News and Events

HR Business Partners’ Patricia Farley-Saavedra
Named to AFAN Board of Directors

LAS VEGAS – HR Business Partners President Patricia Farley Saavedra has accepted a position on the board of directors for Aid For Aids of Nevada.

Aid for AIDS of Nevada (AFAN) provides support and advocacy for adults and children living with and affected by HIV/AIDS in southern Nevada. AFAN works to reduce HIV infection through prevention education to eliminate fear, prejudice and the stigma associated with the disease.

HR Business Partners is a full service human resource consultancy. With roots in Fortune 500 companies, HR Business Partners provides top level benefits and services to small and mid-sized companies. For more information, visit HRBP.net.

What is Your Employer Brand?

By Patricia Farley-Saavedra

It was only a few years ago when area businesses were competing for top employees. Business was booming and the challenge was to find staff to keep up with production. Fast forward to today and times have changed. Companies are downsizing in an effort to shave expenses and the greatest challenge to business is finding more customers. Somewhere along the way, the value of the employee has disappeared and has taken many employer brands with it.

Employer brand is a concept few companies are familiar with, yet those who embrace the concept have a higher propensity for profits, lower recruitment costs and greater employee productivity. In a sentence, employer brand is the public’s perception of a company as a quality employer and employer of quality staff. Many companies ignore their employer brand, thinking it is difficult to measure and even harder to build.

The obvious benefit of a strong employer brand is high staff retention rates and lower recruitment and training costs. Often, this alone, alone is not a strong enough reason to engage in employee branding. A direct line between profits and employee engagement/satisfaction can be difficult to find. However, consumers are constantly making purchasing decisions based upon the employees, not the companies, they buy from. It’s a continuous process where a positive experience at the grocery store, car lot and insurance office can lead to referrals and more sales. On the other side, a poor showing by an employee can cause a long time customer to leave for a competing restaurant, CPA firm or cell phone company for ever.

A company can spend millions on advertising, build the most beautiful and state of the art store and deliver the best product on the market, but if the employees don’t deliver as promised, it only a matter of time before the company must fold. Employees are the heart of any brand. They bring a company to life, give it a voice and deliver a company’s message to their clients on an ongoing basis.

For those businesses that are not impressed by decreased training costs and increased sales, greater job performance may tip the scales. Consider the amount of job knowledge a receptionist has after five years of employment with the same company. That staffer’s ability to perform is likely to be far superior to that of an employee who has been on the job for only six months. Imagine what that could mean in a technical position such as a computer programmer or book keeper.

Outside of employee retention ratios, the employee brand can be hard to measure. The latest gauge is profit per employee (PPE). Between 1995 and 2005 the top 30 corporations saw their profits increase fivefold. Most had a return on invested capital of only a third but a 100 percent jump in profit per employee while doubling the number of employees. PPE can be calculated by dividing the firm’s EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization) by the number of employees (or full time equivalents). Assuming a consistent workflow, PPE can be measured in slow and robust economic times.

Identifying an employee brand doesn’t have to be difficult. It can begin with an employee survey or focus group.

The question to ask is simple, but requires thought and conversation. “Why should anybody want to work here?”

While the responses to the question are related to employment, a direct correlation to the business should be easy to conclude.

“Only the best people work in our hotel because we care about our coworkers as much as we care about our guests.”

While the answer creates a place to stand in the world of recruiting, it also provides a value proposition for the marketing department to consider when positioning the company among its competitors. In this case, it’s a position of warm customer service.

In many companies, the employee brand is driven by the human resource department. Yet only when the company’s top officers are fully engaged does the brand truly comes to life. Studies have shown CEOs committed to the employee brand and their company culture have the most engaged employees. This board level buy-in allows the brand to trickle down into all facets of the business.

Does every company have a formal employer brand? The answer is a resounding NO. In a study only one third of companies have an employer brand strategy. However, establishing and living an employee brand in today’s economy can be the difference between profit and loss.

Patricia Farley-Saavedra is President of HR Business Partners (HRBP), a provider of payroll services and human resource consulting. She has over a decade of experience in human resource management at Fortune 500 companies including Xerox Inc., Intel Inc. and Ryland Homes.