Brand ingredients

If anyone can be said to have done it all - let alone seen it all - in all in the recruitment communications industry, it's probably Paul Walker. He first joined Austin Knight as a writer some thirty-seven years ago, and he's still busily plying his trade as head of employment brand at Barkers.

Employer branding is an area he's been very interested in for many years now. He first got the opportunity to move into it full-time at TMP Worldwide back in 2000. It was "full on" for five years, as he puts it, with project after project for the likes of the Prison Service, Hewlett Packard, Land Rover, Lloyds TSB, Mi5's ‘professional identity' and many more.

At this point he fancied a change of scene, and went to "do a bit of freelance" for former creative colleague Simon Bolton at new agency Market. As so often happens, a bit of freelance soon developed into a major contribution. "It was a storming year," he says of his time at Market, "but then the sky fell in." Following the agency's unforeseen demise Simon quickly resurfaced at Barkers, with Paul joining him not long after.

Paul's new role at Barkers initially contained three components - creative, brand and presentational - but, prompted by him, the agency quickly decided it was going to get into the brand development business in a serious way. Ever since, employer branding has been his main area of operation.

So how did the CIPD commission come about? "There had been a lot of ‘white noise' about employer branding within the HR community," says Paul. "Much of it was what you could call ‘background' stuff - excellent quasi-academic pieces and such like. As a result there was lots of interest from CIPD members in terms of ‘this is something we ought to be doing', but there wasn't much to tell them how to go about it on a practical basis. So the Institute put out a tender for a partner to help them develop ‘the definitive guide'."

Barkers' initiative was spearheaded by Paul's colleague Andrew Platt-Higgins. "There were quite a few players in the frame," says Paul, "including most of the usual suspects. We probably weren't the most obvious candidate, but we ended up getting the project." Their proposal covered both capability and proposed methodology in some detail - and once they'd been appointed, Paul began to get seriously involved.

"It was largely a hands-off project," says Paul. "Initially, our aim was to get as much information about best practice as possible. We were trying to discover how people in the real world had actually done it - what had gone well, what the results had been for them, the whole experience really. And as an antidote or counterbalance to all the theorising, we aimed to cover the issue of ‘how the hell do you start doing it?'"

"The CIPD had already sounded out and nominated a number of members who were seriously interested in the topic," he continues. "We had a couple of ‘discovery days' - managed discussions, if you like - to get their views on how it had been for them. All this information was incredibly valuable to us. This source material provided the foundation for the guide, supplemented by an online survey of CIPD members and 1:1 interviews, particularly with smaller organisations. My own direct experience came in handy, as well!"

"The project involved regular contact with the Institute," explains Paul. "In this respect it mirrored how we'd conduct an actual brand development project. As soon as the research was done and analysed, we'd feed back the results and our interpretation of them. I have to say it was a very good relationship with the CIPD - contact was regular but not onerous, so it was a nice combination of the freedom to get on and do it with regular client interest and feedback."

And talking of feedback, there was a lot of enthusiasm from a wide range of stakeholders. "Feedback was very positive and universally favourable at draft stage," says Paul. "A lot of people said a lot of very nice things about it - particularly that it really met a need and filled a gap."

For Paul, the project itself has prompted new interests in a number of different directions. "One area it highlighted for future exploration is the relationship of the employer brand to an organisation's entire people strategy," he says. "That relationship is key, and only now is it starting to be fully appreciated."

One is left to wonder why the concept of employer branding - which has been around for the best part of a couple of decades now - has only just begun to take off in such a big way. "I put it down to two things," says Paul. "Firstly, the HR community had never been entirely comfortable with it, and secondly marketing hadn't really given it sufficient attention - they tended to be more concerned with developing and safeguarding their corporate and consumer brands."

Of course this attitude is now changing fast with the emergence of specialist client-side employer brand roles, not to mention a much greater appreciation of the subject's importance. (You may recall that Wagamama's Glyn House memorably described the employer brand as "bigger than HR" - and he should know, with responsibility for marketing as well as people issues.)

But despite the heightened level of interest, Paul feels that there still aren't too many agencies out there capable of understanding the issue and "doing it properly." "The online tools (to be issued subsequently as a complement to the new guide) will include some tough questions to ask your existing supplier, specifically about their employer branding capabilities," he says. (You have been warned!)

"Overall," says Paul of the CIPD project, "the experience was great. The partnership with the CIPD team was an excellent relationship, and it was also encouraging to see how many organisations - both blue-chips and smaller employers - had already embraced the topic fully and were really committed to it, not just playing at it. I'd like to think - without being too fanciful or ambitious - that it may lead to a step-change in the development of the employer branding discipline. It's a bit like what happened in mainstream advertising, when people started to think of the brand as an asset with real value. In ten years' time, if people look back to the evolution of the employer brand, I'd like to think it had turned out similarly."