Employer Brand Management: Practical Lessons from the World's Leading Employers

Chapter 2Business Case

‘If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door.’

Milton Berle

They call it La Grande Boucle. The Big Show. The most challenging endurance spectacle in the world. 200 riders, 2000 miles, 23 days. No one from Britain had won the Tour de France in over 100 years. Then two different British cyclists won it in succession. How did this happen? Dave Brailsford set up Team Sky in 2009, and brought with him an approach that had proved to be extremely successful in his management of the highly successful British cycling team at the Beijing Olympics. He called this approach the ‘aggregation of marginal gains’, where every aspect of performance is examined in minute detail for possible improvement and the cumulative effect of many small gains delivers a significant competitive advantage. Many of these small innovations were derided to begin with, but not when Team Sky started to win. It took three years. Now the approach has been so clearly successful that it's been widely adopted across the sport.

Employer brand management is similar in many ways. It's an endurance sport, not a sprint. Gains are cumulative, seldom immediate. Progress is made by paying attention to all the moving parts, not just one or two high profile elements. Because of this it can be difficult to point to one aspect of employer brand management, and say: ‘if we do this, we will win’. You need to look at the bigger picture. If you can improve awareness levels by a few per cent, and your ability to ...