Employer Branding – taking advantage of a market recovery
Over the last five years, the concept of Employer Branding has gained traction as a necessary requirement for the attraction, engagement and retention of talented employees. With the current environment now demonstrating the reality of a market recovery, organisations must look to implement strategies that will work to improve the sustainability of their workforce in the future.
Your organisation has an Employer brand. The big question is… ‘is it the one your organisation wants and does it accurately reflect the reality of working for your organisation?’
To be successful, organisations must aim to build an authentic Employer Brand where the external and internal brand messages link to the employment experience. Shaping these positive perceptions takes times; it requires much more work than simply developing jazzy recruitment marketing initiatives and/or communications.
Make the decision that your Employer Brand is strategic – it’s more than just recruitment advertising and catchy statements on a career website, it impacts on culture. As a CEO, or organisational HR professional you must consider a framework that will strategically build a sustainable employer brand position. A recommended pathway includes the following five phases:
- Audit & Analysis – define your organisation’s people strategy and understand current internal and external perceptions of your organisation as an employer.
- EVP Strategy Development – develop your unique Employee Value Proposition statements and employer brand positioning.
- Testing & Validation – test and validate the proposed employer brand across divisions, regions, countries.
- Alignment & Communication – close the gaps between strategy and organisational reality and internally, then externally roll it out through communications.
- Management & Metrics – set up internal and external metrics to track improvements and alignment with key strategy.
The world’s most powerful brands are built on insight and knowledge – and as such, the Audit & Analysis or research and data gathering phase of the process is critical in determining whether your employer brand will be compelling and successful.
Why is Audit & Analysis Important?
Many management teams believe they already understand their employees. Understanding the explicit needs and aspirations of your employees is the place to start, surveying to interpret their needs within the current organisational and labour market context. Many companies do this conducting employee surveys measuring employee sentiment and the prevailing mood within the organisation. Key however in the Audit and Analysis phase is to really understand the unique drivers of engagement and commitment within your organisation, how this compares to the needs and aspirations of your target candidates and how competitive your overall employment value proposition is, relative to that offered by competing organisations.
Without a strategic investigation such as this, you risk developing an Employer brand that’s not competitive, isn’t reflective of true sentiment within your organisation and will not then effectively attract and engage the type of talent you seek for highly successful operations.
Typical Key Findings
Audit and Analysis findings generally diagnose gaps between perceived and current ‘reality’ i.e. the gap between what managers and leadership think, and actual employee experience. If the aim is to create an ‘authentic’ Employer brand then a compelling employment value proposition (EVP) needs to be developed, and those gaps closed.
Armed with key internal and external insights, your organisation now has the key information required to develop a unique and competitive EVP that can be owned by the organisation.
Where are your Information Gaps?
Review the following questions to identify your Employer Brand information gaps:
- How will a stronger employer brand support your organisation’s operational strategy?
- How will a stronger employer brand support your organisation’s people strategy?
- What do employees currently regard as particularly characteristic of and distinctive about your organisation?
- Do your people have a strong sense of the organisation’s purpose and values and how much of a gap there is between stated ideology and what people actually experience?
- How highly do your employees rate your work environment and current HR processes i.e. learning and development, quality of management, internal communications, work-life-balance policies etc?
- How would your employees describe the key benefits (functional and emotional) if working with your organisation?
- Why do your employees choose to work for your organisation?
- Are your people policies in line with current / future labour market trends?
- What perceptions does the labour market hold of your organisation, as a place to work for?
- What is your current Employment Value Proposition and is this sustainable for the future?