Best Practice | A New Kind of Interview with American Express (Amex)

By Top Employers Institute

In a fun interview format shared across social media, American Express (Amex) used current employees as talent brand ambassadors. In this mini-employee series, Member x Colleague looks behind the scenes of the Amex brand to feature different employees explaining what it is like to work at the company, and what their products are all about.

This is just a snapshot of American Express’s innovative best practices; you can find the entire practice on our HR Best Practices database, which is exclusively available to Top Employers. Get inspiration and insight into the approach, challenges and learnings experienced by certified Top Employers. Access it now via the Top Employers Programme if you are certified or learn more about it here!

Why the practice was needed

The initiative aimed to promote the Amex brand to the outside world in a modern, approachable, and interactive way. Amex decided to select six colleagues with different job profiles to conduct interviews facilitated by a Brand Ambassador. The organisation wanted the conversations to be authentic and emotive while providing an in-depth look at what it is like to work at Amex. The conversations were intentionally conducted with a wide range of different Amex employees, from career starters to executives in upper management positions.

How the practice was implemented

The project was a cooperative project between the marketing and HR departments.
A Member (i.e., a cardholder or customer) meets a Colleague (an employee at Amex) and the two talk about a specific topic. An Amex Brand Ambassador joins the conversation to help facilitate the discussion.
In an interview format, Amex organised conversations on their brand as an employer, including focusing on their strategic points: career, leadership, wellbeing, diversity, and inclusion.
The colleagues Amex filmed all received training on communication (i.e., how to keep their wording gender-neutral, etc.) and on social media use.
These individual videos were each linked to distinct locations from the Global Dining Collection to create an authentic and relaxed atmosphere.
The conversations from the campaign were later edited in different formats (IG-TV, Reel, Post) and integrated on all channels (Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.). The videos were then shared on social media at different points in time.

Some benefits of this initiative:

It gave Amex fans new insights and a special kind of exposure on social media.
Through this initiative, Amex used real people from diverse backgrounds to showcase their diversity within the company. Exciting topics were explored, telling personal stories, highlighting challenges, and addressing questions from the community.
By subtitling the videos, special attention was paid to accessibility so that deaf and hard-of-hearing people could also watch the interview series.

A breakdown of the mini-series interviews:

Episode 1 was with the Head of Private Clients discussing a career with family and female empowerment.
Episode 2 was with the Team Leader in Account Development on corporate culture and team leadership.
Episode 3 was with an HR career starter on Amex as an employer. In the episode, they explored what Amex does as an employer for its employees. This episode covered international career opportunities, inclusion and diversity, leadership, and wellbeing.

Download Now: World of Work Trends Report 2023

Results

The series was successful, and Amex continued it after the first series.

The reach, number of views and interactions can be named as relevant KPIs on Instagram.
A total of 1 085 fans interacted with the Member x Colleague format, and Amex Germany reached a total of 45 052 Instagram users; this resulted in an engagement rate of 2.4%.

Final thoughts

Using this mini-series, Amex was able to highlight its EVP and strengthen its employer branding. Alongside this, the interviews work as a great marketing asset. It is a win-win as customers and employers engage with one another in a new and exciting way.

How Saint-Gobain, Capgemini and bioMérieux are Engaging Employees from a Human-Centric Perspective

Engaging employees has always been a priority for organisations wanting to get the best out of their people. Over the years, there have been many strategies to engage employees, and more recently, organisations have begun to use a human-centric approach. An organisation does not necessarily need to be human-centric to engage its employees but organisations that are employee-centric are seeing better engagement levels than those that aren’t.

That was the topic in mind in a recent roundtable we hosted with HR experts from bioMérieux, Capgemini and Saint-Gobain. These experts included: Regis Blugeon, Director of Social Affairs and HRD for France at Saint-Gobain; Franck Baillet, the EVP of Learning and Development at Capgemini; Pretheshini Moodley, Regional Head of Human Resources for Africa at BioMérieux, and Paola Bottaro, People Director at Top Employers Institute.

