Employer branding has become a strategic priority. With today‘s talent shortages and competitive hiring landscape, organizations must convey what makes their company an appealing, unique place to work. An effective employer branding campaign is crucial for attracting top candidates, engaging employees, and strengthening your reputation.
This comprehensive guide explains what employer branding entails, why it matters, and how to leverage it to boost your company culture. Let‘s get started.
What is Employer Branding?
Employer branding refers to your company‘s image and reputation as an employer. It encompasses your values, mission, culture, recruitment marketing, employee experience, work environment, leadership, career growth opportunities, diversity efforts, benefits, and more.
In short, it‘s the full package of reasons candidates should find your organization an exciting, rewarding place to advance their career. It‘s also why current employees feel engaged and motivated to perform their best work with you.
Employer branding sets you apart from competitors vying for talent. With more open jobs than skilled workers to fill them, you must convey the unique employment experience you provide.
Why is Employer Branding Important?
With today‘s talent shortages, you simply can‘t rely on competitive compensation alone. You need a compelling employer brand.
The benefits of strong employer branding include:
- Attracting Top Talent: You‘ll appeal to more candidates and applicants by showcasing your strengths.
- Boosting Productivity: Engaged, motivated employees perform better work.
- Retaining Employees: You‘ll reduce turnover costs by keeping talent longer term.
- Enhancing Reputation: Customers, vendors, and partners will view you more favorably.
- Lowering Recruitment Costs: You‘ll fill openings faster with fewer resources required.
Simply put, employer branding is vital for acquiring and retaining a skilled, motivated workforce to drive organizational success.
Employer Branding vs. Corporate Branding
While employer branding and corporate branding strategies share some overlap, they serve different core purposes.
Employer branding spotlights your organization as a place to work. The audience is job candidates and current employees. The focus is the employment experience – company culture, leadership, benefits, career growth, work environment, and so on.
Corporate branding centers on your overall brand identity, reputation, services, and relationship with all stakeholders – customers, partners, investors, communities, etc. Here the emphasis includes your mission, vision, values, offerings, and customer service.
Both are integral to your success and should align. But employer branding zeroes in on talent, their needs and priorities.
Components of a Strong Employer Brand
What comprises an employer brand that stands out? Key elements include:
Mission and Values: Demonstrate what your company cares about and where you aim to go. Show candidates the meaningful work they‘ll do.
Culture: Spotlight what your environment and leadership style feels like day-to-day. Highlight collaboration, innovation, inclusion, camaraderie.
Benefits: Tout competitive pay, health insurance, retirement plans, vacation time, family leave, continuing education, childcare stipends, and other perks.
Career Growth: Detail advancement opportunities, skills training, mentorships, tuition assistance, and leadership development programs.
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI): Emphasize any employee resource groups, hiring initiatives targeting underrepresented groups, pay equity audits, belongingness surveys, sensitivity training, and similar efforts.
Work Environment: Convey what your workspaces, tools, flexibility, wellness incentives, amenities, remote or hybrid policies offer.
Employer Brand Storytelling: Share genuine stories, videos, testimonials, and imagery of real employees that bring your culture to life.
The right mix of elements will convey an authentic employer brand aligned with your applicants‘ values and priorities.
How Does Strong Employer Branding Boost Company Culture?
So how exactly does great employer branding translate to better company culture? In several key ways:
It Attracts More Qualified Candidates
Top talent is drawn to places enabling them to do meaningful work and advance their careers. A compelling brand promises that.
It Improves New Hire Onboarding
You attract candidates already bought into your mission and environment. So new hires integrate faster and engage sooner.
It Boosts Employee Morale
Working somewhere reputable and aligned with your values intrinsically raises job satisfaction and pride.
It Increases Employee Advocacy
When workers feel genuinely positive about their employer, they organically endorse you online to friends and networks.
It Encourages Longer Tenure
The more your culture and brand sync with talent needs, the longer employees remain and produce great work.
Employer branding and company culture share a mutually reinforcing relationship. Each feeds the other for sustainable success.
