The way people see your business is reflective of its values. What makes a consumer either come back or post a terrible review on Yelp depends on what they hear about you and how they perceive your services. It can also aid a candidate in deciding whether to accept the position or go elsewhere for a more favorable offer. Businesses invest in ads, social media influence, and other marketing strategies to attract clients because they are aware of this impact. Your positive employer brand, however, is a frequently neglected area that demands just as much effort from your company.
The article will examine the many ways in which an effective employer brand is valuable, both now and in the future, and will discuss the many advantages that come from having such a brand. We’ll talk about how to make your company stand out as an employer of choice and provide advice on how to improve your standing in the industry. We’ll also take a look at some well-known branding examples that your company might study.
What is Employer Branding?
While both organizational and employer brands serve similar purposes, the primary goal of a positive employer brand is to improve your company’s image in the eyes of potential employees. It goes on to detail your EVP and what makes your company unique about potential applicants in return for their knowledge, expertise, and connections.
Put another way, an organization’s employer brand positioning is the sum of its employees’ unspoken opinions about it. For that reason, advertising your company to those looking for work is essential. You may position your educational organization as the top employer by emphasizing and making obvious your stand-alone cultural differentiators.
If you want to build a positive employer brand that people will be excited to work for, you need to know what your company stands for. What makes it special? What exactly does it represent? Making sure your goals are in line with the type of talent you’re seeking requires you to have solid responses to these questions. Consequently, you can improve your recruiting approach, keep your present workers, and send a powerful message to potential new hires about how great your company is to work for.
Reasons why an employer branding plan is essential for each business
The advantages to your company of implementing a solid employer branding plan are numerous. Some of the most fundamental arguments in favor of an employer branding plan for all companies today are as follows.
Improving retention rates and decreasing turnover
It will be simpler to recruit and retain top talent and increase the likelihood that current employees will want to stay with your company if your employer’s branding plan is good.
Glassdoor found that 69 percent of workers think it’s critical or very important for their company to have a brand that they can be proud to represent. According to previous polls, 86% of individuals would never even consider applying to or being employed by a company with a terrible reputation.
Raising the pool of eligible candidates
You may enhance your talent acquisition efforts with an engaging employer brand positioning with no extra investment at all. Your company’s beliefs, rules, culture, work environment, pay, and perks can all be fine-tuned to attract the kind of employees you want after you have a firm grasp on what makes your business special.
A whopping 95% of candidates say that an organization’s reputation as an employer is a major influence in determining whether to apply for a job or not. Additionally, 86% of job searchers study business evaluations before applying.
Conserving funds
One more way to cut costs when hiring is to have a solid employer branding plan. You can cut your cost per hire by as much as half if it shortens the time it takes to fill and hire positions.
Spending extra on compensation to entice top personnel from rivals is less likely if your positive employer brand is appealing to applicants and workers. That doesn’t give you carte blanche to pay people peanuts. People will be interested in working with you for reasons other than the pay and benefits package you provide, though.
Rapid expansion of the company
A company’s most valuable resource is its employees. Having a solid reputation and positive employer brand makes it easier to attract and hire top personnel, which in turn accelerates business growth. As compared to LinkedIn members whose talent brands were weaker, those whose talent brands were strong had a 20% higher rate of growth.
Encouraging a wider range of candidates
An organization’s website, social media accounts, and marketing efforts may highlight its principles, vision, and corporate and social responsibility when they have a well-defined employer branding plan. In the long run, this helps them hire a more varied staff and create a more inclusive work environment.
Increased client loyalty
A candidate’s negative impression of an organization’s hiring practices increases the likelihood that they may seek out alternatives. In addition, CareerArc discovered that 64 percent of customers had stopped buying from a business after hearing bad things about how the firm treats its employees.
What are Employer Branding Strategies?
Companies are realizing the importance of building a positive reputation in the industry. A fantastic brand presence in the market may be achieved via the implementation of an employer branding plan.
Therefore, you need to apply a variety of tactics to create great employer branding, since this will open doors for employers to new opportunities.
