We’ve spoken before about how Employer Brand can make a difference in attracting the best talent for your business. As we start a new year, you may have started planning your recruitment strategy for 2020 but without an effective Employer Brand you may not attract the candidates with the best skills and experience.
Employer Brand is not the same as Company Brand, which concentrates on your products, the service you offer and things like your company history and your reputation. Employer Brand shows people what you are like as an employer and this type of brand is something future employees will want to know about before considering applying to join your company.
Employee Value Proposition
In today’s increasingly competitive job market, having the very best, positive employer brand is essential, critical actually, in making sure you have the very best people working in you teams. It should describe what’s known as your employee value proposition, the unique set of benefits that an employee receives in return for the skills, capabilities and experience they bring to your company. The benefits need to include things like development opportunities, flexible working initiatives, recognition schemes and other non-financial perks you offer as an employer. Your company culture needs to shine through. If your employee benefits are not a proven hit with your current employees, it’s time to re look at things and consider what influences a job seekers decision to accept a job offer and your current employees to stay.
When you are developing your Employer Brand you need to define the essence of your company, what does it stand for, how is it different from other employers? Getting that right will not only boost recruitment results but also improve the engagement and retention of your current employees. Get it right and you’ll develop teams of happy and motivated people which in turn helps grow and strengthen your Employer Brand.
What Part Does HR Play in Employer Brand?
HR have a huge part to play with the generation and organisation of Employer Brand. They need to work closely with their recruitment teams as well as marketing to ensure the right Employer Brand is being communicated. Your communication and/or marketing team should have the skills to create an Employer Branding message for you. Your employees will do most of the work for you as they will be the ones experiencing what it’s like to work there and be talking about that experience whether that be face to face, via job review websites and social media, but your team leaders and managers need to know the message you are trying to send out. If your employee experience or your candidate recruitment process doesn’t match what you are trying to portray then you need to work on that first.
The first step is to really get to know your business, what is its core mission, it’s values and vision. What is unique about your business? What are your company objectives and what sort of people and skill sets do you need to achieve them?
How does you current Employer Brand stack up? Sometimes you might not know what your employees think about what it’s like to work there. Ask the question. Find out what’s working and what’s not and make changes to areas that need improvement.
Build engagement among current employees by having them showcase themselves and their experiences. Ask them to write reviews, share updates of what’s happening at work and new job opportunities on their social media networks – making sure there are clear guidelines. Try and include “employee stories” on the blog page of your website and share news of achievements and training successes. Tell your company story using high quality photographs and videos that showcase the working environment. Statements from the company owner or CEO can be bought to life by using video and make a great introduction to the company and what it’s culture, values and ethos really are.
Employer Branding and Recruitment
When you need to recruit a new employee make sure your job description and person specifications are up to date before you start and bring a bit of life to them; show a bit of company personality. For example, instead of, “must demonstrate excellent communication skills” you could try, “you’re the type of person who’d just as soon pick up the phone than wait for an email to get in touch with a customer” is much more descriptive and attention grabbing! Your job advert needs to be descriptive too, not just a list of what you are looking for. It needs to talk directly to the job seeker and use language that is directed specifically at them. Don’t focus on salary and monetary benefits, use your employee value proposition to appeal to potential candidate’s deeper motivations for wanting to join your team. Your employer value proposition will be the strongest if you can talk about how a role will be meaningful and personally fulfilling or about a global good or a superior work experience.
Your on-boarding process is also something you need to perfect to make a new employee’s first few months go as smoothly as possible. Most employees leave a job within the first 3 months of starting in a role. so those first few weeks of employment are critical in turning a new team member of staff into a productive employee. Make sure new hires have all the tools they need to be able to hit the ground running.
You can read more Employer Branding Tips here.
