FreeHour Malta’s Post

Transcript

Good morning everyone. Today I'm joined by Vanessa Comma Zuli, who is an employer, branding and communication strategist. Vanessa, how are you doing today? All good Zach, very good. So before we get into it, could you give a bit of a background into what brought us here today? So I was scrolling LinkedIn as always, and I came across your post about the report of Gen. Z at the Workplace and I thought, ohh, let me reach out. It's not everyday that you find a local report about work. Book trends and Generation Z. So I was curious, yes. And so to give some context, that's the report we did earlier this year and we work with a lot of HR and marketing teams and there was a constant question on how do we manage Genz and the workforce, how do we attract more of Gen. Z and and we know that by 2025 and a big percentage of the workforce will be Gen. Z. So we conducted this study using our platform to get all these trends and now we have 150 page. Report that dives well and deep into. Yes. So when you receive the report and what were your, your key findings, What was interesting? Yeah. So I think again, what I really appreciated was the local perspective, right. Any HR strategy, any employer branding strategy should really start from data. So if you're not starting from data, then the likelihood of success is going to diminish. So that was the first thing. The second thing was that more or less it was quite aligned with what we see in Europe. So that was a a good thing to to understand. And then I think the stats that struck me the most was that 42.2 actually percent would say that they would leave their current job for a less salary if the role was more fulfilling. And that to me is obviously music to my ears. And for branding is all about creating purpose and communicating purpose and it just shows that the younger generation is looking for much more meaning in their work. For sure. We see that as well. That's three hours. So from my experience. There's other benchmarks like salary work, life balance, this word purpose and the word culture are constant words not being brought up by Gen. Z and other stat which I found interesting was as well. 42% would leave a job if it becomes too stressful. And I think here you mentioned a point the last time we met where. There's a certain tolerance which which everyone can take to stress, but then the why becomes even more important, right? Why am I tolerating this stress and what's motivating me to kind of keep pushing? Exactly. And a lot of stress can be reduced in the workplace through communication at times when people don't know what is expected of them. And there there are two parts of expectation. There's a part which is extremely tangible and like, OK, I need to come to work at 9, let's say. But then there's that non tangible cultural part and if a culture isn't articulated, it can become extremely stressful and unsettling for any individual to understand how to navigate this workplace and more importantly how to thrive. Because everyone as an employer, that is your role, right? That people who are with you should try so they are more productive and essentially the business does even better. Something else which the report. Kind of delved into is the traits of what a leader kind of should should role model to their team And I think working with you I've really learned the importance of that role modelling and because behaviors speak much louder than just words. And so from the report we got three main behaviors and motivator. Someone with a supportive attitude and empathy and honesty. What's your take there? Not too sure I guess. The dream, right, the dream, I think. That I'm really glad that you delved into this and to report. And when I talk about employer branding, I talk about 3 elements for successful employer branding. There is the HR practices, there's your marketing, and then there's your leadership behaviors. And we all want to work for a leader who has positive behaviours, right? We all want this. And if there are employers that are really working hard to be. An attractive employer then they cannot stop with the HR and with the marketing practices. Leadership is what holds everything together because as you said, the leaders are role modeling certain behaviors and it's through this role modeling that employees really start to believe in the organization and essentially become ambassadors. That is the that is your ultimate state of employer branding where you have employees that are promoting. Their organization organically. But something else you've mentioned to me was the the importance of not just saying like why are people leaving, but why are people staying? And so could you tell a bit into that, like, what does that mean? Oh my God, this is my hate. So much focus on exit and in this day and age people are going to leave. That is a fact, right? But we want to understand why are people staying and when we understand. Why people saying, why are people staying? This is really the basis of our marketing, any marketing or communications campaign. But also it helps us navigate what we want to highlight internally, right? Because often we're putting so much focus on that external advertising, that external communication. But really, what are we telling our people? What are we telling them about what we expect out of our culture? We just talking to anyone or have we really defined who our ideal employee is? Yeah, yeah. So I meet with a lot of HR