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The Ultimate Guide to Employer Branding
Ask a few people in your office, what is it like working at Google. They will probably reply with words like innovative, collaborative, fun or free lunch. But chances are, those colleagues of yours have never worked for Google. This is the power of an employer brand. Reputation precedes the experience.
An employer brand is the market perception of what it’s like to work for a company. It’s your value proposition to your employees. It’s critical to not only recruiting top talent but retaining it. Key message: It’s central to business success. But you already know this. What can you do to make your employer brand stand out from the competition?
Define your Employee Value Proposition
Ask yourself the question; What does it mean to work here? The answer is your employee value proposition (EVP). The key traits you would like associated with your company as an employer. These attributes should differentiate your organization from other employers. It should be relevant, distinctive and most importantly true.
Assess your current employer brand
To collect high-level insights, there are easy questions you can ask:
The self-assessment: Why did you join the organization? What do you enjoy about working there?
The employee check: Do you get employee referrals? What do employees tell their friends about working for your company?
The Employer Brand Excellence Framework is a great guide on the areas to critically assess. This will allow you to identify any gaps between employer brand thinking and practice.
Finally, for effective employer brand analysis, you should discuss and agree upon key stakeholders KPIs such as Employee turnover, Employee happiness scores, Cost per hire and so on.
Measuring KPIs will keep the benefits of a strong employer brand top of mind and allow you to continually improve.
Strengthen your employer brand
Go take your marketing manager out for lunch. Ask them questions about their work and know their interests. That is how employer branding is established.
Here are 5 simple ways to get you started:
Employee advocacy
Attracting talent relies more heavily on employee advocacy. Do your employees’ social media profiles publicly recognize they work for your brand? Do your employees refer friends for open roles? What are your employees saying publicly about working for your brand? People talk about what they like, inspire your employees to talk about your organization.
Partner for trust
When you think about it, you will see employer brand partnership opportunities around every corner so why not consider becoming a member of a trusted industry organization.
Enroll your company for employer of the year awards.
Open your offices to a journalist to review your employer brand – you’re probably wondering who you could contact to help build your brand to potential job seekers, you’re reading the blog of one such partner right now. Send us a message on LinkedIn or Twitter.
Engage in corporate social responsibility
Get your company and employees involved in community programs to help and improve societies. This does not only expose your company’s social goals but also gives your employees a purpose to serve outside their everyday work.
Create employer branding communication spaces
If you don’t already have a careers page on your website, get one! If you do, when was it last updated? What about social media pages dedicated to sharing what it’s like to work for your brand? You need digital spaces to communicate why it’s great to work for your company. Where your employees can be advocates. Pro tip: Feature your actual employees is your branding materials.
Be visible to jobseeker
Be seen on Uganda’s leading career website. You probably already use our job ad services. But we take supporting your employer branding seriously, so have just released dedicated Employer Pages.
These initial insights will be your guide and you go deeper into assessing employee ‘touch points’. Your organization’s way of recruiting and managing people. If your EVP is not lived in its actions, the effectiveness of any employer branding initiatives will be less than none.
This article originally appeared here