These certified Top Employers are embracing a human-centric approach and utilising it to engage their employees. Throughout the article, we will explore how these organisations are making a more holistic approach to employee engagement without ignoring the challenges faced by organisations making this change.

How Does an Organisation Become Human-Centric?

A human-centric organisation, also known as a people-centric or employee-centric organisation, strongly emphasises its employees’ wellbeing, development, and satisfaction. In this type of organisation, employees are considered the most valuable asset, and the entire organisational structure and culture are designed to prioritise their needs, growth, and overall experience.

Some characteristics of a human-centric organisation include:

Prioritising employee wellbeing.
A healthy work-life balance for employees.
Creating a diverse and inclusive culture.
Maintaining open communication across the organisation.
Ensuring that employees feel empowered and have a sense of autonomy.
Allowing employees to have flexible work arrangements.
Cultivating a collaborative environment at work.
Investing in professional development for every employee.

The concept of a human-centric organisation recognises that when employees are valued, supported, and engaged, they are more likely to be motivated, productive, and committed to the organisation’s success.

During Top Employers Inspire 2023, we got an insider’s view of how Top Employers Institute is becoming a human-centric organisation. Paola Bottaro, People Director at Top Employers Institute, talked to Wouter van Ewijk about how the business has adapted to support its employees better while learning to be mindful, empathetic, and purposeful. You can watch that session here.

Assumptions About a Human-Centric Organisation.

The concept of a human-centric organisation is still very new, and as such, many incorrect assumptions come with the term. Some of these assumptions are around how it is easier to implement a human-centric approach depending on some factors like:

The organisation’s industry: there are doubts that some sectors, like investment banking and manufacturing, can become human-centric.
The size of the organisation: there are assumptions that it is easier for smaller organisations to be human-centric than other larger organisations.
Geographical location: it is assumed that organisations that operate where there is a national legal framework find it easier to be human-centric.
Type of employee: there may be an assumption that having a human-centric approach for an organisation with white-collar workers is more effortless.

However, many of these assumptions are incorrect. Organisations that want to become human-centric differ in many ways, yet they can all engage with this approach.

How Top Employers like Saint-Gobain, Capgemini and BioMérieux Understand Human-Centric Organisations

Pretheshini Moodley, Regional Head of Human Resources for Africa at BioMérieux, started this discussion by sharing how BioMérieux sees a human-centric perspective as engaging their people by “considering the individual needs”. This fits into their way of working because, as an organisation, one of their values is centred around belonging – where people can be themselves while feeling like they belong at BioMérieux.

As an organisation, they have prioritised listening to their employees and allowing them to share their genuine feelings and thoughts. In many ways, they are highlighting the diversity of their employees. While BioMérieux engages with their employees in a human-centric approach, they prefer to call it employee-centric as they feel that it allows their employees to feel better represented by the approach that they are taking.

At Capgemini, Franck Baillet, the EVP of Learning and Development, shared how the organisation recognises that one of its significant assets is its people. As such, they see the topic of engagement and human-centric work as “absolutely key”. As a human-centric organisation, one of the things they try to do at all times is to “put the individual at the centre at all times.”

While they see a human-centric approach as the best, Franck notes how it can be challenging at all times, primarily due to their size, but it is still something they enact across their organisation. Similarly to BioMérieux, Capgemini prioritises regularly listening to their employees to understand what is best for them. It helps them test the “temperature” of their employees’ feelings.

As the conversation continued, Regis Blugeon, Director of Social Affairs and HRD for France at Saint-Gobain, shared how Saint-Gobain see themselves first as customer-centric and people-oriented. For them, everything starts with the customer. The engagement of their people is significant for them, and they engage them by prioritising what their customers and their people need.

One of the ways that they keep themselves accountable for their employees’ feelings around engagement is by measuring their engagement levels regularly. Their regular check-ins with their employees are why they see themselves as people-oriented because this approach to their employees impacts many other aspects of their day-to-day work environment; it is just balanced with the needs of their customers. For Saint-Gobain, this regular assessment is also essential because their organisation is not a monolith, but rather, they have a remarkably diverse set of workers – from blue-collar to white-collar.