Benefits of Employer Branding
Beyond boosting your company culture, robust employer branding offers additional benefits:
- Increased applicant volume and pipeline
- Faster, more cost-efficient recruitment
- Lower turnover leading to retention of intellectual capital
- Positive PR and third-party endorsements
- Market distinction in a competitive sector
- Enhanced productivity from engaged employees
- Stronger customer satisfaction based on employee satisfaction
A 2022 LinkedIn survey found 78% of candidates consider employer brand before applying for a job. Developing positive employer branding must be priority.
Best Strategies for Employer Branding
How does one cultivate a genuine, appealing employer brand? Key strategies include:
Spotlight Authentic Culture
Show candidates everyday realities – videos, testimonials, stories, imagery, employee spotlights, office tours.
Leverage Employees as Advocates
Encourage workers to share content and engage socially to drive organic reach.
Promote Brand on Careers Site
Dedicate an entire page to employer brand featuring workers, DEI efforts, benefits, events, videos.
Track Metrics Rigorously
Analyze critical performance indicators like cost per hire, turnover rate, job acceptance rate, source of hire.
Respond to Reviews
Actively monitor and address feedback sites evaluations to manage reputation.
Integrate Brand Across Channels
Ensure your message permeates job posts, email signatures, swag, solar channels, brochures, ads.
Invest in Management Training
Equip people leaders with inclusion coaching, empathy workshops, unconscious bias mitigation to champion culture.
The above strategies help craft an authentic, engaging story conveying why your organization is an incredible place to grow a career. Candidates will take notice.
Top Employer Branding Platforms
Sophisticated employer branding software makes executing an effective branding and recruitment marketing strategy achievable.
Here are some top-rated platforms to consider:
1. Papirfly
Papirfly is an end-to-end solution including templates, workflows, and analytics so organizations can easily create, manage and amplify their employer brand across every channel and touchpoint.
Companies like BMW, IBM and LÓreal centralize their global employer brand building through Papirfly.
Key Features
- 15,000+ templates for employer websites, job ads, email signatures, social posts
- Digital asset management to store, organize all employer brand assets
- Detailed analytics tracking brand asset engagement and reach
- Automations to simplify creation and distribution
- Gigabit-speed content delivery network for fast load times
- Robust access and permissions controls
2. SmartDreamers
SmartDreamers offers tailored strategies, software and services to help employers attract and engage high-quality talent by conveying their unique brands.
Global brands like SAP, Schneider Electric and Colgate-Palmolive leverage SmartDreamers to power their recruitment marketing and employer branding efforts.
Key Features
- Built-in analytics to optimize spending and recruitment ROI
- Chatbot screening to engage candidates 24/7
- Candidate hub to nurture relationships beyond just applying
- Job page personalization with unique URLs
- Automated candidate rediscovery when new jobs arise
3. Energage
Energage Employer Branding solution helps spotlight your differentiators like culture, values and diversity to stand out to applicants. Its AI-powered community builds authentic stories conveying why your company is an awesome place to work.
Organizations like Dish Network, Ben & Jerry‘s and Quicken Loans use Energage to boost their brands.
Key Features
- Employee survey program to capture workplace feedback
- Automated insights into company strengths and growth areas
- Cultural badges and highlight creation
- Metrics benchmarking against top performers
- Social sharing tools for employees
4. GoHire
GoHire offers an array of tools to amplify your employer brand digitally. This allows showcasing your culture to candidates where they already spend time searching online and on social media.
Global organizations like UPS, FedEx, Nestle, Pepsi and Airbnb use GoHire to attract talent.
Key Features
- Build a customized, sleek career site
- Seamless integration with popular job boards
- Simplified applicant tracking
- ROI tracking by traffic source
- Automated job posting to multiple sites
The Takeaway
A compelling employer brand is mission-critical, enabling you to inspire candidates and retain stellar employees over the long haul.
This requires conveying an authentic, engaging story aligned with applicant values. Continuous tracking, response solicitation, advocacy incentives and modern branding tools keep your culture credible and outreach effective.
Prioritize employer branding to acquire and nurture a skilled, motivated workforce propelling your organization forward today and tomorrow.
