The Importance of Employer Branding

by Nora Köppling

What is employer branding?

The term employer branding refers to the creation of a brand by a company for employees, former employees, and prospects with the purpose of attracting and retaining talent. The employer’s brand is expressed in different ways – it is about what employees, and former employees say about a company on the internet, i.e., social media forums, social media and testimonials on platforms such as Glassdoor, or their opinions when they share with friends and family.

In other words, an employer brand is defined by what employees think about the company they work for. A large employer brand can increase the number of candidates interested in working for your company by promoting a higher sense of belonging while reducing employee turnover.

What is the employer branding added value?

Investing in employer branding can result in substantial hiring costs cut-off due to a great deal of work applications coming in thus being able to find suitable candidates in less time. On the other hand, if employer branding is deficient discovering skilled candidates will take up too much time and effort. Likewise, the employer brand helps reducing employee turnover in the company. Therefore, if turnover is significantly reduced less positions should be covered thus reducing hiring costs.

How can I create an employer brand?

Employer brands are created through the employees’ support since, in our experience, everything is depending on the employees. It is of underlying importance to rely on happy employees and to achieve this, aspects such as competitive salaries, continuous education, compensation plans, and flexibility should be addressed and taken care of. The creation of a safe zone to receive feedback from the employees could be quite useful to know how they feel at work and how to increase satisfaction.

Aligning the company’s vision, mission, culture and consumer brand is by far the next step. It is also important to analyze the company’s reputation status both internally and externally as well as to know what is working best. By knowing this a more specific strategy to spread the employee’s word about the reasons that make them work in your company may be implemented inasmuch as what makes the organizational culture unique and what is the organization offering to co-workers.

In order to gain insight on how to start a robust employer brand we need to think about what a person might consider when accepting or declining a job offer. Some important aspects may be:
·       The company’s values
·       The company’s culture
·       Location and facilities
·       Compensation plans
·       Career path
·       Leadership opportunities
·       Quality of work environment
·       Value employees
·       Balanced work environment
·       Flexibility
·       Other benefits

Once your employer brand is set and well defined it should be put into practice. This can be achieved in social media platforms such as LinkedIn or getting employees involved. As mentioned earlier, employee testimonials play an important role. In order to spread co-workers’ word, incentives to motivate colleagues to write their opinion on the relevant platforms may be promoted or else you can record their testimonials and publish them in your company’s site. Another way to implement the employer brand is writing job descriptions that align with a defined brand highlighting the benefits of working at your company, but the employer brand does not end here, the brand needs to be promoted all of the time not only during the recruitment process but also during onboarding and other stages. In order to receive formidable employee testimonials, it is necessary to have happy employees.

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