by Fronetics | Dec 20, 2017 | Blog, Talent
Here are our most-viewed blog posts from 2017 about talent, including tips on retaining your top talent and helping turn your employees into brand ambassadors.
The start of the new year brings along a host of resolutions. Finding a new job or advancing in a current position are common new year’s resolutions for individuals. For companies, identifying new strengths and interests within your employees and hiring and retaining great talent are common goals.
We’ve assembled our top 10 talent posts of 2017. We hope these posts help you and/or your company overcome challenges, and achieve your goals for next year.
Top 10 most popular talent posts of 2017
1. Gender Diversity is Not a Women’s Issue: It’s an Economic Issue
Gender diversity is generally viewed as a women’s issue. It is not. Research conducted by McKinsey & Company and LeanIn.org finds that despite corporate America’s stated commitment to gender diversity, outcomes are not changing. Moreover, the research finds that employees do not believe companies are taking the necessary steps to enact change. Read more.
2. Top Supply Chain Management MBA Programs 2018
Looking for talent? Try recruiting from these top-rated supply chain management MBA programs and schools. We have written before about the importance of recruiting and strengthening the relationship between academia and the supply chain industry as means to solve the growing supply chain talent gap. If your company is looking to hire, consider strengthening your rapport with schools that offer supply chain programs or specialties. Read more.
3. Are We Thinking About “Soft Skills” All Wrong?
By calling them “soft skills,” are we shortchanging competencies that are critical for supply chain and procurement professionals to succeed? One of the biggest stories in the world of Supply Chain and Procurement talent over the past few years has been the emerging importance of Soft Skills. As the field has become more strategic — with a greater impact on wider areas of business — professionals in the field have had to become stronger at advocating for it. Read more.
4. Great Supply Chain People Are Getting Harder to Find, But Do Companies Have a Talent Management Issue?
Is the Supply Chain talent gap problem really a talent management problem? This guest post from Argentus explores the so-called “talent deficit” in the field from all angles and perspectives. The fact is, it’s becoming harder for companies for find the talent that they need for these positions as baby boomers retire and the function evolves. Read more.
5. Employee Brand Ambassadors Can Influence B2B Buying Decisions
As peer influence becomes increasingly important in B2B buying decisions, empowering employee brand ambassadors will benefit your bottom line. I’ve written lately about the rise of influencer marketing. It’s a strategy B2B businesses are starting to understand and use to their advantage. But you don’t need a Kardashian or even an important industry professional to get started. Employees are your most natural, ready-made influencers. Read more.
6. Freight Driver Shortage Update: Will 2017 Come to a Head and Cause Issues for Shippers?
Growing woes over a forthcoming capacity crunch are not going away anytime soon. But, the capacity crunch may have a major impact on the freight driver shortage and vice versa. In a sense, fewer drivers mean that capacity will grow tighter. Yet, as capacity shrinks, the incentive for drivers increases. Read more.
7. 3 Ways to Attract Millennial Talent for the Supply Chain
Hoping to draw more millennials to your talent pool? Implementing these three ideas might help win them over. By the year 2020, millennials are estimated to make up a majority of the workforce. In addition, a 2014 study found that 46% of B2B buyers were millennials, and that number is on the rise. This seismic shift in workplace demographics calls for a new approach to attracting and retaining talent. Read more.
8. 3 Questions to Ask before Making a Professional Change and Overcommitting
Thinking of making a professional change? Here are some questions to consider before taking the plunge and overcommitting. We’ve all been asked to take on new projects at work when we’re already completely swamped. In the moment, it can be very hard to say no. And we’ve all jumped on LinkedIn to see what other opportunities are out there. More money, less headaches. The grass is always greener. Read more.
9. Could Liberal Arts Grads Fill the Supply Chain Talent Gap?
Mark Cuban thinks liberal arts grads will be the next in-demand employees. Could they be the answer to the supply chain talent gap? The supply chain talent gap has been called a “perfect storm.” Every report cites doomsday statistics of the impending crisis when, by 2025, 60 million baby boomers will exit the workforce, leaving only 40 million millennials to take their place. Read more.
