Segmenting your employees is a powerful technique to brand yourself as an employer because it is a good way to show people who you recruit and what you represent. Employees are a company’s greatest asset and knowing how to classify them is a truly important component of your brand image. There are so many ways to group your employees but there are four essential grouping themes that can add value to your employer brand because they can help you get a perspective of what people who work for you generally sound like. You can leverage that statistics and accentuate it to the relevant stakeholders to maximize your business prospects. While keeping in mind acceptance and inclusion, by offering up these segments can allow for a clear understanding of the type of person and the energy of a company in which the organization thrives.
1) Demographic
Demographic categorization is a useful framework to define your company’s employer brand. The gender quota of your company is one of the factors you can consider when compiling the demographic data. One of the questions you can ask pertaining to company demographics is going to be does your company appeal to more males or females? Because not all industries appeal to the same balance of men and women. For example, in Myanmar, finance and accounting roles are more appealing and competitive toward females while IT, computer software and hardware roles are more popular among males. Knowing which gender group your company appeals to does help in shaping your company’s brand image. You can learn the further details of labour demand, the level of experience being sought, job applications by gender and the salaries being offered in the Myanmar employment market in the quarterly reports of JobNet.com.mm.
Another relevant question is does your company favor people of a certain age bracket or life cycle? Many companies prefer people of a certain age of segment of life which fits better with the job posted. Some companies prefer fresh graduates or young talents while some others lean toward a more experienced group depending on capital, clientele, or other factors. The general age segment of your company’s major hires can be factored toward your company’s brand. A case in point would be the startup enterprises in Myanmar; they tend to recruit younger, tech-savvy, and versatile people with an innovative vision to work for them although more experienced and older people are also a part of the growing startup community in Myanmar.
2) Geographic
A geographic segmentation of your company’s employees is another approach that can be taken to optimize your employer brand. One component of your recruits’ geographic background can be their nationality status - whether they’re local or foreign national; where your employees come from can play a significant role in branding your company as an employer because many stakeholders within the business realm now are now sensitive toward whether the company is up to international standards in terms of environment or not. As a matter of fact, some job seekers even look at the company’s international exposure as one of the desirable job factors so if your company touts a strong international workforce, remember that it’s something worth showcasing to your future recruits.
In Myanmar, there are some local companies with a fair share of international employees although that number is growing more and more every day. There are also numerous multinational companies investing in Myanmar that are open to expats or foreign employees. For example, international business development and auditing firms branched in Myanmar like Deloitte, Ernest & Young, KPMG, and PwC recruit international employees and that happens to be a part of their employer brand.
Even if your company at this point only employs Myanmar nationals, you can still choose to segment them based on the local regions that they come from though this is a narrower form of demographic segment and may not serve many useful purposes. In addition, if you were a largely foreigner friendly company, you can curate the statistics on where your foreign employees come from. For example, if your employees are of a Chinese or a Japanese who more likely than not are of a predominantly oriental culture, you can expect them to be more respectful, self-disciplined, and people-oriented in the workplace than their westernized equivalents who may not embody such qualities but may be more goal-oriented, independent, and straightforward.
3) Psychographic
Psychographic profiling of the employees may be a time consuming process due to the time it takes to systematically list down their psychological positions. Another challenge that psychographic segmentation may represent is the framework that should be used to segment the employees psychologically. Nevertheless, there are a few recommended regions of psychology that employers can tap more into as a means to segment them.
One way employers can categorize the employees psychology wise is through their common set of values. A value is any intrinsic quality or attribute that people stand by. The personal values of an employee can shape their attitude and conduct in the workplace and can directly affect their performance. Professionalism is one common value of employees and those who claim to embody that value tend to treat work as one of the highest priorities in life, focusing on their personal standing in the workplace and vocational milestones.
The employees’ lifestyle is also an alternative segmenting framework. Some employees like to keep a low profile with a decent work-life balance while others are more competitive, placing a heavy emphasis on professional achievements and their place on the pay scale. Knowing the employees’ lifestyle choices help you better identify their needs and try to accommodate them accordingly in the workplace. Societies like Myanmar tend to place family, tradition, culture, and religion as instrumental elements in life and the companies that can transform such aspects into psychographic segments of the workplace will be well served. The employer brand can particularly benefit from this segmentation because employers now know what tends to be the most important for their employees and incorporate this piece of information as shared employee needs and experiences that they strive to cater to, convincing many other job seekers to take an interest in the company.
4) Behavioral
Your employees’ behavioral tendencies, like their psychographic ones, are not inherent and easily observable like demographic or geographic components. But being informed about the employees’ behavioural patterns can be useful in tailoring your company’s working environment; coming up with more suitable incentives for each group of employees and even assigning them to particular work conditions which they might prefer.
One way employees can be grouped according to their behaviours would be through their working styles. Employees can be team-oriented as well as individualistic based on any number of factors. There is no such thing as a better work style because employees can only expouse productivity to the maximum if they’re allowed to employ the working style that they’re most comfortable with. You can split the employees into such groups based on their attitude toward team working and allow them the autonomy of engagement if they so choose. Myanmar is a country of high collectivism according to Hofstede’s cultural dimensions analysis, meaning that many Myanmar employees lean more toward working within a team dynamic than solo. Still, there are many professionals in the workplace who yield better results on an individual basis; it all comes down to the traits of the person and one is not necessarily inherently better than another.
One more basis of behavioural segmentation of the employees will be to observe how they respond to particular incentives placed in front of them. Not all employees are enticed by the same reward; although monetary benefits could be the most attractive of all incentives there are, some employees may be more motivated by their status such as reputation or position in the company, or the learning curve of their role or even their relationship with the colleagues. Whatever the case is, observing the shift of the employee’s performance before and after being introduced to a particular incentive can help you customize your company’s offers to your employees.
Knowing how to put your people in the best position to succeed is a key attribute of being a Myanmar best Employer. See the list of 2019 Myanmar Employer Awards Finalists where different organizations were recognized for proficiency in Rewards and Recognition in the workplace, best use of Programs to Promote Company Pride, and more categories to promote HR and human capital management. If your organization is interested in competing and being recognized for an award, learn more about the program and get recognized as a Myanmar #1 Employer of Choice.