Employer Branding Articles
Have you deserted your Employer Brand?
During the downturn many companies refocused priorities and resources, in the process making their Employer Brands virtually redundant. Abandoning an Employer Brand during a recessionary phase can prove to be a very costly mistake during a market upturn.
Let’s not forget the basics surrounding the need to engage employees regardless of the market environment and business challenges. Cutting back on internal communication and people development is short-sighted and a knee jerk reaction. Amidst market recovery, employees will look to ‘jump ship’ on the basis of what is on offer and how they were previously treated.
Employee Engagement – Investing during a down turn
One of the biggest challenges senior executives face during the current recession is managing the need to balance costs with sliding revenues and profits during the market downturn. To find the balance between shedding unprofitable investments and not missing out on too many potentially profitable ones, it remains not a question whether cost cutting should be undertaken, but rather from where, how this is conducted and why it’s crucial to communicate information on such measures to your team.
During the recession, executives placed emphasis upon the financial risk of investing, often at the expense of assessing the competitive risk – i.e. of not investing. How you manage a downturn, including employee engagement and development will directly influence your talent position in an upturn.
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?’
Branding from the Inside
Think of marketing or branding and you could be forgiven if you thought this encompassed a primary focus upon sales, the brand’s position, or even the customer. Just as critical and often omitted in this equation are employees, your brand’s ambassadors and the very people who carry the brand to make it meaningful to the customer.
In the midst of marketing executives developing brand campaigns, we wonder how this crucial element has been so often overlooked by most companies. Ask any group of employees and many will readily admit they don’t actually believe in their brand, feel disengaged or even quite hostile towards it, or the company. By building an employer brand your internal teams are given a powerful emotional connection to the products, services and the company.
Employer Branding – Validate, Align, Communicate
Our previous blogs about Employer Branding have focused on the importance of understanding your current employer brand, how to develop a strategic positioning for your employer brand that is competitive and sustainable in the future, and also identifying how best to develop your Employment Value Proposition (EVP).
Now that you’ve defined your organisation’s unique EVP statements, it’s time to double check. We need to make sure that your employer brand messages are ‘authentic’. We will also discuss how best to align and communicate your employer brand both within your organisation and to the external market.
Brand – Driving your bottom line!
A company’s culture really is its internal brand (what you stand for to your employees, stakeholders and vendors). Internally, culture plays a major part in driving revenue. Your customers and employees are human after all and operate on emotion.
Internal brand/culture is more than just this – it is about employee expectations and their behaviours (adhering to what makes your Company so unique). So how does internal brand/culture really have an effect on revenue?
Employer Branding – Defining your EVP
In previous blogs, I’ve discussed the benefits and basics of employer branding. A key component of employer branding is the development of an Employee Value Proposition (EVP) that communicates the central value message conveyed by the brand.
If you have completed a thorough Audit and Analysis process as discussed here then you should have an understanding of the following, Click Here To Read More
Talent Management – Avoid the Threat of Mass Voluntary Turnover
With talk of ‘green shoots of recovery’ emerging and the doom of the ‘economic down turn’ beginning to disperse, companies need to beware. Mass voluntary turnover of your talented employees may be on the horizon!
As companies begin the recovery talk and consider their readiness for a market up turn, employees may well be coming out of their bunkers and reviewing their employment opportunities. Many employees have suffered pay cuts, bonus-less periods, colleague layoffs, management changes and organisational restructuring and instability over the last 18 months. They have put aside their ‘employment wants’ i.e. skill development, career progression, reward and recognition etc just to remain employed. However, now that there is light at the end of the tunnel, a process of reassessment will begin.
Employer Branding – Insight & Knowledge is the Key
Every organisation has an employer brand. The 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 will take time and will require more work than simply jazzing up recruitment marketing initiatives.
Employer Branding – Building a Sustainable Workforce
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. Although the current environment is overshadowed by the realities of the global downtown, public and private organisations must look beyond this to address longer term issues that will affect the sustainability of their workforce in the future.