Employees are important for the success of a company. In fact, they’re credited as the main source of competitive advantage. They’re the so-called internal stakeholders of companies. However, a shortage of skilled workers and pandemic-damaged relationships make it increasingly difficult – as well as time-consuming and costly – to find qualified staff who identify with the values and corporate identity of a company.
So how can employer branding optimize your efforts to attract qualified personnel and streamline the recruiting process? And how can companies effectively strengthen their corporate brand through employer branding?
Employer branding has recently become ever more interesting as a brand management concept. Companies handle it in many different ways, but the basic idea of employer branding is to apply brand management principles to HR. It involves the development of the employer’s brand and all related activities such as management, coordination, implementation, and control.
Importantly, employer branding complements the corporate branding of your company. It is a part of it, directed at a different target group. Corporate branding is based on the corporate identity of a company and is mostly aimed at potential customers or business partners. The target groups of employer branding are potential and current employees.
Employer branding is most obvious in the recruiting process. If used correctly, it leads to brand-oriented recruitment where brand knowledge is conveyed and absorbed by the potential employee right from the start.
The goals of employer marketing, by contrast, are not “only” to attract employees and position the company as an attractive employer. Employer marketing is more about attracting employees from the very beginning who identify with the company and fit well into the existing team. A second goal is to retain these employees for a long time. Especially in times of shortage of skilled workers when companies are vying for good candidates, this can be a challenging task.
Employer branding is not only the wording and communication of the brand promise but also the implementation of it. Any company can say in job advertisements and on its career pages that team outings take place regularly, that salary increases come every year, and that the focus is on employee satisfaction. Saying so doesn’t mean it’s true, and job seekers suspect this. Of course, a candidate won’t get a true picture of the situation until they’re employed by the company. But good employer branding ensures a high level of trust in the statements even before that, for example through blog articles or video blogs of those outings.
There’s a frequent distinction between internal and external employer branding. External employer branding targets workers in order to get them to apply to the company and accept the job. Internal employer branding aims to convince existing employees to stay with the company for a long time.
Employer branding, therefore, provides an overarching concept that brings many HR activities such as recruiting, career management, and selection of candidates in line with the branding of the company. Cooperation between marketing and HR departments is necessary if not a complete handover of employer branding to the marketing department.
It seems clear that the benefits of employer branding lie primarily in personnel recruitment. However, it results in many additional benefits for companies and employees:
All of this ultimately leads to advantages for companies in terms of market share as well as financial targets.
Employees want to see that a company meets their personal definitions of a “good” employer. Everyone has different ideas about how they define a good employer. For some, a distinctive digital workplace with good collaboration tools is essential. Others place a greater value on regular workplace activities, such as lunching together or after-work beers.
How do you communicate the corporate culture to employees before they start working for the company?
Employer branding and internal branding are often compared with each other. Both have the goal of communicating the corporate brand and brand promise to employees. They help foster loyalty and a bond with the company through consistent values.
Internal branding ensures that employees understand the brand and the brand value proposition so they can comply with them, especially in external communications. Training on corporate design falls within the remit of internal branding, as does training on brand-compliant behavior toward customers and the use of brand management software.
Employer branding, on the other hand, is aimed at both potential employees and existing employees. Employees should be satisfied in their position and communicate this to the outside world, or offer the company the opportunity to report on this in order to attract new employees.
Basically, employer branding plays a role from the first to the last contact with the company. The candidate journey can be expressed in the following five phases:
1. Application process: Does the job ad reflect the company? Can potential employees find more information about the work culture and the brand value proposition on your online presence? How have current and former employees rated the company, the job, and the application process on various portals?
2. Onboarding: Is onboarding a structured process? How is the internal branding designed and how do training and education take place?
3. Candidate experience: Does the company deliver what it promised in the job ad and in the application process? Is there potential for improvement?
4. Retention: Are employees happy with the corporate culture? What further benefits will ensure higher satisfaction? How can work processes be streamlined to eliminate frustrations so that employees are happier in their jobs?
5. Offboarding: Do your employees remain professional even when someone leaves the team or the company? How can you cultivate a positive impression until the termination of the employment relationship and also afterward?
A respectful application process is essential. Reed did a survey of job candidates in the UK and found that a negative experience in the application process caused 73% of respondents to also have a negative perception of the brand. 33% of respondents said they would be very unlikely to buy a company’s products after a bad experience in the application process. 38% of respondents shared negative experiences with their family or circle of friends.
Employer branding, unlike corporate branding, can be measured well by numbers. These include:
With the empower® Brand Control solution, you can easily integrate your brand style guide directly into Microsoft Office and ensure that emails, job postings, and onboarding documents make a consistent and professional impression.
You have all relevant fonts, sizes, colors, and layouts at your fingertips and don’t have to search for them.
The practical empower® Design Check checks your PowerPoint and Word documents for compliance with the corporate design. Any deviations can easily be corrected with the auto-correction function. This relieves your employees of the work of frustrating formatting.
Email signatures can also easily be managed centrally with our solution. You can ensure that everyone always leaves a professional impression when communicating with potential employees and that all necessary information is included in the signature.
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