A lot of companies have started to recognise the importance in adopting a strategic approach to their employer brand, especially for candidate attraction, however there is a bit of confusion of who exactly creates this brand. Your employer brand is described as the perception of your company as a great place to work, and while you can go and blow your budget on a sexy Google-inspired employer brand campaign the fact is you still won’t fully control how you are perceived!
The first thing companies need to realise if they want to successfully attract candidates via the employer brand is that they MUST be authentic. If you market a facade it will come back to bite you, through your reputation but also costing you time on wasted job interviews and impacting upon employee retention. Anything you portray MUST reflect the true story of who you are as an employer, so try and use genuine stories that showcase your company culture to promote your employer brand. This isn’t to say you get to work on a corporate video showcasing your employees stressing about their sales targets and complaining to IT support about the printer breaking, just don’t blatantly lie about who you are! It’s like when people say “just be yourself” before you go on a first date; because what’s the point attracting someone who isn’t going to love you for who you are!
The foundation of any employer brand is the employees themselves, they are your “brand builders” because they will form the majority of your content and story but will also help you share and promote that story too. It’s important that you treat your employees well, are transparent in what you do and find opportunities to empower these employees to be advocates of your business. If you don’t get the foundation of your employer brand right (keeping your employees happy and engaged), then you’re going to have problems down the line in both candidate attraction and retention. So in other words be nice or word will soon get out not to touch you with a barge pole.
Some companies choose to ignore the bigger picture and have found that it can impact more than just candidate attraction – it can even cause your customers to generate negative perceptions of you as a business. If you Google “Sports Direct working conditions” you’ll be greeted with a page of results with the terms “appalling”, “not treated as humans”, “like a Victorian workhouse”… the type of thing that will make your candidates run a mile but may also scare away potential customers! We’d like to think that most of you treat your employees well, but if you want to avoid the “Sports Direct effect” then it could be time to carry out an employee engagement survey to make sure everyone is happy!
Looking for more help in shaping your employer brand? Get in touch with us today!
