Employee Promise

A phrase I'm hearing more and more often these days is “war for talent.” We're in a war for talent. How do we find the best people? But let's face it, we've always been in a war for talent, and we will always be in a war for talent if you care enough to find the very best people for your team.

If you don't attack this war in the right way, you're going to stifle growth. You're going to frustrate your people, especially your A players, you're going to frustrate your best clients, and everyone's going to feel overworked - especially you. So what are you doing to become a magnet for your ideal team player?

A lot of companies have what's called the “brand promise.” A brand promise is the answer to a really important question. It says: what's the biggest challenge your core customer has that you solve better than anyone else? And you use that to create a promise to your customers and attract the best customers. That's great. But do you have an employee promise?

Without an employee promise, without the right team, you're never going to consistently deliver on your brand promise. Now, your employee promise is similar to the brand promise, with a slight tweak to the question. The question to be answered for the employee promise is: what's the biggest challenge your ideal team member has that you solve better than anyone else? This forces you to answer the question: who is your ideal team member? What challenges do they have? Maybe it's about growth or autonomy. Maybe it's about being heard. Maybe it's about working on interesting projects that are consistent with some inspiring purpose.

What are the 2 to 3 specific promises you're making, and what measurements could you put in place to make sure you're actually delivering on those promises? Once you define the employee promises and know you're delivering on them, what are you doing to use them to recruit the very best team members? Are you going to continue to do the typical job posting, use the typical recruiters? Or are you going to add a large dose of marketing to market to the employee promise, attract the very best people, and then retain them?

Now, off to the talent war you go - good luck!