In today’s competitive world, business reputation is essential to organizational growth. The statistics prove that 86% of workers don’t apply and continue to work for an organization with a bad reputation. However, creating a compelling employer brand reputation is vital as it ensures you can attract and retain top talent. But if you want to achieve all this, start understanding the whole concept.
What is employer branding? A breakdown of the definition:
Top companies already know that to attract talent, they will have to put effort into their brand. However, the best way to do this is through employer branding. In simple words, the term employer branding means:
“It is the perception and reputation of your brand or organization among current, old, or new job seekers.”
Employer branding is an effort that involves strategies and tactics that you use to build a brand reputation. So, you will have to work on how to make your organization the best place.
Importance of employer branding strategy:
Around 95% of candidates think that reputation is the crucial factor when they start searching for a new job. Apart from this, if an organization focuses on the brand reputation, then you can enjoy these benefits:
- If your company has a good reputation, you can reduce the cost of hiring by up to 50%. Furthermore, it also helps to increase the number of expert and qualified candidates by up to 50%.
- A good employer brand reputation reduces employee turnover by up to 28%.
- It helps to recruit top talent as, according to Glassdoor, 75% of candidates apply to an organization that maintains the employer brand.
- A positive employer brand reputation boosts employee satisfaction, and they try to give their best performance.
Apart from this, many other benefits of maintaining an employer’s brand reputation exist. For instance, it helps to keep the customers’ trust and fuels effective corporate communication.
Best employer branding strategies a company can use to recruit & retain employees
In this technological era, everything is connected to the internet, and everyone wants to share their experience online. However, the same happens in the corporate world, where 72% of candidates have shared their poor job experiences online. So, in this case, the companies tried to make up for their poor reputation by offering a 10% pay increase to job seekers. But you can build the employer’s brand reputation by using these valuable techniques:
Assess where you are standing now
The first and foremost thing is to understand where you are standing right now. In this way, you can work on building up an actionable plan. Here are the techniques you can use to see the current position of your organization and employer brand.
| Survey employees | This way, you can ask for honest feedback to understand what’s happening in the organization. It helps to solve internal problems and build a team of loyal people. |
| Focus on the reviews | Reviews provide the best guidance when you want to improve your weak points. More than 62% of employees say their perception of a company increases when they respond to a review. |
| Take help from social media. | If you think about brand reputation, then social media is the best. You can take the help of different tools to measure brand health, sentiments, and keywords that people search for. |
| Review recruitment process | Focus on the hiring and onboarding process, as it’s the first thing that shows the potential of an organization. |
In addition, you can identify the gaps in content that may cause issues in recruitment and retention. You need content for resources like social media, websites, onboarding material, and internal newsletters.
Focus on employee value proposition: (EVP)
If you have a strong EVP in your organization, then it can outshine rewards like monetary and non-monetary. EVP provides a base for your employer’s branding strategy and messaging. But remember that EVP should be an accurate representation of what employees are expecting from their company. It will hurt your brand’s reputation if you set a wrong expectation and later can’t meet that. In EVP, you can offer salary, benefits, growth opportunities, company culture, remote work flexibility, etc.
Define organizational goals
Setting organizational goals is crucial as it provides a base for building a brand employer’s reputation. So, as a first step, set SMART goals that would later help measure the performance. You can set recruitment goals that include the following:
| You can attract more leads | Implement campaigns for priority roles | Set the number of new hires |
| Receive more referrals | Engage employees | Hire more expert and qualified staff |
| Take the help of tools like paystub generator to make employee’s life easier | High employee retention rate over time | Add awareness campaigns to boost perception and awareness |
Apart from this, your goals might include more shared posts, and you can increase employer-related branding posts.
Identify audience and define stakeholders
Stakeholders and target audience for the employer branding strategy are the two main things that require the most attention. According to LinkedIn:
“More than 40% of professionals look for colleagues and work culture before accepting a new job position.”
So, sort out these things before attracting new talent because you first need to figure out the type of talent you want for your organization. Later, it would be best to determine your stakeholders because employer branding is a team effort. So, get stakeholders on board as it’s the best way to prevent burnout and disorganization.
Create plans & track results
When your strategy is in the process, you must understand that it’s not your destination. So, after launching the plan, remember to track results by comparing them with benchmarks you already set. But before tracking results, here are a few tips that you should consider while making a rollout plan:
- Make an editorial calendar for blog and social media content that focuses on employer brand reputation
- Internal emails to get feedback from employees
- Check and respond to reviews
- Regularly encourage employees to post more about their open roles
Apart from this, remember to update career roles on your company’s website. Besides, you can work on compensation, start a company’s blog, hire a diverse workforce, and interact online. A good employer brand strategy helps to meet the business’s short- and long-term needs. So, align your strategy with organizational needs and see the positive changes. But it’s vital to set actionable goals.
