Alumni programmes – where HR & marketing should meet

Jason Frank, Marketing & Research Director at SAS looks at the why professional services Alumni programmes are more relevant than ever.

Marketing and HR don’t talk enough. That means missed opportunities and glaring inefficiencies. Nowhere is that brought into more stark relief than in the increasingly critical area of alumni programmes, sitting as they do at the intersection between talent and business development and acquisition. No longer the domain of Oxbridge colleges, leading organisations like McKinsey and London School of Economics have blazed a trail in demonstrating how alumni networks can add real value to organisations’ talent and business development activities. Professional services firms in particular are recognising the value of alumni programmes. In the past two years we have helped organisations such as 3i, Deloitte and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer to establish new alumni networks, centred around web-based hubs.

Employees who leave to become in-house counsel are a potentially rich source of future revenue and talent (1 in 4 UK employees returns to work for a former employer). However, many firms we’ve spoken to tend to be relatively haphazard in terms of tapping into this area with more formalised relationship-building programmes, relying instead on haphazard personal partner-led forms of relationship-building.

Our recent work in establishing alumni networks has led us to benchmark a number of alumni networks and interview members of both the McKinsey and London School of Economics (LSE) programmes. The findings were fascinating, giving us a real insight into what high-value professionals do (and don’t) want from such programmes. Ultimately, in a world where the best people construct their own complex web of networks with current and past colleagues, clients and headhunters, it’s all about making your firm’s ‘network’ more desirable and useful than everyone else’s. Half-hearted programmes will deliver half-hearted results.

Harvesting low-hanging fruit
Not only are alumni programmes proven to increase the likelihood of generating revenues directly from former employees, but also indirectly – more actively engaged former employees are simply more likely to recommend their former employer to contacts. Our experience shows that the creation of an alumni programme acts as a catalyst for greater focus on business development amongst these ‘low-hanging fruit’. And programmes should always be designed to support, complement and maximise existing business and client development programmes, leveraging existing events and content. In terms of return on investment it takes just one small engagement/instruction to offset the initial set-up costs.

Online appetite
At the core of an alumni programme is a web hub that facilitates networking and content-sharing between both firm and member, and on a peer-to-peer basis between members. There are a few tricky decisions to be made here about how to facilitate and maximise these interactions. One could argue that groups within professional online networks such as LinkedIn should suffice, and in some cases they might, but our research shows that members like a little more exclusivity and privacy than such networks allow. Those who argue that the most senior people tend not to really interact meaningfully online are only partly right – that’s why other face-to-face networking opportunities, offering focused professional content are a vital part of the overall mix. Recent Legal Week research showed that 40% of all corporate counsel report an interest in joining an online professional network specifically designed for lawyers, and 54% say that the ability to link to other lawyers would be the most important feature of the network.

PICTURE: http://www.freshfields.com/aboutus/alumni/

Talent and the culture effect
It’s not rocket science – by maintaining a dialogue with former employees firms can increase the likelihood of re-hiring talented individuals. Enterprise Rent-a-Car is an example of a leading organisation in the field of HR. It has an active alumni programme that has helped to attract 68 senior employees back to the organisation in the last three years a handy recruitment channel considering how so-called ‘boomerang hires’ are highly cost-effective.

However, perhaps a far more profound effect of having an active alumni programme is the pervasive influence it can exert on leadership, management and culture. Our research with McKinsey showed that one of the biggest positive impacts of having an alumni programme is the effect it can have on partner, manager and employee behaviour within the firm. Put simply it helps them to see that the experiences of their employees now will have commercial implications later. By giving the employee experience a clear and tangible life beyond the firm, people come to be more mindful of the fact that the departure experience should ideally be a positive one. Indeed people tend to become more mindful of ‘life after the firm’ in their behaviour towards colleagues generally – the above behavioural change, though not immediate, can lead to significant cultural and financial benefits, for instance in terms of retention of talented people.

‘Legal Week research showed that 40% of all corporate counsel report an interest in joining an online professional network specifically designed for lawyers.'

Getting started
Setting up an alumni programme needn’t be prohibitively complicated or resource hungry. However it does require some focused thinking and sensible answers to some critical questions. Why exactly are we setting up the programme? Who are we going to focus our efforts on? What value can we realistically add to their lives?

There’s no doubt that at a time when firms need to exploit every possible opportunity they can, alumni programmes present a glaring opportunity.

If you want to talk more about SAS’s alumni programme research and experience call Jason Frank on +44 (0) 20 7243 3232 or  email jfrank@sasdesign.co.uk

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