As DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) initiatives continue to be deprioritized across the automotive industry due to budget cuts, maintaining strong, consistent DEI communications remains essential for talent acquisition, employee retention and brand reputation:

Rather than eliminating DEI efforts, brands can leverage automated marketing technology to sustain and even enhance their messaging at a fraction of the cost.

Templated content creation tools empower anyone in your organization to produce high-quality, on-brand materials. A well-organized Digital Asset Management (DAM) system streamlines campaign execution and ensures compliance.

Below, we’ll explain how Papirfly’s powerful Digital Asset Management and Content Creation Suite can make your DEI communications more cost-efficient, more consistent and more effective across your company.

4 ways Papirfly’s solutions deliver cost-efficient DEI communications at scale

1. Achieve scalable DEI content with on-brand content creation tools

Manual content creation is a major drain on automotive marketing budgets:

• Content production is time-consuming and resource-heavy
• It limits scalability and diversity
• It prevents localization and personalization
• It slows campaign execution
• It impacts brand consistency

Papirfly’s on-brand content creation software enables you to not only maintain but expand your DEI communications.

Intelligent design templates lock in key branding elements (logos, slogans, colors, etc.) so your teams can create content efficiently while staying on-brand. No more bottlenecks that delay campaign launches or result in low-quality, off-brand materials.

Plus, because our templated content creation solution is so intuitive, anyone can produce DEI communications – no design skills required. So if your local dealership or factory runs a recruitment campaign, they can generate content in-house, rather than rely on HQ.

Speaking of local teams, templates include customizable text and image fields, so regional teams can create localized employer brand campaigns. Combined with automated approval workflows that suit a dealership network structure, this software delivers truly agile, self-sufficient marketing.

Even without a dedicated DEI team, on-brand content creation software lets you produce high-impact, multichannel campaigns faster, more consistently and more cost-effectively than ever.

2. Ensure standardized, compliant DEI messaging with DAM

Alongside our templated content creation solution, Papirfly’s DAM software streamlines your DEI communications, ensuring structure, compliance, and efficiency.

By centralizing all DEI and employer brand content, our DAM system eliminates scattered assets. Assets can be tagged and categorized based on location, users, language and beyond, so your messaging is nuanced to the relevant region, while custom access control lets you manage who can retrieve particular assets.

This seamless access to all DEI materials empowers both HQ and regional teams to execute campaigns on time and reduce wasted resources.

Beyond this, our DAM solution saves time and money by automating compliance across your digital assets – something few DAM systems offer:

Total compliance and total control over your digital DEI assets – Papirfly’s DAM system ensures only approved, on-brand content reaches your marketing channels.

3. Educate your frontline employees with powerful brand portals

To empower frontline workers to create impactful DEI content, they need a deep understanding of your brand. Papirfly’s brand portal makes this seamless by centralizing brand guidelines and campaign materials in one accessible space.

Unlike standard DAM solutions, brand portals ensure employees can easily educate themselves on how to communicate DEI messaging effectively. 

You can create custom campaign or regional pages, clarifying what assets your people can use, available templates and general guidelines. They are simple to make, and you can assign access rights based on country, region and other parameters.

By integrating seamlessly with our DAM software, intuitive brand portals cut search time and provide clear content direction. The result? Consistent, authentic DEI communications across all channels, and employees inspired to be ambassadors for your automotive brand.

4. Measure the ROI of your DEI communications with real-time analytics

Tracking the effectiveness of your DEI communications is key to continuous improvement. Papirfly’s marketing data and analytics tools provide real-time insights into what content your teams are engaged with across your organization.

With our tools, you can analyze campaign adoption rates to see which assets are being accessed by your dealerships and regional teams. 

You can also gather insights from successful, popular campaigns and apply those insights to underperforming regions, refining your global DEI communications strategy.

With a customizable analytics dashboard, you can focus on the data that matters most – filtered by date, region, and asset type – ensuring your DEI communications remain impactful, data-driven, and consistently optimized.

Papirfly: Your key to successful DEI communications at scale and under budget

Even as DEI departments disappear across the automotive industry, strong, sustainable DEI communications remain crucial for employee recruitment and retention.

Papirfly’s dynamic Digital Asset Management and Content Creation Suite is the only way to maximize the reach of your DEI content against ever-shrinking budgets. 

Through our smart content creation templates, cohesive DAM system and insightful brand portals, you not only replace the role of a DEI department or team. You take the volume, quality and consistency of these communications to the next level, all while staying within budget.

