Developing Your Employer Brand: How to Attract and Retain High Performers
/Most companies, whether they're serving businesses or consumers, spend a lot of time and money thinking about what their brand is to their customers.
Those companies that were ahead of the curve have also been spending time and money on their employer brands.
Now that we have a super tight talent market unlike anything we've ever seen before, companies are realizing they should’ve been devoting resources to an employer brand all along.
Let go of what you didn’t do, and start now.
Talent allows you to grow
I often see young companies that can’t sell more products or services until they hire more. And recruiting isn’t as simple as putting up a job ad — not in this competitive talent market.
Companies need to spend as much energy finding employees as they do finding customers. Recruiting talent is just as important as acquiring customers. Maybe more so? After all, it’s talent that allows you to grow.
I’m not talking about putting more energy into your HR department for recruiting. You may need to do that as well.
This is about marketing, though. Your marketing team is the best at marketing, so you should be collaborating with them on your employer brand as well as consumer brand.
See: When to Hire Your First Employee (and the One After That)
Start with your values
Do I sound like a broken record about corporate values?
I’ll keep talking about them because they’re the basis of everything you do, and that’s no different when we’re talking about your employer brand.
In fact, hiring is arguably the place where your values matter the most. After all, the people you put in those roles are going to uphold (or not uphold) those values going forward.
So, what are your values? What’s your culture? And what does that look like in action?
Talk to your current employees about what attracted them to your organization and what keeps them there. Talk to prospective employees about what they’re looking for in a company so you can identify what elements of your culture to highlight.
See: How to Develop Your Core Values (and Implement Them) in Six Steps
Then you talk about what you learned. Just putting up a web page or mentioning that you’re hiring on your social media profile isn’t enough.
Here are some ideas:
Include employee testimonials on your employee-centric web page and on your social media profiles. Focus on LinkedIn.
Create videos of your team in action and talking about the work they do
Write blog posts about your corporate values and how you live them
Talk about your corporate social responsibility. If charitable activities are part of your culture, share information about your company’s engagement
Profile employees, and don’t just talk about their credentials or the work they do. Share who they are as people and what they do outside of work
Speak at events where prospective employees will be in attendance and talk about how your company lives out its values, apply for and win awards
Use keyword targeting and job postings in relevant publications to direct potential candidates to your employee-centric web page
Reach out directly to potential candidates and share what it’s like to work on your team. Are there third parties who can help? (Technical.ly)
One of the things business owners often worry about is their ability to provide a salary and benefits package that allows them to compete in the talent marketplace.
If you keep losing candidates to companies with richer benefits, you may have to take a step back and analyze your budget.
At the same time, a strong employer brand can help you change the balance between the quantitative and qualitative aspects of the job. That’s where you showcase your culture and your values.
We have great managers who do weekly one-on-one meetings with their team.
We invest in professional development and offer opportunities to grow. Here are some examples.
We do charity work together once a month. Look at all of us engaging in this work together.
We have an incredibly close-knit team. Here are testimonials from some of them about what it’s like to work together.
Every work environment is about more than the salary and the benefits package. The people you’re hiring are human beings, and they want a positive experience when they go to work (or log on) everyday.
You can use your employer brand to highlight the things that make your company an interesting place to work. Show a prospective employee what it’s like to be a part of your team.
If you’ve ever been on a college tour, you can take inspiration from what academic institutions are doing. When I took my son on his college tours, they were selling rock walls and cruise-ship inspired dining halls. The peer tour guides were the most animated, excited, happy people on the campus.
They took us everywhere but the classroom because they weren’t selling the academics. They were showing my son what it would feel like to be a student there.
See: Should You Outsource Your Hiring?
Developing a remote employer brand
The biggest challenge in developing an employer brand in the past year has been the introduction of remote work and distributed teams for many organizations that didn’t have that as part of their culture.
Building a local employer brand feels more straightforward than building a national or international or global employer brand. (We’re used to attending local events and building geographically-centric networks.)
The increased competition may be intimidating, but you also get a bigger pool of candidates. Plus, the process for building your brand is the same.
Hopefully over the last year and a half, you’ve found ways to transition your culture to fit a more distributed working environment. Highlight the things you’re doing to stay connected. Show candidates that they’d be joining a team, not just a bunch of people on separate islands working on adjacent projects.
Final thoughts
Not having the time or money are the most common reasons companies don’t focus on an employer brand.
The truth is, you can’t afford not to develop an employer brand — not in this talent market.
Just like you’d look at your cost per acquisition (CPA) in marketing, you have to look at your cost per hire (CPH). Then determine how much you’re willing to spend to find good talent.
Oh, and don’t think that using a recruiter means you don’t need an employer brand. Anyone who’s considering working with you will be looking for a clear messaging to prospective employees.
What if you’re a small organization with an equally small budget?
Unfortunately, you’re likely in need of an employer brand even more than larger companies with more name recognition and bigger benefits packages. Even if you can’t shell out for all the bells and whistles, get started. Talk to your employees, get testimonials, and create an employee-centric web page that shows what it’s like to work with your team.
In a couple years, you’ll be glad you didn’t wait. Contact us to learn more about how the Trajectify team can help your business get the talent it needs.
