoad

Lumesse

Lumesse, Europe’s largest independent talent management solutions company, has released a new version of its Lumesse Mobile app for Apple iOS, with an enhanced user experience, multi-lingual capabilities and improved usability. The Lumesse Mobile app allows businesses worldwide using Lumesse TalentLink 12 to give managers access to key process steps and employee information in multiple languages from their iPhones (the app is also iPad-compatible.)  Lumesse Mobile is designed as a true native iOS app to ensure a responsive, high quality user experience on mobile platforms.

myStaffingPro

myStaffingPro is a full-featured applicant tracking and recruiting software system with advanced applicant screening capabilities.  myStaffingPro provides professional staffing software tools designed to help users achieve hiring goals while saving time and money.  myStaffingPro Elevate: social recruiting and employment branding software that harnesses social media, job distribution, network building and career site techniques.  myStaffingPro Express: economical solution for companies looking for the essentials in applicant tracking.

Kenexa

Kenexa offers unified business solutions for human resources that support the entire employee lifecycle, including:

• Recruitment Solutions (RPO)
• Employment Branding
• Employee Assessments
• Talent Management
• Compensation Solutions
• Engagement Surveys
• Leadership Solutions

iCIMS

iCIMS is a leading provider of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) talent acquisition software for growing businesses.  iCIMS’ Scalable Talent Acquisition Software offers:

• Secure Web-based platform accessible from anywhere, anytime
• Fully automated job publishing to social networks
• Electronic onboarding documents and communication
• Robust searching and reporting functions
• Free 24×5 access to award-winning customer support

SilkRoad

SilkRoad Technology is a leading provider of social talent management solutions.  RedCarpet, SilkRoad’s HR onboarding program, helps organizations better plan and manage employees during transitions using tools that include:

• Onboarding management – Automated workflows, standardized task assignment, reporting, global localization and an intuitive user-interface designed to help HR professionals and managers efficiently streamline the onboarding process.
• Employee portals – Branded content, social network integration and ongoing communication help transition employees into company culture and keep them in-the-know during transitions.

Electronic forms – Auto-populated fields, electronic signatures and instant delivery help HR managers keep compliant with E-Verify and I-9 while eliminating time and cost associated with paper-based administration.

 In the March issue of HRO Today, the cover story “Fighting for Jobs” addresses the issue of why organizations need to consider veteran hiring programs.

Since 2010, the federal government has increased its focus on veteran employment due to an interest in reducing unemployment costs and aiding those who have served our nation at war. This includes the passage of the Hiring Heroes Act of 2011, new tax credits for hiring veterans, and the creation of the White House’s Joining Forces initiative.

Veteran hiring stems from humble beginnings.

During the past two decades, a variety of factors have combined to spotlight just how valuable the U.S. military veteran population is as a source of talent for corporate America.  A noteworthy percentage of Fortune 500 CEOs are veterans.  More than 180,000 veterans leave active duty military service each calendar year, so the military offers a highly qualified pool of jobs candidates. Perhaps most importantly, the performance, development, and bottom-line impact that veterans have had across multiple industries has been significant.

As part of the American Jobs Act signed by President Barack Obama in November 2011, the Returning Heroes and Wounded Warrior Tax Credits offer tax incentives to businesses that hire unemployed or disabled veterans. Through Joining Forces, Pres. Obama is challenging the private sector to hire and train 100,000 unemployed service members or their spouses.

In addition, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has launched Hiring Our Heroes, a nationwide program to help veterans and military spouses find employment.

Corporations are also joining in the fight. GE plans to hire 5,000 veterans over the next five years and sponsor 400 veterans’ job fairs this year.  And JPMorgan Chase, along with other partners, launched the 100,000 Jobs Mission last March, with the goal of hiring 100,000 transitioning service members by 2020.

Let us know how you think you can help.

“Spring, the sweet spring, is the year’s pleasant king…”

–Thomas Nashe (1600)

Though we at the Global Human Resources Outsourcing (GHRO) primarily staff the business office with professional talent, the first day of the sweetest season makes us think beyond the desk.  Here’s a round-up from CareerBuilder.com naming a few jobs that get you out and about:  “10 Great Jobs to have in the Springtime” by Rachel Zupek.  Our Top Six are:

1. Vendor

Springtime means enjoying the great outdoors.  Baseball season means hot dogs, cold beer, cotton candy and frozen lemonade. Education: On-the-job training

Annual salary*: $19,876

2. Sportswriter

Sure, sports take place year round, but for me, spring is when some of the most exciting sporting events go down. Exhibit A: March Madness basketball games. Exhibit B: Major league baseball spring training and season openers. Exhibit C: NHL playoffs. Exhibit D: NBA playoffs and draft picks. Exhibit E: The Masters golf tournament. Sportswriters can take their pick making predictions, following games or analyzing who is going to be the next Tiger Woods.