In today’s highly competitive pharmaceutical sector, companies face an increasingly complex challenge in attracting and retaining top talent. Traditional recruitment methods are no longer enough in an industry that demands innovation, speed, and expertise. As the pharma industry grapples with a shortage of skilled professionals, the importance of employer branding has never been more critical.

Employer branding goes far beyond simply promoting a company’s products and services—it’s about defining what it’s like to work there. A strong employer brand fosters trust, sets a company apart from its competitors, and signals to potential employees that the organization values their growth, fosters a positive work culture, and is committed to employee well-being. But with the talent market flooded with outdated job descriptions and a lack of differentiation, can pharma companies afford to overlook this key aspect of recruitment?

What makes a strong employer brand?

A compelling employer brand isn’t just about creating a catchy tagline or designing an attractive job posting. It’s the essence of what makes a company a desirable place to work. At its core, a strong employer brand revolves around a clear and compelling Employer Value Proposition (EVP)—a statement that defines what the company stands for and the unique benefits it offers to employees.

In the pharma industry, a successful employer brand highlights elements such as:

• Career development opportunities: Pharma professionals are looking for growth opportunities that align with their ambition. A strong employer brand offers clear pathways for progression.
• Commitment to innovation and patient care: Talented individuals in pharma are deeply motivated by the impact they can have on healthcare. A company that demonstrates innovation in treatments and services will attract professionals driven by this mission.
• Company culture: A strong culture that values collaboration, diversity, and work-life balance can make a company stand out as a desirable place to work.
• Employee benefits: Today’s top candidates expect more than just a paycheck. Companies that demonstrate a commitment to employee well-being, such as flexible working arrangements, wellness programs, and competitive benefits packages, appeal to the best talent.

But creating a strong brand isn’t enough if the messaging isn’t consistent. Pharma companies must ensure that their brand is communicated uniformly across all touchpoints—job boards, company websites, social media, and recruitment campaigns. Consistency in messaging helps reinforce the company’s values, making it easier for potential employees to identify with the brand.

How employer branding attracts top pharma talent

When potential candidates evaluate where they want to work, one of the first things they consider is a company’s reputation. A strong employer brand increases the trust and credibility of an organization, making it more attractive to high-caliber professionals.

In fact, 56% of pharma companies report significant challenges in hiring for critical positions due to a shortage of qualified professionals (PharmaTimes). However, companies with strong employer brands see 50% more qualified applicants and 33% lower turnover (LinkedIn Talent Solutions). This highlights just how important it is to differentiate through your employer brand, especially when hiring for hard-to-fill positions in the pharmaceutical industry.

A strong employer brand also enables organizations to streamline their recruitment process. Candidates who resonate with a company’s values and culture are more likely to apply, reducing the time it takes to fill key positions and cutting down on recruitment costs. Moreover, it helps reduce employee turnover, as candidates are more likely to stay with companies that align with their personal and professional values.

With growing competition for talent in the pharma industry, having an attractive employer brand isn’t just a “nice-to-have”—it’s a strategic advantage.

The importance of consistency and authenticity in employer branding

While a strong employer brand can attract candidates, authenticity and consistency are what will make them stay. Pharma companies must communicate their values not just through marketing materials but also through the experiences of current employees. Encouraging your employees to act as brand ambassadors can be one of the most effective ways to communicate your company culture authentically.

Employee testimonials, work-life balance highlights, and showcasing internal initiatives such as professional development programs help potential candidates envision themselves within the organization. It’s about giving candidates an insider’s view of what it’s really like to work at your company, not just what you say in a job posting.

Equally important is maintaining consistency across all platforms, ensuring that every touchpoint—from job descriptions to social media posts—aligns with the company’s core values and messaging. Inconsistent branding can confuse candidates, leading to potential misunderstandings about what the company stands for and whether it’s the right fit.

How to build a consistent and authentic employer brand

In the competitive world of pharma recruitment, building a consistent and authentic employer brand is essential for attracting top talent. However, achieving this requires the right tools and strategies.

Pharma companies, especially those operating across multiple markets, need tools that streamline their content creation process. This allows them to maintain a consistent brand message across different regions, while still being localized for each market. For multinational companies, scaling employer branding efforts quickly without compromising on brand integrity is crucial. Whether it’s for job postings, recruitment ads for social media, or posters for recruitment fairs, maintaining a cohesive and on-brand narrative is vital and can make all the difference in attracting the best talent.

