Intangibles Triumph in Maintaining Employer Brand

(Sydney, Australia) – Research recently released by a local marketing manager with nearly three decades’ experience working with numerous multinational corporations as well as unemployed and underemployed individuals reveals that businesses across the Commonwealth and in other countries are in danger of having irreparable damage done to their brand by disgruntled former employees—often via numerous social websites.

Greg Weiss, founder of CareerSupport365.com, is sounding the clarion call to all employers to be keenly aware of conventional exit interviews whenever an employee is being terminated.

“There is a high propensity for disgruntled employees to visit (user-generated content) sites like Glassdoor and rank their former employers poorly—and within a short time of losing their job,” Weiss notes in Professional Updates Management (July 2013).

He attributes the sharp increase in UGC sites such as Glassdoor directly to a palpable disconnect between how well—or poorly—former employees were treated while on the job, in addition to the level of career transition support upon being outplaced.

Weiss’s research, conducted among nearly 500 ex-employees in Sydney; Vancouver, Canada; and Los Angeles reveals several telling results:

• 88 percent of former employees still talked poorly about their former employers over three months after being terminated.
• 65 percent of respondents ages 25-45 knew of UGC sites such as Glassdoor.
• 85 percent of all ex-employees were very likely to visit a UGC website and rank their former employers.
• 92 percent of people who lost their job were very likely to visit a job site in the first week they were made redundant or were retrenched.
• 91 percent of people who lost their job felt ‘down about themselves’ and attributed their feelings mostly to their displacement.
• 90 percent of employees had not received any outplacement or career transition support upon being laid off.
• 89 percent of laid-off employees said they would have felt ‘much more positive’ towards their employer had the latter provided them with outplacement or career transition support.
• 95 percent of ex-employees would have felt ‘far less inclined’ to post adverse comments about their former employers, had they been provided with outplacement or transition services.

In an age where social media dictates how well or poorly something or someone is received, perception is all-encompassing. Weiss urges all companies to recognize the importance of not only investing time, money and other valuable resources in the hiring process, but to also take an identical approach when having to let someone go—otherwise the potential economic and social fallout could spell disaster for that company’s particular brand.

Additionally, a strong financial and compensational support system has been traditionally provided for upper management and executives, while leaving little to no resources for the average worker. “Most (HR staff has) only offered support to senior levels and token support—at best—to anyone else leaving their company,” Weiss observes. He attributes this to traditional employment hiring and firing practices, usually done at high cost.

Weiss’ solutions for implementing greater employee satisfaction upon being terminated from the job are threefold—offering outplacement to all ex-employees rather than a select few; to treat all employees with a modicum of dignity and respect; and to learn good business/HR tactics that will dramatically increase the level of respect and admiration of the business in question—and reduce the ad hominem attacks that threaten the employer brand.

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Learn more about Greg Weiss here!