How Top Employers Institute is Becoming a Human-Centric Organisation

As the discussion around Top Employers Institute’s shift into becoming a human-centric organisation, Paola Bottaro explained that the company did not decide to become human-centric overnight. Instead, their leadership board undertook the decision, understanding that this approach is complex, especially as there is no such thing as a “typical human experience”.

At first, when the organisation began to think around this issue, they considered calling it an action- or activity-driven approach. Still, they settled on the human-centric approach because it encapsulated their desire to give everyone a fair and equal experience while understanding the differences that make us human.

In a similar vein as the Top Employers in the conversation, Paola stressed the importance of listening to employees, especially as working in a human-centric way is explicitly not a one size fits all approach, and even she recognises that you can never know everything about working in a human-centric way. That is why listening is essential and embracing that you may not always understand, but you should always be open to listening.

What About Engagement?

Franck shifted the conversation to understanding what engagement means. In some ways, the word is quite generic as it can apply to many situations because an employee can be engaged in many different ways. And for each employee, their way of being engaged at work may be completely different.

He thinks organisations must consider “how they can create the best conditions for people to feel engaged?” He sees that engaging employees is in so many different people’s hands, which is part of why engaging employees is more of a complex task than it appears to be on the surface.

Franck sees that employees understanding the “why” of their job is playing a critical role in improving the engagement of employees as it helps to guide the organisation to develop the conditions to support employees – making them feel more engaged.

Adding to Franck’s, Pretheshini explained how at BioMérieux, they launched a project to gauge their employees’ sense of purpose before they even critically thought about engagement. They did this by investigating employee insights, and asking each person how they viewed purpose and “why they were here [at BioMérieux]”. They used this as the start of their engagement journey to create a sense of purpose and better understand each person’s motivations. It made it a lot easier for them to understand the voice of their employees because of this project.

Once they had done this part of the project, they ensured they created a safe environment for their employees to share their thoughts. The environment needed to be a place that empowered employees in a ‘space’ they could trust because, without these safe spaces, they would be unable to have satisfying and enlightening discussions.

Beyond having a survey or a measurement for their employee engagement, BioMérieux has created a game that leans into their desire for honest conversations. In the game, they encourage employees to be courageous and utilise the trust they’ve built with their colleagues. In the game, when an employee wants to be courageous, they show the car to their manager and then say how they would like to share something important. Pretheshini shared that they see “every failure as an opportunity to become better”, and that can only happen when you’re brave enough to try something that may lead to failure. It allows employees to feel engaged because they are given the space to truly try their best, even when it doesn’t work out.

How Does Leadership Fit In?

Leaders in an organisation are often the guides that make initiatives work, but that still needs to be completed in a boardroom. Instead, modern organisations require empathetic, emotionally intelligent leaders, good listeners and communicators. These are often considered soft skills and have been undervalued for many years. Still, when it comes to engagement, these skills are crucial to having an authentic connection between leadership and employees.

Here are some key roles that leaders play in promoting employee engagement:

Effective communication: Leaders should foster open and transparent communication with employees.
Recognition and Appreciation: Leaders should recognise and appreciate employees’ contributions and achievements regularly.
Creating a Positive Work Environment: Leaders should foster a positive and inclusive workplace where employees feel safe, respected, and valued.
Aligning with Organisational Values: Leaders should ensure that their actions and decisions align with the organisation’s values and mission to help create a sense of purpose and shared direction.
Leading by Example: Engaged leaders model the behaviours they want to see in their employees.
Empowerment: Empowering employees by giving them autonomy and decision-making authority can increase their sense of ownership and engagement.
Professional Development: Leaders should support employees’ growth and development by providing training, skill-building, and career advancement opportunities.
Conflict Resolution: Addressing conflicts and issues promptly and fairly is essential for maintaining a positive work environment that engages employees.

Final Thoughts on Employee Engagement

Employee engagement is a critical factor to many organisations’ success, and a human-centric approach recognises that engaged employees are motivated not only by financial incentives but also by a holistic experience that fulfils their emotional, psychological, and professional needs.

