Employer branding strategy is key for HR. However, creating an effective strategy can be a task. There is no secret formula to building the best employer branding strategy. Yet, there are a few guidelines that can help HR achieve this, and attract the best talent.
Here is something not everyone realizes; the strategy you implement impacts more than recruitment. It impacts your employee retention rate, your hiring process, employee experience, employee performance, and profitability.
Therefore, it is vital for every organization to have a clearly structured employer branding strategy. You have to know what you want to look like to your potential employees. It isn’t easy to get the best talent to work for you. However, communicating your values, purpose, and identity, which form the basis of successful employer branding, helps in making sure that you do.
What is Employer Branding?
Employer branding is more than what employees think of your business or product. It includes how you treat your employees, what it is like to work for you and operate within your company culture. Essentially, it is your way of marketing yourself as a great employer.
Here are 10 Tips for Creating the Best Employer Branding Strategy
1. Align the strategy to meet organizational objectives
The first step is to understand what your business goals are in the short, medium, and long term. The strategy you are going to use has to consider what the business objectives are and align itself with these objectives.
This means understanding what the company needs, what kind of people they need and when they need them, and what cost is sustainable.
Here are a few questions you could ask yourself to understand how to align with your company’s objectives:
What are the main objectives the business is looking to achieve over the next few years?
What products and services are we planning to provide?
What talent is required to produce those products and services?
What shortfalls in our existing talent pool may deter you from achieving these objectives?
2. Set specific objectives
The point of any strategy is to achieve goals. In order to achieve goals, you have to set the objectives you desire to achieve. To do this, you must:
- Set objectives that are actionable and achievable within a specified period.
- Assign duties to different resources so that the task is shared.
3. Define the KPIs
Set out clearly defined KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) for your employer branding. If one of your objectives is to reduce attrition, then your retention rate would be one of your KPIs.
When you are using KPIs, make sure that the data you collect is accurate, or else you will not be able to get an accurate understanding of the situation.
4. Measure your success or failure
Much like KPIs, create clear measurable objectives. If you are looking at cutting recruitment costs, keep a track of all the relevant data. Essentially collect all the data you can and try to make sure the errors are down to a minimum.
This is a good time to bring in some technology to help you out. Whether it is data analytics or generally keeping a tab of what’s going on, it makes sense to leverage the latest tech to help you out.
Using artificial intelligence and the latest machine learning goes a long way in keeping errors to a minimum and also ensuring that all the data is collected and processed properly. This could be technology to track your applicants, to analyze how effective your job posts are, or to get a read of how your operations and budgeting are doing.
There are some really great HRM suites out there that combine all these.
5. Budget appropriately
Once you know what you have to do and how it is to be done, you have to make sure you have the resources ready. This means having your budget in place as well as making sure the people and the tools you need are ready to go.
6. Understand your desired employee profile
This is a big part of your employer branding. Have a clearly defined set of characteristics that you require of your potential employees. This makes it easier to narrow down the search and reduces the leg work required to find the right candidates.
7. State your Employee Value Proposition (EVP)
Your Employee Value Proposition should be strong, this outlines exactly what you as a company are looking for in a candidate and also helps applicants understand what they stand to gain by working with your organization. The kind of EVP you put out there goes a long way in fortifying your employer branding.
8. Streamline the recruitment process
Your recruitment process doesn’t just get you the right talent. It also helps talent decide if they want to stay. If your process is streamlined and hassle-free, employees have a better experience and are likely to join your company and not drop out in between the recruitment process.
A smart strategy is to focus on the employee and applicant experience. How people perceive you have a lot to do with your recruitment process.
9. Focus on retaining great talent
While your recruitment process and how aspiring candidates perceive you are important, a major part of your employer branding depends on how you treat your existing employees.
Keeping employees engaged and happy while they work for you is vital. This part of your employer branding strategy may be the most important. What your current employees say about you has a huge impact on how others see you, so you must ensure that you get it right.
10. Let your employees speak
As discussed in the previous point, what your current employees think of you matters a lot. Make employee testimonials a part of your employer branding. Give them a platform to talk about how great it is to work for you and give them the space, to be frank about their experiences.
Developing the Employer Branding Strategy
1. Make your employer branding material exciting
This means that your social media pages, your careers page on your website, and even the job descriptions in your job posts must grab attention. Try to get potential candidates excited, and show off how great your company’s culture is.
This is an important step in implementing your strategy. An exciting careers page that shows employees enjoying the work they do for your company and a few well-placed, honest testimonials can make a big impact on aspiring applicants.
Even small things, like the quality of company t-shirts and the rewards you give your employees, are a part of your employer branding. If you give your employees inexpensive t-shirts, that is how your company will be seen. On the other hand, if you are willing to spend a few extra bucks to give your employees some great quality clothing with your brand splashed all over it, everyone will have a better impression of your organization.
2. Make great content and be consistent
Just as you would do for the products and services that you want your clients to buy, make great content for your potential and existing employees. The same goes for your recruitment blogs and the content on your employees' and careers page.
It isn’t enough to create great content once every so often. You have to be regular, consistent, and persistent when creating and publishing content designed to build your employer brand.
When creating content to build your employer branding, it’s a great idea to get inspiration from your team. Ask your employees what kind of content they enjoy and even let them be part of the content creation process.
Just like you would create a marketing budget for your products, create a budget for your content campaign. If you want your content to reach the right candidates, you are going to have to spend a little bit. The rewards are sure to come in the way of great talent and a great employer image.
Now don’t be too hard and fast with your content strategy when it comes to employer branding. While you need to stay true to your company culture, you also need to be ready to move with the times and trends that impact your industry.
3. Be prepared for obstacles
While you may have a great strategy in place, be prepared for implementation obstacles. Your plan may be great, but there may be something that gets in the way of being able to implement it efficiently.
There are various factors that could disrupt implementing your employer branding strategy:
- Transparency about your implementation is a great way to make sure that everyone is on board. The more everyone knows about what is going on, the more likely it is that they are all going to be working towards the same agenda.
- Make everyone a part of executing and implementing your employer branding. While the initiative may come from the top, the implementation has to be done on all levels, by all levels.
A key part of implementation is making sure that everyone understands what’s at stake and what needs to be done. Keep everyone in the loop and make sure they are able to put in their two cents too.
4. Take a test drive
Once you’ve put together a great employer branding strategy and have delegated all the responsibilities, you have to test your strategy. Take it for a test run and see what happens.
This way you can make sure that you make the changes required before you go into full implementation. This increases the chances of your branding strategy succeeding.
5. Be flexible
Once your strategy has been implemented, it doesn’t mean that it is all going to go smoothly. It should, but it may not. If you see that you need to make some changes and take action quickly, sticking to your guns isn’t always the best plan.
Make sure that your strategy has enough room for improvement and changes as and when required.
6. It isn’t a one-time deal
Yes, it takes effort, time, and money. However, the results should show you that it is worth it. If your image matters to you, then you need to make sure that you revise your branding strategy to stay relevant, and are constantly visible.
The old adage, “out of sight, out of mind”, couldn’t be more apt. You have to keep working on your employer branding to make sure that you are sending the right message and keeping up with the times.
Conclusion
Your image matters; it is the same for potential employees as it is for potential customers. If you are looking for loyalty, you have to go the extra mile and let people see who you are.
Employer branding strategies take time and effort to create. They are worth it if you want to be known as a great employer, and ultimately as a great organization.
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