It is truly fascinating to me as I watch organizations spend hundreds of thousands of dollars branding their career sites at the quality, excitement and level of effort they put into it to get applicants to want to come work for them.

It is of even GREATER fascination to me the LACK of effort I see organizations put into the branding of the employee experience   once a candidate is hired and truly part of what makes up the value of the organization.

Over the past 10 years, organizations have done a great job leveraging the latest technologies to drive the applicant experience to one that is greater in excitement than many e-commerce/shopping sites on the web today.

Over the past ten years, organizations have struggled with who owns the intranet/portal; where it can be accessed from and issues of security that make us all cringe.  Application vendors have made this worse by not providing plug-ins to portals or intranets giving employees multiple user interfaces and log-ins to systems.

Part of every HR/Talent Management Strategy must include employee branding, workforce facing tools such as portals and a focus on the overall EMPLOYEE experience.  If EMPLOYEES are truly our greatest "asset" (overused, I know)...then why do we spend more on the applicant experience and give them crap to work with internally.

As you plan your budgets for late 2010 and into 2011, think about how to "mashup" all of your internal technologies and processes into an experience that exceeds your applicant experience today.

Take a look at the applicant experience and the employee experience in the mirror.  Which looks better, which is more appealing, and what will drive long-term employee engagement.

At Knowledge Infusion, we use the term "cultural continuance" to discuss how we are creating a culture for applicants and ask if we are carrying it over for the applicant once they become an employee.

How mature is your "cultural continuance"?

Another infusion of knowledge...