Updated: May 21, 2023
If your business has a powerful employer brand, it will be cheaper and easier for you to attract talents and retain the already existing staff. Your business reputation within the professional community will be highly positive. Ultimately, it can improve your relationships with your customers, stakeholders and partners. Read this article to get to know about the importance of employer branding and ways of strengthening your brand!
What Is Employer Branding and Why Is It Essential?
Your employer brand is the perception of your company in the labor market. It reveals what your staff member and specialists from outside your organization think about your business. If your brand is strong, many people would love to work for you. It’s weak, they will be not so enthusiastic about joining your staff.
An attractive employer brand is synonymous with:
- Easy candidate attraction
- High employee engagement
- Developed company culture
- Generous employee benefits
Today, it’s a great time for building a powerful employer brand strategy. First, there are numerous online resources (such as LinkedIn, Glassdoor and social networks) that enable you to spread the word about your company with minimal expenses. Second, you can choose the work format that suits you best: office, remote or hybrid. Use flexibility as a tool to accentuate your brand uniqueness. And of course, there are large amounts of accumulated knowledge that you can access and benefit from — such as this article.
Guide on Enhancing an Employer Brand
Below, we’ll list the key employment branding techniques. They should come in handy for organizations of any size and niche.
Come Up with a Unique Value Proposition
Your employer value proposition is what differentiates you from your competitors. It can be your global mission of improving teenagers' mental health or state-of-the-art workplaces for in-house teammates. Candidates who share your values will be eager to apply for your vacancies.
Conduct a Self-Audit
The owners and managers of a company might have an illusion that they have created ideal conditions for employees. However, the staff might have a different opinion.
Your team members might hesitate to criticize you openly. To get to know what they think, conduct surveys (including anonymous) and interviews.
You may come across negative reviews about your business online. Answer them politely and promise to fix the mentioned issues. Apologize, if necessary. Your replies don’t need to be long.
Keep a list of the negative points that people mention. Prioritize them and strive to fix them one by one.
Encourage your team members to provide feedback to managers and never punish them for criticism. Consider rewarding the employees who help you detect the most significant pain points and find solutions for them.
Develop a Corporate Culture
Corporate culture is a broad notion. We won’t focus on it in detail — but we’ll provide a few examples of what you can do:
- Create a set of documents with your company’s policies and make them accessible for all your teammates
- Introduce a rewards system — make sure its rules are transparent and include them in the above-mentioned set of documents
- Order branded cups, pens and other supplies
- Organize online and offline networking events
Your goal is to create a sense of belonging among your teammates. Plus, it’s vital to standardize work procedures.
Improve the Onboarding Process
Due to substandard candidate experience at the onboarding stage, a new team member might leave you in a couple of weeks. To prevent this, it’s vital to:
- Write comprehensive instructions
- Assign a mentor to every newcomer: the former should introduce the latter to the other teammates, show them around the office and answer their questions
- Provide the newly hired person with all the necessary tools and explain how to use them
Let the newcomer start with the simplest tasks that they can perform well without exhausting themselves. Praise them for being efficient. Your new staff member will feel confident and motivated to carry on.
Focus on Your Current Employees
The cost of talent acquisition is one of the most crucial employer branding metrics. To save funds and nerves, learn to love your staff and strive to retain them. Don’t hesitate to make informative posts about your most talented and committed employees on your corporate website and social networks. Ask your staffers to provide testimonials about your organization.
If your team members are happy with you, they will enthusiastically spread the word about your business among their acquaintances. People will want to join your company.
Provide Growth Opportunities for Your Staff
If a staff member stays with your company for many years, they might get bored of doing the same things again and again. To motivate people for professional and personal growth, offer them free online or offline courses. Mention this fact in the descriptions of your job openings — it would be a superb recruitment marketing move.
Outline career growth perspectives for each position in your company. Inform the employees about the paths that they can take. It would be more reasonable to nurture your in-house talents than hire outsiders for high-level positions — because the latter know nothing about your business and will need a lot of time to adjust.
Respect Your Staff’s Rights for Work-Life Balance
Do all your staffers still need to work from the office every day? Consider giving them more flexibility: remote work, hybrid work or a four-day week. Let them choose their schedules. The productivity of your employees should increase and they will report greater job satisfaction.
Promote Diversity and Inclusion
This point has become paramount in recruitment branding. Give equal opportunities to people of all ages, ethnicities and backgrounds. Value specialists for their achievements and not demographics.
Be Active on Social Media
Depending on the specifics of your business, you might want to run your company’s social media accounts on LinkedIn, Facebook, TikTok and/or any other platform. Regularly post fresh information there, such as:
- Product news
- Achievements of the whole organization as well as its selected departments and employees
- Major events, such as anniversaries or conferences
- Results of your surveys and research
- Photos of your office and staff members
In addition, run a blog on your corporate website. Its contents can partly overlap with your social network posts. The blog will allow you to prove that you’re an expert in your niche and treat your business seriously. Plus, it will be instrumental for your SEO.
Final Thoughts
To build a strong employer brand, it’s necessary to come up with a unique value proposition, conduct a self-audit, develop a corporate culture, improve the onboarding process, focus on your current employees, provide growth opportunities for your staff, respect your staff’s rights for work-life balance, promote diversity and inclusion and be active on social media. A powerful employer brand facilitates recruitment advertising. It enables you to boost staff retention and cut down expenses on hiring new professionals. The overall image of your business will become more positive.
Furthermore, investing in employee engagement initiatives, such as regular feedback sessions, recognition programs, and employee wellness initiatives, can contribute to building a positive employer brand. By prioritizing the well-being and satisfaction of your employees, you create an environment where they feel valued and motivated to contribute their best work. This not only enhances staff retention but also attracts top talent who are seeking a supportive and fulfilling work environment.
