In an age where acquiring talent has become more competitive, an employer brand can draw positive attention to the company and will consistently support attraction, onboarding, and retention of new employees. Getting employer branding right not only will bring top talent into the fold, it will give the current employees something to feel personally attached to the company.
If you are hiring the right people and offering a clear, precise employee value proposition, your internal employer
brand should be strong organically. Because the key to building a strong employer brand is focusing on what you can do for employees — not on how awesome you are, as a company. It is becoming more and more important to show people how you take care of employees, what your brand stands for, and how your company puts your values into practice. One way to create a stronger brand is through brand ambassadors — employees who are engaged and connected within your organization, and can take their passion beyond the walls of your workplace.
A well-developed brand can do much of the recruiting work for you, organically pulling in candidates who share similar values, behaviors, and goals, which could potentially make them a great fit with your company. To boost the amount of high-quality, passionate candidates competing for positions in your organization, your CEO, management, marketing team, and recruiters can all contribute to developing and growing your employer brand. Intentionally crafting a positive candidate experience, which includes strong brand visibility, can help to attract the best talent.
While you cannot control every aspect of your reputation, you can put together a cohesive recruitment marketing strategy that shares essential information about your COMPANY employees throughout each step of the recruiting lifecycle. Since your employees are your informal recruiters and marketers, step one in creating a good employer branding strategy is helping employees to represent themselves on LinkedIn and other social media networks to get the word out about your organization. Companies also need to use social media to put a spotlight on their brands and generate interest among qualified candidates.
Smaller companies can similarly highlight their employees stories to create better employer brands, using videos, photos, and blogs. Having a good time in the office gives employees the opportunity to share their stories on social media, and those stories act as marketing segments to draw both talent and customers to a brand. Corporate brands that incorporate fun as part of their new normal tend to have the most positive, loyal employees. Mostly, companies are focused on customer perceptions of a brand, rather than an employer brand, which is determined based on candidate and employee experiences offered by a business.
Companies with a strong brand — good employee perception — attract top-quality candidates easier, are able to hire more selectively, and enjoy lower costs-per-hire compared with companies with a weaker brand.
Given that 75% of candidates are more likely to apply for jobs posted by a company actively managing their employer brand, creating a world-class employer branding plan puts your company in an enviable position to get your pick from a talented pool. An employers brand reflects the reputation that you have among job seekers, employees, and key stakeholders, so building a cohesive plan for managing and maintaining this reputation pays off in more ways than one. Doing so gives you a baseline against which you can measure and compare improvements or failures, all the while keeping the culture of your business front of mind as the key ingredient in your employers branding initiatives success.
Ultimately, your research should reveal the aspects of your company culture your employees enjoy most, which you can focus on emphasizing, along with any areas that need to be improved in order to deliver a stronger employer brand. A good period of research can highlight gaps in your employer brand, what other companies are doing with onboarding new employees, right down to what employees are saying after leaving. The easiest way to make sure that you have buy-in from other stakeholders and employees is if you have a clear road map that describes actions that you will be taking to improve your companys brand.
If you are looking to bring new talent into the organization, making the company a better place to work is a prerequisite.
When the organization is willing to invest in skill-building programs and activities, they draw new employees into the brand. It builds trust with employees, helps to attract and retain top talent, and encourages all parties to work together in finding solutions that are effective for all involved.
Employer branding increases the quality of hires, decreases the hiring time and costs, and may even result in higher satisfaction among existing employees. To design a staff ambassador program, you must ensure every employee understands and is familiar with your core brand messaging. Even if the person or people who run Glassdoor are not working in social, a social media manager can be vital to helping to craft your strategies and content about the authentic, transparent, and engaging employer brand. Having a robust brand with a mobile-friendly site is a first step in reaching out to Gen Z candidates.
