What is employer brand strategy?

Employer branding strategy is an essential part of any company’s talent acquisition. Especially in today’s times, when there is an increased demand for top-tier talent, it’s crucial for companies to invest in their employer branding strategy.

Employer branding strategy enables your company to dictate and positively guide the dialogue about your company to enable higher talent acquisition and retention. At a fundamental level, employer branding is how you market your company to potential employees and what employees say about your company as a workplace.

‍
Why is it important?

In this rapidly changing world, expectations of workers across all industries have changed over the last two years since the pandemic has hit on a global level. The talent market has shifted once again, specialized talent is in huge demand, and employer branding is becoming a priority for many employers.

‍

Regardless of if you’re a large corporation with ability to hire at scale and massive recruitment marketing budgets, it’s a necessity for every company to have a culture and brand which portrays their uniqueness. What is important is how you communicate these unique characteristics.

‍

It’s important to be aware that not all candidates are the same, different candidates will find different aspects of work appealing to them. What these individuals do have in common is their awareness of what they want from their potential employers. Thus, in a market where the candidates hold the cards, it’s vital to focus on employer rebranding strategy for the best results.

‍
How to build a successful employer branding strategy?

1. Know your company's unique value proposition.

‍

It is important to begin with a clear understanding of your company's mission, vision and value statement as well as the company culture. It may be useful to narrow down what the needs of the business are and work in reverse order to understand the types of technical skills/background experience you may need to acquire to achieve the needs of the business.

2. Conduct an employer brand audit.

‍

From the get-go, it may be difficult to have a clear understanding of your company’s reputation as perceived by your current and potential employees. Thus, it’s important to get a pulse of what the perception of the company’s reputation is with current and potential employees. There are multiple ways to conduct the audit, such as; hiring a firm that specializes in monitoring company’s reputations, conducting internal surveys to understand what current employees consider the benefits and challenges, conducting social media surveys and also doing research on jobs review sites such as Glassdoor.

‍

3. Write an employer value proposition.

‍

After conducting the employer brand audit, it’s important to analyze the data to create an employee value proposition. Essentially, this is communicating through marketing messages and a promise for your employers.You might use this EVP for your own careers’s website, recruitment materials or external websites such as LinkedIn.

‍

4. Leverage current employees.
‍

‍
Potential employees would like to hear and see more about the employer brand from current employees. This is why it’s important to include video testimonials or interviews to be added to the employee value proposition and added to the company website.

‍

5. Cultivate a strong onboarding process.

‍

The onboarding process is the first real experience of a company’s culture a new hire obtains. Infact, certain studies have shown hires are twice as likely to look elsewhere for opportunities if they have a negative onboarding experience.

‍

6. Offer learning and development opportunities.

‍

One of the main reasons driving high attrition rates in firms is that employees often feel bored or have reached a plateau in their current role and need new challenges.

‍

Thus by enabling and allowing them to learn new skills, it showcases the company’s focus on continuous learning and development. Additionally, new skills that are picked up by employees’ can also benefit the company in the long term.

‍

7. Create a strong diversity and inclusion initiative.

‍

Part of the process of creating a strong employer brand also involves a commitment to building strong diversity and inclusion teams. Some of the benefits this can lead to are better work culture, strong service and more creative ideas and solutions.