You know that having a strong employer brand is key to attracting and keeping the best talent.But building an effective employer brand strategy is no easy feat. Where do you even start? How Do you define your employer value proposition and communicate it authentically to candidates and employees? What tools and resources will you need to execute your plan? Don’t worry,we’ve got you covered.
In this article, we’ll walk you through the essentials of developing an impactful employer brand,from conducting research to promoting your EVP across channels. We’ll also show you how a partner like Brandemix can help bring your employer brand vision to life and achieve real results.
So, What Is Employer Branding?
Employer branding refers to your company’s efforts to promote itself as an attractive employer and a great place to work. It’s how you distinguish yourself from competitors and build your reputation as an employer of choice.
Some of the key goals of employer branding include:
- Attracting top talent. By promoting your company culture and employee value proposition (EVP), you’ll appeal to high-quality candidates.
- Retaining great employees. When current staff feel engaged and aligned with your brand,they’ll be more likely to stick around for the long haul.
- Improving recruitment efficiency. A strong employer brand means you’ll get more (and higher quality) applicants, allowing you to be more selective. This can decrease time to hire and cost per hire.
- Boosting employee engagement. Employees who connect with your brand and missionare usually more motivated, committed, and productive. This leads to better business outcomes overall.
Why Is Employer Branding Important?
There are a few key reasons:
- It helps attract top talent. In today’s competitive job market, candidates have lots of choices. A compelling employer brand showcases why your company is a great place to work, which helps you stand out and bring in the best applicants.
- It boosts employee retention and engagement. When employees feel proud of where they work and are connected to the company culture, they tend to stick around longer. Strong employer brands have engaged employees who feel motivated and passionate about their jobs.
- It enhances your reputation and customer brand. How you treat employees reflects on your whole brand. A positive employer brand signals to customers and clients that you’re a good company that values people.This can strengthen relationships, build loyalty, and drive more business.
- It has a real business impact. Companies with strong employer brands often have an easier time achieving key results like reduced turnover costs, improved productivity, and higher profits. When you invest in your people, it pays off.
- A positive employer brand has a profound impact on diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging within an organization. When a company cultivates a strong reputation as an inclusive and supportive employer, it attracts a diverse pool of talent from various backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. This diverse workforce brings together a wealth of ideas, innovation, and creativity, fostering a culture of inclusion where every employee feels valued and empowered.
How to Build a Strong Employer Brand
The Employer Value Proposition: Crafting an EVP That Resonates
Define Your EVP
Your Employer Value Proposition (EVP) is your promise of value to employees. It should capture what makes your organization unique and what people can expect from your company culture and work experience. When crafting your EVP, think about your key differentiators like work-life balance, growth opportunities, company mission, training programs, or anything else that sets you apart.
- Focus on your strengths and be authentic. Don’t just copy what other companies are doing.
- Survey employees to find out what they value most. Look for common themes to build your EVP around.
- Keep your EVP concise, around 2 to 3 main points. This will make it easy to communicate and remember.
Bring Your EVP to Life
Once you have defined your EVP, you need to demonstrate it to candidates and employees. This is where a company like Brandemix comes in. They can help create strategies, content and brand -aligned recruitment marketing assets that showcase your EVP.
Some examples include:
- Employee spotlights: Highlight star employees on your career site and social media. Show what a day in their life is like at your company.
- Company culture videos: Create short videos highlighting popular company events, your office space, team outings, and what your environment is really like.
- Employee testimonials: Feature authentic quotes and stories from your employees on what they love about working for your organization.
- Job postings: Incorporate your EVP messaging into job ads and descriptions. Mention the key differentiators that would excite candidates about the role and company.
Key Tactics and Employer Brand Channels
Promoting your employer brand is all about spreading the word about what makes your company culture special. The good news is that nowadays, you have plenty of options for getting your message in front of the right people.
Your Careers Website
Your careers site is the hub of your employer brand. Feature employee spotlights, day in the life stories and videos about your culture. Update jobs regularly and make the application process as simple as possible. Include a news section to keep visitors up-to-date with the latest from your company.
Social Media
Social platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are ideal for highlighting your employer brand. Post photos and videos of employees at work and company events. Share updates on new benefits or career opportunities. Engage with followers by posting questions and polls. The more you post, the more visibility you’ll gain and the more engagement you’ll drive with your target audience.
Employee Advocacy
Your own employees are your best brand ambassadors. Provide them with the tools and content to share on their own social media profiles. When employees post about how much they love their jobs, it shows candidates your company is a great place to work.
Participate in Industry Events
Attending and sponsoring industry conferences, meetings and job fairs puts your employer brand in front of active and passive candidates. Send employees as company representatives and encourage them to engage attendees. Pass out your latest company swag for extra visibility.
Paid Advertising
If you have the budget, paid advertising on major job sites and social platforms expands your reach even further. You can target ads to specific locations, job titles and interests. Track the performance of your ads to determine what’s working and make changes to improve results.
With consistency and persistence, promoting your employer brand through these key tactics and channels will help attract top talent and build a pipeline of great candidates.
How to Measure the Success of Your Employer Branding Efforts
Measuring the success of your employer brand initiatives is key to ensuring your efforts are paying off. Some of the ways you can track your progress include:
Employee Surveys
Conducting periodic employee surveys is one of the best ways to gage how your brand is resonating internally. Ask questions like:
- How likely are you to recommend our company as a great place to work?
- How well does our company live up to its brand promise?
- How strongly do you identify with our company values and mission?
Seeing scores improve over time means your initiatives are strengthening your employer brand.
