Who is responsible for your employer brand in Singapore?

The unemployment rate in Singapore has hit an all-time low of 1.9 percent for the fourth quarter of 2014. Yet, according to Randstad Source Right's 2015 Talent Trends Report, critical talent scarcity remains one of the top three issues facing employers in Singapore.

This can only mean one thing: Candidate supply is falling short of demand and businesses must rethink their talent management strategies in order to succeed in this war for talent.

What factors drive employees to leave one job for another?

Based on a recent study by global employer brand research firm Universum, work-life balance emerged, in the fifth consecutive year, the top career goal for Singapore's university graduates. When asked to define work-life balance, the following factors surfaced as determinants:

Having a career that's aligned with my personal interests;
Valuing and respecting employees; and
Flexible working hours.

But hey – you could have an HR team that advocates all of these internally and not showcase it – how do you make your talent brand heard? Who should be accountable for Employer Branding? A handful of recent studies raised some interesting insights:

Sixty percent of CEOs feel they own employer branding (and just 32 percent of CEOs feel the role is owned by HR). Repeated surveys show CEOs do not believe HR is up to the task. – Universum’s 2020 Outlook State of Employer Branding

Nearly half of CEOs (47 percent) say the Head of HR isn't a key player in strategic planning. – The Economist

Less than 40 percent of human capital professionals express high confidence in their current approach or consider their efforts innovative. – The Conference Board

Marketing, on the other hand, is caught in the middle – 39 percent point to HR, while 40 percent point to the CEO.

In the same study by Universum, Google (unsurprisingly), was ranked top employer of choice by Singapore graduates. Let's look at Google as a case study:

1. Google encourages employees to follow their personal interests by encouraging employees to do cool things that matter. In a panel interview at Bloomberg earlier this month, Google's SVP of People Operations Laszlo Bock stressed the importance of giving employees a sense of purpose – in Google's case this is the common vision of changing the world, one data at a time.

2. Google values and respects each employee by offering endless personal career growth opportunities through internal mobility. Google's student blog features René Zimmermann, a German university graduate, who has progressed in 2.5 years from SMB Sales to working together with the world's biggest brands, in Google's Large and Customer Sales (LCS) team.

3. Google offers flexible work arrangements in its promise to take care of "the whole you" – keeping Googlers healthy, whether physically, emotionally, financially, or socially. Googlers who are newly-turned parents get time-off as a welcome gift to their new bundle of joy.

Word has it that Google receives as many as 75,000 job applications in one week. "So what? Google is loaded!" you cry out loud.

But the important thing to note from the above is that you don't need a lot of money to do what Google has done. In the same report by Universum, it was brought up that talent now consider salary more and more as a "hygiene factor", evaluating career options with other non-monetary qualities from their prospective employers.

HR does what it does best with talent management, compensation and benefits, employee welfare, and engagement. But what good is a fantastic talent management strategy if is not showcased, broadcast, and used as a talent attraction tool?

When asked if organisations employed a dedicated social media employee for career opportunities, only 20 percent said they do. The gap lies in Marketing departments having the expertise that talent attraction professionals require to build effective social media programs; yet little collaboration exists between HR and Marketing to help facilitate learning.

Who is responsible for your Employer Brand? Are your HR and Marketing teams working in silo? It is time for HR to move away from being an operational cost-centre to integrating with strategic business units as part of a larger organisational strategy with direct impact on company bottom line.