Education: College degree, preferably in communications, journalism or English

Annual salary*: $36,994

3. Florist

April showers bring May flowers, after all.  Springtime means blooming flowers, weddings and generosity (aka, bouquets of roses “just because”). Florists will stay occupied during this busy season, while enjoying the budding blossoms that have been buried all winter.

Education: High school diploma

Annual salary*: $33,859

4. Fashion buyer

Springtime is synonymous with fashion. Buyers get to shop through all of the new spring lines and buy clothes that have color, flowers and designs for our favorite retail shops — a far cry from the black and gray turtlenecks and tweed we’ve been sporting all winter.

Education: Requirements vary depending on the organization, but large stores and distributors prefer applicants who have completed a bachelor’s degree program with a business emphasis.

Annual salary*: $50,796

5. Landscaping worker

It’s growing season!  Snow is off the ground and grass, trees and flowers are ready to be planted and fertilized. Lawns need to be mowed, weeds pulled and trees trimmed, all of which add up to a lot of time outside, doing what landscapers do best.

Education: No minimum educational requirement, though most states require licensing or certification for workers who apply pesticides.

Annual salary*: $23,980

6. Construction worker

What’s better than being outside all day working on your latest project? It seems like constructing a house or building would be much more enjoyable in nice weather than in the freezing cold and snow.

Education: Most positions have no specific educational qualifications, but apprenticeships are encouraged and require a high school diploma or equivalent.

Annual salary*: $31,781

Rachel also includes on her list Meteorologist (Annual salary*: $67,004), College admissions counselor

(Annual salary*: $98,796), Pest control worker (annual salary: $28,056) and Housekeeper (Annual salary*: $19,619).

*U.S. national average salary figures based on data from CBsalary.com, powered by SalaryExpert.com

The Top HR Products of 2011 Award winners were recognized at the 14th Annual HR Technology® Conference & Exposition held in Las Vegas in October. Judged by editors of Human Resource Executive® magazine, the top products were selected based on their innovation, user‐friendliness and value to the HR profession.

The Global Human Resources Outsourcing (GHRO) team isn’t recommending any one product over another…we’re just sharing.  The Top winning products are:

1. RAVE, by BI Worldwide, is a mobile and web‐based platform designed to facilitate communications, engagement, recognition, promotion, incentives, learning and brand management. Built for mobile devices first and Web second, it is geared to serve and reach audiences on the go. It also has the capability to share recognitions and announcements with personal Facebook, Twitter and email accounts. Features include customizable mobile learning programs, a secure and private social networking environment for connecting across an organization, promotions and incentive tools to help product and brand managers drive their messages to the front lines, and alerts and push messages designed to put corporate information into the hands of employees.
2. Manager Ready, by Development Dimensions International (DDI), is DDI’s electronic version of its “day‐in‐the‐life” assessment experience that it has been offering at its facility in Bridgeville, Pa., for years. Long in the planning, the interactive and simulated three‐and‐a‐half‐hour experience now gives online participants the same opportunities to respond to realistic job challenges – although only through open‐ended emails as opposed to the live assessment’s additional role‐playing and telephone activities.  Like the “in‐person experience,” Manager Ready lets participants come face‐to‐face with real business problems in the form of videotaped messages and steadily streaming emails from supervisors, subordinates, colleagues and customers – all of them needing to be prioritized and acted upon.  DDI assessors follow up with reports, ratings and development plans for both the participant and his or her manager.
3. EASy Virtual Customer Simulation, by Employment Technology Corp., uses high‐end graphics and a storyline to immerse applicants into a variety of venues within a hypothetical town, where they meet a cast of characters who help them navigate through the simulation.  To complete it, applicants must visit the different venues and provide outstanding service to a variety of customers – who have varying degrees of unpleasantness – while mini‐games carry the applicant from one venue to another. The assessment also measures applicants’ abilities in three competencies: friendliness, conscientiousness and problem‐solving abilities.
4. HireVue Enterprise, by HireVue, enables employers to create a holistic environment for conducting and managing the interview process. Companies can use the platform to deploy video interviews, interview guides, scientifically validated questions, collaborative evaluation and comparison tools, and more. From phone screens to video interviews, all types of workplace interactions can be captured and used to make more informed decisions. The product’s authoring tool includes templates and frameworks that enable content to be organized and pushed out to the entire enterprise.
5. Keas Health Challenge, by Keas, is designed to get employees to take their well‐being more seriously through quizzes, challenges and the promise of a cash prize. The product encourages players (employees) to engage in three simple, manageable health actions (such as getting eight hours of sleep each night for a week) and team up with other players into groups of six in order to amass the most points in a given companywide challenge. Players also can see a live news feed of updates from teammates and others in the organization from their own profile page, as well as comment and share advice on health challenges.

