“When asked the question, what is employer branding? My answer is simple, what’s the feeling you want candidates to have about your brand? That feeling. That feeling that permeates your organization… 1 part values, 1 part culture, 1 part experiences… in essence, employer brand is your unique scent.”
– William Tincup, President at Recruiting Daily
What is Employer Branding? A question that is gaining momentum and is growing in importance is the process of promoting a company, or an organization, as the employer of choice to the desired target group. The process facilitates the ability to attract, recruit and retain ideal employees.
A good employer brand marks a business out as somewhere that people want to work, ensuring that current employees stay, and there’s a steady stream for new applicants.
There are three key players to include a successful employer brand.
Human Resources
Human Resource is closely connected to finding candidates, hiring, employee engagement, and retention. HR helps the team and maintain company culture by recruiting and retaining the right people for the company.
CEO
CEO are crucial when ensuring company culture and employer branding is successful. It is not because they have made good decisions in the past, but also embrace the company’s value and mission, and are very passionate about those things.
Marketing Team
Employer branding needs some help from the marketing team. They will be well-versed in your target market and know which content marketing strategies will get them aware of your product or service and will ultimately convert those people into buyers.
Brand Advocates
Employees who are identified as people who share company content and already speak positively about the company.
It’s everything that makes you different, everything that makes you STAND OUT.
The importance of employer branding for the organization is to attract the best industry talent. Having a reputable employer brand is a must for an organization’s strategy because it has the benefits to recruit better candidates, reduce hiring and marketing costs, and improve productivity.
“Employer Branding is nothing new. Though you may only now be leaping on the bandwagon you already have an employer brand – it might not be the one you want.”
– Matt Buckland, Head of Talent at Lyst
Employer branding is essential for any business. It is what makes the company different from its competitors. Here are 12 best practices when establishing employer branding.
Adopt a Strategic Approach to your Employer Branding Over the Entire Employee Lifecycle
The value of your employer brand lies in your company’s ability to attract, engage, and retain stellar talent and win loyal customers. When the company can promise and deliver a high caliber of experience to job candidates, employees, alumnus, vendors, customers, then the company’s employer brand is firepower.
Clarify your Company Mission, Vision, Values, and Culture
Make your company’s missions, goals, values, and culture clear, and play up the factors that make the company’s unique, or at least better. By refining your employer brand and ensuring that you’re appealing to the candidates you want to attract, you’ll be less affected by the ups and downs of the talent acquisition trends.
Be aware of any Political Risk
The business will benefit shifting production offshore and recruiting quality talent overseas, at the expense of local applicants where these may fit in with the mission, vision, and values
Allow for External Factors Affecting your Branding
To promote your employer brand you need to measure what’s working, what’s not working, and what’s working most and least effectively, to decide what is having the impact and improve over time.
Determine who owns your Employer Branding Strategy
Some specific personnel is responsible for your employer branding strategy. The internal and external stakeholders can claim ownership of the employer branding. This ensures your employer branding to be included in the calculation of your triple bottom line and interrelates with the customer experience and implementation of sustainable business practices.
Ensure your C-suite has Buy-In
Employer branding involves everybody in the organization. This includes the top leadership team. A strong employer brand is your organization’s best tool for attracting, hiring, and retaining top talent.
Utilize all the Data you have available
Data and analytics become a popular commodity because it helps businesses of all sizes make more informed decisions, and better understand their customers.
Invest in your Employees’ Learning
With the development of technology, employer brands require commitment, resource and behavioral change across the whole organization.
Focus on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
CSR becomes an essential part of the business, and companies should genuinely incorporate social responsibilities toward internal and external stakeholders in their operations. CSR can be relevant to employer branding and presents a categorization model for facilitating a concrete integration of CSR and employer branding element.
Enhance your Brand Image and Recognition
The step towards improving your brand is to assess where your organization currently stands. Getting a clear picture of consumers’ opinions is necessary for creating a brand image that will resonate with the desired audience. Your organization has to know how it delivers value to consumers, to build a brand that makes sense to the outside world. Remember you’re selling your brand, your business has to win consumers over through the general impression and perception.
Ensure you Market Online where Potential Employees look
Employer branding is the process of marketing your company as an employer of choice by creating a positive image, or reputation, and showing the company as a great place to work. Your brand image needs to reflect your mission, vision, values, and culture.
Utilize Social Networks and Employee Advocacy
Social media platforms enable the organization to be more versatile and agile than traditional advertising, offering the ability to text messages, learn from consumers, repeat and reinforce messages, and innovate and respond quickly.
“Employer branding is defined as a comprehensive concept to design internal and external employer image with the intention to ameliorate the perception of the company as a preferred employer by existent and future employees.”
– Ambler & Barrow
Strong brands attract high-quality candidates more easily, can hire more selectively and have a lower cost-per-hire, and building a good employer brand means learning what employees want to learn. Millennials wanted to seek new opportunities and develop their skills regardless of their age, gender or background.
Employer branding is the identity of a company as an employer of choice. The key to success in building an employer brand lies in using employee insight to inform HR strategies, communications, and personnel management.
