In today’s increasingly complex economic landscape, business leaders have to focus on far more than simply the product or service their company offers. To become or remain competitive, organizations must also consider how they are viewed by employees in terms of the appeal of their workplace culture, compensation levels, and benefits packages. From huge tech companies like Google to industry giants like L’Oreal and IKEA, the emphasis now is on
investing in employee happiness and well-being by creating an employer brand that attracts and retains top talent. In this article, we’ll explore the reasons why it’s so critical to developing an employer brand, and how you can build yours.
Importance of Building an Employer Brand
As modern CEOs, HR departments, and marketing leaders can tell you, employer branding is of the utmost strategic importance. Many leaders believe that employer brand responsibility lies with the CEO or marketing department, while CEOs may argue this responsibility lies with HR and recruiting. But the bottom line is that building an employer brand is so important that every part of an organization has a role to play in ensuring it is done successfully. The development of a robust employer presence is critical to attracting and retaining talented employees, and as such should be a top priority across all organizational levels.
How to Build Your Employer Brand
We’ve got some tips on how you can build your employer brand in such a way that you’ll be able to attract and retain talented employees. Here’s how:
1. Conduct a brand awareness and reputation analysis.
First, you’ll want to know where your company stands in terms of its employer brand. To determine the strength (or lack thereof) of your company’s reputation as an employer, you should survey target audiences and key external stakeholders. You should also survey existing employees to gauge their experience and level of satisfaction. The information gained in these surveys will enable you to establish metrics to measure growth and develop a change strategy to improve your employer brand reputation. To do this, you’ll want to work with your HR department to create organization-specific objectives.
Focus on these fundamental objectives, as well as the company-specific ones you develop based on your analysis:
- Secure recruitment needs in the long term.
- Grow your employer brand locally and globally.
- Differentiate your employer brand from your competitors.
By accomplishing these objectives, you’ll be on your way to strong employer branding and, by extension, talent attraction and retention.
2. Create, promote, and invest in employee development and learning initiatives.
The workforce is currently and will, for the foreseeable future, be dominated by the millennial generation. This generation is known for their expectations regarding learning and development opportunities within their chosen career. They want to grow and expand within their companies.
By offering these opportunities, you’ll be much more likely to retain your talent, as well as attract new talent. Moreover, your company will be stronger and more effective because you’ll be maintaining employees who know their jobs.
A powerful way to meet this expectation is by embracing e-learning. Millennials are knowledgeable about technology and want to be able to complete activities to grow and learn in their own time. Even more beneficial are those opportunities that enable your employees to gain certifications and credentials that they can use in other companies in the future.
3. Capitalize on brand value.
Employer brand management is critical to attracting new talent, as employer branding plays a major role in the decisions candidates make about which companies to apply to. Potential employees must understand company strengths to feel engaged and start building loyalty to the brand mission. Some brands create a website where they talk about their brand ethos, which has yielded positive results in attracting talent by showing exactly how the brand
will benefit them and vice versa. These websites are also great because the team gets an opportunity to show what they do and share their experiences.
4. Personalize the experience.
It’s important to personalize the experience individuals have on the pathway from candidate to employee. In fact, retention is often based on employee experience because all employees need to know that they matter as people. Here are some ideas on how to incorporate this into your organization’s hiring and HR policies:
- Map out a career roadmap with each employee, which helps you see where their talent lies and how you can help them be the best employee possible, as well as meet their personal career goals.
- Engage in employee recognition. This boosts morale, leading to increased motivation, acknowledgment of efforts, and increased productivity.
- Develop nurturing relationships, especially between employees and immediate supervisors for an interpersonal connection.
5. Engage in internal communication.
Talent attraction and retention aren’t going to be effective without communication. Brands have to communicate the value and need for a strong employer brand and how employees can help fulfill this goal. As today’s world is more transparent, clever recruiting efforts are no longer sufficient for an effective employer brand image. Instead, there must be an emphasis on existing employees and their satisfaction to generate interest from new talent and keep current talent.
You’ve got unique staffing needs. At Dover Staffing, we can help you meet these needs, so contact us today for more information on how we can help you.
Image Credits: Photo by Lookstudio on FreePik