Candidate Experience
The experience candidates have during the hiring process significantly impacts your brand.
Survey candidates at different stages to determine:
- Their level of interest in the role and company
- How they felt treated during the interview
- If their perception of the brand aligned with what was conveyed
Make improvements as needed to ensure a great experience for all candidates.
Social Media Engagement
Monitor how people are engaging with your brand on social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Glassdoor. Look at metrics such as:
- Follower growth and mentions of your company
- Comments and shares of your posts
- Ratings and reviews on Glassdoor
Growing, positive engagement shows your brand is resonating and people want to interact with your content.
Industry Rankings
Finally, see how your company stacks up in employer branding rankings like LinkedIn’s Top Companies list or Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work. Climbing in the rankings or making the list for the first time is a sign your efforts are paying dividends.
Continuously tracking these metrics will help ensure your employer brand strategy is achieving the desired results. Making data-driven decisions and refinements along the way will only strengthen your brand in the long run. The ultimate goal is creating an unforgettable experience that attracts and retains the best talent.
Common Employer Branding Challenges and How to Overcome Them
Lack of executive buy-in
It can be challenging to get leadership on board with employer branding initiatives, especially if they don’t fully understand the benefits. Do your research and put together a solid business case explaining how employer branding can positively impact key metrics like cost per hire, turnover rates, and job satisfaction. Start with a pilot program to demonstrate results before asking for more resources. Get executives involved by inviting them to participate in employee focus groups or branding workshops. Their support and guidance is essential for success.
Inconsistent or outdated brand messaging
Your employer brand includes your mission, vision, values, culture, and employee experience. Make sure all of these elements align and are accurately reflected in your messaging. Review your career site, social media profiles, job ads, and recruiting materials to ensure they have a consistent look, feel, and voice. Survey employees to see if the brand you’re projecting matches their actual experience. Refresh outdated content and retrain hiring managers on your employer brand promise.
Lack of differentiation
It’s hard to attract top talent if you look and sound like every other company. Determine what makes you truly unique as an employer by identifying your key differentiators, like innovative perks, training opportunities, work-life balance, company mission, or career growth potential. Promote these differentiators prominently in your employer brand marketing to help you stand out.
Difficulty measuring success
Employer branding is an investment, so you need to be able to quantify the results. Establish key performance indicators (KPIs) to track metrics like cost per hire, time to fill open roles, job offer acceptance rates, quality of new hires, employee satisfaction, and retention. Measure your KPIs before launching an employer brand initiative, then at regular intervals afterward to gage progress and make data-driven optimizations. Tools like employee surveys, focus groups, andexit interviews can also provide qualitative insights into your brand’s impact.
- Use social media analytics to see how people are engaging with your brand online.
- Monitor site traffic and conversion rates on your career site.
- Review metrics from job ads and recruiting platforms to see how your brand is influencing candidate attraction and conversion.
Monitor how people engage with your brand content and make improvements. See what’s generating the most interest on social media and your career site. Survey candidates and new hires to determine what attracted them to your company. Measure quality of hire to ensure you’re attracting candidates that fit your culture. Make changes to strengthen your brand based on the data.
The companies with the strongest brands, like Google, Facebook and LinkedIn, gained their status by crafting a compelling EVP, sharing authentic stories, building a social presence, optimizing the candidate experience and continuously improving based on data – driven insights. Following their lead can help make your brand attractive to top talent in your industry. Focus on the elements that make your company an employer of choice and share that message with the world.
How Brandemix adds Magic to the Employer Branding Mix
Working With an employer branding agency partner like Brandemix can provide direction, thought leadership and an outside perspective that may be lacking internally.
Brandemix Can build an authentic brand strategy based on what makes your organization truly unique as an employer. By conducting research into your culture, values, and employee experience, Brandemix gains insights to build a compelling brand story and employer value proposition (EVP).
Impactful Content and Campaigns
Brandemix creates inspiring content across multiple platforms – from videos to social media posts to blog articles. Brandemix designs recruitment marketing campaigns tailored to your brand and target audiences. Eye-catching and thought-provoking, this content spreads your employer brand message far and wide.
An Ongoing Partnership
Brandemix can be a long – term partner, continually optimizing your employer brand and EVP. Staying on top of trends in both branding and recruitment marketing, Brandemix keeps your strategy and content fresh, authentic and impactful.
The Brandemix Difference
What sets Brandemix apart?
- Deep expertise in employer branding and recruitment marketing.
- A brand first approach. Brandemix builds your employer brand from the inside out based on what makes you unique.
- Ongoing optimization. Brandemix continually improves your strategy and content to drive the best results.
- A true partnership. Brandemix invests in fully understanding your organization and needs to become a trusted advisor.
- Proven results. Brandemix has a track record of helping companies attract higher quality
- candidates, decrease time – to – fill, and boost employee engagement and retention
If you want to attract the best talent, you need a strong employer brand. And to build an impactful brand, you need a dedicated partner. Brandemix brings the expertise, insights and ongoing commitment to help make your organization an employer of choice.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jody Ordioni is the author of “The Talent Brand.” In her role as Founder and Chief Brand Officer of Brandemix, she leads the firm in creating brand-aligned talent communications that connect employees to cultures, companies, and business goals. She engages with HR professionals and corporate teams on how to build and promote talent brands, and implement best-practice talent acquisition and engagement strategies across all media and platforms. She has been named a "recruitment thought leader to follow" and her mission is to integrate marketing, human resources, internal communications, and social media to foster a seamless brand experience through the employee lifecycle.