The challenge of outdated job profiles

A significant challenge in pharma recruitment is the prevalence of outdated job descriptions and role profiles. These documents often fail to reflect the evolving culture and values of the company. Worse, outdated content can make a company seem out of touch with current industry standards. In an industry where top talent is in high demand, this can seriously impact a company’s ability to attract quality candidates.

For many organizations, keeping job descriptions and recruitment materials up to date and aligned with company culture is an ongoing struggle. The right tools can help address this. Templated content creation solutions enable teams to quickly update job descriptions and recruitment assets, ensuring the most current, relevant messaging. These tools make it easy to keep job descriptions accurate and in line with the company’s culture, helping to attract the right talent. This proactive approach helps businesses stay competitive in a fast-moving talent market.

Digital Asset Management solutions also ensure that all content, whether recruitment-related or internal, aligns with the company’s branding strategy, providing a unified approach to employer branding that strengthens both recruitment and retention.

A streamlined approach to employer branding

To tackle these challenges, teams need more than just basic solutions. What they need are Digital Asset Management and on-brand content solutions that streamline the content creation process across all platforms. This allows recruitment teams to scale their employer branding efforts quickly and ensure that every piece of communication—whether it’s a job posting, social media ad, or internal memo—aligns with the company’s core values.

By integrating the right solutions, pharma companies can create globally consistent and locally relevant recruitment materials, which helps attract top talent from multiple markets without compromising brand integrity.

Solving the challenges of employer branding to attract top pharma talent

Building a strong employer brand is no longer optional—it’s a necessity in today’s competitive pharma recruitment landscape.  It helps attract and retain top talent by building trust, reducing recruitment costs, and showcasing what makes your company a great place to work. 

Papirfly’s on-brand content creation and Digital Asset Management solutions enable pharma companies to efficiently scale their employer branding efforts while ensuring their messaging is both globally consistent and locally relevant. These tools enable recruitment teams to quickly update job descriptions and other recruitment assets, ensuring they always reflect the company’s culture and values.

By maintaining consistency, pharma companies can not only build trust with candidates, attract the right talent, and reduce recruitment costs but also retain talent by showcasing what makes them a great place to work.

The automotive industry is undergoing a fundamental transformation. As electric vehicles (EVs) and digital technologies reshape the landscape, traditional roles like “building a car” are evolving into “programming a car.” To stay ahead, automotive companies must attract tech-savvy talent—engineers, data scientists, and AI specialists. For HR leaders, creating fast, consistent, and compelling recruitment campaigns is essential to meeting this challenge.

The challenge: Recruiting in the EV era

In the age of EVs and digital transformation, HR leaders face several key challenges:

1. Adapting to a new talent landscape

Demand for software engineers, AI specialists, and data scientists in the automotive industry has surged. The global automotive software market is projected to reach $43 billion by 2027. Yet, many companies struggle to position themselves as the right employer for this evolving workforce. With increased competition from tech firms and startups, automotive brands must highlight their unique advantages to stand out. This includes showcasing their role in cutting-edge innovations, sustainability efforts, and the impact of their technology on the future of mobility.

2. Staying agile in a rapidly changing industry

Innovation in EVs and digital technologies moves at an unprecedented pace. Recruitment campaigns must evolve just as quickly—outdated messaging risks making a company seem irrelevant to prospective candidates. HR leaders must develop agile strategies that allow them to swiftly adjust messaging, ensuring their employer brand stays aligned with industry trends. Additionally, leveraging real-time data insights can help HR teams refine job descriptions, highlight in-demand skills, and tailor outreach to match shifting workforce expectations.

3. Building a consistent employer brand

Differentiation is critical. Automotive companies need to communicate clearly and consistently why they are the ideal choice for top talent. Without a strong and unified employer branding, attracting the right candidates becomes increasingly difficult. A well-defined employer brand not only strengthens recruitment but also enhances employee retention, as candidates are more likely to stay with companies that align with their values and career aspirations. Consistency in branding across digital platforms, job descriptions, and social media is essential in reinforcing credibility.

4. Balancing global consistency with local relevance

While the EV revolution is global, recruitment strategies must resonate locally. Companies must develop localized content tailored for specific markets while maintaining alignment with their global employer brand. Cultural nuances, regional job expectations, and local talent pools all play a role in shaping recruitment strategies. By ensuring recruitment messaging is adaptable yet consistent, companies can engage candidates more effectively while maintaining a cohesive global identity.

