8 Tips on How to Build a Strong Employer Brand

Your business’ brand reputation and perception as an employer among your employees and prospective workforce is a crucial determinant of the type of talent you attract. To hire the best of the best, businesses need to focus on how to build a strong employer brand that is inspiring, compelling, and resonates with the larger workforce. This article will give you 8 tips to elevate your employer brand and actualize your business’ full potential.

Before getting into how to build a strong employer brand, it is important to understand what an employer brand is.

An employer brand is your organization’s image and reputation as an employer among the workforce. This includes your existing employees, as well as the broader workforce that makes up your hiring pool.

There are many ways to establish your employer branding. It primarily involves using various mediums to divulge information about your organization’s identity, vision, mission, goals, and priorities to let people know what it’s like to work for you. Some avenues for solidifying your employer branding include:

• Your organization’s career page
• Your organization’s social media presence
• Workplace review websites
• Your company’s content (such as blogs, videos, infographics, etc.)
• Your employees’ experiences at the organization

Strong employer branding attracts the right talent to your organization and retains your best employees by situating you as an organization worth working for. Here are some notable benefits of employer branding:

• It attracts top talent that is also the right fit for your business
• It retains your existing talent
• It decreases hiring costs
• It creates a positive brand perception

A strong employer brand increases your organization’s visibility and makes it a top choice among candidates. Here are some numbers that stand testament to the importance of a strong employer brand:

• An overwhelming 88% of job-seekers take employer brand into consideration when applying for a job
• 72% of recruiting leaders agree that employer brand has an impact on hiring
• Employer branding can increase employee engagement by 20%
• 76% of applicants want to know about a company’s tram culture and values before they accept a job offer at the company
• You can increase your company’s referral rate by up to 51% with a positive employer brand
• Investing in employer branding makes companies three times more likely to make a quality hire
• Conversely, 69% of candidates report that they would reject job offers from companies with a bad employer brand

Here are 8 tips on how to build a strong employer brand, so you can effectively communicate your organization’s identity and values to the workforce.

Identify your brand’s current strengths and weaknesses by conducting an employer brand audit. Go to social media, job-boards, and company review sites to see what past and current employees are saying about you. Take note of the good and the bad.

The information you gather from your audit will give you crucial pointers about what employees like and don’t like about your organization at the current moment. From there, you can use this information to come up with an employer brand strategy that leverages the positives and fixes the negatives.

Another way to build your employer brand is by aligning company values and policies. If your company’s values are not reflected in policies or, worse, are contrary to policies, it reflects very poorly on your employer brand. A business with strong employer branding has policies that align with the company’s broader values, thereby creating a positive working environment and experience for its employees. For instance, if you are a capacity-building organization that enables continuous growth for your target audiences, it would help to also have capacity-building opportunities and programs for your own employees.

You must also gather employee feedback about the workplace to evaluate whether your employer brand comes through as intended. Set up internal feedback channels where employees can submit their grievances and suggestions.

However, collecting employee feedback is not enough. You will need to act on it and keep employees in the loop about your plans and strategies for addressing feedback.

Employee feedback will not only improve your employer brand internally but also externally, as it will reduce the likelihood of employees sharing their frustrations on external platforms.

To meaningfully attract and retain candidates, you must have a unique and attractive employer value proposition (EVP). An EVP is a marketing message that contains factually correct information about your brand, values, mission, etc. It lets potential employees know what kind of business you are and what are your priorities as an organization and as an employer. A value proposition expresses your business’ purpose, as well as the environment and provisions you offer to employees. It can include:

• Your company’s vision
• Management style
• Career development opportunities
• Level of flexibility offered
• Job security
• Community and networking
• Perks and benefits apart from salary

Another effective strategy for how to build a strong employer brand is to make your employees your brand advocates. If you incorporate the tips mentioned above, it will be likely that your current employees resonate with your employer brand. Hearing good things about an employer from employees is one of the most effective ways to establish yourself as a desirable workplace among potential candidates, since employee word-of-mouth is seen as more trustworthy than a business’ own words.

A positive and well-aligned company culture is also a significant contributor to building a strong employer brand as it shapes employees’ experiences to reflect your brand’s values and priorities. Just like your policies, it is recommended to shape your company’s culture based on your organizational values so that there is harmony in your stated intentions as an employer and what it really is like to work at your organization.

You can also leverage the hiring process to establish a strong employer brand among potential candidates. Structure your hiring process to be candidate-friendly and weave key aspects of your employer brand into potential candidates’ initial encounters with your company. This could range from simple hospitability to a unique hiring process that is tailor-made to fit your organization’s culture and vision.

Lastly, once you have hired desirable candidates, create a positive onboarding experience for them. Make the onboarding experience smooth, enjoyable, and inspiring. Get employees excited about their roles and make the onboarding process consistent with your employer brand.

Given the importance of employer brand, businesses should invest time, energy, and resources into how to build a strong employer brand. Businesses can leverage their culture, policies, employees, and hiring and onboarding process to create a cohesive and consistent employer brand that attracts and retains the right fit of candidates.