We’re familiar with the power of a strong brand identity. Yet we only tend to think about its effects on consumers. It also makes a ton of sense to build your brand for that key audience: employees.
Strong employer branding helps you attract top talent for less and convinces people to stay on at your company for longer. Consider virtual call center companies looking to hire agents and set them up in different time zones to handle the busy seasons. Employer branding is a significant tool in attracting not just permanent employees but valuable remote and flexible workforces amid stiff competition and challenging conditions.
In this post, we’ve pulled insights and tips on how to leverage your employer branding to attract top talent.
What is employer branding?
In simple terms, employer branding is knowing how best to communicate your company’s values and culture. Almost anyone can loudly declare an inspirational vision and rattle off a long list of perks. But bold employer branding is about finding creative ways to show existing and potential employees that you practice what you preach.
Embed a social wall on your website to attract top talent
Which stakeholders should be involved in employer branding?
To attract top talent for your company, all departments must be united behind your brand. HR is an obvious stakeholder in hiring, but also consider how Marketing and other departments can work together to find the best candidates.
Say you need to attract new top developer talent. Presumably, you won’t need to ask them at an interview, “what does ci stand for?”. Why? Because continuous integration is a mainstream technique in software development. But it could be a good idea to work with Marketing to develop an employer value proposition to make your company an attractive option.
Fortunately, new tech enables stakeholder and team collaboration. For example, a business might invest in the latest eCommerce call center outsourcing solutions. They can also integrate these solutions with their unified communication platform that prevents different teams from becoming cut off from one another.
Deploying the latest tools not only shows job applicants you value innovation and making their lives easier. It also facilitates better message consistency between all stakeholders involved and helps you reinforce your employer branding.
The importance of employer branding strategy for attracting top talent
Why does employer branding strategy matter? An employer’s brand is a decisive factor throughout the candidate’s journey. Most job seekers consider an employer’s brand when applying for a job.
To set yourself apart, you need an employer branding strategy. It can increase the job pool of applicants, reduce turnover rates, and help avoid calamitous talent drain.
And a strong employer brand saves your business money in other ways too.
For one thing, you can spend less money promoting your vacancies on pricey career sites. Instead, prioritize employer branding now and watch a high-quality talent pool pour into a simple job page. For another, you can save on salaries. You can still pay people what they’re worth, but you won’t need to pay over the odds to snap up the caliber of people that’ll thrive in your organization.
How to implement an employer branding strategy
Tap into your values
A strong employer brand starts with the value you offer. What makes you stand out? Start by identifying your business needs and what kind of talent you need to recruit to achieve your goals. Then, use your company’s mission statement, values, and culture as a guide.
Successful employer branding must align with your organization’s values and goals. To establish your credibility and earn the affinity of today’s jobseekers, you need to communicate authentically.
Chipotle positions itself as a more natural and healthier alternative to traditional fast food. And it offers an upward career path to empower high-quality and motivated talent. Its employer branding wraps its mission statement in a big-picture story (see below) to resonate with and attract the top candidates.
Think about the bigger picture. Forgetting for a second what features your product has and its purpose, can you pinpoint what your company does to impact the world?
Suppose, for instance, your organization is committed to reducing its environmental impact. You likely already know what the iso-certified meaning is. You can display certificates such as these as proof and validation that you intend to fulfill your environmental obligations.
Share company values through a a social media embed on your website!
Audit your employer branding
All companies have an employer brand. So you need to proactively manage your reputation among both internal and potential employees. Send out surveys, see what people say on social media, and read the beans spilled by former employees on career sites like Glassdoor.
Respond appropriately to any negative comments, but don’t cover your tracks. Instead, address comments to show that you’re open to constructive feedback and working to make improvements.
Besides negative comments, lack of company engagement can also be a potential red flag for future applicants. It’s all research to help you reboot your company culture and build a strong employer brand. Maybe throw a few fun internal events.
Create an employer value proposition
Your employer value proposition is the unique set of values your organization stands for and the benefits you offer employees for what they bring to your company.
Simply make a promise and keep it. Half the appeal of a powerful employer brand is the purity of having a crystal clear EVP. Canva’s mission to empower people to create with their graphic design tool is embodied in their simple EVP to make the design ‘amazingly simple’ and ‘be a force for good’ (see above). Include yours on your website, social media accounts, and recruitment materials.
Here’s another thing to note: pay is only one factor in employee satisfaction. People are attracted to meaningful work. They want to feel valued. And they’re making career moves accordingly. So showcase any socially meaningful or positive impact on the world and communicate how you’ll empower potential employees to live their best working lives.
If a rough definition of moral behavior is doing the right thing when no one is watching, employee advocacy has employees who testify to your work culture without duress.
Encouraging employees to be brand advocates will supercharge your recruiting and build your employer brand in one fell swoop. People trust friends and family first. They talk up the companies doing right and live what they champion. Get marketing and HR to create company-related content that employees can share to showcase they’re proud of their workplace.
Potential employees google what actual employees are saying to uncover the reality of your working culture. Happy employees will truthfully share tidbits of your company’s culture on their networks. Make it easy to post on your social wall, as social media is great for diversifying the talent pool and finding the best candidates.
Cultivate ongoing employer branding
Employer branding needs to be grounded in your values. It also needs to run through your approach to hiring and managing talent. Start as you mean to go on with a solid onboarding experience that enthuses recruits about their roles and company culture. A negative experience will likely lead to people deserting you for a different opportunity.
You might, for instance, collect a few of your best coaching call examples into a playlist to empower new employees with the instructions and tools to perform well.
Employer branding efforts should be ongoing, holistic, and responsive to shifting trends.
Promote employee training and personal growth
A core part of any ongoing employer brand is a commitment to training and nurturing the best talent. Raise awareness about training sessions and learning and development opportunities for employees and candidates alike.
Talented candidates gravitate to employers willing to truly invest in new hires. Look no further than the many people who leave jobs for a new challenge. Being committed to your employees’ personal development should be an easy decision. They learn new skills and add more value to your company, and you won’t risk them leaving because of boredom.
An eCommerce company, for example, could train new hires on how to use CVE to know what common vulnerabilities and exposures to look out for to protect the safety of clients’ payment information. This way, you’re showing your commitment to your client’s security and your employees’ development – two birds, one stone.
Promote company culture on a social wall
Leverage content to tell your story
We touched on generating word-of-mouth buzz. But it’s worth emphasizing the importance of creating a whole slew of content that illustrates your company culture, events, and benefits — and telling your story across multiple channels, including official comms and social media. Meet candidates on whatever platforms they are on.
Create candidate personas to help you do this. These are akin to the buyer personas that inform marketing content. In marketing products and services, you create high-quality content to generate awareness and draw visitors to the perfect website conversion funnel.
In recruiting the best applicants, you use your candidate personas to develop a diverse range of great content – blog posts, social media posts, photos of employee highlights, and video testimonials. Thoughtful, authentic content will attract top talent and move them down the hiring funnel. For example, a great social media content idea for your brand is to introduce your team with pictures and a bio. It’s an excellent way to connect on a human level and grow your audience.
Invest in your future today
Strong employer branding helps you recruit, retain, and engage top talent. The top talent that you need to help your business grow and flourish. The competition in today’s job market is stiff as employers scramble for the best candidates. But you can cut the costs of acquiring potential employees and improve relationships with existing ones.
We hope the suggestions and tips we’ve supplied help you safeguard and strengthen your employer branding.
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