Meeting HR challenges in the automotive sector

HR teams must ensure their recruitment strategies reflect industry changes, stay competitive in talent acquisition, and establish a strong employer brand. The ability to swiftly update recruitment campaigns, reduce time-to-market for content, and maintain consistency in messaging is crucial. Companies that effectively execute these strategies will build trust with prospective hires and strengthen their position as an employer of choice. Additionally, integrating digital tools that streamline recruitment efforts—such as AI-powered resume screening, automated workflows, and data-driven insights—can significantly enhance efficiency and outreach.

The solution: How Papirfly empowers automotive recruitment

Addressing these challenges requires a solution that enables agility, consistency, and efficiency. Papirfly’s Digital Asset Management and on-brand content creation solutions empower HR teams to create recruitment campaigns that evolve with industry trends, attract top talent, and reinforce a strong employer brand—globally and locally. By centralizing assets, ensuring brand consistency, and offering intuitive tools for customization, Papirfly allows organizations to scale their recruitment efforts efficiently. With built-in compliance features, seamless collaboration, and localization capabilities, recruitment teams can maintain messaging accuracy while adapting to regional needs.

In today’s highly competitive job market, your employer brand is vital. It’s the key to attracting top talent, retaining your existing employees, and distinguishing yourself against a backdrop of ever-increasing competition.

And, while a compelling Employee Value Proposition (EVP) and an authentic, attractive culture are both important parts of a world-class employer brand – for global companies, few things are more crucial to connect with candidates than personalized, localized messaging. 

This means more than just writing job descriptions in relevant languages or using local imagery in your onboarding materials. For the best localized employer brand messaging, it’s important to tailor your marketing assets to the cultural sensitivities of local markets.

Imagine you were recruiting candidates in Japan. Because Japanese work culture tends to value collectivism, where a company is often viewed like a family, you would want to create content that centers around your team members and company culture. 

However, this ‘team-focused’ recruitment strategy likely wouldn’t spark the same interest with American job seekers. In this instance, you might speak to this region’s individualism by highlighting employee perks, learning and development opportunities, or flexible working options on your adverts.

Respecting a culture’s unique nuances is essential for attracting and retaining top talent. It shows them that your company values their specific requirements, rather than pushing ahead with a generic, one-size-fits-all message for your global workforce.

But what more does localized employer branding do for your company? And how do you actually implement this in your marketing? In this article, we’ll dive deeper into the topic of employer brand localization and show you how to get started. 

Why is region-specific employer branding so important?

According to recent figures, as many as 75% of global firms have found it hard to get the right talent through the door. If you’re one of the thousands of employers in this difficult position, you’ll know that long-term vacancies can cost your business dearly in time, money and productivity.

To give yourself an edge in local talent attraction, regional employer branding allows your roles to better resonate with job seekers right out the gate. By wrapping your collateral in imagery or elements that speak to their culture or surroundings, you already demonstrate that your brand aligns with them directly.

This can help you fill your positions up to 50% faster, and boost your chances of securing a quality hire by as much as three times. 

Plus, by engaging your existing employees with job materials that reflect their culture and location, you can improve retention internally by as much as 28%. Aside from easing the pressure on your recruitment and hiring processes, engaged workplaces can be 17% more productive and 21% more profitable. 

On top of this, localized employer brand content lays the foundation for a more positive global reputation. Even if your internal employees and job seekers aren’t the target audience for your corporate branding, giving these groups a positive experience sends a strong signal to customers, stakeholders and other audiences in these territories. 

How do you translate a global employer brand to local markets?

A localized employer brand strategy is a proven way of improving the speed and quality of your talent acquisition efforts. It can also empower your existing staff, enhance productivity and contribute to a trusted reputation.

But how do you unlock the full potential of this strategy? Like any employer branding initiative, the right approach is essential.

Understand your ideal candidates and existing staff

Before committing any time or resources to localized content creation, it’s important to understand exactly who your regional audiences are and what they stand for. 

Do you want to appeal to candidates in a brand-new market? Are you trying to counteract high churn in a particular regional office? 

Your objectives will dictate the look, feel and direction of your employer brand campaigns, so it’s important you have a clear picture of the employee personas you’re targeting from the very beginning. Without this, it can be impossible to know how to tailor job postings and employee engagement strategies to best resonate with the right people.

