Meet the Father of Employer Brand Management at #TBSummit - Simon Barrow

The Talent Brand Alliance is proud to bring Simon Barrow to the London Talent Brand Summit. As the inventor of the modern employer branding approach, Simon’s beliefs represents the industry’s history as well as the potential for where our profession is headed. Be prepared to challenge your thinking about employer branding within talent attraction, and come to the event with an open mind for this exciting and very interactive discussion. Simon joins us on day two (17 October) - see the workshop agenda.

Simon Barrow

Father of the Employer Branding approach

Simon Barrow is best known in the business world as the ex-consumer goods Brand Manager (on Knorr and later Colgate-Palmolive products) who created The Employer Brand approach and its mission ‘to bring the best of brand management to people at work.’ It was a radical idea back in the 1990s and employer brand management is now an established global concept.

But Simon believes that radicalism is just as necessary now in 2019 given the major organisational and technological changes which have made outstanding personal talent more powerful than the long established major employers of the past. This is the new employee economy and Simon Barrow is calling for a massive upgrade in the role of employer branding with these beliefs:

“It can be hard to achieve necessary change. I’ve done both product brand management and Employer Brand Management and the latter is a tougher job. ~Simon Barrow”

Simon’s Employer Brand Beliefs

• Employer Brand thinking is about creating and managing every aspect of the employee experience. 

• Recruitment marketing activity is only a part of Employer Brand Management. If you cannot influence necessary change to the realities of being at work, you are not doing an EB Management job.

•  It is all about the organisation itself and what it does to provide a unique and compelling culture and an opportunity to be outstanding.

• It can be hard to achieve necessary change. I’ve done both product brand management and EB Management and the latter is a tougher job

•  Success in EB Management comes to those who can earn the respect and trust of line and functional leaders across the business based on their grasp of the issues, research and innovation necessary. They know HR, they know Marketing and they know the importance of coherence, coordination and measurement.

• Product Brand Management ability has long been a springboard for line management providing you can add the financial and leadership skills. That is not yet the case for people facing roles eg HR

• HR and related areas should be a springboard today for those with outstanding talent and ambition but they are not . That’s because there is no alumni record in the way Finance, Operations and Marketing can demonstrate.  

• Line Management, investors and strategic consultants continue to fly blind on the deep human issues of engagement and understanding because the community they respect does not include those who do. 

Want to meet Simon and learn from your other employer branding peers at the workshop in London? Request your ticket to the next Talent Brand Summit today.

Got a question for Simon? Send it to him ahead of the event - summit @ talentbrand .org.