An employer brand is how the world sees your company as a place to work. Get it right and recruiting the staff you need becomes much easier, get it wrong and you’re fighting a never-ending battle to attract and retain the staff you want. So what can you do to strengthen your own employer brand?
A strong brand is based on reality and should seek to show off what is great about you, not convince people you’re something else. Take a look at your company culture, the office environment, your values as an employer and see what’s good (and maybe what’s not so good). You may even want to ask your staff for honest feedback. Websites like www.glassdoor.co.ukare also great places to look for feedback as employees, candidates and the general public can rate you as an employer and share comments about what it’s like to work for you.
You now know what your employer brand is today but is this what you want it to be and will it attract the types of people you are looking to hire?
Is your company fun, dynamic and quirky; or maybe structured, professional and prestigious? Is the office chatty or quiet? Do you want staff to stay with you for 10 years or 1 year? Think about the values you want employees to have and the personalities which align well with these values. Think about the objectives for the company as a whole and how future employees can help deliver these objectives.
By taking the time to think about all the above in the context of your own business you will soon build a list of values which you need to use to build a clear and accurate employer brand that is ready to share with the outside world (and current employees). This last bit is really important as you need your current employees to believe in the brand and actively promote it for it to be successful.
The first place to start communicating your employer brand is on your own website or careers page. To do this you will need to work with your marketing or web design team to make sure it’s presented in a way which is on brand and aligned to the brand as a whole.
By far the best way of communicating your employer brand to a large audience is the advertising of your vacancies across popular and relevant job boards using branded adverts. By doing this you are reaching people interested in the vacancies you’re recruiting and promoting yourself as an employer of choice for people who buy into your employer brand values. An added advantage of branded adverts is you will see an instant increase in levels of applications by up to 50% compared to recruitment agency adverts. This is because candidates can engage with your employer brand and the best candidates can get frustrated with blindly applying for jobs through recruitment agencies.
This is probably the most important factor in building a great employer brand as it’s the part which will give the brand credibility. It’s all well and good creating an excellent employer brand on paper but if it’s nothing like the reality then it’s a waste of time. What you are promoting as your brand has to be a true reflection of you as an employer and the opportunities you offer your staff.
A great way of promoting this is by having employee testimonials on your website and even inviting current employees to interviews so they can directly answer questions from candidates.
Need help with your employer brand? Why not ask us for help?
If you would like to speak to the Finda team about this topic or something else, please get in touch.
