Intelligence Group regularly examines what employers are the favourites in The Netherlands. This year, it appears that there is still a top 10 to be made, but they all lost popularity. Geert-Jan Waasdorp, Director of Intelligence Group, states that this trend has already been recognizable for na while, “but it has never been more evident. As many as eight of the ten best slipped in popularity. That is a very clear sign. I have never before seen so many large companies make such a drop.”
But whose is it a clear sign? According to Waasdorp, large employer brands are simply under pressure. This supports the trend of large organisations losing their attractiveness relative to, for example, start-ups.
causes
Waasdorp gives five reasons why the strong employer brands are becoming less interesting:
The zeitgeist is different because the economy is different. Their used to a big focus n large companies, but now it is different. The 'now' is focused on startups and online businesses. The economy has changed. Now the smaller the impact they make as players, the more they win as behemoths. Earlier, the trend used to be big = beautiful, now the reverse is true. Small = sexy is the trend in this economy.
If you asked one hundred trendwatchers to invest money in Shell or KLM, nobody will do it. The companies have been trying to preserve what they used to have jealously. It would not surprise me if Shell with this energy revolution in ten years will be going bankrupt. Great has become a dinosaur, and we all know what has happened to them. As a result, there is not much for employees to get more in large companies. It takes 10-20 years before you climb far enough in the hierarchy to mean something. While you're in a start-up, you can make an impact almost immediately.
Large companies are facing inwards, constantly reorganising themselves. Everyone is afraid that their jobs will be made redundent over two years, and that stresses the working atmosphere. People do not want to work in that envrionement.
Because there is only one look at survival in the short term, there is no longer any investment being made in the labour market and employer branding. There are still vacancies filled, but that's fulfilling the necessary, without a vision for their employees.
People are done with all those scandals at major companies. That does not mean that nothing is happening in small business, but, in recent years, big businesses have been perceived very negatively in the news.
mandatory chores
Actually, improving their image is not that difficult, says Waasdorp. “It could come down to something as simple as writing a good job description ... still, the average level is depressing. In most organisations, recruitment is simply a compulsory chores for HR. My view is that any company that can look at it in a different way, is able to become one of the strongest employer brands in the Netherlands within two years. I don't want to be a sourpuss, but the level in the Netherlands is just not very high, and that's a shame.”