How to Build an Employer Brand in a Changing Job Market

Why is employer branding important?

Implementing an effective employer branding strategy is increasingly important for today’s businesses to stay competitive. Not only are the number of skilled workers decreasing, but the expectations of the rising working class are much different from those of their predecessors, making today’s top talent all the more difficult to attract.

By 2021, almost one in five workers (employed or available for employment) will be nearing retirement, compared to only about one in seven in 2005. As these baby boomers age and retire, there are fewer graduates entering the workforce with the proper skills to replace them. Companies, as a result, will struggle to find the right fit for jobs, especially those in highly competitive sectors where niche skill sets are in high demand. In addition, baby boomers share somewhat different values and expectations from the new Generation Y workers when it comes to the workplace. These trends indicate that employers must make an almost complete shift in the way they approach hiring to attract and retain the best talent in the market.
To make the change even more drastic, posting a job and waiting for candidates to apply will no longer work to attract top talent. These days, companies must become an employer of choice in order to source, recruit and retain top candidates. To do this, let’s first explore what an employer’s brand represents and then take a look at ways to build and implement a compelling strategy around that brand.

What is employer branding?

As an employer, your brand includes the perceptions that both your current and potential employees have of your organization. An effective employer brand communicates your organization as a great employer and place to work. This positive messaging helps increase recruitment and retention rates while boosting perceptions of your organization in the marketplace. Effective employer branding is therefore about communicating your organization’s values, personality and culture to create the desired perceptions from both current and potential personnel. To truly be effective, however, employers must not only communicate but deliver their brand promise to employees during every aspect of employment from recruitment, to training, on through to promotion and termination.

Benefits of employer branding

Although consistency throughout all aspects of employment may be difficult to maintain, the benefits of an employer branding strategy that’s executed properly could be tremendous for the organization. A clear and well-defined employer brand can significantly improve application rates and help keep the organization top of mind, giving your company a wide pool of talent to choose from. In today’s crowded and highly competitive job market, it’s more important than ever to make your company stand out by providing compelling reasons to join your company as opposed to joining any other.

When companies work to engrain their values and desired behaviors across the organization, they experience higher employee engagement and motivation. This increase leads employees to be more productive in their contribution and more loyal in their commitment to the organization – which all ultimately translate into greater stores of skills and knowledge that improve the company’s bottom line. With more engaged and loyal employees, your company lowers the risk of losing its best talent to competitors, even in tight job markets.
Considering the wealth of profitable benefits, company’s today are investing more of their HR budget on building and maintaining their employer brand to stay top of mind to the best candidates.

Building an effective employer branding strategy

The first step in creating a compelling employer branding strategy is performing guided and detailed research of both your current and potential employees. Internal research could consists of things like focus groups and interviews with managers and executives to understand the needs of employees. Complete employee profiles can also help HR managers understand the differences in work distribution for both the older baby boomers as well as the younger Generation-Y and Millennials. External research should assess your target candidate group(s) by answering the questions, “Who are you looking to attract, what do they want, and what are your competitors doing to attract them?”

The next step in building your brand is to create an employer value proposition (EVP) based on your research. This is your promise to current and future employees and should be a true and accurate reflection of how your organization treats its employees. When crafting your statement, ensure it’s concise and clearly worded with factual points to support the main message. HR also needs to ensure the employer brand messaging to employees mirrors the messaging delivered to other key stakeholders of the organization (e.g. customers and investors).

Communicating your employer value proposition is the third step in building an effective brand strategy. The EVP can be communicated internally by means of employee orientation programs as well as training materials or a companywide email. The EVP can be communicated externally via recruitment advertising, the company web site, as well as at events and job fairs. The key for effective communication here is making multiple impressions on both current and potential employees and demonstrating support from top management.

Lastly, it’s important to measure employees’ response to your communications to evaluate your success. Metrics HR can monitor for positive increases include:

• Turnover/Retention rates
• Employee satisfaction surveys
• Brand awareness and attractiveness
• Loyalty and engagement
• Flow of applications
• Cost per hire

Taking these steps may be both time and resource intensive, but the benefits will be important to maintain a strong workforce that drives your business and increases your company’s bottom line. Building, monitoring, and enhancing your employer brand over time are steps that all HR managers and staff should take to prove the true value their department brings to the organization at large.

By: Jerry Grimes