human forward.insights from celebrated employer brands.employerbrand research2018.standing outforewordface to face with jos schut, chief human resources officer, randstaddaring to be different: how heineken is bringing a taste for adventure to its employer brandwe are future makers: seeing the real siemensitching to switch: what attracts talent, what makes them want to stay and what drives them away?focus, persevere, breakthrough: why huawei sees its spirit of dedication as key to successour people are our employer brand: the passion that enables changi airport to shinelooking beyond the obvious: how deutsche telekom wants to get candidates thinkingthe toyota way: a vision for a high-tech future thats built around people3412172534414955content.As business models evolve and labor market competition intensifies, your employer brand is more important than ever. Your employer brand is the image of your organization among current and prospective employees, along with a wider set of stakeholders that include people who might work for you in the future or people that influence them such as their family, friends or social networks. Your employer brand is not just what you say about yourself, but what everyone says about you, the opportunities for which have been greatly increased by social media.foreword.The annual Randstad Employer Brand Research is the most comprehensive study of its kind. In 2018, we asked more than 175,000 people from 30 countries what are their preferred sectors to work in, what are the best companies to work for, and what makes them attractive. The results can provide valuable insights to help your organization understand and shape your employer brand. Featuring interviews with HR executives from six organizations that have con-sistently scored highly in the Randstad Employer Brand Research, 'Standing Out: Insights from celebrated brands' looks at what makes an employer appealing to prospective and existing staff. A particular focus of this years interviews is how to sustain the human dimension when technology is coming to dominate so much of our lives. Beyond a narrow focus on pay and promotion, many people want to work for organizations that operate on a human scale; where they can make a dif-ference and where empathy, creativity and individuality are prized. A key strength of the featured companies employer brand-ing strategies is their success in projecting these very human qualities.We would like to thank the executives from Siemens, Heineken, Huawei Technologies, Deutsche Telekom, Toyota Argentina and Changi Airport Group for kindly sharing their employer branding insights.We hope that you find the publication inter-esting and useful for your organization. face to face with jos schut.standing out 2018 | 4 contentin the center of the picture creating an experience for our clients, candidates and employees thats more personal, more impactful and which allows them to realize their full potential. Technology is very much part of this journey into the future, but its there to empower rather than bypass or replace people,” says Jos Schut, Randstads Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO).We asked Jos to describe the thinking behind Human Forward and what lessons he can share with other organizations as they seek to bring a human dimension to digital transformation.human forwardharnessing technology to empower people not bypass them.Technology enables businesses to serve more customers, at greater speed and at less cost, while turning todays eruption of data into valuable business intelligence. Yet technology cant replace the human touch the creativity, empathy and engagement that customers prize and which drives innovation and differentiation. How can businesses strike the right balance between technology and human touch? How can they guide their workforces through the uncertainty of major disruption and change? “Through Human Forward, Randstads new brand promise, were putting people standing out 2018 | 5 contentFour out of five believe that its important for recruitment agencies to recognize them as individuals, beyond their resumés.Standing Out: Randstad is a business that seeks to make the right match between candidates and employers. How can technology support this?Jos Schut: Technology is the engine that powers our world. Here at Randstad, the first point of interaction with clients and people looking for a new role is now almost always digital online, mobile or social media. We need to ensure they can engage with us easily and seamlessly when, where and how it suits them. Through our Digital Factory and the Randstad Innovation Fund, were also developing groundbreaking new tools that enable us to match the right candi-dates and clients with greater precision than ever before. On the candidate side, the innovations include gamification and psychometric tools that allow us to develop a 360-degree profile of capabilities, experience and personality traits. On the client side, the innovations include rich new data-driven insights, which enable businesses to gain a better understanding of their evolving talent demands and develop more proactive workforce plans. Were also developing tools that enable businesses to reach out to a much wider spectrum of potential candidates and target their recruitment spend and subsequent selection much more effectively. Standing Out: What are the limitations of technology and why is a human dimension still so important?Jos Schut: Technology can only go so far. It can even make organizations lazy. In a sector like ours, the risk is relying on technology to identify a certain number of people in your database to fill a certain number of posts without really getting to know the businesses and candidates, and hence whether the people were putting forward would fit in and help to create real value. standing out 2018 | 6 contentResearch we carried out in the US supports this. While most candidates recognize the value in technology, theyre frus-trated when it supersedes the human aspect of the recruitment process. Almost all believe that technology should be used to aid the