"How to Quickly & Easily Become an Employer of Choice"

"If your employees love working for your company and buy into your employer brand, they will be your best advertising." - Nigel Barcham.

Being an ‘Employer of Choice’ means being one of the top companies in your industry that potential and current employees actually really want to work for.

In order to become an employer of choice, you need to:

• Recognise that your employer brand is important
• Commit to understanding more about your employer brand
• Develop your employer brand actively
• Appeal to the great candidates who are out there
• Increase the retention rates of new hires

But how do you find out where your company currently stands on the employer of choice scale in potential employees minds? And how do you work on improving this standing?

Some of the following ideas can give you an indication:

1. Have your staff help you to find the core of your employer brand. Bring together a small group of your best employees for an open discussion and brainstorming session focusing on which skills are the most difficult to recruit for

2. At this meeting pass out paper and markers. Ask them to write and draw what your company’s brand means to them, what the key elements are, and what they would like to see within the company that would make it an employer of choice

3. Another idea (not as crazy as it sounds) is to ask them what their company would be if it was an animal or an automobile. This group work should be a fun activity, and it will provide some revealing, interesting results

4. If the drawing activity is too ‘radical’ for you, ask employees to prepare a few paragraphs on what kind of work they love or their favourite activities on the job, or just have a structured discussion

For example, ask them:

“What do you like about working here?”

“What would you like changed to make the company a better place to work?”

Get to know your employees and what they want. Also, find out what they think needs fixing. Employee committees focused on retention strategies are often effective. All these small steps will go a long way to improving your status as an employer of choice.

Another thing you can do in order to move your reputation on towards that of an employer of choice is to create an online feedback forum can help your employees communicate with one another. Most importantly, act on the feedback you receive. Make you’re your staff realise that feedback is important and that everyone’s voice is heard.

Such exercises are an excellent starting point for a discussion, which ultimately allows employees to speak more clearly about what they want from work, in both the short and the long runs. What will make you an employer of choice is your decisive ability to act upon this feedback and positively improve the work environment based on the real needs of your employees.

The Company More Employees WANT to Work For

As well as getting your employees involved, you should do some research into your company’s attractions for potential staff, and look at your turnover. This will give you good insight into where you have hiring challenges, and if you are effectively communicating the employer brand that you hoped you were – namely that of a company with a much better work environment than average.

One great tip is to talk to candidates that turn down roles and ask them why. Another is to conduct exit interviews (which is relatively common practice today) with staff who are leaving you. You should find out how you are perceived not just internally by your staff, but externally. This can be measured by tools such as surveys and focus groups. An understanding of how your company is perceived will allow you to make the changes that will improve your company and your reputation, bolstering your potential to become an employer of choice.  

Once you’ve defined what your employer brand is (or what it should be and how you are going to get there) you need to ensure that everyone in the organisation understands it. This can be done by getting together an “Employer Brand Project Team” which includes not just top executives, but also lower level people. This team must make sure that all company values and attributes are both communicated to staff, AND fully developed in your company advertising, websites and PR programmes. This must be reviewed regularly to make sure that everyone is still walking the walk, and not just giving the employer brand lip service. You will need to deliver on your employer brand in order to become an employer of choice as well as just promising it, especially to keep hold of Generation Y staff. Use employee surveys to ensure that the employer brand is being delivered at all levels and across all teams. The message? Consistency is essential. Failure to deliver on an employer brand will have negative implications for your organisation.

The Eight Steps to Becoming an Employer of Choice

Employer branding is becoming increasingly important in strategic decisions. There are several global trends driving the increase, and some may require you to rethink your employer brand if you want to become an employer of choice. Many of these trends are the same as those driving the global move toward Free Agents, or people who self-manage their careers without being permanently linked to an employer. Free Agents are typically the most skilled and valuable employees.

So what are the eight steps to building a powerful employer brand and your reputation as an employer of choice that will help you to attract and retain great staff and keep you ahead of the game? You need to know the following:

1. Understand where your business is going – the future direction of your company, where it will grow, and what markets you will enter

2. Identify the employees you need to get there. Identify skill gaps and plan when you need employees. Too few employees will lead to stress on your current team and brand damage. Too many and you may need to retrench, which causes even greater brand damage and all but destroy your reputation as an employer of choice

3. Determine the key employer brand attributes – those that define the experience of working with you

4. Maintain consistency with the corporate brand. It must be in harmony

5. Develop a communications plan. Key considerations are budget, timing, markets, media and the priority you give to each. The options include the following:

· Internet: company intranet, e-marketing, direct marketing and promotions. This is particularly important for the under-30s. Ideally develop some simple online tools for them to interact with you or recruiters

· Executive recruitment advertising: Internet, newsletter, radio, direct mail, cinema, and TV. Don’t waste money on big newspaper ads sold by recruiters in some countries

· Event marketing: career fairs, company open house, trade shows, conferences, and special events

· Campus recruiting: on-campus university promotions, sponsorships, and e-marketing

· Employee communications: referral programme (pay for referrals; it is way cheaper than paying recruitment agencies and the calibre of recruit is usually higher), reward and recognition programme, induction programme, and intranet

6. Get testimonials from happy staff. Coach those doing your executive recruiting to successfully answer questions about what it is like to work in your company. Also, they must be selected carefully to embody the brand

7. Establish measurable benchmarks based on desired outcomes, such as cost, speed and quality of hiring. This also enables you to track improvements and improve your reputation as an employer of choice

8. Execute and measure. Set a target launch date and inform employees. They will then champion your new strategy

Following these steps will help you to keep up with and surpass your competition. You will be the employer of choice if you maintain these eight simple steps. However, you must also consider that many of your competitors are now carrying out employer branding exercises. This is most noticeable in the Asia-Pacific region, where 48% of companies were aware of employer branding (compared to 42% in the USA and 38% in Europe. It was also found that 74% of companies in Asia-Pacific felt that developing an employer brand leads to higher staff retention and 54% believe that this exercise reduces recruitment costs. It was also found that on a worldwide scale, approximately a third of all companies have an employer branding strategy in place. Source of all figures: Employer Branding Survey, The Economist 2006 and Robert Half Workplace Survey, Q1 2007).

If a third of companies globally already see the importance of this, and are acting on this, shouldn’t you too? Start improving your company’s reputation today and become an employer of choice tomorrow.