Employee Engagement 2.0
The implication has always been that the combination of cutting edge projects and great working environment meant Google employees were amongst the most engaged in today’s recession-riddled corporate world. Having visited their offices in London I can vouch that, superficially at list, it seems a great place to work. Indeed I was so convinced before they even fully staffed the office in London I applied directly to them to join their attraction strategy team. That was back in 2006. I am still waiting for a response.
But I digress. It seems that the inefficiency of their hiring process doesn’t put off (or indeed is probably in part a result of) the more than 700,000 applications they apparently receive each year. However, in addition to the recent departures, the company has seen hiring slow, and has even been forced to cut back on infamous perks such as afternoon tea and the annual ski trip. It seems that all is not rosy in Google-land, with talent jumping to social media firms such as Twitter and Facebook, including some of its top executives such as the heads of advertising sales and display-advertising , their engineering director and the search-quality chief.
So what has it done about it? Well being the most advanced and innovative algorithmic genius it’s gone what it’s best at doing – created an algorithm. When I picked up on this story, every report seemed to be very excited by the fact that this has taken employee engagement to an entirely new and never-before-seen level. True. But it also seems slightly creepy.
It has produced an algorithm so advanced and so ingrained in the employment and engagement process that it can supposedly crunch employee data such as appraisals, salaries and promotion history and decipher who among its staff is the most unhappy and who among the 20,000 engineers, developers and nerds it employs is the most willing to leave. Not only does it know every move we as web users make online, it can now pry into the work-life habits of its own and work out who should stay and who should go.
Currently in a test phase, the web giant has so far discovered one key trend: those of its employees that feel underused are more likely than others to leave. Not sure you actually need an algorithm to work that one out. However, the boffins are no doubt beavering away at how to probe deeper into the way their employees think, behave and react to certain situations.
Like online recruitment software before it this does not provide a pure solution that can bypass all human thought and interaction. Yet, as my experience of applying to Google shows, all too often businesses take technologies to be stand alone solutions. Out of context, at best this system will allow employee engagement campaigns to be tailored, focused and address specific issues, no matter how individual those may be. At worst, the impact could be incredibly far reaching as the results are used to vet or even dismiss employees. The system would have to be faultless considering the information it gathers and the consequences it could have on people’s lives.
People’s reasons for leaving an employer can superficially differ, but as current and former Googlers claim, the company is losing talent because some employees feel they can’t make the same impact as the company matures. You don’t need an algorithm to show you that you that if you don’t engage with your employees, treat them with respect and motivate them to contribute to the bottom line now and in future, they will leave.
Google’s algorithm has been described by one HR commentator as “helping the company get inside people’s heads even before they know they might leave”. A scary thought.
Are you Born Digital?
As one who has long maintained that the demographic labels used so much in recruitment (Gen Y, Gen X etc) are lazy, broad statements I’ve kept an eye on what consumer advertising and marketing have been up to. Since the dawn of the first DotCom boom we’ve heard different ways of internet users being defined, with “Digital Natives” – those who know no different – and “Digital Migrants” – those of us who learned to navigate the digital age – gaining most traction over the years. Whilst these are useful, those who fall into both camps, as with Gens Y and X, do not behave necessarily in the same way. I came across this short post that I think proposes a new definition that perhaps makes more sense, and accepts that birth dates do not define a response to technology:
How good is this website?
There’s been a lot of buzz this week about the Boone Oakley website –“a veritable master class in the production and execution of a digital advertising agency website” to quote Simon Lewis from Online Marketing Jobs. And I must say I’d be tempted to agree with him.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Elo7WeIydh8
Right on the button in terms of matching brand identity, target audience and media. Clearly not a design for everyone, and clearly not an agency for everyone, but then that’s the point. Great to see an agency that pushes its clients too, if the sample work is anything to go by. This has (almost) taken over as my favourite agency site ever. Though the Biccie Booker on the Alternative’s site still takes some beating:
Can job boards be used as an employee engagement tool?
