Gartner stresses on Employer Branding and Social Networking

Came across this press release from Gartner and I thought its a wonderful piece of information capturing the need for building employer brand and use of software and Social Networking tools to manage talent.
I would present my two takes on the article here.

To start with, we have all been witness to the global turmoil and how organizations have reacted to it (rather nervously) with slashing of workforce and costs. While there would have been a reason to do so, what organizations don't realise the impact this has had on their branding. Apart from bringing negative publicity, it also makes them " Brand of choice averse". Which definitely means that there would be all that extra work HR would need to do to build the credibility of brand.

As more and more organizations realise two things about the economic environment

1. Its dynamic and unstable

2. Its global, so impacts can happen from anywhere

This is also the time for Organizations to wake up to this new truth, Business is more uncertain than ever and the impact can never be determined easily till it hits. So Businesses have to learn to live with this turmoil and at the same time ensure that they are able to do so with the " Right people".
At the same time, organizations need to engage in using Social Networking tools more to engage in brand building, this is what the Gartner article also speaks about.

"The employer brand has recently become a significant component of human capital management (HCM) strategy," said Thomas Otter, research director at Gartner. "Many HR leaders have instigated employer branding projects. This isn't simply a fancy new name for recruitment advertising, but a broad strategy to leverage the intangible values of the organization to improve retention, employee satisfaction and performance."

The essence of using social networking tools to build employability brand is never questionable, however organizations need to understand the value these tools can also bring into alignment of their talent, some of which I talked about here

The coming years would determine how well organizations are able to cope with the new challenges that the economy brings onto them and how well they are actually able to leverage some of these challenges to take steps towards building the " Employer Brand" and all of this with more investments in software for managing talent processes !!