Engagement is also not a topic that rests solely in the hands of HR professionals; instead, it is a companywide task, and when an organisation is human-centric, it can better allow everyone to achieve these engagement goals. When employees are engaged, they become more committed, innovative, and motivated to contribute their best efforts to the organisation’s success.

While this is only a snippet of their conversation, it highlights some of the challenges and successes Top Employers are making in creating the conditions to support employee engagement.

To find out more, get in touch today for free and find out how to engage employee by becoming an employers of choice!

Nurturing Talent: Retention Strategy Insights from BAT

By Sandra Botha, Global HR Auditor, Top Employers Institute

As a certified Top Employer, BAT recognises that talent retention is critical in a rapidly changing and volatile labour market. Limited growth opportunities and a lack of skill development often motivate employees to seek new opportunities elsewhere. To help ensure top talent joins and remains at the company, BAT implemented a Career Conversation series.

Lucy Evara, Head of Human Resources (HR) for BAT East African Markets and I had the opportunity to discuss this new Career Conversation series and other talent retention strategies during the 2022 Top Employers Institute Best Practices Week. Any organisation seeking to improve its talent retention strategies continuously will find value in our engaging conversation.

Here are some of the highlights:

Building an Empowered Organization

During our discussion Lucy shared insightful perspectives on BAT’s mission to cultivate an empowered organisation. This mission, which serves as the foundation of HR programmes, is to create, “an engaged, agile and high performing organisation with winning capabilities & culture delivering an enterprise of the future.”

BAT has identified four key levers to realise this mission:

Build talent with winning capabilities,
Culture and leadership behaviour,
Diversity and inclusion, and
Fit for purpose organisation design.

The company regularly seeks input from employees to shape its initiatives. BAT conducts the “Your Voice” employee survey every two years, which gathers valuable feedback on company culture and initiatives. In 2021, employee feedback played a pivotal role in shaping the Career Conversations series, which directly responded to the wants and needs expressed by participants.

Watch Here: 2023 Global Top Employer BAT Certification Celebration Announcement

Career Conversations

Engaging in meaningful career conversations is essential for fostering professional development and growth within organisations. At BAT these discussions, between leaders and their employees, revolve around identifying strengths, areas for improvement, and interests, all within the framework of present and future career performance and aspirations. By empowering employees to take ownership of their career paths and explore the vast array of opportunities, leaders play a pivotal role in inspiring and maximising the potential of their team members.

There are two critical aspects of career conversations: that they are separate from a performance evaluation and that employees think of themselves as the driver of their careers. While a performance evaluation and career conversation may complement one another, the evaluation provides feedback on past performance and the career conversation aims to explore future potential. Although leaders assist employees with thinking about their futures, the employee is accountable for following through on identified action items.

BAT’s approach to their Career Conversations series is to give examples relevant to their workplace to make learning practical, transparent, and meaningful. “It’s key to note that these were conversations and not death by PowerPoint. The intent was to make them as engaging and impactful as possible,” Lucy explained. The conversations generally focus on the “four Ws and one H,” – what, why, when, where, and how – to give specificity and clarity during discussions.

Within BAT’s career conversations, there is a focus on helping people understand the company’s career principles:

Sustained high performance,
Strength of your functional and leadership capabilities,
Critical experiences that you have gained in the course of your working life, an
Ownership of your career development plan.

Most importantly, the conversations end with a call to action, which Lucy described as employees “knowing that their manager will speak to them about their readiness for specific roles and considering the questions: Do I understand my development actions? How ready am I for some of these roles? Really just creating a greater awareness so that people can take ownership of their development plan.”

Demystifying Talent Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)

At BAT, biannual “talent checking” sessions are conducted to assess progress on the company’s people development and align on the next steps. “The key elements or outputs that come from these sessions,” Lucy explained, “are talent pooling, which we traditionally call succession planning in HR, and talent supply and demand.” A team’s functional leadership cluster is responsible for these sessions.

BAT utilises talent pools to identify individuals who are “ready now” for specific roles, aiming to facilitate their move within the next 12 months. Additionally, they identify individuals as “ready soon” if they are prepared to transition in 12-24 months and “emerging talent readiness” if they show potential to move in the next 3-5 years. Categorising employees based on their readiness guides career conversations and helps tailor development plans.

