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Chinese Proverbs, Spanish Geese, Employee Engagement & your Employer Brand
by Peter Schmitt (Peter will be presenting at the 2010 South African Employer Branding Summit in Johannesburg on 23 March 2010. for more information about the summit click here)
What do Chinese proverbs, Spanish geese, employee engagement and the employer brand have in common you may ask? Not a lot directly. But indirectly, some surprising commonality emerges to give us some significant pointers as we consider the impact of employee engagement and the employer brand. Particularly pertinent as the world moves out of recession.
There is a Chinese Proverb that goes “Make happy those who are near, and those who are far will come.”
I watched a video from TED recently. A parable by an American chef called Dan Barber about foie-gras (specially fattened goose or duck liver). Now if you have any interest in cooking or food, you will know that foie-gras is the chef’s favourite ingredient. Its taste: rich, buttery. Its texture: delicate, unctuous. Its versatility in cooking: from appetizers to entrees to mains to deserts. It’s just sublime. The problem comes with how it’s produced. The fattening is typically achieved through ‘gavage’ - being force-fed corn. In Anglo-Saxon countries, this poses a problem to many, causing emotional outbursts amongst animal-rights supporters, restaurants to be boycotted and the production and sale of it has even been banned in several states across America.
This parable however spoke of a different scenario for geese on a farm in Spain’s western region of Extremadura. Local farmer Eduardo Sousa typically raises around 1,000 or so geese each year allowing them to roam freely, on a farm that replicates the wild as closely as possible, eating their fill of acorns and olives. Because they're not domesticated, their natural instinct takes over. When the weather turns cold and it's time for them to migrate, they start gorging to excess in preparation for their migratory flight. The result is a fattened liver that, while smaller than conventional foie-gras, is delicious enough to have won France's prestigious Coup de Coeur award.
But the truly amazing thing about Sousa’s flock of geese is that when wild geese fly over the farm on their migratory path, the geese below call out to them. The wild geese come down to investigate and many stay behind, mating with the geese on the farm – staying on to become Sousa’s next batch of ethically produced award winning foie-gras. Not because they are forced to stay but because they want to stay.
Actually, this is also a parable about employee engagement and employer branding.
As we move out of a global recession that’s frozen companies and people in a state of fright largely due to the fact that we haven’t experienced anything of this magnitude before, reports are coming in of an impending migration of large numbers of people for supposed greener pastures. Departures largely due to the mistakes we’ve made in dealing with them during the last 18 months. The biggest issue: they haven’t been looked after. So they’re unsatisfied, unfulfilled and unhappy.
But they’re not talking traditional employee satisfaction (salaries, benefits, training, etc) They’re talking about respect, trust, freedom and communication. Respect for who they are and what they’re capable of & enough trust to communicate the business strategy with them. The trust that includes them. The sort of detail we usually reserve for the elite few of the executive leadership team or the inner circle. The good things and the bad things. The truth.
The reality is that when we realise that our people are capable of handling the truth, we’ll be better off. And the sooner we realise they’re capable of understanding strategy and then putting it to work, they’re streets ahead, as are we.
When it comes to shaping and defining our employer brands, the biggest inputs to the process, together with visionary leadership and succinct communication, should be our corporate strategy. Combined, these are the most attractive components to any intelligent individual. It is these elements that appeal to talent. It is this combination that engages and motivates talent to deliver beyond all expectations.
The employer brand, if articulated correctly should also demonstrate the level of employee engagement across the organisation. And in its development, purely by including the organisation, it starts to get an understanding of this strategy and purpose that maybe wasn’t communicated succinctly before. Thus commences the employee engagement we are looking for, through a clear understanding of what the business is about and what we expect of them.
This makes people happy. Happy people stay. And happy people talk about what makes them happy. And them talking to good people is the most authentic way of communicating our employer brand. This draws good people in their droves.
Just like farmer Sousa trusts his geese to stick around on his farm that causes them to invite other geese to come and stay. And in the process we’ll be rewarded for making them happy.
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