Plus, when you consider that every country has their own idea of work, culture, benefits and more, ensuring your adverts, onboarding materials and internal branding pieces are as impactful as possible relies on the insight you gain through these personas.

So, how do you create these crucial documents? At their core, your employee personas should ask:

• What region is my audience located in? 
• What goals and motivations do they have?
• What are their key demographics?
• What personality traits do they demonstrate?
• What challenges do they face?
• What do they want/expect from a workplace? 

Stay organized with robust Digital Asset Management software

Once you have a solid idea of exactly who you need to target, the next step involved in translating your employer brand worldwide is to prioritize organization.

The last thing you want is for an off-brand job advert to find its way into the hands of a potential candidate, or a new recruit to receive an outdated version of your onboarding package. Why? Because inconsistencies like this can shatter people’s trust, set false expectations, and undermine the good will your employer brand has worked so hard to build.

But, with potentially thousands of assets to organize across dozens of countries, keeping on top of everything can quickly become a full-time responsibility.

Here, a dedicated Digital Asset Management (DAM) system can be really helpful. Acting as a central, digital repository where every asset can be tagged, organized and easily accessed, getting the right materials in front of the right candidates becomes a simple, straightforward task.

Coupled with regional brand portals that house your local style guidelines, EVPs and exemplary assets, your provincial teams can get immediate access to the content relevant to their audience. This makes it faster and easier for your global departments to run effective recruitment campaigns, all while streamlining internal communications.

Invest in on-brand content creation tools

While giving your teams access to the right assets is an important part of delivering a locally-tuned employer brand, if you operate in multiple territories, chances are you’ll have a long list of different audiences to create collateral for – and the time, resources or capabilities to deliver only a fraction of it.

Coupled with the inconsistency that can arise when your decentralized teams begin adapting your core assets (or create their own materials altogether), it’s clear to see how content production is one of the greatest challenges for delivering a locally-relevant, globally spanning employer brand.

And with signs suggesting that the demand for collateral is only going up, how do you and your teams deliver employer branding at scale in the long term?

In our view, the right on-brand content creation tools are invaluable. By giving your central and frontline personnel the ability to swap out things like imagery, copy, colors and more in a matter of clicks, as the core facets of your brand guidelines remain fixed, smart templating technology can streamline production in a big way.

In practice, this means your central marketing departments can prepare core materials on budget for every region, all while your locally-based teams have the tools to create or tailor assets to their target markets without undermining the consistency of your brand.

Plus, with ease of use central to most content creation tools, anyone across your business can produce the materials they need, freeing up your marketers and creatives to focus on fleshing out your employer brand strategy.

Put simply, the right solution can revolutionize the way you deliver collateral to candidates and colleagues around the world.

Inspire your existing employees to become advocates

Another great way to translate your global employer brand to local communities is to use employee ambassadors.

It doesn’t matter if you’re conducting localized hiring drives or spreading awareness of your presence in a new market. The bottom line is, people trust employees significantly more than companies themselves. 

So, who better to offer first-hand insight into your workplace than your regional team members? Their unique access and authenticity can demonstrate specifically how your workplace reflects the cultural nuances of the area.

This can give talent a clear picture of life at your organization, form genuine connections with people in the area, and ultimately attract candidates to your career site.

Furthermore, by getting your staff to play a more active role in your employer brand and rewarding their efforts, you can encourage your teams to stick with you for the long term. 

Ready to realize the full potential of your employer brand?

As the competition for talent intensifies – and job seekers become increasingly discerning – successfully recruiting and retaining talent demands a local approach to employer branding. 

However, with each country having their own cultural traditions and expectations to honor, crafting and coordinating content that resonates with each of these audiences is no easy feat.

By putting the insights we’ve covered in this article into practice, we hope you’ll have everything you need to reshape your employer brand into one that connects with candidates and colleagues from one region to the next.

Employer branding is crucial for any organisation. Executed well, it can position your company as a compelling place to work, help attract and retain top talent, and enable you to stand out in an ever-expanding sea of competition.

In fact, in a recent survey, 1 in 6 UK workers said they would accept a new role without a rise in pay, if it led to better job security and development opportunities.

However, get it wrong, and you could risk falling short of candidates’ and employees’ expectations – a poorly maintained employer brand that can lead to greater employee churn, sluggish hiring processes, lower morale and engagement, and potentially hurt your brand’s reputation beyond the talent pool.