Talent demand refers to roles that need new people and talent supply refers to those who need new roles. By staying aware of these needs, leadership expedites the process of matching talent with internal opportunities. Lucy highlighted that BAT, with offices in multiple countries, takes a broad view and considers relocating individuals if a suitable match is found. This approach enables the company to leverage talent and maximise employee career opportunities.

Our discussion concluded with the important observation that, ultimately, for career conversations and other talent retention strategies to be successful, they must be supported at three different levels: the individual employee, the manager, and the organisation.

Empowering Individual’s Growth & Transformation

In the rapidly evolving landscape of education and professional development, traditional learning methods, jargon, and frameworks are giving way to a new era of sophisticated and personalised learning fueled by cutting-edge technology. This seismic shift has ushered in an unprecedented level of personalisation in the learning experiences of individuals, particularly in the corporate world.

Employees now expect to be treated as “internal” customers, and employers are increasingly prioritising a “employee-centric” approach that profoundly impacts the way learning is delivered and experienced.

In a recent LinkedIn Live Event, Dwen Hwee, HR Head, Singapore and Korea at Tata Consultancy Services and Billy Elliott, Regional Director for APAC at Top Employers Institute, discussed an outstanding best practice of how they make learning available to anyone to learn anytime, anywhere, using any content or any device.

Here are some key learnings from the session.

TCS’s Culture of Learning and Democratizing Skills

TCS, a renowned global leader in IT services and consulting, has fostered a culture of learning by creating a comprehensive learning ecosystem. This ecosystem encourages employees to take charge of their careers and focuses on people, purpose, and the democratisation of talent and skills within the organisation.

TCS offers a range of learning formats, including self-paced learning, virtual classes, game-based learning, and more, supported by partnerships with external training providers.

Building a Robust Learning Ecosystem: Addressing Digital Demands and Driving Business Success

TCS recognised the need to develop a comprehensive learning ecosystem to address the evolving demands of digital technology and ensure the continuous growth and development of its employees. Several factors contributed to the development of this learning ecosystem, including:

The need to have Talent Fungibility as a strategic employer branding value
Learning as a driver of business success
The need for the organisation and employees to have relevant skills
The Digital Transformation Wave and remain innovative

To build a learning culture within TCS, which translates to purpose-led talent development, they developed it across five pillars:

Providing training opportunities – Linking learning with career and rewards
Being a partner function – Fueling business growth by being a part of business strategy & operations
Onboarding more training partners – Creating innovative & seamless learning ecosystems
Provisioning learning content – Building agility and hunger to learn and unlearn
Conducting technology or leadership programs – Nurturing growth & transformation mindset while focusing on cost & efficiency

TCS has developed various initiatives to support these pillars:

Talent Development Digital Ecosystem – TCS developed a talent development digital ecosystem anchored in their HR and resourcing teams. They engage, retain, and develop employees across the globe, aligning closely with the business to support its growth. The ecosystem includes the iEvolve learning and competency management system, which offers a diverse range of learning formats and proficiency levels. The iEvolve system serves as a one-stop-shop for employees to access training and certification records, whether internal or external. Various learning formats are on the platform, including in-person workshops, hackathons, self-learning and Gamification. As an example, under the digital ecosystem, TCS uses a virtual iQclass, where employees can learn from other employees overseas in a live session. This digital employee experience enables TCS’s 5As of learning – which is for Anyone to learn Anytime, Anywhere, using Any content delivered on Any device.

The T-Factor – using an in-house built Algorithm using AI, provides a measure of relevant skills for all TCS employees. TCS employs a unique approach called the T-factor to cater to employees at different experience levels. This approach encourages employees to develop expertise in multiple digital technology skills while also excelling in one or a few specific areas. The T-factor was introduced to anticipate the increasing demand for digital technology skills, and it ensures that employees are prepared and trained to apply these skills in real business contexts and support customers in transforming their businesses.

