Workplace Passion: Part Two – The Hiring Factor

February 12th, 2015

Marc Iannacone

Part two of a six-part series on creating it, sustaining it, and building an employer brand with it. This installment focuses on hiring and the need for a two-way street.

Hiring.

Hiring is the coalface – the ‘doing it’ end- of the lifecycle of employer branding; I am saying upfront that hiring is the key tactical element for HR seeking to build a passionate workplace culture.

Employer brand focused clients engage eBrands because they want to make their hiring easier. Hiring is usually at the implementation end of the lifecycle, so should I not be writing about the strategy elements first?

I start with hiring because an investment in creating passion capital is going to change the way your company hires people. It will probably also change the criteria your company uses to assess the candidates attracted to the employer brand, ultimately changing your hiring priorities. All this change is not going to sit well for every business.

So let us briefly review what a hiring tactic looks like before you embark on the ‘passion journey’; it is a litmus test that may save your company from…heartbreak.

Hiring passionate people manifests passion. The change is what this means for your candidate profiling and selection. The organization that embraces passion has to be willing to hire talent based the following selection ladder:

Alignment of belief, passion, and commitment (first)
Experience (second)
Qualifications and credentials (third)

The companies that have this ladder flipped, face a vertical battle from day one. The emphasis has to be on knowing and agreeing with what a candidate believes.

Some companies may not have the right characteristics to pull this off. The passion profile may be a stretch that cannot underpin a brand built on truth. That is not to say that passion cannot be a part of your workplace; it simply won’t be infectious.

Hiring passionate people means asking the right questions and being able to understand your candidate’s belief system perfectly. Hence, and now we come back to the employment brand lifecycle, the only way to see if the beliefs between candidate and company match is after the employer brand values are determined.

The two-way street.

Passion requires reciprocation. Unreciprocated passion will only create the most Shakespearean of workplace tragedies. Claims, counterclaims, thickened plots and broken promises.

Beliefs need to be reinforced and nurtured; the hiring event mentioned above is only the beginning of a (hopefully) long-term relationship. Passionate workplaces feature listening, collaboration and communication.

Employers must abide by their tangible and intangible commitments to their employees as if they are employment brand ‘shareholders’. Employees, who invest passion into the business, want returns; as their enthusiasm rewards your company’s external stakeholders and customers, employees need to be paid in the same way. Honesty, openness, fair remuneration, freedom of dialogue and confirmation of beliefs support a give and give relationship. Passionate workplaces always feature a healthy sense of workplace justice.

Brand Impact

In summary, hiree’s that talk about their company passionately due to a strong belief system match, give the employment brand an effective multiplier.

Next installment – I’ll take a look at the ethics of healthy work ethics. To talk about your employment brand, contact [email protected]

Look forward to your thoughts below.