Business

What is an Employer Brand and How to improve it?

By Christy Bella | February 4, 2022

The employer brand is one of the components of a holistic image of the company, which shows the attractiveness of the business in the eyes of employees and candidates.

How to understand if a company has problems with employer branding?

Many companies conduct surveys to determine eNPS (employee loyalty ratio), but do not always get the truth. In organizations with a complex hierarchy, people are not ready to openly express dissatisfaction, fearing for their place. Therefore, if you want to understand the real situation and change it for the better, then it would be good to know what people complain about in smoking rooms and in other informal situations.

But first, take a look at the social networks of employees. See if they list their place of work on their accounts and talk publicly about your company.

What is an Employer Brand and How to build an Employer Brand?

In building an employer brand, the same rules apply as for attracting customers – the scope of the company and its mission, the personalities of top managers and heads of departments, the appearance of the site and office, the social package and the compliance of actions with the declared values are important.

For efforts to be useful, there must be a clear business strategy and work at the intersection of HR, marketing, PR and, social advertising. You should not be shy and not lazy to talk about your company offline and online.

There is a long-standing and well-established practice in product marketing – to build a Customer Journey Map (customer journey map. – Ed.), Taking into account all points of contact, pains and wow moments. In the same way, each company must have a Candidate Journey Map – a way for the candidate to interact with the company:

Channels from which the candidate learned about the company, and 3-5 touches with the brand before the start of interaction (articles, social media networks, events, employee reviews, etc.).
The first interaction with the recruiter (hunting or the candidate himself sends the CV).
Negotiations and commercial offer (offer).
Purchase (entry to work and the transformation of the candidate into an employee).
Trial period (relevant for both the employee and the company).
Teamwork (first successes and difficulties, adaptation and training).
Turning an employee into a loyal one (or not).
Recommendation of the employer to your friends (or not).
The moment when an employee ceases to be such (competent offboarding – dismissal)

If any of these steps are skipped or not thought through, the business risks losing an employee and a reputation as an attractive employer. And, as we remember, a dissatisfied client, and in our case this is an employee, tells his friends about the bad experience. With luck, it will be from 5 to 20 people. And if you’re not lucky, then thousands of people in social networks and forums.

That is why a comprehensive approach to attracting and retaining talent should be as well thought out as the marketing strategy.

If any of these steps are skipped or not thought through, the business risks losing an employee and a reputation as an attractive employer. And, as we remember, a dissatisfied client, and in our case, this is an employee, tells his friends about the bad experience. With luck, it will be from 5 to 20 people. And if you’re not lucky, then thousands of people in social networks and forums.

That is why a comprehensive approach to attracting and retaining talent should be as well thought out as the marketing strategy. However, the attractiveness of the employer is the result of the work and attitude of the whole team. And first of all, the leaders who set the tone for the corporate culture.

To better understand and transform corporate culture, every leader should ask themselves the following questions:

In what form do people give and receive feedback?
How does our company feel about risk and failure?
How do we celebrate success?
If an employee has a need for something, how will he express it?
What can be changed in the company right now? And what about the next three months?

Working on the employer brand is not a trick and not a new trend for “snickering IT people”, but a basic necessity. When a company has nothing to attract employees and nothing to retain, this is a real threat to the life of the organization. Creating and implementing an Employer Brand strategy involves a series of decisive actions that will affect every aspect of the business. CNA-IT Employer Branding Company is the solution for your business success.