Xcelerate – This is TCS’s career guidance management platform designed to help employees navigate their career paths. Through Xcelerate, employees can log in and input their desired roles, preferred technologies, and a timeframe for progression. The platform then generates a personalised learning path based on the employee’s current skill sets and desired career trajectory. Xcelerate also offers interactive features such as 360-degree feedback, where colleagues and supervisors provide comments and feedback, fostering holistic development in both technical and soft skills. Employees can participate as mentors or choose mentors from a registered list. The platform provides employee insights, including learning paths of employees in desired roles, competency gap analysis, and engagement indexes. Xcelerate seamlessly integrates with TCS Elevate, a talent framework comprising three pillars: Junior Talent, Mid-level Talent, and Emerging Leader and Senior Leadership paths.

Driving Career Advancement: Transformative Benefits of TCS’s Learning Ecosystem

Over 170 000 employees across TCS have been placed in projects across the business, which will help them reach the roles they desire in future. At TCS, their learning ecosystem results in numerous benefits for our employees. They gain a wide range of digital technology skills while specialising in specific areas, positioning themselves for career advancement.

Through personalised learning paths and continuous access to training programs, they engage in ongoing learning, ensuring their skills remain relevant. Our interactive platforms, like Xcelerate, provide holistic development opportunities through 360-degree feedback and mentorship, nurturing well-rounded professionals.

Actively participating in shaping their learning journeys improves employees experience and increases employee engagement, ownership, and motivation.

Making an Impact: GroupM’s DEI Sponsorship Programme

By Androna Benadé, Senior Account Manager, Top Employers Institute

How GroupM’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) sponsorship programme creates a career support network for people from traditionally marginalised groups

During the 2022 Top Employers Institute’s Best Practices Week, I had the opportunity to speak with Amy Walker, Inclusion and Diversity Manager for GroupM, a UK-based media investment company and certified Top Employer, about the company’s new DEI sponsorship initiative.

GroupM’s desire to radically change the industry and facilitate a new generation of leadership was the catalyst for the programme. They chose to focus on sponsorship because it’s an effective way to disrupt systemic barriers that prevent underrepresented groups from accessing top leadership positions. The pilot programme lasted for 18 months, involved 35 sponsees, and saw half of the participants promoted, with all of them moving forward in their development.

Here are some of the highlights from our discussion. You can also find a link to our full discussion here.

How Sponsorship Is Different from Mentorship

To begin our discussion, Amy explained how sponsorship programmes impacted her personally. “I’m on the autistic spectrum and I also have other conditions – physical, mental health conditions. I can attest that the sponsorship I’ve received from leaders in our business and the inclusion and adjustments that I’ve had as a disabled person have allowed me to have a really accessible environment that works for my needs.” Amy recognises the opportunities she received as a result of the sponsorship programme have helped her get to where she is today and make her passionate about creating similar opportunities for others.

Understanding the differences between sponsorship and mentorship is essential when considering a programme like this for your organisation. A mentor can be anyone within or outside the organisation, who possesses a particular set of skills and experience. They generally offer guidance and support and take a broad view of their mentee’s career growth. The relationship can be formal or informal, and it is usually not measured with any kind of performance or impact metrics.

In a sponsorship programme, having a formal structure with support and guidance is key to achieving measurable results. Sponsors are senior members of a company invested in supporting talented junior staff. They promote the sponsee directly, actively open doors to new experiences, leverage their network, and build industry connections to help the sponsee gain access to opportunities. Really, it’s about taking a very active role in supporting the sponsee’s career advancement. Success is measured not only by promotions but also by lateral moves within the company or network, which provide valuable experience for future leadership positions.

Roles & Responsibilities

In GroupM’s programme, the sponsee manages the administration of the relationship – making sure that they follow up on action items, reaching out to new contacts, and keeping their sponsor in the loop about their progress. Both parties must prioritise the relationship and meetings to achieve results.

Open and honest communication is a key element of a successful sponsorship relationship. To foster this dynamic, a sponsor needs to create a safe space so that their sponsee doesn’t feel defensive or criticised when discussing their experiences. They can work through the sponsee’s self-limiting beliefs from that foundation and develop a clear picture of the desired career path.

