Top Strategies to Improve Employer Branding

Jobseeker today, do homework regarding the companies they intend to apply to. And with instant access to information, news, and reviews about an organization’s work culture, branding has become an area that no employer would like to miss out on. 

According to a survey by Glassdoor 95% of jobseekers agree that employer branding plays a key role when they decide to apply for a vacancy. Moreover, it is very obvious that employees will feel proud to work for a company that has a strong and positive employer brand. In the meanwhile, good employer branding brings in best-in-class talent who give rise to strong teams who are responsible for the overall growth and success of the organization. 

Therefore, businesses must be mindful about investing in and implementing the right strategies to build and sustain the organizations’ brand as an employer. This write-up gives you a focus on the proven ways to build a positive employer branding. 

What is Employer Branding? 

Employer branding refers to the influence an organization possesses in order to attract new talents into the organizations’ workforce. Employer branding has a direct correlation with people’s perception about the work culture, environment, and aspects such as employee value proposition. With better employer branding one can attract better candidates and stakeholders. In short, employer branding refers to an organization’s branding as an employer. 

Benefits of Building Employer Brand 

• Increased number of applicants per job posting. 
• Saves recruiters’ time by taking care of attracting and sourcing the right talents. 
• Helps enrich the organizations’ talent pool. 
• Helps organizations and recruiters stay ahead in a competitive talent ecosystem. 
• Enables better talent and employee retention rates. 
• Results in candidates’ increased willingness during the offer acceptance stage. 
• Reduced talent attrition rates. 
• Helps reduce the overall hiring cost. 
• Cuts down the overall hiring time. 
• Increased word of mouth promotion about the company thereby making it easier to hire using job referral campaigns. 
• Enables acquiring quality talent with less effort. 

According to a Glassdoor survey, 62% of its users are more likely to respond to a job offer from a reputed organization. 

Strategies to Improve Employer Branding 

1. Proper the right digital platforms 

Today’s recruitment world is taken over by digitization, tools, and technology thereby making it inevitable for every employer to have a strong online presence. Social media is one of the best places that can help organizations project their culture and diversity, employee benefits, updates regarding the company’s achievements, new career and skill development opportunities, and other important announcements and messages to its audience.  

Here is a list of the most commonly used platforms to enhance employer branding. 

• LinkedIn 
• Facebook 
• Instagram 
• Twitter 
• YouTube 
• Spotify 

2. Optimize the organization's website and career page  

In general, job seekers look at the company's website and career page before applying for a job. This makes it important to have informative web content about the organization in place. Here it is recommended to display the necessary information candidates must know before joining the organization such as the company’s vision and mission, business model, achievements, location, contact information and so on.  

A big part of the goal of building an employer brand is to have a creative and informative career page. In addition to that a good career page doesn't just list job openings; it can also be made to tell candidates about the company's culture, diversity, and the perks they offer. Also, you can project your company related features by means of virtual office tours, photos and videos during educational and cultural events, and so on.

 3. Ensure training and growth 

Apart from the monetary benefits top talents also consider the prospects for growth within the organization and the industry. Skilled and most competent candidates tend to choose the offer from an employer who is more prominent over counter offers. Therefore, it is important to present the importance of the role, growth prospects within the organization, and the training and skill development scope offered for its employees. 

For instance, recruitment agencies provide recruiter training and skill upgradation programs. By this the firm gets to ascertain its field of expertise, attract prospective candidates interested in the recruitment industry, become renowned among the niche professionals and establish meaningful connections who can refer you suitable candidates in the future. This also helps attract passive candidates.  

4. Consistency is the key 

With the advent of digital technology, the humungous feat of building a trust worthy employer brand has become easier with the help of readymade templates, recruitment process automation, and a one-click away process. All of this will fetch you the desirable results only on being consistent in your efforts.  

Organizations utilize social media experts to build a robust plan to build employer brand and employ marketing professionals to make their efforts consistent. Also, in the case of providing training, skill development programs, and competitions it is important to keep such activities rewarding and consistent. Only then will your efforts contribute significantly to building a strong employer branding. 

5. Good candidate and employee experience  

In today’s review driven marketplace, it is highly evident that candidates look for company reviews with regards to its growth, performance, candidate selection process, work culture and diversity, work-life balance especially from its current and previous employees before applying. And this becomes a key deciding factor for top talents to accept your offer letter over your competitors’. Therefore, try making the candidate experience as easy, transparent, and fun as possible.  For example, the application process can be made simple and inclusive, onboarding can be made more social, and so on.  

Here it is also important to keep the current employees’ experience positive by communicating regularly, addressing grievances, conducting regular surveys and feedback sessions regarding work-life balance, employee satisfaction, perks, team mates and managers and by proactively acting upon the issues. This will result in lower candidate attrition, a healthy work environment, resulting in employees talking positively about the company culture thereby improving the overall employer brand. 

According to a Glassdoor survey, 65% of job seekers consider reading at least five reviews about the company before even considering applying. 

6. Candidate and employee relationship management 

The way you communicate as a brand as well as a representative of the brand impacts largely on the overall brand of the organization. Mainly candidates and employees have to be kept updated regarding important announcements, notifications, answer queries and concerns. For all this there has to be a pipeline in place to communicate efficiently with the candidates as well as the employees.  

Manual communication for all such instances is not feasible thereby making it a dire necessity to utilize bulk actionable such as emails, notifications, WhatsApp messages, recorded audio and video messages, etc., to be automated for regular communications such as applicant status, onboarding, performance reports, seasonal greetings, and so on.   

Here as an automation solution, recruitment softwares such as Applicant Tracking Systems helps recruiters manage their communication with candidates from one central location by integrating, it with a candidate relationship management tool.  

7. Mobile optimization of online campaigns 

Most of your potential candidates and current employees will be active mobile users therefore make sure to check the mobile compatibility and shareability of your campaigns that are targeted to build employer brand. 

Here is a checklist that you need to monitor for enhanced results of your employer branding campaigns. 

• Make your website and career page mobile compliant. 
• Make sure to have a consistent social media presence. 
• Keep your job referral program campaigns easily shareable across platforms. 
• Implement mobile recruiting steps for submitting application forms, prescreening tests, and interviews. 
• Keep your webinars, competitions, and skill development programs mobile complaint for increased participation. 

Challenges 

The most common challenge that organizations face while building their employer brand is that it is a time-consuming process and the progress will be slow. To counter this, organizations utilize the brand of recruitment agencies and independent recruiters to attract suitable candidates and to build their own talent pool. It is well-known that recruitment firms and industry experts with their powerful network and personal branding can source the best suited talents within a challenging timeline. 

Final Takeaways 

Creating a positive employer brand is not a one-time event but an effort that demands consistency and creativity. Moreover, the best working strategy to create a positive and genuine impact as an employer varies with respect to the type of organization.  

Most importantly, employer branding is not just about enticing new candidates, but also, about keeping the current employees valued and motivated, continuing a goodwill relationship with the alumni, gaining the trust of partners, clients, as well as the general audience. Having all this, you can expect a longstanding, automatic word-of-mouth promotion for your organization in addition to your paid and non-paid efforts to invest in your employer brand. 

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