So, how do you build a great employer brand? It all starts by understanding exactly what makes some of the world’s greatest so successful. Organisations such as Google, Salesforce, HubSpot and Bain & Company are consistently ranked as tremendous places to work, and a large part of that is their commitment to strengthening their distinct employer brands.

With all this in mind, in this article, we’ll be diving into research and drawing from our decades of experience to bring you the standout characteristics of effective, well-rounded employer branding.

7 hallmarks of world-class employer brands

1. A clearly defined employer brand strategy

Like most successful elements in marketing, a world-class employer brand starts with a well-conceived strategy.

Without an overarching idea of how your employer brand is perceived, who your ideal candidates are, where prospective recruits spend their time, and the messages you must share both internally and externally – your efforts can quickly become inconsistent, unstructured and unsuccessful. 

You don’t have to look far to see the correlations between solid strategizing and employer branding success. Take energy drink giant Red Bull, for example. They wanted to seek out the most promising candidates from their expansive talent pool – all while providing a memorable recruitment journey.

To do this, the company devised a strategy that centred around the creation of a new tool, Wingfinder. This started by working together to identify the core traits, skills and experience of their ideal hires, which were then programmed into Wingfinder. This made it faster to find prospects that fit Red Bull’s hiring criteria, while providing unsuccessful applicants with helpful career development advice.

This has allowed Red Bull to improve the quality of its hires and the public standing of its overall business. And while Wingfinder is the tool at the heart of this, it would not be nearly as effective without the well-considered strategy behind it.

With all this in mind, how can you formulate a successful strategy for your employer brand? Here are some top-line tips for you to mull over:

For more insight on composing a top-tier plan, check out our in-depth article: How to develop and deliver an effective employer brand strategy.

2. A receptive attitude to listening

An employer brand, while a formidable recruitment tool, really centres around delivering an experience that resonates with your existing talent. 

Placing your full focus on attracting new job seekers, and consequently leaving your teams on the ground feeling undervalued or ignored, only hurts your ability to recruit, retain and engage staff in the long-term.

This is all to say that it’s important to listen to your staff. The insights they provide can pave the way toward a future where your brand and your people are closely aligned, empowered and engaged. 

And this is exactly what L’Oreal – world leader in beauty products and globally regarded place to work – did when it came time to craft a new Employer Value Proposition (EVP). By soliciting input from its staff, the organisation established a compelling EVP that authentically represented the company.

So, how do you gain the information you need to make changes for the better? One way is to simply ask, sending out an internal survey with questions like:

• How would you describe the company culture to a friend?
• What made you decide to join our organisation?
• What aspects of our workplace do you find most and least motivating?
• If you could change one thing, what would it be and why?

3. An authentic company culture

Another core tenet of any successful employer brand is authenticity; your ability to ‘make good’ on your promises and incorporate them into your everyday company culture.

Is your business rooted in tradition, or are you laser-focused on the future and globalisation? Is your corporate structure formal and hierarchical, or do you take a more free-flowing approach to employee participation?

There’s no right or wrong answer here. The important thing is that you genuinely reflect these values in the day-to-day environment at work. If you don’t, you could risk alienating your new and existing talent.

For example, imagine you’re a candidate who joins an organisation because it’s positioned as a forward-thinking company and a global leader in its field. But, when you get there, you’re greeted by dated equipment, a stringent dress code, and a restrictive management structure. You’d probably feel misled and disconnected from the get-go.

What can you do to ensure your company culture more closely aligns with your employer brand and values? Consider the following:

4. A localised approach to communication

The world’s best employer brands are great communicators. It doesn’t matter if they’re speaking to employees in Europe or appealing to candidates in Asia, global leaders in this sphere all nail one thing – localisation.

Whether you’re a national corporation or an international conglomerate, the last thing you want to do is take a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to messaging. Doing so could exclude individuals who ‘fall outside your central narrative’ and damage your reputation within certain groups and cultures. 

You only have to look at when the Jolly Green Giant became the ‘Intimidating Green Ogre’ in Arabic, to see what can happen when localisation goes wrong.

With that in mind, what does success look like here? For multinational software company SAP, adapting content to local audiences meant they could present an entirely consistent brand – one capable of empowering employees, supporting talent acquisition, and maintaining a vast talent pool of over 150 nationalities.

