How to Quickly Get to the Essence of Your Employer Brand

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

So, you know that your employer brand is important, and you’ve committed to understanding more about it, developing yours and appealing to the great candidates who are out there (while also raising retention rates), but how do you find out where you currently stand on employer branding? And how do you work on changing yours?

You could have your staff help you to find the core of your brand by bringing together a small group of employees, focusing on those with skills that are difficult to recruit for. Facilitate open discussion and brainstorming with ideal and scarce candidates.

One idea is to pass out Butcher paper and marker pens. Ask them to write and draw what your brand means to them, what the key elements are, and what they would like to see in the brand.

One idea, not as crazy as it sounds, is to ask them what their company would be if it was an animal or an automobile. T

his group work should be a fun activity, and it will provide some revealing, interesting results. If the 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.

Creating an online feedback forum can help employees communicate with one another. Most important, 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.

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. One great tip is to talk to candidates that turn down roles and ask them why, as well as the relatively common practice of exit interviews. 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.

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 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 Building Your Powerful Employer Brand

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. 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 your powerful employer brand that will help you to attract and retain great staff and keep you ahead of the game:

1. Understand where your business is going: 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.

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

4. Maintain consistency with the corporate brand. It simply 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. 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.

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 must 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?