Employer Branding

Employer branding is a strategic process that helps shape a company’s reputation as a desirable employer in the market to attract, engage, and retain top talent.

It requires active efforts and actions to craft a compelling narrative about your company, showcasing its uniqueness while highlighting employee experience and the company’s positive work environment to differentiate it from the crowded job market.

An employer branding strategy goes beyond competitive benefits such as salary packages, group health insurance policy coverage, and a flexible work environment. It encompasses the four Ps—people, purpose, platform, and performance.

Thus, when employers are recruiting, their goal now is to win the minds and hearts of the desired employees with the help of a strong employer branding strategy.

Within employer branding, there are four different approaches to explore according to business requirements. All these branding strategies focus on different aspects of the recruitment and selection process.

To help you understand better, let us look at each of them below:

-External Employer Branding- This employer branding strategy focuses on attracting potential employees by showcasing your organisation’s positive work environment and culture.

-Internal Employer Branding- This employer branding strategy focuses on your organisation's current employees. It involves implementing a comfortable and positive work environment for them to ensure they are motivated and satisfied. This can include the provision of bonuses, incentives, group health insurance coverage, etc.

-Branding of Employee Advocacy- This employer branding strategy focuses on promoting your organisation with the help of your existing employees. Within this strategy, the current employees work as brand ambassadors and share about your company, their satisfaction and positive working experience with their network.

-Branding of Candidate Experience- This employer branding strategy focuses on providing potential candidates with a smooth and memorable hiring experience. By ensuring a positive and smooth experience, your organisation will create a lasting impression on the candidate.

Employer branding in HRM (Human Resource Management) is crucial for hiring the right talent, providing a positive working environment, and keeping existing employees satisfied.

When it comes to planning and implementing an employer branding strategy, HRM focuses on the key aspects of showcasing your organisation as desirable by initiating and executing engaging employee activities and programs.

Moreover, it acts as a standardised publication or billboard for your organisation by promoting various activities and programs through different mediums to encourage a productive working environment and attract the required talent pool towards your company.

Increases Employee Retention

One of the primary benefits of employer branding is employee retention. As the competition in the job market is constantly increasing, retaining employees has become a significant concern for many employers.

With the help of employer branding, you can create a positive working environment for your existing employees by creating a sense of belonging and encouraging them to work better.

Increases Employee Satisfaction

Implementing well-thought-out employer branding activities can significantly enhance employee engagement, making existing and new employees feel more valued at the workplace.

Moreover, when their contributions are acknowledged, they will feel more comfortable sharing their views and more inclined to make the required efforts to ensure your company’s overall success.

Attracts Top Talent

When you position your organisation as a positive workplace with happy employees and a motivating work environment with the help of a strong employer branding campaign, you will be able to attract top talent from around the world.

Employees are constantly on the lookout for opportunities wherein they not only fit well with the work culture but also get to stay happy and motivated. With this, you will benefit from reduced time and effort for recruitment.

Improves Market Image

When you understand employer branding meaning and how to make use of it for your organisation, you will also be able to place yourself as a “Top Employer” in the market.

With this positive word of mouth about your company in the industry, your overall market image will change. This will help attract new talent, customers, and even investors when your business needs them.

Ensures Positive Candidate Experience

One of the most integral aspects of recruitment is making the candidate feel comfortable and acknowledged.

With an effective employer branding campaign, you can create a memorable experience for candidates by giving them a sense of belonging from the first interview to the last and ensuring a smooth interview process from start to end.

Increases Employee Referrals

Another crucial benefit of employer branding is increased employee referrals. Often, the recruitment process can get tedious due to the limitations of the available talent pool for a required job role.

However, when your existing employees are happy with their work culture and environment, they are more willing to refer candidates that they feel are a good fit. This also helps increase positive word of mouth about your organisation in the market.

Assess your Company- The first step is to understand your current employee value proposition. Moreover, understand what more you can offer in terms of company culture and working environment to improve the employees' experience.

Understand the Target Audience- In the next step, evaluate who you want to attract with your employer branding campaign. This is necessary to plan the type of employer branding approach you must adopt to cater to the required target audience.

Define Employee Value Proposition (EVP)- After completing the assessment and finalising the target audience, the next step is to list down the employee benefits you offer after they join your company. This will help you plan your employer branding strategy more accurately.

Explore Different Content Types- The next step is to plan what content types you would want to incorporate into your strategy. You must make a good mix of exciting, creative, and powerful content types to ensure your existing and new employees engage with it. Some options include-**

Work perks (team-building activities, employee feedback, growth and support opportunities, a reward system, and transparency).

