How to build a strong Employer Branding

The go-to solution for minimizing your hiring costs by 50%

Employer branding refers to the entire process of building and maintaining your company’s reputation to attract potential employees to work with you. In simplest terms, it is the overall brand of your organization.

As your brand has a target market whom you wish to drive up the sales funnel and convert into consumers. Your employer brand, on the other hand, is aimed at retaining the present staff and it encourages new, vibrant talents to work for you.

The more effectively you advertise your employer brand, the more likely you are to recruit and retain top applicants in your company.

Employer Branding — A strategy to attract and retain great talent

Employer branding is the most effective technique for convincing fresh recruits that your company is a good fit for long-term employment. Due to the pandemic, employees’ expectations from their companies have evolved. It’s becoming increasingly crucial to demonstrate how you treat your employees, what your brand stands for, and how your firm lives up to its ideals. In order to be successful in a competitive recruiting market, leaders must value and retain their outstanding employees.

Today, most people utilise social media to hunt for jobs and to research business cultures. These same channels may be used as a great employer branding plan to develop trust with them and honestly convey what it’s like to work for your organisation.

“86% of job applicants go through sites like Glassdoor to see if a company is good before applying, implying that your employer’s brand is more important than you believe.”

“In fact, 40% of companies spend on employer branding to better their long-term recruitment marketing requirements, while another 28% strengthen their employer brand to make their company stand out.”

“About 92% of people consider switching their jobs if offered a role from a company with an excellent corporate reputation.”

The above stats clearly demonstrates how powerful is employer branding, and that only those having an impactful employer brand shall be able to compete.

What makes employer branding so important?

If you are successful in attracting and retaining your employees, this not only makes you stand out but also increases the value of your brand. Employer branding is the key to success if you want to increase employee engagement and employee advocacy while lowering turnover. A strong employer brand might help you save up to 50% on hiring costs.

Top Tips For Developing A Positive & Attractive Employer Brand

At first, working on your employer’s brand strategy may appear to be truly toilsome. Consider the following questions for yourself and the answers might help you in developing your own unique Employer Branding strategies:

• Why would someone want to work for you?
• Do you regularly demonstrate your brand values to the audience and are you well-known amongst your talent pool?
• Are your management and staff on the same page with you when it comes to your company’s brand image?

Without sparing any more minute, to assist you, I have compiled a list of 6 practical ways for creating an employer brand that will resonate with potential applicants and catch their attention.

1. Accommodate and plan out your Employer Branding strategy

Employer branding is only successful when every department of the organisation including the HR, policy, finance, legal, operations, and marketing are equally involved in creating the strategy. Also, every employee needs to be made aware of it to ensure a cohesive message.

Your teammates who love working for you are the most powerful brand advocates. Also, you may also consult and hire a team of branding specialists, particularly at the start when you’re building a team that will take ownership of your branding strategy.

2. Create your Employer Value Proposition (EVP)

You’ve already established your standard and researched what your workers and others in your business are saying about your employer brand and that’s a wonderful start! It’s now time to market those key differentiators as your new EVP or Employer Value Proposition.

EVP encompasses the rewards, benefits, and other commitments your business makes to attract and retain the best employees. This unique employer brand marketing differentiates you from your competition.

An effective EVP is employee-centric and you may think of your EVP as the main reason why an employee chooses to work with you over your competitors. Ideally, this goes beyond marketing a list of perks and benefits to potential employees and attracts a diverse, high-talent pool of potential employees looking to work in an inclusive environment.

You can use feedback from employees to develop your employee value proposition (EVP) as no one knows your company like your employees. A confidential survey with Q/As on whether the team members would refer their friends to work in your team or asking to state the pros and cons of working at your company can be the best way to gather information about what your employees think about your current brand.

You must share your action plans with employees and let them know that you’re willing to adapt to meet their needs. This not only motivates your loyal brand ambassadors but also showcases that your company is about actions, not just talks.

3. Invest in the power of Storytelling

Social media is the most accessible platform for employer branding. We must therefore start curating content and developing this gifted employer branding strategy. This strategy should not be just another marketing effort but it must be cultivated as a custom within the work culture.

When it comes to developing an employer brand, digital storytelling is crucial, and how well you execute it will often be the only thing that sets you apart in the market.

Storytelling is all about how you convey the facts you want potential applicants to know in a way that engages them and makes them want to learn more about you. You can also use your valuable employee stories to answer any queries that applicants may have in order to accomplish a good job with storytelling.

When employees share their own experiences and values with your audience, they not only feel connected but also enlighten the work culture amongst the potential candidates. More recent studies reveal that employee content gets up to 8x more engagement than content on brand promotions and articles.

4. Launch an Employee Referral Program

In simple terms, an employee referral program is an organized and structured program employers use to ask existing employees to recommend candidates for open positions. The employee referral program is considered to be one of the best internal methods for prospecting and hiring the best talents through existing networks of the team members.

While the monetary reward for employee recommendations isn’t always essential, employees may earn a little additional money by recommending a competent applicant, and it also provides them with a chance to compete with their coworkers (by keeping track of recruits internally) or even bring a buddy into the fold. Effectively, they might end up doing 50% of HR’s work when it comes to reviewing their candidate’s qualifications, experience, background and more.

5. Create awareness of your Employer Branding guidelines

It’s a big mistake to not share with your present staff about your company branding approach. How can they spread the word if they are unaware of the need to do so? You need everyone in your organisation to be on the same page when it comes to remuneration, perks, culture, and other messaging if you want your communication with the recruiting pool to be consistent.

As we know employee advocacy is the internal and external promotion of an organization by its employees. Bringing new staff into the loop during onboarding is the best way to achieve this. Allow their mentor to speak with them about your employer’s brand and supply them with tools such as employee value proposition paperwork, blogs, and videos. Also, make sure to send updates on a regular basis to keep current employees informed.

6. Focus on Employer Branding Metrics

Today, more than ever, having a great employer brand has become inevitable and without measuring results, it’s difficult to identify the value of your plan. You’ll need to look at metrics like distinction, awareness, and perceived quality in your workplace when calculating the ROI of your employer branding approach. Consider using online review sites and questionnaires to assist you in identifying the changes that your workplace branding is causing.

You’ll need to look at KPIs like distinction, awareness, and perceived quality in your workplace when calculating the ROI of your employer branding approach. Lastly, make sure to measure and observe these metrics if your employer branding strategy is yielding the results you want such as Retention rates, Employee engagement, Quality of candidates, Cost of hire, Brand awareness, etc.

Conclusion

Nothing is more powerful and appealing to job searchers and applicants than tuning into an honest and unbiased experience of what it’s like to work for your company.

As an IT recruiter, it has been an ecstatic experience to work for an energetic organization where I know I’m making a difference in the community. Here’s my teeny-tiny Youtube video marking the completion of 6 months of constant learning, working and having fun at my current organization:)

I hope this blog helps you and your organization to thrive as a genuine, collaborative and transparent employer brand.

Say Hi to me on LinkedIn and I have recently become active on Twitter too, let’s connect!!