Headlines

• In the war to attract finance and top talent, the public profile of a company leader gives a business an important – and measurable – competitive edge.

• Amongst both investors and potential recruits, the visibility of a company leader’s historic commitment to ethics is a key determinant for stakeholders’ investment and employment decisions.

• For top talent, 44% of respondents said that a CEO’s public track-record of strong management skills would factor into whether to accept a job offer.

Press release 

Top firms are losing out on the best talent by not taking the personal reputations of their CEO and executive team seriously, finds a new survey.

The reputation of a company CEO was enough to swing the decision of a potential recruit in whether to join a company or jump ship from a competitor, according to the 2,000-person survey. The research was commissioned by Transmission Private, the leading strategic communications advisor to successful individuals and their companies.

The result comes as the war for top talent starts to intensify as organisations race to recruit the best people to rebuild in the aftermath of the pandemic.

Jordan Greenaway, Managing Director of Transmission Private, added: “A lot of time, resource, and energy is spent on managing and protecting a company’s corporate reputation to attract talent. But the same level of energy is not spent on executive leadership personal reputations. This topic now needs to quickly rise up Company Boards’ agendas.”

The survey found that a company leader’s personal reputation for being a good manager, integrity, and building strong teams were the best ways for a company to set itself apart from competitors when recruiting and retaining talent.

In fact, 44% of talent would be swayed to accept a job if they could find information online, or elsewhere, about a CEO’s track-record of having strong management skills. While 43% said they would be swayed to join a company if it was led by a CEO with strong ethics and integrity, and another 39% said they would be looking to join a company with a leader who had a strong track record of building good teams.

The importance of strong ethics was resilient across all age groups. There is sometimes a mistaken assumption that ethics is given more weight by younger value-conscious consumers, but the research finds the oldest respondents gave ethics the most weight. These factors outranked other personal traits that get a lot of column space, such as confidence & charisma (17%) and storytelling ability (5%).

Luke Thompson, Partner at Transmission Private, said: “If a company leader has not taken steps to give visibility to their strong ethics, management track record, and passion for building strong teams they are putting their company at a severe competitive disadvantage when it comes to attracting talent.

“Before joining a business, potential recruits will likely search the company leadership online. It is essential that executive leaderships’ digital footprints accurately capture their career history, evidencing their ethics and management skill.

“This may be done, for example, feeding impact-based language into their executive biographies, as well as ensuring visibility of individual leadership members in company CSR activity.”