marketing people like I said and they're often very, very busy with the day-to-day stuff. And how does how does someone start the the journey of employer branding. We know it's a fast term and but what are the the the first few steps they can take to start to understand who they are and how to? Kind of set a road map with a a positive way forward, yes. Of course, to your point, employer branding and working with employer branding is a journey. But it is a scalable journey, and it's a journey that is, let's say, going to be beneficial for any sized organization. And there are a couple of, let's say, mindsets, things that need to happen that once they would have happened, everything else to some extent can follow. And definitely defining the purpose of the organization is the first step. Now of course, maybe large corporate organizations. Have a big vision mission statement, but every business owner has a why they started this organization. Every business owner had some form of vision. So can we articulate that? Can we write that down? Can we create this purpose which is so important to the younger generation. So that is definitely the number one starting point. And then of course there are other things like really aligning the HR practices. With the trends. So for example, we know work life balance is a trend and leadership, you know certain behaviours and leadership, Wellness and well-being. Looking at the trends, but ultimately aligning these two things again with their purpose. Because if you're not aligning your practices with a purpose, then you are like every other organization and they're in this day and age where employees have become like customers. You need to stand out and the only way you're going to stand out is with your unique culture and with your unique purpose. I really see that as well in different areas with Jen. See how much authenticity really matters. And they can see through that, you know, that cliche text you're going to put on LinkedIn, Like it needs to be authentic and it needs to be communicated authentically as well. So that's something we've learned and we're still kind of embodying in our content. And it's really interesting to see. Yes, I think that it pains me a lot when organizations are putting in so much effort for their external money, exactly so much into the external kind of aspect. And that is to some extent important. So one shouldn't ever, like you will never catch me say that the external branding is not a valuable part of employer branding, but I'm not 100% sure that it is the first part that is, that is what I tell organizations I work with. It's important. You need to have visibility, you know, but what about your internal? Because what happens is that there is this perfect picture that is being painted. And then from day one. It's broken. And that's exactly. And that there is a concept called psychological contract. And once that psychological contract is broken, so from the candidate becoming an employee with certain expectations because of this visual picture that was painted, as soon as you break that psychological contract, the likelihood of that employee remaining with you for a long time is really, really unlikely, yes. Really unlikely. So every HR professional should aim to understand what is the key message, what is the promise that I'm putting it out there and how am I fulfilling this process from when the employee joins till when they leave, Because that's and then they still become ambassadors. The point is not to hold on to employees forever, that's not the world we are living in. But the point is that when they are with us, they are ambassadors, they are thriving and they are super productive. That's the that's the aim. And so like we said, when I saw there's a lot of this and in fact what Three Hour and yourself have come together is to provide kind of the step one of where this journey begins. Can you explain what we've packaged together? Yes, what we notice is that. Organizations are super busy, right? So we really wanted to bring the key people together, whether that's the leadership team, the HR team, the marketing team and certain leaders within the business and give them that opportunity and time to reflect on their situation as an employer and how to become an interactive employer. So we put together this workshop whereby we bring in the report and the data. From the Genz Workplace Trends Report. Help the organization unpick the report in this workshop. Allow them time to brainstorm right together as a team on what actions they need to take. What realistic actions. Not big dreamy plans, but realistic actions they can take in order to become a more attractive employer in order to attract, engage and retain. And then we put together a nice recommendations document which is combined with best practice employer branding, let's say research and the latest trends in in employer branding. So like that they have a very good understanding of what the next steps are for them which they would have participated in ultimately. So it's not some unrealistic, let's say plan, but it is a plan which they have complete ownership of. Cool. Thank you very much. Vanessa, it's a pleasure to be working on this project with you and I really hope to see many organisations thrive in becoming a more attractive employer. So get in touch with either a Three Hour or Vanessa and we're happy to guide you through the process of what this will take. So thank you very much. We'll see you soon.