The Snitch

Is your employer brand taking a beating from competitors?

Ah, it’s the $1,000,000 question: What is it that Singapore employees want?

In a survey conducted by B2B branding specialist StrategiCom and Singapore National Employers Federation, it sought to understand what key employer brand attributes drive employee attraction and retention. (See our original story here.)

Here’s the full breakdown of the survey answers.

5 most important attributes to attract employees

(Ranked in order of importance)

• Allows a lot of freedom to work on one’s own initiative
• Recognition and appreciation of employees work
• Opportunity for long-term career progression
• Attractive overall compensation and benefit package
• Training and development

5 most important attributes to retain staff

(Ranked in order of importance)

• Attractive overall compensation and benefit package
• Recognition and appreciation of employees work
• Job security
• Opportunity for long-term career progression
• Training and development

5 least important attributes to attract employees

(Ranked from least important)

• Dressing
• Conservative working environment
• Internationally diverse mix of colleagues
• Humanitarian organisation
• Only recruiting the best

5 least important attributes to retain staff

(Ranked from least important)

• Dressing
• Accessible location
• Employees with varying background
• Internationally diverse mix of colleagues
• Use your degree skills

It’s interesting how an attractive C&B package only ranks as number 4 to a potential employee, but later becomes the number 1 retention attribute. And from these results, it’s clear that recognition and saying ‘thank you’ is a simply but surefire way of both attracting and retaining employees.

I’m also surprised at how the survey respondents say a ‘accessible location’ do not matter much to employees — because I’ve definitely heard complaints about companies being located too far away from work before. And with ‘humanitarian organisation’  not attractive a trait for attracting employees – does this mean companies don’t really need to perform acts of corporate social responsibility to attract candidates?

What do you think? Do these results tally with your company’s employee value proposition?