Due to growing competition in acquiring talent, professionals now have a far greater choice over where they work and who they work for. This shift in power now means that companies are having to sell themselves even more so than ever. General corporate marketing simply will not suffice anymore. Employer branding focuses on highlighting employee experience, promoting the appeal of working for their company, and outlining all the perks of working for that company and how it would benefit the employee. Before social media existed, employers had a degree of freedom to promote their internal processes in a good light regardless of the internal state of the company, and rarely wold people question it. However, employees have such a wide outlet to voice their opinions through social media that companies must ensure employees have a good perception of the brand they are working for and are happy in their working environment.

Create employee satisfaction

A strong employer brand is not achievable if you do not take care of your employees. First assess the position of your current brand identity internally. Conducting surveys and interviews are a great way of determining your employee’s satisfaction rates. Identify what you do well in ensuring your employees are taken care of and establish an account of the things you need to improve on in order to enhance satisfaction in your workplace. Your employees are an asset to your brand and have the ability to influence perceptions of your brand. Your employees are essentially recruiters for your brand and can have a huge impact on acquiring new talent depending on how they portray what its like to work for your company. Implement an employee satisfaction strategy. Build upon what you do well and focus on improving attributes that your employees deem important and attractive.

Determine brand perceptions

Perception has an influence on consumer behaviour, therefore having an impact on an individual’s drive and motivation to engage with a product or brand. There is clear evidence to suggest that perception is an internal stimulus that can be influenced by many external factors. These factors can be easily modified through the use of effective marketing. It can be detrimental to your brand If the correct use of marketing is not utilised in order to influence and enhance perceptions. It is important to maintain an awareness of brand perceptions of your organization. Invest in determining the factors that influence those perceptions.

Once an understanding of the influencing factors that could impact on brand engagement have been established, recommendations of the efforts that the business can make in order to modify their marketing strategy to adapt to these issues can be implemented.

Attract New Talent

At this point in the recruitment process, it is time to start building up your brand image in order to strengthen your employer proposition. Focus on highlighting why job seekers would want to work for you and how working for your organisation would benefit them. Promote the internal working environment of your organization. Ensure that you target your employer branding to the type of individual you wish to ultimately employ.

When marketing your brand to prospective employees:

• Promote the culture of your organisation
• Promote the ways by which employees are rewarded and celebrated for their performance and achievements.
• Advertise your awards and accolades. This is a great way of marketing your organisation and demonstrating your efforts and achievements.
• Promote the ways by which you encourage career development and outline the training you provide your employees and any progression prospects.

Measure and Evaluate

Now that you have invested in creating a strong employer brand, invest in measuring your efforts. Whether you have been successful in acquiring new talent or not, monitoring the effectiveness of your employer branding efforts both internally and externally is crucial in determining whether you are fulfilling your aims or not. Research from EBI 2011 found that employers use the following in order to measure return on investment of employer branding:

• Retention rate
• Employee engagement
• Quality of hire
• Cost per hire
• Number of applicants

If you are looking for someone to help you to improve your employer branding then please contact us on 0207 788 6600 and our expert consultants will help you find the right HR professional for the role.