If you want to be seen as an excellent employer, follow these steps.
Perform a brand audit of your present employer.
You might have a partial picture of how you come across your ideal clients, present workers, and prospective employers. Conducting a positive employer brand audit will help you identify your strengths and areas for growth, allowing you to sell your brand more effectively.
Monitoring staff participation, comments, and the state of the brand as a whole is essential.
Internal teams can be surveyed and feedback forms can be distributed electronically by employers. You may also learn how people perceive your brand by keeping an eye on social media and engaging in social listening. Keeping tabs on the people visiting your career website and what they’re doing is crucial.
Another smart move is to bring in outside assistance in the form of a reputation management firm.
Develop the USP (unique selling proposition) for your business.
All of these things—the company’s goals, culture, and values—contribute to its unique selling point. This is useful for figuring out what the company requires and the sort of employees who can help get the job done in the long run.
Making an employer value proposition is easier if you are familiar with your company’s distinctive features.
A larger pool of qualified applicants and A-list employees will apply to work for the company because of its distinctive selling point. Because of this, you will become known as the “employer of choice” among your present and future employees. In addition, it shows your employees that their effort is important to the company’s success.
Leverage current employees
You may indeed start improving your positive employer brand from the inside. In other words, you should put your present staff to use as they are the ones who know your brand best. In a nutshell, you want to mobilize your present workforce into a social media recruiting force.
To establish and maintain trust, it is necessary to cultivate strong employee advocates. Your audience is three times more likely to believe information shared by an employee than by the CEO, according to the LinkedIn survey.
Establish a robust onboarding procedure.
Glassdoor discovered that having a solid onboarding process increases productivity by more than 70% and the retention rate of new hires by 82%. Also, new hires’ first impressions are shaped during onboarding, thus a bad one can have a detrimental impact on the company’s reputation, retention rate, and recruiting expenses and efforts. Among new employees, one-fifth are less inclined to suggest the company to others following a bad onboarding experience, according to the poll.
Thus, a good onboarding procedure is the foundation for keeping the company’s reputation in good standing. Get new employees involved in their work and pumped up about the challenges they’ll face. A positive company culture and reputation, reduced staff turnover, and increased productivity are all benefits of a well-managed transition process.
Offer chances for study and skill development
People often quit your organization due to a lack of opportunity for professional progression rather than financial compensation. Therefore, workers become tired of performing the same thing day in and day out. Consequently, businesses should encourage their workers to further their education so they may acquire marketable skills that will be useful in the modern workplace.
A greater retention rate is the result of showing that you care about your employees’ advancement. To get high-level professionals to join your team, you might highlight these chances for personal growth.
Recruit a varied staff
Glassdoor reported that 76 percent of working professionals value diversity in the workplace. It is therefore quite evident that the employer branding plan must adhere to the tenets of diversity, equity, and inclusion. More and more, job-seekers are looking for employers that value diversity in the workplace. Three-quarters of job applicants(76%) said that a diverse staff is a major consideration when choosing between employers and positions, according to Glassdoor.
Faster client orientation, staff happiness, and decision-making are just a few benefits that diverse firms reap. The bigger the return on investment (ROI), the better. Companies with a more diverse and inclusive workforce tend to have higher profits, according to a poll.
Maintain integrity
When developing an employer branding strategy, it is crucial to be honest and open.
Stop being evasive and make good on all the promises you made to applicants. Communicating with candidates at each step of the hiring process helps increase their investment in the process. To boost employee happiness and retention rates, it’s a good idea to get their feedback on how to improve and to help them overcome any challenges they may be experiencing. When workers are content, they are more likely to talk positively about the business, which helps build the employer’s brand positioning faster. Give a good culture that matches what you say online; honesty is key.
To conclude,
To recruit and keep top talent in today’s competitive employment market, it is vital to build a strong positive employer brand. Companies may differentiate themselves from rivals and establish themselves as desirable employers by highlighting their sustainability and social initiative efforts, fostering a strong company reputation, and offering many learning opportunities.