• Onboarding experience

• Employee spotlights

• Employee testimonials

• Careers page

• Job positions, etc.

Evaluate- After implementation, the last step is to evaluate the impact of your efforts to assess which ones work. You can do so by measuring employee retention, satisfaction, new hires, types of candidates applying, etc., to improve your employer branding.

Monitor Social Media Channels- Monitor the company's social media channels constantly to see who is mentioning you, the reviews people are leaving, etc. This will give you a clear idea of what is working on your social media channels.

Surveys- Conduct employee surveys to understand what changes they would like to see in terms of work culture and environment. This will also help you understand how happy your existing employees are.

Anonymous Brand Surveys- To understand your company’s brand awareness and opinion in the market, conduct surveys with the general public to see how they view you as an employer.

Compare Application to Hiring Ratio- To understand if the planned employer branding strategy is working well, track the number of applicants applying for a job in your organisation and calculate the ratio of hires from the pool. This will highlight how potential employees view you as an employer.

Assess Employee Retention Records- Lastly, assess employee retention rates, as this will be a clear indicator of whether your organisation is providing a good working environment to employees and their satisfaction levels.

• Check what is working and what is not working in your employer branding approach. Assess your past practices and make necessary adjustments to improve the results.

• Introduce more competitive packages if possible to see if that is one of the reasons why candidates and existing employees are leaving your organisation.

• Encourage active participation from employees to promote a positive work environment. You can do so by planning fun activities, offering more work flexibility, and promoting a better work-life balance.

• To increase value addition for the employees, offer a higher scope of professional growth and development via training programs, on the job training, promotions, etc., to ensure the top talent stays with your organisation.

• Lastly, assess your recruitment and onboarding process to identify and bridge any gaps in the current procedure that might not meet the new candidates' expectations of an employer.

Netflix

Netflix, one of the most popular global streaming platforms, also has strong employer branding. Its approach to this strategy is very straightforward, as it has clear channels for employee updates.

For instance, their Instagram handle has a dedicated content category for employee stories where they highlight their journeys via internal campaigns. Moreover, they also have a very detailed “Careers Page” where they showcase the work culture, company employee stories, and more details about Netflix’s story and history.

Chipotle

Chipotle, one of the largest Mexican restaurants in the world with over 3000 restaurants, is all about its employees. It is an impressive example of employer branding as it focuses on employee well-being by offering various value-added perks to its employees.

For instance, their Instagram page “People of Chipotle” highlights employee achievements, career growth trajectories, and work get-togethers. This helped Chipotle create a positive image in the market.

HubSpot

A great example of an internal employer branding strategy is HubSpot. This leading contact relationship management, sales, marketing, and service company offers a wide range of upskilling courses and resources for everyone.

Simultaneously, they offer a balanced and positive work environment for their employees, with complete work flexibility and ownership, high transparency, team collaboration activities, and constant motivation to do better. They also have a culture code deck to help new candidates understand the work culture from start to finish.

In today’s competitive job market, employer branding is no longer a luxury but a necessity. When you invest in a strong employer branding strategy, you transform your company from just another workplace to a desirable employer.

Employer branding can help attract top talent, increase employee satisfaction and loyalty, improve employee retention rates, and more. However, for effective employer branding, the entire team within an organisation needs to work together to make their brand desirable for potential employees.

Other than employer branding, safeguarding your employees’ health and well-being with Tata AIG’s group mediclaim policy is a great way to motivate and retain employees. It provides extensive coverage for pre- and post-hospitalisation charges, doctor fees, maternity benefits, in-patient treatment expenses, etc.

Additionally, explore our website to learn more about SME insurance to safeguard your business against unexpected expenses that hamper business continuity.

Does employer branding benefit small companies?

Whether you are a big organisation or a small business, an employer branding strategy will help you stand out from the crowd among your competitors. It will additionally help you build a strong and positive brand image in the market to attract top talent.

How can employees help with employer branding?

Existing employees from your organisation can be great brand ambassadors for your business. All they need to do is share positive reviews and comments about the work culture and environment within their professional network. You can do so by developing various employee advocacy programs to encourage employees.

Is social media an accurate way to begin employer branding?

Social media channels have a significant impact on the way people communicate and process information. Thus, using social media for employer branding can help you promote your work ethics, culture, and employee stories without any expensive investment.