During the programme, GroupM identified several key responsibilities for sponsees:

Manage the relationship with their sponsor.
Be open and honest.
Identify barriers, including self-limiting beliefs.
Develop a career vision and goals.

Work hard on identified action items.

Key responsibilities for sponsors were also identified:

Create a space safe for conversations.
Leverage their network.
Provide guidance on navigating company politics.

Actively open doors to experiences and opportunities for advancement.
Champion their sponsee repeatedly and visibly.

Results & Insights

By the end of the pilot programme, half of the participants were promoted, and all of them made significant progress in their career development so that they are ready to advance when an opportunity arises.

One of the most exciting insights we discussed was that many sponsors noticed that their sponsees work incredibly hard – twice as hard as their peers. Helping them unlearn that behaviour and devote more energy to developing their personal brand and networking became part of the sponsor’s role. “I can think of specific people and see the journey they’ve been on and how they’ve changed and the kind of gravitas and confidence they have in themselves,” Amy shared, “And the way they can kind of promote themselves and make that influence felt through the company is really inspiring. It’s been brilliant to watch that happening.” Seeing individuals experience these kinds of changes after participating in the programme and subsequent positive ripple effects in the company is one of Amy’s favourite parts of her work.

GroupM will continue developing the sponsorship programme. Their next steps are to:

Make the programme permanent,
Include senior leaders in the pool of sponsors by default,
Have more targeted sponsor/sponsee pairings,

Build a training framework,
Partner with a wider agency group, and
Bring sponsors/sponsees together across the whole group regularly.

Advice for Companies Interested in Starting a DEI Sponsorship Program

To wrap up our conversation, I asked Amy what advice she would give to other companies interested in starting a sponsorship program. First, she said, it’s important to establish clear roles and responsibilities before the programme begins. Doing so will prevent confusion and ensure that everyone involved is on the same page. The programme needs to be actively managed, with ongoing feedback and regular check-ins to make sure that everything is progressing smoothly.

Next, it’s essential to consider how people are selected for the programme. Choosing participants solely for the sake of diversity will do more harm than good. Instead, Amy says, “It’s crucial to focus on high-potential talent. There’s no point running a programme like this with people who aren’t ready or don’t want to move up.” Search beyond traditional sources of talent and consider individuals who may have been overlooked in the past.

Training and support are vital to help participants confront their biases and step out of their comfort zones. Cultivating a safe and supportive environment is key. Managing expectations is also important. Make it clear that there are no guarantees of promotion or advancement.

Finally, there are numerous resources available to help companies get started. Amy described one that particularly stands out to her, “There’s this organisation called BRiM that’s made up of industry partners and they’ve just created the most brilliant guide. It’s got everything you need in there – so much rich, thought-provoking information about what might go wrong, how to make it a safe space, and how to be aware of cultural differences.” Part of the reason it caught Amy’s attention is that it was created by Black individuals who have participated in sponsorship programmes themselves. Guides like this one can help organisations ensure that their programmes are inclusive, effective, and impactful.

Update to Group M’s DEI Sponsorship Programme

Since my conversation with Amy during Best Practices Week 2023, several exciting updates have been made to Group M’s Sponsorship Programme. After seeing positive results from their first Sponsorship Programme with improvements in the representation of high-performing talent from minority ethnic groups, Group M began to see significant moves from these employees through promotions.

Amy noted, “Overcoming years of bias that have kept minorities from equal representation in top leadership positions requires intentional intervention. One tool that has proven to be highly effective when implemented well is sponsorship.

“A sponsor is a person who has power and influence, who can talk about you in the rooms you’re not in, put you forward for opportunities, introduce you to key decision-makers, and help you navigate your company.”

The first cohort of sponsees completed their 18-month programme in 2022. Of the 37 sponsees, half of whom were women, 57% of sponsees were promoted during the 18-month programme, with a further 10% moving into a new role or gaining greater responsibility – all the while building contacts, skills, confidence, and a career path towards promotion

GroupM’s second Sponsorship programme will launch later this year, targeting a wider group of underrepresented talent and explicitly targeting the areas of improvement identified from our Gender Pay Gap analysis.

