With talent becoming more mobile, attracting and recruiting the best candidates sits on top of the agenda for most organizations. As companies compete for the best talent, they have to ensure that they market themselves as the best place to work with the right interventions boosting their employee value proposition. It helps organizations to attract top talent and also retain their best employees.
The Importance of Employer Branding
Even today, not many organizations understand the importance of employer branding and how critical it is to their bottom line. Employer branding statistics show that a strong brand can reduce employee turnover by 28% and cut the costs-per-hire by half. Additionally, it helps in attracting talent that is 50% more qualified and interested in working with the organization. So, it not only helps in cutting down the hiring costs but also ensures that the existing talent is more motivated and productive.
Defining Employer Branding
Employer branding is essentially a strategy to align the organization’s image with the employee experience so that the organizational messages are consistent with the actions. It is built on the employer’s ability to deliver on its promise and sends a message about the employer brand vision, what kind of place it is to work, how the employees feel, and what kind of people are a good fit for the organization.
Employer branding is typically managed by the HR department and often associated with superficial perks and employee benefits. However, it is a common mistake made by many companies where the employer branding is disconnected from the corporate branding. The employer brand vision should grow from the organization’s vision rather than being a separate entity on its own.
Employer Branding and Talent Acquisition
A lot of HR professionals agree that talent acquisition has become more like marketing and employer branding in recruitment has become indispensable. An organization’s brand and reputation are major decision factors for all aspects of growth of their business, and one thing that drives this brand perception is social media. Most candidates and employees research, engage, and post on social media platforms. According to Glassdoor, 79% of job applicants use social media in their job search.
Social media offers a platform for current and prospective employees to present their views, display a realistic picture, and give an insider’s view of the organization. An organization’s employee branding activities are not enough if the employees are not actually happy. Channels like Glassdoor, LinkedIn, and even Facebook have become tools for candidates to assess an employer’s offerings. It is therefore important that the recruitment messages of an organization align with their employees’ perceptions.
Many organizations are also using social media platforms to share easily consumable videos, infographics, and blogs to create engagement with candidates, and these are becoming increasingly powerful tools for communicating the employer brand in the recruitment process. However, these activities should not be done in isolation and should be a part of the larger employer branding strategy.
Building a Strong Employer Branding Strategy
Employer branding should be a meticulously planned strategy that is aligned with the corporate brand and followed by employee branding. It must start with a brand audit wherein everything that is being written about the organization in news, social media, and other platforms must be assessed. An audit can be performed by sending out internal surveys, conducting social media searches, performing Google searches, and checking out professional sites like Glassdoor and LinkedIn. Apart from being a great self-awareness exercise, it helps in creating a brand strategy wherein the strengths can be highlighted and the areas of improvement can be worked on to create a stronger employer brand.
It is also crucial to plan the employer value proposition (EVP). EVP is a marketing message that goes out to the larger public through company websites, recruitment collaterals, or LinkedIn company pages. It must highlight the organization’s reputation as an employer. However, it must not include anything that is untrue or the employees would not vouch for, or else it can cause more harm than good.
Employees as Brand Ambassadors
Existing employees can be the biggest ambassadors of an employer branding and must be leveraged to gain the maximum benefits out of the employer branding activities. Employee testimonials in text or video format can be a powerful tool to highlight the image of an employer. Employees can be encouraged to post about successful events or awards and recognition on their social media pages with suggested hashtags. It is an extremely powerful way for employees to share the company’s culture with their own networks and is often referred to as employee branding.
Committing to building diverse teams also goes a long way in creating a strong employer brand. It cultivates a positive image of the organization and increases the reach to diverse segments. An organization is also perceived to be fair and just when they highlight their diversity and inclusion initiatives, which in turn helps in attracting more talent.
Managing Brand Perception and Communication
While each organization wants to say the best things about itself, it is absolutely critical that the brand messaging includes only what is true. Companies cannot assume that their brand messaging will be accepted at face value. Candidates look for resources like former and current employees and media reports to verify if what the company says about itself is true or not.
In today’s world of social media, anyone can post content about any organization that can be consumed worldwide. There is no check for credibility, and it attracts a lot of traction on the internet, especially when it is negative and sensational. While this kind of content is soon replaced by a new set of content, it doesn’t disappear without doing any harm to the employer branding.
Countering Negative Information
While it is impossible to completely shield the workforce from this overflow of false information, it is absolutely critical to warn them against it. Organizations must encourage their employees to be skeptical of viral news and verify it before sharing. It will help in curbing the spread of false news about the organization because if an employee forwards false news, people are more likely to believe it since it will appear to be a ‘verified’ source. Employees are the brand advocates of any organization and can make or break the employer brand.
An internal communications team must continually engage with the employees and make sure that any fake news making the rounds on social media is discussed with the employees and awareness is spread to curb it from spreading any further. Also, if there is any piece of negative news about the organization, it must reach the employees from the right source and not through social media or inauthentic channels to ensure that they have the right information.
Similarly, if there is any piece of news that the organization feels is newsworthy, it should be communicated to the employees first through a digital newsletter. They can then be encouraged to share it further, which aids in strengthening the employer branding.
Conclusion
In this highly dynamic work environment, the workforce in any organization can be a differentiating factor. To attract top talent and retain them, organizations need to constantly work to enhance their reputation as an employer and create a robust employer brand to maintain a competitive advantage.
References:
- The News is Part of Your Employment Brand- Sharlyn Lauby, 07 July, 2019
- 5 Impacts of a Strong Employer Brand- Jason Webster, 18 April, 2013
- Why We Need To Rethink “Employer Brand”- Ken Banta and Michael Watras, 07 July, 2019
- The 28 Employer Branding Statistics Your Company Must Know- Todd Kunsman, 15 January, 2019
- Everything You Need to Know About Employer Branding- Caroline Forsey, 21 February, 2019
- The impact of fake news on workforce & your organization- Sharanya Manola, 12 January 2018
