Are GBS Organizations Differentiating Their Brands Locally?

The following comments are some of the laments Global Business Service (GBS) leaders often have:

• “There is a war for talent and our resourcing team isn’t doing enough”
• “Attrition is spiking, and we don’t know how to solve it”
• “We are unable to get remote workers to collaborate and connect”
• “Learning and progression is impacting staff whose work is not in the office”
• “HQ communication is too slow and is missing the local touch”
• “Stakeholders want swifter turnaround and information”
• “Our brand isn’t visible in the local market”

While these issues of talent attraction, retention, reputation, connection and collaboration concern many GBS entities, most look for the shorter way out – paying more salaries, harping on benefits, cajoling prospective candidates with freebies to meet the internal timelines and SLAs and look good to senior management and HQ.

Unfortunately, these steps are counterproductive. It ends up with candidates vying for the best offer and bargaining for improved flexibility and benefits. The focus shifts from appreciating the company’s purpose and how they connect with it, to meeting self-interests. Sourcing teams are under pressure to reach candidates and even drop quality standards to achieve goals. This creates a ripple effect on business effectiveness, morale and outcomes.

Issues that need urgent addressing

I believe some of the issues we are seeing are symptomatic of a lack of differentiation of the brand and the inability to localize the employee value proposition. It leads to distrust among stakeholders and the lack of taking a stand on topics that matter locally. Let’s break these down a bit more.

GBS organizations exist because they can primarily bring consistency, continuity and cost-savings for their parent firms. However, they go beyond when they can take on complex work and tap technology and digitalization to drive results. Irrespective of the geography, staff in GBS entities may not have direct contact with internal or external customers of the company. That is a disadvantage because they may not get the full business context. Likewise, since most processes run by GBS companies in the locations they are situated are similar to their peers, the chances are that the brands begin to look and sound the same. Again, a big disadvantage for recruiters trying to woo candidates. When the employee value proposition isn’t clear or not localized, it can do more harm than good.

Lastly, very few companies pay attention to what staff really want or conduct studies to pinpoint the actual needs before communicating or crafting their local narrative for the brand. There is a need to reconcile what staff want vs what employers think they want. For example, according to a study by McKinsey, employees want to be valued by their managers and organizations and to get a sense of belonging while employers think staff want better pay, benefits and well-being.

What must be done differently

To me, it appears that as GBS organizations vie for talent we are missing something important – the differentiation and positioning through communication and branding. Differentiation means the ability to identify your core strengths (to be authentic) and leverage it to stand out in a coherent and attractive way. Positioning is about capturing a unique space in the minds of your audience in relation to your competitors. Both are important to establish credentials and avoid getting labeled as just ‘one of the same’ among GBS firms.

While communications and branding aren’t a silver bullet to solve all issues concerning staffing and engagement – however, there can be inexpensive quick wins that help GBS organizations present themselves more effectively and coherently. This includes identifying the EVP and localizing it, curating storytelling approaches and building assets to educate stakeholders. When the reputation is stronger, there is a lesser dependency on HQ, less pressure to attract talent, lesser investment in resources and managing expectations of younger generations.

Begin taking decisive steps

The question remains - are GBS leaders managing centers satisfied with the communication and branding they get locally? Is it enough to connect staff to the purpose? Is it sufficient to build trust and collaboration?

It, therefore, helps to avoid pitfalls of investing in less-than-optimal actions to mitigate crises and reach a point where the issues are too big to handle locally. Losing control of this challenge will have a cascading effect on staff’s experiences, the center’s image and most importantly, the leader’s credibility among stakeholders. Not a position that any leader will want to be in.