Be bold! To build your employer brand, you need to ensure your company has a vision of development and growth based on innovative practices in human resources management.
What benefits will this bring? Better workforce retention and increased productivity and competitiveness. Here are some ideas to help you in this process, based on our experience in the consulting field:
Develop a sense of team ownership of the company vision
Ask all staff to contribute to various initiatives by creating work groups that incorporate different levels of authority. Employees will then have a say in important decisions about the future of the organization.
Some concrete examples:
- Employee participation in the recruitment process
At Accuracy, our analysts, associates and managers all form an integral part of the recruitment process. At every step, each of these has an opportunity to conduct interviews and take part in hiring decisions.
By putting the entire team in contact with candidates, you guarantee that your company values are shared and disseminated, while ensuring that new recruits are effectively integrated. Team members then become ambassadors of your company!
- Employee participation in the strategic planning process
With our teams, we've set up a think tank made up of young employees, non-partners and tomorrow's leaders, whose mandate is to think about our company's future.
When these committees focus on the fundamentals of our business (vision, values, structures, etc.), stimulating ideas emerge!
This exercise has helped us establish two initiatives:
- The first is about innovation. Its purpose is to provide strategic oversight in order to broaden our service offering, create new tools to raise our market profile and be alert to emerging issues (Big Data, artificial intelligence, etc.);
- The second initiative is based on individual career paths. Its purpose is to set up personalized trajectories: for example, employees can take a sabbatical for a personal project, meet a new challenge by being transferred to one of our clients for a specific period, or even devote several work weeks to an innovation project that will eventually help the company expand its range of services.
- Employee input on remuneration practices
Within our organization, we have set up an internal remuneration committee made up of employees with various levels of experience. This committee's goal is to carry out a comparative analysis of remuneration practices and then make recommendations to management. This initiative has allowed us to:
- Solidify the relationship of trust between company management and staff by giving employees a chance to participate in a sensitive and important process;
- Instill in every employee the feeling that their remuneration reflects their true value based on market conditions.
Your teams may have relationships within the same field as yours and often have privileged access to information. Actively contributing to these work groups will help your staff feel highly empowered and valued.
Promote the well-being of your teams
Do you expect a lot from your employees, whatever their level, and is their performance rooted in the values of your organization? Along with this expectation, there needs to be a desire to ensure the well-being of your teams so that they feel fulfilled, both professionally and personally. How? Here are some things to think about:
- Develop a hierarchical structure that fosters communication
- Lay out your office space to facilitate interactions among management, senior professionals and juniors. Within our firm, every partner and vice-president shares an office with a senior and a junior professional, which stimulates the transfer of knowledge and skills, and promotes teamwork;
- Set up a support system that is simple yet effective, by associating seasoned senior professionals with more junior professionals. This system will help the company smoothly integrate new employees and oversee the development of junior professionals, as well as empowering key employees and giving them a sense of accomplishment;
- Create common spaces to encourage interactions among all members of your organization.
- Reinforce team building
Organize activities or create initiatives to this effect, such as:
- Informal quarterly meetings to speak to your team on a regular basis. This will help you highlight recent contracts, present financial outcomes, discuss new initiatives, obtain proposals or constructive comments, etc.;
- Team lunches to celebrate the completion of important projects;
- Get-togethers to celebrate successes (new professional titles, promotions, reaching key objectives, etc.).
In our firm, in addition to these activities, teams participate in annual international seminars that bring together all company staff, without exception, and national seminars specifically oriented to team building through sporting challenges. New employees also participate in international training at the "Accuracy School," which offers a two-week intensive program.
When do you know your employer brand building is succeeding? When your company is renowned not only for its skills (expertise, ability to innovate, pragmatism, responsiveness, etc.), but also for its way of working together, through the goodwill it shows its teams, its humanity and its willingness to have all its staff continue to learn, develop and share knowledge.
About Accuracy:
Accuracy was created in 2004 by seven corporate finance professionals, with a view to developing a business consulting company with a human dimension. In 2015 it was ranked first among France's Great Place to Work® businesses with under 500 salaried employees, and then again in 2016, and thirteenth in Europe for the same category in 2016. Today it comprises more than 350 professionals and team members in 13 offices across 11 countries and 3 continents. Our philosophy of "high standards and consideration" continues to be at the core of our international growth.
To find out more, visit: www.accuracy.com
François Filion, Managing Partner
Accuracy Canada