There’s an interesting discussion that’s just started on the Recruitment Futurology group on Linked In. The initiator of the debate has proposed that in the current economic climate job boards could perhaps be used as an effective way to communicate with current employees registered on their CV databases, and ex employees that could be tempted back. The phrase “Employee Engagement” is used. This is indeed a hot topic at the moment: how to keep people motivated and loyal when all the news (be it internal or external) is around negatives: falling revenues, closures, redundancies. Employee engagement is something that’s been on the HR agenda for a long time. It seems that the external media have cottoned on and want to look at how they can get a piece of the action (what with their falling revenues, closures and redundancies).
Mixed views thus far as you can imagine. My thoughts are as follows:
Digital marketing techniques can be and are used as employee engagement tools. But what we are talking here is branding, not job specific advertising. So there is definitely room for content on job boards to be adding to an employee engagement drive. And indeed targeting ex employees via the e-marketing services is a great value-add.
However, I think that ultimately you will lose traction with candidates if they think that their private decision to register their CV on a job board’s database is something that is actively being tracked, and then targeted, by their current employer. Indeed many job boards allow you to select companies you don’t want contacting you so it would be difficult to even segment these candidates in many cases.
The solution would be an active PR campaign that uses the content sections of sites. How you commercialise this from a media perspective is a good question. Traditionally, in the interests of ethics, editorial and advertising are kept very separate. So of course there is the risk that either the story is not picked up as it’s not news-worthy enough, or it is picked up but potentially the angle is not as positive as the client would like. HR clients in my experience are not 100% comfortable with this. The alternative is a paid for advertorial, but again that can be counter-productive as there is a natural cynicism on the part of readers that this tells a positive story because the company concerned has bought the space and written the copy.
Job boards, like the wider media landscape, are looking at ways of adding revenue in the current climate. And to state the obvious, the lack of recruitment means a lack of “traditional” advertising. It is very difficult to convince clients even in the good times to go beyond just jobs. I think it will be nigh on impossible now. That said, this is a superb opportunity for job boards to look at how they can add value, even if it means running new products at no cost. Developing these in partnership with more innovative clients will create a lot of goodwill that will pay dividends in future.
You can follow the discussion via this link: http://tinyurl.com/megz9j
Just what we needed – another job board.
I’ve picked up the tail end of a discussion on Linked In relating to a new job board called Vacancy Clearing. It’s currently in beta stage but you can see the prototype at:
www.vacancy-clearing.com/index2.php
As the name suggests, the idea is that employers who may be struggling to fill a job can post it on here to be exclusively accessed by recruitment consultants. Those agencies that have signed up received email alerts that new jobs have been posted, and are permitted to submit CVs. Employers and candidates remain anonymous until such a time as the advertising company wishes to engage with a particular recruitment consultant. Word is that this will all be at no cost. So far, possibly so good. However, this model does not take into account the complexities of the recruitment market, even leaving aside the current economic climate.
Candidates have often strong opinions on particular brands – if the employer is anonymous, good candidates may be reticent to agree for their CV to sent over. If employers are writing their ads and company profiles themselves (which could be likely as they will not want to pay for professional copy if they are not paying for the media) they may not be able to compensate for the anonymity, and will either undersell themselves, or give too many clues away thus opening the floodgates to calls from agencies. Most candidates are registered with more than one agency – it is likely that employers will receive multiple CVs (though it would be interesting to compare how each agency presents the candidate).
If candidates are anonymous, right down to “current employer – large investment bank” how can employers make valid decisions on whether to engage with these individuals? If candidates are anonymous, what’s to stop the less reputable recruitment consultant from sending the CV without the candidates permission? If the employer is anonymous, the cases of candidates CVs being submitted to their existing employer may increase – and clues on the CV may alert the advertiser to that fact. If the employer is anonymous, how can recruitment consultants assess whether it’s a reputable company to be associated with and to be representing their candidates to?
All in all, a lot of time could be wasted. And that doesn’t take into account the drive that many employers have to reduce both the number of agencies they partner with as well as their reliance on them. This started a good few years ago with the larger firms, but as the cost and usability of existing job boards and candidate management technology become more accessible, that drive to direct sourcing is filtering down to lower volume recruiters.
Do those few companies who are hiring really need even more calls from every agency in town?