10. Three Tips for Retaining Your Top Talent
Investing in your top talent and playing an active role in developing their careers will motivate them to stay around. Company loyalty is a thing of the past. In today’s day and age, everyone is looking for the next best thing, and that is true in the workplace as well. But this doesn’t mean that retention of top talent is hopeless. Read more.
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by Fronetics | Aug 18, 2015 | Blog, Leadership, Marketing, Social Media
In one of the most infamous social media gaffes, the insurance giant Aflac fired its widely-recognized spokesman Gilbert Godfrey after he tweeted insensitive comments about the Japanese tsunami in 2011. The rapid growth of social media has created a gray area for employers and employees alike in the space where personal and professional meet, to be certain. But, social media has also presented some of the greatest opportunities for marketing growth since the introduction of the internet. Even so, companies have been slow to relinquish control and absolute authority of their brands on social media. Those that have embraced employees as brand ambassadors, though, have seen mighty returns on their efforts.
A few years ago when Sodexo set out to transform the way it uses social media, no one could have foreseen how successful the initiative would eventually become. Through a series of intentional moves, the company empowered its employees to use social media to extend its brand. In short, Sodexo shifted its social media efforts from strictly marketing to the education and empowerment of employees. Its expanded marketing efforts engaged and mobilized its entire workforce as brand ambassadors. As an example, to find and attract top talent using existing employee connections, Sodexo crafted a targeted social strategy. The company identified employees who were frequent social media users with many connections and tasked them with social job sharing – in other words, employees were asked to use their personal social media accounts to advertise job openings to their collective social connections. In just three years, Sodexo grew their average job opening pageviews per month by over 1,100%.
So how can your company foster a similar online community of connected and engaged employees? To begin, listen and observe. Monitoring the activity of both your company’s social profiles and that of your employees will help you to understand how employees are currently using social media to interact with your brand. From there, you’ll be able to identify employees that are heavy users of social media and which employees are online community influencers. Note what topics and social networks drive the most engagement. Use this initial research to set benchmarks and goals for progress. After you’ve completed the review of your company’s social landscape, you’ll have a clear picture of where the greatest areas of opportunity lie and who to tap for help.
Successfully reframing your employees as brand ambassadors through an intentional social strategy requires creating a culture that empowers and incentivizes employee participation. It’s important to clearly articulate your company’s overall social strategy, but much more important to link its goals and objectives to employee job functions. Employees are much more likely to participate if what you’re asking them to do is seen as complementary, not supplementary to their workload. To encourage informed participation, provide training for your social media brand ambassadors. For example, you could invite a local college professor to present at an internal workshop outlining how to write content specifically for social media. Or, mine existing internal resources by tapping your communications department to lead an introductory corporate digital communications webinar for social brand ambassadors. Creating an informative and sustaining dialogue with your employees will be key in determining whether or not your efforts will be successful.
Once you’ve empowered your employees with the appropriate resources and knowledge, motivate them to participate online. Ask brand ambassadors to follow your company pages, promote company events or initiatives, and share company-posted content. Assign them as group moderators of online communities. Request their contribution as subject matter experts for blog posts. Whatever it is you decide to ask of them, it’s critically important that you regularly engage them. Companies that consistently treat employees as partners in social media by marrying the personal and professional growth of employees stand to gain significant benefits.
Back at Sodexo, a quick glance at the company’s social media profiles reveals a thriving online community driven by employee participation. The Sodexo Facebook page shows a wealth of employee comments and posts, links to employee blogs, and corporate posts highlighting employees. The company’s Twitter account is populated by dedicated hashtags for employees and tweets about employee participation in one of the company’s social initiatives. It’s clear Sodexo’s employees are enjoying the perks that come along with engaging online with their employer. Meanwhile, Sodexo itself is expanding brand awareness, enjoying improved internal communication, increasing sales, and attracting top talent – simply by empowering its own employees to become ambassadors of the brand.
by Fronetics | Aug 13, 2015 | Blog, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy
With LinkedIn this month reporting a 33% year-over-year growth of revenue and a 21% increase in membership, it remains solid in its role as the primary social network for business. Data from outside the company confirm its dominance. A University of Massachusetts study published earlier this year examined social media use by the fastest-growing corporations in the U.S. and found that LinkedIn is the platform of choice (94%) for America’s top companies. There’s little doubt that the 380 million member social media giant has transformed the relationship between companies, its customers, and its employees. But with so many potential connections and opportunities for engagement, how can your company squeeze the most out of its efforts to connect with audiences on LinkedIn? Look to your employees.
