Simon Barrow introduced the term “employer brand” in 1996, looking to integrate and introduce marketing thinking to the HR function.
“We define the Employer Brand as the package of functional, economic and psychological benefits provided by employment and identified with the employing company. The main role of the employer brand is to provide a coherent framework for management to simplify and focus priorities, increase productivity and improve recruitment, retention and commitment.“
~ Simon Barrow & Tim Ambler
Skeptics from both sides dismissed the idea of bringing these functionally disparate roles closer, but when recruitment went social, the concept finally got the attention it deserved.
Employees now have virtual access to millions of job opportunities at a click of a button. With the increased competition in the post-covid job market, businesses feel the pressure of focusing on retention and attracting the attention and interest of the best talent in the marketplace. With job seekers feeding on corporate reviews and making choices through Glassdoor and other social media sites, Employer branding aka branding the employee experience has come to the top of everyone’s to-do list.
HR leaders are thinking of their employee experience and taking a cue from their marketing leaders who have been finely honing the customer experience for years and realizing that relationship-building is key.
Organizations have finally come to embrace employer branding to showcase their culture to current and prospective employees.
So, what does Employer Branding have to offer?
With talent acquisition and retention challenges at an all-time high, your employer brand is why you will attract job seekers. Similarly, employer branding is important in retention if employees feel that they are part of a tribe that stands apart.
Specifically, Employer branding leads to –
- A shorter recruitment cycle
- Improved quality of hire
- Lower costs per hire
- Greater employee and customer retention
- Greater employee engagement
Answer the following questions-
Are prospective employees attracted to work at your company?
Is your company able to retain its top performing employees?
Where to begin?
In her award-winning book “The Talent Brand” author Jody Ordioni outlines the 4 easy steps
Speak with project stakeholders to:
- Define goals, objectives, and success metrics
- Understand the business strategy that drives the talent needs
- Discuss usage and audience of current/new materials
- Review and analyze existing research and relevant materials
Speak with marketing, advertising, internal communications, product teams, and other lines of business to ensure all brand assets and alignment opportunities are integrated. Samples could include:
- Consumer brand strategy, messaging and creative direction
- Visual brand palette
- Brand vocabulary
- Available images
Create your talent brand identity: the creative visualization of your talent brand and communications concepts that enhance talent brand awareness and drive engagement and applicant flow.
Conduct monthly on-site or phone conferences with key project stakeholders to support upcoming initiatives. Conduct candidate and employee research to ensure that you’re authentically promoting your culture drivers to all audiences.
Now, this requires a whole new mindset and approach. This means that Employer branding is not a cut-and-paste job. It is something that requires careful planning. It has to be treated as a separate function and have its tangible benefits visible in the long run. There are no defined processes, and situations are often dynamic. However, the following two steps form the starting point of a successful Employer Branding initiative.
1. Define Organizational Mission Statement and Values: First and foremost, your employees are people. Start to think about the contribution of their work towards society at large. For this, it becomes imperative to define your organization’s mission statement, values, guiding principles and culture.
Take the example of Tesla’s mission statement, “To accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.” A compelling statement that communicates to the world, their employees, and job seekers that the company is looking at giving back to society by way of clean transportation. Creating a feeling of making a difference in society adds a new dimension to their story that ultimately attracts the type of audience they are looking for.
2. Organizational Culture: Another building block of employer branding is developing an intentional culture that engages employees. Employer branding and culture are interdependent and cannot exist without each other. Organizational culture stems from a list of factors like aligning corporate values, rewards, recognition, growth prospects, employee self-actualization, training and re-skilling, financial benefits, and perquisites.
Over to You
As we emerge from the pandemic to a new dawn, we must realize that these are truly dynamic times. Situations appear under control but can change rapidly. Then, how do we tackle the present and prepare for the future?
It is time to position Employer Branding at the forefront of your organization. When properly planned and executed, it could be a game changer and propel your organization and help it emerge stronger and prepare it for any uncertainty.
Now that you are ready, take the first steps and go for the transformation.
Brandemix is a world-class branding and digital marketing agency that provides value by increasing a business’s ROI. Headquartered in New York, Brandemix provides a plethora of valuable services like – Digital marketing, branding, employer branding, advertising, social media marketing, corporate communication, and recruitment marketing. Brandemix is a reputed agency known to get your target audience to believe and support your business, objectives and goals.
Get in touch with Brandemix and optimize your company’s ROI, like never before!
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.
