For as long as organizations have been competing with each other, Employer Branding has been around. Building a respectable reputation as an employer helps you with attracting new candidates and saving on marketing costs. In addition to this, it also has benefits to your employee engagement rating. In this article, we’ll look into why Employer Branding is so important and how you can apply it within your organization.
First, lets get into the definition of Employer Branding:
Employer Branding is the reputation of your organization towards (potential) employees. It differs from the Brand Reputation, which is also focused on other stakeholders such as customers and the general public. Employer Branding became popular in the 1990s and has been growing in popularity ever since. Instead of only focusing on reaching out to job seekers yourself, Employer Branding enables job seekers to come to you.
What are the benefits of Employer Branding?
There are a lot of benefits in having an Employer Branding strategy within your organization. Let’s have a look at 3 compelling benefits:
1. Recruitment benefits
The recruitment benefits are, probably, the most important reason to start with Employer Branding. A strong and healthy brand naturally attracts potential employees. Most job seekers will look at your organization’s reputation, both online and offline, before they apply. Always make sure that your online branding is on point. Build a brand on social media, invest in a great website and engage in online conversations to get your name out there. In addition to this, it is also wise to share your knowledge with the world. You can do so with blogging, creating video content, and many other ways. As long as your content is top-notch, this also has great advantages for your online marketing strategy as you will rank higher in search engines.
Next to attracting potential employees, you can also save on recruitment costs. Once you have built a great employer brand with an amazing reputation, people will want to work for you. This means that you can spend less money on expensive campaigns and job boards.
2. Employees
Next to recruitment benefits, there are also benefits for your own employees. According to research from Glassdoor, 32% of job seekers mentioned that employee reviews are the top factor when looking for an organization to work for. For this reason, it is very important to keep your employees happy and have them as advocates for your organization. Happy employees tend to stay longer at your organization, while also being more productive.
3. Marketing benefits
Branding can be seen as part of marketing. As we already mentioned above, a strong employer brand will have a positive outcome on how potential employees view you as an employer. But this will also count for your overall branding. People with a positive attitude towards your organization are more likely to buy something from you or recommend you to their friends and relatives. And since word-of-mouth marketing is very powerful, this will have a great impact on your organization.
How do you start with Employer Branding?
A good way to start with Employer Branding is to invite the marketing & communications department to the same table. They have probably formulated a strong vision and mission for your organization, which can be used as a starting point for your employer branding strategy as well. For example, if your organization is a charity which raises money for the rescue of animals, you might want to point out that you are looking for people who are passionate about animals. Another example, if your organization claims to be the best in its field, you want to attract the top performers in the industry.
More importantly, increase the engagement with your current employees. Ask them to participate, give them a voice and don’t be afraid to share their views. They can be your best or worse advocates when it comes to employer branding. Keep that in mind.
These strategic choices are all part of your employer branding strategy.
Career site
Once you have determined your strategy, you can look for ways to get your message out to the world. A good way to start is with a career site. A career site can be built to represent your vision, mission, and image as an employer to attract new employees. With Phenom’s Career Site Platform, for example, you can make use of artificial intelligence on an easy to manage career site. This way, you can pick the best candidates for the jobs!
Social media
Other great ways to draw the attention of potential employees are through social media channels. Especially LinkedIn can be very useful to promote your workplace. Share or like images from employees, give employees a stage to share their experiences and interact with your audience. With these tips you should be able to build a strong employee brand!
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