Consider this case study in “smart ownership”. Aiming to increase the popularity of its Instagram account, the dedicated social media team at National Public Radio (NPR) did something unheard of – they turned ownership of its Instagram account over to its multimedia team. The team reasoned that aligning the organization’s visual strategy with a digital medium that’s innately visual could be the key to deriving the most value from the social network. In short, NPR recognized the value of extending ownership of its social media efforts to its employees.
Here’s why your business should leverage the popularity of LinkedIn and develop its own smart ownership strategy:
Broadening inclusion of your company’s LinkedIn efforts beyond a sole person or dedicated social media team lets employees share ownership of your brand. A strategy informed, directed, and executed by a single team or person can sometimes be narrow in scope. Encouraging the participation of your employees expands perspective and gives your in-house subject matter experts a digital voice – one that might connect beautifully with your leads and prospects.
Encouraging your employees to engage with your company on LinkedIn helps your brand reach new audiences. Your company benefits in a number of ways when an employee connects with it on LinkedIn. When a new employee adds his new work experience to his profile, your company’s logo is displayed on his profile for each of his connections to see. When an employee likes, shares, or comments on the content published by your business, a notification is generated and seen by his connections. These seemingly routine updates or tasks, like personal LinkedIn profile updates, can turn into real opportunities to reach an expansive audience.
Engaging employees on LinkedIn creates trust and substantiates professional relationships. Several years ago, faced with the rapid emergence of social media, many employers chose to ban social media sites from company networks thinking that if they could prohibit the use of these sites during work hours, employees would be more attentive to their work and thus more productive. What we know now, is that these types of strategies stymy growth and propagate missed opportunities. The author of a 2013 study examining the link between social media and worker productivity has this to say: “… the ubiquitous digital connectivity altered workers’ sense of ‘presence’ and helped rather than hindered the effective completion of collective tasks.” The message here is two-fold: encouraging employee use of LinkedIn builds trust and increases productivity.
Promoting LinkedIn as a company-endorsed channel of distribution builds positive branding and marketing opportunities. Quite simply, who better to promote the work of your company than the employees who carry out the day-to-day responsibilities? And because people are far more likely to interact with individuals over brands, your company’s promotion by your employees is likely to drive more engagement.
Communicating with employees via LinkedIn can take your social efforts beyond marketing. While it’s true that most businesses use social media to ultimately affect their bottom line, not all social media efforts need to be strictly marketing. A robust LinkedIn community of employees can serve to both improve employer-employee communications and enhance the distribution of public information. Need to get your messaging out quickly? Use your employee base on LinkedIn to help distribute timely messaging or to clarify your company’s position on an emerging matter.
Building a successful smart ownership strategy isn’t about giving away ownership, but about building inclusion and better aligning existing resources. Businesses that encourage employee engagement on LinkedIn are well-positioned to build brand ambassadors out of those who know their business most intimately.
Fronetics Strategic Advisors is a leading management consulting firm. Our firm works with companies to identify and execute strategies for growth and value creation.
Whether it is a wholesale food distributor seeking guidance on how to define and execute corporate strategy; a telematics firm needing high quality content on a consistent basis; a real estate firm looking for a marketing partner; or a supply chain firm in need of interim management, our clients rely on Fronetics to help them navigate through critical junctures, meet their toughest challenges, and take advantage of opportunities. We deliver high-impact results.
We advise and work with companies on their most critical issues and opportunities: strategy, marketing, organization, talent acquisition, performance management, and M&A support.
We have deep expertise and a proven track record in a broad range of industries including: supply chain, real estate, software, and logistics.
