‘A word is a word, and a picture is worth a thousand…but a brand is worth a million’- Tony Hseih. This line by Tony Hsieh tells us that branding is vital and essential for the success of any organization. Branding helps in building trust with customers, driving sales, and increasing your potential as a business. Here in this blog, we will discuss the importance of brands for business organizations and how building strong employer brands is essential. We will also learn about a new term ‘Employer Brands’, and how achieving it is the key to successful recruitment.
Why is Employer Branding essential?
‘Employer Branding’ basically means when a company gives out a message about who they are, what makes them different, and why people should prefer them. Employer Branding also acts as attracting new talent and retaining existing ones. Simply put, employer branding describes a company’s mark and reputation as an employer and how it can serve its employees. It is an important aspect when it comes to acing your business needs and easing your recruitment processes. Let us find out some reasons why building strong employer brands/ employer branding is necessary:
Demonstrates your unique culture:
Every candidate wishes to join a company that depicts a positive and growth-oriented work culture. Recruiters should be considerate when they promote their company culture, work environment, growth prospects, and employer brand as a whole. Nowadays, companies try to use social media platforms to describe what they are and what their company culture is. Celebrating important days, hosting fun activities and recognizing employees are some aspects that help in building strong employer brands.
Your internal workforce can act as brand advocates:
When your company’s employees exhibit positive work experiences, they are likely to showcase and share them on social media platforms. This helps in turning your internal workforce into brand advocates which increases the attraction of candidates to join your company. This way you can plan your recruitment strategies in advance.
Reduction in Recruitment Costs:
Building strong employer brands helps in reducing recruitment costs as interested candidates come swarming when you have a strong employer brand. When you already have loads of interested candidates on your waiting list, the recruitment process for your organization becomes easy and effortless. That is the power of building strong employer brands!
The Approach to building Strong Employer Brands
When you make the right approach to build an employer brand, it increases your chances of attracting better talent, minimizing costs and reducing employee turnover rates. For building a successful employer brand, you need to identify your company’s Employee Value Proposition (EVP), Employer Reputation, Brand Messaging, Brand Communication, Brand Differentiation and Impact. Let us discuss each of these terms one by one.
Employee Value Proposition (EVP):
Employee Value Proposition is the unique value that an employer offers to the employees in return for their experience, skills and commitment to serving the company. These includes components like rewards, salary hike, benefits and much more.
Employer Reputation:
Employer Reputation is the perception of the organization as an employer. It shows the organization’s image which is shaped by its culture, benefits, development opportunities, salary packages and overall candidate experience. Companies that have a positive employer reputation will have higher chances of attracting and retaining employees. While companies that hold negative employer reputations will face challenges to hire talent.
Employer Brand Differentiation:
Similar to EVP, is Employer Brand Differentiation. It can be defined as how a company can stand out and differentiate its branding strategy to its talent market.
Employer Brand Impact:
As is clear from the term itself, Employer Brand Impact means what impact it puts on the candidates. It is obvious that job seekers would not apply for those companies that have a bad reputation. It thus becomes vital to strategize your employer branding in a way that it puts an impact on the job seekers to willingly apply in the company.
Moreover, recognizing employer brand perception and employer brand communication and strategizing their use can put a great impact on your employer branding efforts. Employer brand perceptions are formed when the employees share their experiences working in the company. Whereas employer brand communication is using marketing strategies in order to create a positive image of itself.
Impact of Employer Branding on Recruitment Process
As per TalentNow, 77% of candidates say that the reputation of a company is important.
According to Glassdoor, 74% of candidates are more likely to apply to a job if the employer actively manages its employer brand.
As per Officevibe, Employee turnover can be reduced by 28% by investing in employer brands.
According to such stats, we can surely see that building strong employer brands increases the chances of attracting potential candidates thus also reducing turnover rates of employees. But how does employer branding affect recruitment processes?
The employer brand that you showcase gets the attention of candidates. This increases your reputation as an employer and gives easy access to recruit talented people. Other channels are word of mouth, and referrals that further help in increasing the number of applicants for different job positions. The recruitment process thus becomes easy via positive employer branding as you do not need to call up candidates, rather they themselves apply eagerly to enter their preferred company.
Impact of negative employer branding on recruitment
If your company has poor reputation, high employee turnover rates, and negative media coverage, there are high chances that it will directly impact the recruitment processes. It will become difficult to find out candidates as no one will be willing to join such a company with a negative reputation.
Employer Branding Best Practices
To overcome the impacts of negative employer branding, there are some best practices that can be taken up:
- Communicating and showcasing your company’s employer brand consistently.
- Fostering and motivating positive company culture.
- Inculcating open communication, employee benefits practices, and feedback culture.
- Developing a Strong Employer Value Proposition (EVP).
- Promoting employee recognition by making them feel valued and respected at every stage.
- Learning from past mistakes and setting up realistic branding goals
- Enhancing your company’s brand image by creating a perfect website page
Conclusion
Employer branding and the strategy behind it make a great impact on your company’s reputation and the employees joining it. Moreover, it also impacts the recruitment and hiring processes. Therefore, it is essential to focus on employer branding as it can benefit you in the long term.
Ensuring that your company’s image is positive and there is no negativity around can make your employer branding process a success. Nowadays, there are many digital platforms through which this process has become easy. Companies can showcase themselves by indulging in social media platforms and posting employee testimonials, work culture videos, and employee referral programs. This way positive employer branding directly helps the recruitment process in better talent attraction and reduced efforts.
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