Adcorp's creativity at work

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Q. You just got back from New Zealand, the enchanted land of the Lord of the Rings. What was the goal for the trip?

I was invited by our affiliate in New Zealand, Adcorp, and their managing director, Kevin Lodge, to address their annual HR conference. Kevin and I met when he came to the U.S. in 2004 for our Global Network meeting. We applied to the Human Resources Institute of New Zealand (HRINZ) with a proposal for me to speak about employer branding and its importance, as well as trends in HR branding. HRINZ scheduled me to be the keynote speaker on the last day of the conference, Friday, September 16th.

Q. Did you learn of any emerging or interesting trends in their workforce arena?

New Zealanders--they call themselves “Kiwis”--commonly leave the country after college for what they call their “O.E.”, or “overseas experience”. They usually go to the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, or, less commonly, the United States. Employers in those countries typically pay more than Kiwi employers due to the higher cost of living in those countries.

According to an article I read in the Auckland New Zealand Herald, many men choose to stay overseas because they want higher salaries. This aggravates an already very tight labor market--3.7 percent national unemployment, 66 percent of the eligible workforce working--and actually has created a shortage of men in the country.

Q. Has this phenomenon been beneficial in any meaningful way for women there?

The shortage of men has meant that women have more opportunities in New Zealand. The Prime Minister, Helen Clark, is a woman, for example, as is Theresa Gattung, CEO of the New Zealand telephone company, Telecom Corp. She's also the highest-paid executive in the country.

The country has a less resilient glass ceiling than one would find in Australia or even the U.S. New Zealand has a very egalitarian feel to it--they are not at all formal. So there would be more occasions where women could network and not be shut out by an old boy's network. I am sure Kiwi women will attest that the road to the top is not smooth and downhill, but relative to those trod by their sisters in the U.S. and Australia, I believe they are in a much better position.

Q. Is New Zealand actively working to bring back the people it loses to the O.E.?

I did not see any evidence of a coordinated program by the government to reach out to Kiwi ex-pats. Individual employers are recruiting in the U.K., Ireland, Australia and Canada, and they get some Kiwis showing up interested in going home.

Q. What did the trip uncover in terms of branding and recruitment?

In the course of researching New Zealand for my presentations there, I came across a survey of nations as brands. As it happens, New Zealand ranked 10th in the world (the U.S. is 11th, down from 4th). Prime Minister Tony Blair of the U.K. has talked in the past of re-branding Britain to give it a more modern, dynamic reputation to counteract its image as an 18th century theme park for tourists.

The fact is, everyone has a brand--people, companies and countries. “Brand” is a synonym for “relationship”. Your brand is the relationship you have with your universe-immediate friends and family, co-workers, neighbors, fellow citizens. When we speak of an “employer brand”, we mean the relationship an organization has with its employees, past, present and prospective. For nations, their brand is the relationship they have with their citizens, as well as the relationship they have with the citizens and governments of other countries.

Q. Do movies such as the Lord of the Rings and other pop cultural items have an impact on a country's brand?

Absolutely. Even Kiwis acknowledge that their country was known primarily for lamb and wool prior to the Lord of the Rings trilogy being released. This is not surprising given there are about 4 million New Zealanders and, by last count, 78 million lambs and sheep. But seriously, the scenery in Rings was compelling and the effect on New Zealand tourism has been significant.

It is also interesting to note that the top-rated nation brand is Australia. Starting with the Crocodile Dundee movies and going right up through MacLeod's Daughters on cable TV today, Australia has cultivated a very popular image, sort of a U.S. West without the superpower overtones or urban violence--cowboys on horseback in the Outback, etc. Other popular nation brands include Switzerland, Sweden, France, the Netherlands and the U.K. All of those are popular, picturesque tourist destinations with relatively safe cities.

Q. Are the war for talent and branding top of mind for people in New Zealand?

Definitely. With such low unemployment and a lack of skilled workers, employer brands are critical for attracting talent. I spoke with many employers over the three days of the conference, as well as those I met through Adcorp. All of them are concerned about their brand and their ability to leverage it to recruit the best.

Q. Does New Zealand have similar challenges as the United States in the quest for rarified talent such as health care workers?

Yes. I was somewhat surprised by this, since U.S. employers have gone to New Zealand to recruit Kiwi health care professionals to come to the U.S. I thought there was a surplus, but the opposite is true.

I spoke in Auckland with executives from one of their health care districts--they have a national health care system like most civilized countries--and they have gone as far as the U.K. and Ireland trying to convince nurses and therapists to emigrate to New Zealand. The problem is the perception that New Zealand is so far away; Australia is 1,200 miles by air.

According to a national survey in June, half of government agencies and over 60 percent of IT firms say they are actively recruiting right now. Nearly half--46 percent--of financial services companies are hiring as well. So the search for talent is widespread in New Zealand.

Q. Were you able to experience the picturesque landscape between meetings at the conference?

Yes. There was “The Big Day Out”, a gathering of the speakers at the conference, officers of the HRINZ, and human resources executives from the top New Zealand employers. It was held the day before the conference began. HRINZ took us out to a place called Pencarrow Lodge, which is a working sheep ranch on a government preserve.

Once we arrived, we had a panel discussion on the state of human resources throughout the world. I was asked to address the topic in relation to the U.S., as was Kevin Wheeler, who also attended. There were representatives from Great Britain, Singapore, the Philippines and Australia, as well as New Zealand. It was interesting to hear that the major problem throughout the world is the so-called “War for Talent”. Employers worldwide are having trouble finding skilled people.

The fact that the lack of skilled talent is felt in every market was striking. Certainly, there are lots of people unemployed or underemployed in the developing world. But even in those markets--in this case, the Philippines--there is still a lack of people who have the skills necessary to develop a telecommunications or wireless infrastructure (our speaker was with Vodafone).

In Europe, the lack of skilled workers is the top priority of executive management because the demographic trends are more pronounced than in the U.S. Several European Union countries are on the cusp of having declining populations, even with the influx of workers from the former Soviet bloc countries, Turkey and North Africa. Without workers, how does one support expansion and innovation, much less the high cost of national health care and retirement found in those countries?

Besides the panel discussions, we also had a networking buffet lunch, followed by skeet shooting and extreme golf--chucking balls into Cook Strait. Kevin Lodge of Adcorp shot four out of five at skeet, and I shot three out of five; most didn't hit anything. I warned everybody not to mess with ad guys …

Called “the father of employer branding”, D. Mark Hornung is a senior vice president of Hodes and works with clients such as The Clorox Company, Raytheon and Mercury Interactive. Previously, he developed branding for clients such as Starbucks, Discover Financial and Nissan. Mark was CEO of Bravant, a start-up that developed an online behavioral assessment application, Career@gentâ"¢. Mark teaches branding in the Continuing Education department of San José State University. He has a degree in Philosophy from John Carroll University. He is co-author of Opportunities in Microelectronics Careers. His writing has also appeared in The New Yorker.