Look for Part II of this post with the rest of the list next week.

However, the most memorable aspect of Ms. Bovino is not simply her notable career accomplishments, of which she has many, but it is her considerable philanthropic work that truly makes her a remarkable person.

Ms. Bovino is a major contributor and co-chair of the Women’s Philanthropy Fund of Orange County which is an organization solely focused on helping women and children who are in need of support.

Founded in 2002, the Women’s Philanthropy Fund consists of over 110 members who give $10,000 or more every year to support the Orange County United Way. The WPF is the most successful group of women philanthropists in Orange County and in conjunction with the United Way provide crucial help to thousands of underprivileged women and children who are in need of basic services such as medical, education, financial and counseling.

The WPF member’s collective support of the women and children of Orange County has transformed the lives of many families in the community by providing them with the emotional and financial support to get them back on their feet to ensure them safer and brighter futures.

Ms. Bovino’s philanthropic reach extends even further by serving as the Executive Director of the Owl Foundation. The Owl Foundation is focused on out-of-school/out-of-work youth to raise their self-esteem by while enabling them to continue on with their education and teaching them the job skills to help make them successful and independent adults.

Ms. Bovino attended Boise State University and majored in Business Administration before going on to become owner and president of 1st Flagship which is the parent company of GHRO, a professional employer organization and administrative services organization which specializes in human resources outsourcing.

Even though Ms. Bovino’s many accomplishments take up most of her time she still manages to enjoy her family and pursue some more leisure interests including traveling, reading, snow skiing and learning to play golf.

However, despite her busy schedule, the amazing fact remains she is dedicated to making it a priority to contribute to the future well being of Orange County’s families and youth by generously giving her time and money to important local philanthropic work.

Human resources consultants offer many services to complement your existing HR policies or develop new ones:

• Payroll services are at the top of a human resource consultant’s offerings. It includes paycheck processing, tax filings, direct deposits, and year-end tax form processing.
• They can also obtain competitive rates for comprehensive benefits packages.
• A human resources consultant ensures 100% compliance with all federal and state laws.
• They create documentation for such policies as sexual harassment and minimum wage.
• To ensure the safety of the workplace and your employees, human resources consultants can develop risk management policies in accordance with OSHA regulations.

Human resources consultants: pros & cons
There are some pros and cons to hiring human resources consultants for your business. HRO firms offer consultants with years of experience, something a small or new business could benefit from. But some of the policies they implement can cost money and may only work for larger companies. You can make up some of those savings by bringing in consultants in lieu of a full-time HR director. However, you lose the personal attention in-house HR directors provide.

Also, when your organization anticipates big changes, a human resources consultant can help ease the process by detailing how it benefits the company. But they often need the help of in-house staff to directly respond to employee concerns and to gauge reaction throughout the company.

If you feel hiring a human resources consultant can benefit your HR processes, contact GHRO to receive a free quote, and learn how you can outsource you business.

As a Professional Employer Organization (PEO), GHRO Total Solutions provides integrated services designed to streamline the cost and complexities of HR management, employee benefits, payroll, Workers’ Compensation and more. We offer this through a unique and seamless co-employment model that provides the benefits of a highly staffed HR team, without the overhead costs.

Our two newest clients are progressive organizations that understand the importance of HR, having all of the “T’s” crossed and “I’s” dotted in government compliance, HR policies and manuals, payroll administration and benefits coordination.

GHRO’s New Customers:

Kyliptix Solutions, the brainchild of William Gast, provides Software as a Service to small and mid-sized businesses. What makes them unique is that they have utility pricing — so it is a very affordable option for small companies who can’t afford to pay for the software usually sought after by large corporations. Businesses like them because the downtime for data transfer is very brief and the training time for their KIBS Business Suite is basically overnight. Kyliptix Solutions allows small to mid-sized companies to communicate better with employees at every level within the company and share information with better consistency. But mostly, the affordability is the big draw. With their focus forward approach to business solutions, partnering with GHRO was a purely natural decision.

Excalibur Technology is the only IT partner your company will ever need. Excalibur’s solutions can be customized to organizations of all sizes. From initial evaluations to installation, integration, service and support, their staff can deliver the business results you may require. They successfully support thousands of clients with technical services and projects. As your network services partner, Excalibur Technology will work closely with you and your staff and ensure that their solutions are custom tailored to meet your business needs.

Human Resources can be complex. See how easy it can be with GHRO. Your Trusted PEO. Call GHRO at 888-308-0338 or 949-797-2001 or check out our website at http://www.ghrogroup.com.