1st June 2016 is a key date in the diary for Cielo’s clients, potential clients and those simply interested in staying plugged into the talent agenda. Here are six key takeaways from our annual Cielo Europe Summit that you can use to improve business outcomes at your organisation.
- The 2016 Cielo Europe Summit kicked-off with Stuart Woollard giving us a macro perspective on value and the negative impact the pursuit of profit can have on long-term performance. The rating and assessment matrix he and his colleagues at Organisation Maturity Services LLP developed has gained significant traction from key blue chip corporations – many of which are keen to get that AAA rating – although none have yet!
- We then shifted our focus to Employer Branding with Will Innes – Vice President Brand Strategy & Innovation at Cielo. Will guided us through how to engage authentically with potential candidates, including taking your employer brand and putting it as the heart of the candidate experience. After all, “Candidates are 69% more likely to buy from a company that gave them a positive candidate experience”. Given that our company cultures are now completely transparent to a potential candidate, even job-boards are reinventing to become culture aggregators and immersive to your next new hire.
- Recognising that an authentic and consistent culture is THE key driver for any high performing business, our next session brought to life how technology – as an enabler – can enhance the candidate experience and provide organisations the data to make informed decisions and predict the future. Adam Godson, Director of Global Technology Solutions at Cielo, kicked-off and hosted this interactive session that showcased some of the key thinkers/CEOs leading the way in this market. “Your digital reputation is a fact of life,” was a key message that resonated with our audience and demonstrated how much we all have to get involved in creating great online experiences for our clients, candidates and the broader community.
- The most effective way to embed your culture is to lead by example and create an environment for your leaders to be Inspiring. Leigh Bowman-Perks of Clareo Potential made it clear that it is essential to embed diversity into your culture and allow your people to tell those stories. To do that successfully, we must create a real sense of purpose and ensure that every employee understands the purpose of the organisation and their role in it. This then cuts through what can be a very VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) environment given today’s economic uncertainty.
- Authentically sharing your true culture with a future employee is central to tomorrow’s recruitment processes, and most importantly, the impression you make after a candidate says YES. Dawn Hollingworth, Director of Brand, Strategy and Creative Services at Cielo, took us through the journey of Maria, a candidate that had said and YES and was now in the onboarding phase of her journey.
The next generation onboarding solution Cielo has created carefully guides the candidate from saying YES to the first day, fifth day, thirtieth day and beyond. This gold standard solution includes a video card that confirms the great decision they have made, through to a best-in-class induction event and gameified learning that allows them to build their knowledge and stay engaged. This is all closed out with a Day One that “gets the basics right” and check-ins through their first thirty days – everything a high performing organisation needs to onboard an employee set up for success and planning to stay. - Closing us out was Nita Clarke of the Involvement and Participation Association. Nita has received an OBE (Queen’s honour) for her work on Employee Engagement, and her experience and insights cut-through to why engagement matters – or as Peter Drucker is famous for saying, “Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast”. You can create your EVP and a plan for execution, you can even measure it and feedback the results, but what you really have to deliver is an authentic culture that feeds every interaction and is inclusive of your workforce. Nita helped us understand that your decreasingly deferential employees demand a voice and to understand why.
In a world where digital makes all our organisations totally transparent to a potential candidate, we need to be authentic, engaging, open to being challenged and enabled by technology that enhances the candidate experience.
This post was written by Sally Hunter, Senior Vice President of Cielo. You can connect with her on LinkedIn.