Winning the Battles for Talent

I think it’s time that we stop saying we’re in a war for talent. Not because the fight is cooling off, but rather, because it is intensifying. It is worth changing our perspective on the concept itself; its real form is not that of a war, but of continuous battles for talent.

Organisation’s ability to attract new talent and engage with current employees is not something we win or lose at once. It is a process of continuous improvement – a thrilling one at that – in which the areas of people management play a decisive role.

Maximising the Employer Brand Strategy

88% of companies worldwide certified as Top Employers have an employer brand strategy that incorporates their employee value proposition as a core element. Naturally, all organisations offer some kind of value proposition to their employees.if they didn’t, it would be difficult to attract anyone, or keep them in the company for that matter – but here we are talking about effectively addressing the challenge of identifying, developing and communicating what you can offer to the talent you require, both during the hiring process and once they are in the company.

A value proposition is something that makes the organisation unique, makes it a company that professionals want to belong to, where they want to work and thrive. That, undoubtedly, is a competitive advantage that sweeps away any competition.

Optimising the Candidate’s Journey

The best companies want to make sure they deliver on what they promise, and they achieve it by embarking on a process of listening and continuous improvement.

That is why 89% of Top Employers design and review the key stages of their talent acquisition process so that they are aligned with the pillars or key characteristics of their employer brand. What’s more, 70% of Top Employers systematically measure their employer reputation among their potential candidates – their target market for talent – while 70% also map their candidate’s journey, allowing them to optimise it.

They outline what the experience will be like, both from their perspective and that of the candidate, and work with the information they collect from surveys to implement a process of continuous improvement at each focal point.

The aim of this is to improve the candidate’s experience so that the hiring process is agile and reflects the pillars of the employer’s brand, making the company more attractive.

Measuring the Experience of Newcomers

These steps are not limited to candidates; they are also aimed at employees, both existing and new. 79% of certified Top Employers measure the experience of new employees, but it is interesting to note that 40% also focus on discovering whether the perception of the employer brand the employee had before joining the organisation has matched their actual experience in their first few weeks of company life.

This is very insightful information. It reflects the fact that they are companies with a daring attitude, that are very committed to people, and that thrive in the spirit of continuous improvement. The results they capture inevitably lead to action, and either they change the experience or they will have to change the employer brand.

The best companies will need to work to build trust in their employer brand with the aim of maintaining their commitment to their promise of value throughout the talent life cycle of the organisation. 85% of companies certified as Top Employers ensure that there is a clear alignment between the employer brand and the perception and experience that employees have.

They are consistent and coherent brands that work to ensure that no disparity arises between how they consider themselves to be and how they really are in the day-to-day life of the company.

The EVP at the Core of the Employer Brand

An employer brand strategy should have the employee value proposition (EVP) at its core. This is, after all, what gives it consistency, because it brings together the tangible and intangible benefits offered to employees and is aligned with the pillars of the employer brand, related especially with the current and aspirational values of the company.

80% of Top Employers are clear on the fact that, for an employee, a good value proposition must include an effective listening process. For this reason, they actively involve representatives from different groups of employees in defining their value proposition, evaluating their needs, aspirations, and current work experiences. Best practices in this respect shows us the relevance of segmenting employee samples and analysing whether there is a gap between the company’s vision and that of the employee – something which is usually the joint work of management and human resources.

Mapping the Employee Experience

Of course, the EVP, the heart of the employer brand strategy, is certainly not the result of a one-off exercise; the best companies – 72% of Top Employers – increase their value by regularly assessing it, and they continue the systematic exercise of listening to employees. 46% of them use effective tools like employee experience mapping, which details the employee’s perception at every touch point of their journey in their relationship with the company.

Final Thoughts on how to win the Talent War

Talent battles are continually being fought. Socrates, with very good judgment, left us with this reflection: “The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavour to be what you desire to appear”. Consistency between what we say we are and what we really are is what builds trust in the employer brand.

The best companies invest time, resources, and enthusiasm, as they embark on a process of continuous improvement to achieve what they promise.