recruit-ment experience, not replace it. Four out of five believe that its important for recruitment agencies to recognize them as individuals, beyond their resumés. Employers agree more than four out of five prefer a staff-ing partner who provides a personal perspective about candidates.Other sectors face similar challenges. For example, a lot of banks are closing branches and moving processes and client interactions online. Yet there are limits to this. People are fine with automated payments or checking their balance on their cell phone. But when making a critical life decision such as arranging a pension or a mortgage, they want a qualified person to understand their needs, talk them through the options and guide them through the process.Without a human dimension, services can also quickly become commoditized and undifferentiated.randstad employer brand research | 7 contentThey want a qualified person to understand their needs.Without a human dimension, services can also quickly become commoditized and undifferentiated. The real value of technology is in enabling businesses to do things better and to do new things, rather than simply getting a machine to do what they already do. As more aspects of commerce become auto-mated, consumers also attach more value to the uniquely human capabilities that cant be replicated by machines. Even enterprises that are seen as being at the forefront of technology are in fact empowered and differentiated by this human dimension. For example, theres been a lot of focus on Netflixs use of artificial intelligence (AI) to profile viewer preferences and drive personal recom-mendations for its on-demand content. Yet, this profiling has been made possible by human teams who train the AI, one of the key roles of which has been to break down movies and peoples responses to them (e.g. switching to another movie) into thousands of emotional touch points. Only people can create that kind of emotional connection.Standing Out: How is Randstad looking to put people first?Jos Schut: For all the reasons Ive said, we believe that staying relevant and differentiated in our fast-changing marketplace demands more than just digital transformation. A seamless digital experience is no more than the price of entry. What has and will continue to mark Randstad out is the time we take to get to know our clients and candidates, learn about their aspirations, and work out how we can help to realize them. We dont just want to fill posts and make up the numbers, we want to create a perfect fit between client and candidate.standing out 2018 | 8 contentWhat can I offer that a machine cant and how can I make the most of this.The real power of technology is in enriching the know you conversations we have with clients and candidates. By taking care of all the initial data capture and basic screening, technology gives our consultants more time to get inside the heart and soul of the companies we serve and dive deeper into our candi-dates goals and potential than we would get from just the resumé. Technology also provides data-driven insights that our consultants can build on to improve the quality and value of these conversa-tions. Thats why weve launched Human Forward we want to harness the power of technology and the passion of people to create an experience that is more human and more valuable.Standing Out: What is the right balance between tech and touch?Jos Schut: In striking the right balance, I think organizations should be asking themselves “how can we use technology to augment rather than simply cut costs or automate what we do”. If you only apply technology to drive down expenses without thinking about the impact on quality and service, youll only end up driving customers away.Its also important that people within an organization ask themselves “what can I offer that a machine cant and how can I make the most of this”. Technology is advancing all the time so they need toensure that their skills and ways of working keep pace. While a lot of money is being invested in digital skills, the creativity needed to lead innovation and the agility needed to adapt to change could be just as important.Standing Out: The scale of change can be disorientating. How can you bring employees on-board?Jos Schut: Many employees across all industries are fearful about how their roles will change as a result of digital transformation or whether they will have a job at all. standing out 2018 | 9 contentThats why its vital to put people at the center of the strategy for change, rather than simply focusing on the systems. That in turn demands active input from HR. This includes explaining the value that technology can bring to employees less of the work they hate and more time to carry out meaningful activities.Some work will be automated. Therefore, its vital that plans for retraining and reassignment are in place before the technology is implemented. Its also important to ensure that employees have opportunities to put forward their ideas and air their concerns, that organizations take this on board and are honest in how they communicate back. At Randstad, few if any posts will cease to be relevant. Yet, we still face challenges in securing buy-in from employees. In particular, it can be difficult to encourage employees whove been performing well without the aid of too much technology to embrace it. This is a challenge that would resonate with a lot of businesses. In addressing this reluctance to change, its important to demonstrate how technology can empower people and, yes, how theyre likely to slip behind if they fail to keep pace. The key to making this kind of change work is recognizing that its as much cultural as technological and that people are at the center of it.knowledge base what we can learn from randstad in a post-digital age, human capabilities are more important than ever employees need to remain agile and ready to adapt to change to keep up with techno-logical advances if employee buy-in is the key to successful transformation, its essential to show how technology will make their jobs more meaningfulstanding out 2018 | 10 content