There’s nothing more important for a company than its employees. They are the driving force behind the success you make and attracting the best and the brightest should be your goal from day one. Employer branding is the key to positioning your company as an attractive prospect on the job market.
Like with any other branding, branding your business as an employer is about knowing what the customers want and turning yourself into a company that can provide it. In these cases, the customers are employees who plan to get a job at your firm.
Infographic: Employer Branding Strategy in 5 Steps
What’s your goal?
The first thing to know is what the goal of your company and its branding strategy is. This will make a difference in both the approach and the scale of your branding strategy. The goal depends on how big your company is, how much you can afford to pay your employees and your position in the market.
Sometimes, a branding campaign is oriented towards getting more visibility on the market and receiving more applications across the board. Other times, it’s about finding the top of the line employees that will help bring your company to the next stage of its development.
Know who the perfect applicant is
When you’re creating an employer brand or an individual job advertisement, you need to have in mind for whom the ad is written. This means that you should figure out what your perfect employee should be like and to use the branding to try and find them.
This goes beyond looking for an applicant with the right skills or someone who will accept your payment level. You need to find a person that will fit in with your company culture and become a member of your team both personally and professionally.
Offer education options
When you ask the employees what they value most in their employers, money doesn’t often come up as the most important matter. In fact, most employees would prefer an employer that would help them get a better education and improve their skills than those who provide larger paychecks and bigger bonuses.
Educating the employees, even on the matters that aren’t related to their job, will create a better working environment and make your workers more loyal to the company. It also allows them to move from one role in the company to another without too much hand-holding and delays.
Flexible employment options
A modern company needs to provide options for different types of employment and give the employees different outlooks on what employment is. The so-called gig economy has changed how companies employ and how freelancers work because it allows companies to save by not having traditional contracts. At the same time, freelancers are enjoying more freedom to pursue a variety of projects at once.
It can be prudent to advertise your company as a business that values self-employment and allows employees to enter into flexible contracts and flexible payment arrangements.
Ask for reviews
It’s imperative to get feedback from your employees if you want to grow and become a company that will attract more applicants and especially the ones that will improve the company. These reviews should be handled in a systematic manner and provided regularly.
The reviews should cover both the company itself and the hiring process in particular. This information will allow you to adapt to the needs of the applicants looking for a job and find common ground that suits both parties.
Building an employer brand will make your company more attractive to potential employees and help you find the best people to work for you. A strategy for making such a brand must be based on honest data and its appraisal.