Despite the immense benefits of localisation, adapting your employer branding to different markets is hard work, especially if you operate in multiple territories. That’s why some of the largest enterprises, like SAP, rely on dedicated content creation solutions to expedite this long and involved task.

While different content production tools will vary in their capabilities, giving anyone on your team the power to quickly change elements like colours, imagery and messaging – instead of having to build each new version from scratch – unlocks the speed and flexibility essential to achieve effective localisation.

In addition, harnessing a capable Digital Asset Management (DAM) tool alongside this can allow your teams to categorise social media graphics, recruitment ads and more based on location and audience segments. This greatly reduces the risk of inappropriate or ill-fitting content reaching the wrong market, cutting down inconsistencies that threaten your communications.

5. A forward-thinking commitment to DEIB

DEIB stands for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging – four concepts at the heart of any leading employer brand.

Without them, you run the risk of excluding talent. Not just by limiting who you directly consider for your roles, but also by alienating anyone who places real value in working at a company that honours diversity and inclusivity. 

So, how do you embrace and establish a more equitable culture in your organisation? For global payment service Mastercard, they made a commitment to equal pay, and invested in establishing Business Resource Groups (BRGs) to represent communities across 47 countries. These are impressive milestones that feature prominently on their career pages.

That doesn’t mean you need to champion these exact initiatives or invest in developing your own career page to succeed. As we’ve mentioned above, taking your employer brand to the next level is all about listening to your people and what matters most to them. So for you, that could mean:

• Establishing diversity & inclusivity champions internally
• Fostering a culture of greater transparency
• Setting up inclusive recruitment processes
• Using AI to sense-check recruitment materials for inclusive language

For more industry-leading insight into crafting an equitable employer brand, don’t miss our in-depth guide: DEIB in the workplace: Top trends to activate an inclusive employer brand.

6. A consistent employer brand

Maintaining a consistent brand is important – not just for your paying customers, but also for your prospective and high-performing talent.

Why? Because all of the hard work that goes into creating your employer brand strategy, refining your EVP and building a culture of authenticity can all be undone when you deviate from your playbook and defy brand consistency. 

It doesn’t matter if it’s slightly off-brand colours in a social graphic, a mismatched tone of voice in an employee handbook, or an outdated logo on an offer letter. Inconsistency breeds distrust, confusion and disengagement, sinking your reputation as an employer.

That’s why leading employer brands like Rolls Royce and Google place immense value in consistency, never deviating from their brand guidelines regardless of the channel they’re using or the region they’re in.

But how do these pioneering brands achieve unbreakable unity? While approaches will undoubtedly vary, in our experience it’s essential to:

• Create a robust set of employer brand guidelines your teams can follow
• Set up a digital brand hub to centralise every aspect of your brand identity
• Use content creation tools like design templates to minimise human error
• Recycle assets to remain on brand economically

7. A proactive drive for employee advocacy 

Now more than ever, trust and transparency are at the forefront of many professionals’ minds. 

To tap into this emerging trend and craft an identity that meets this criteria, many of the globe’s leading brands leverage their employees as ambassadors, showing others what life is really like at a company from the perspective of a team member.

It’s why Adobe’s channels regularly feature employee stories, and the thinking behind Nokia’s investment into employee generated content (EGC).

The way this strategy works is simple. By nominating people who personally embody your employer brand’s values and genuinely love working for you, you can inspire these frontline employees to create a positive, honest window into your working environment – insight that helps top talent picture themselves in your organisation.

For these programmes to work best, the right approach is key:

Discover how to encourage employees to advocate for your employer brand. Read our insightful article: 6 steps to turn your employees into true brand ambassadors.

Ready to take your employer brand to new heights?

In such a highly competitive landscape, properly managing your employer brand has never been more important. To ensure you’re getting it right, you don’t just need to implement the right strategies; you need to understand what separates good employer brands from the greatest – and these seven elements are the starting point.

By analysing some of the best identities out there, and employing our years of unique experience in this area, we hope the information we’ve compiled in this article acts as a helpful benchmark to guide your identity to greater success. 

Coupled with a powerful end-to-end branding solution, you can revolutionise your ability to attract and retain top-quality talent, stand out in an increasingly crowded market, and drive your company to further success with the right people behind it.

Replacing any employee is a long process. One that can cost your company thousands, undermine your teams’ productivity and impact your business’s bottom line in a big way.

However, when you consider that the average worker changes roles 12 times throughout their career, losing good employees seems like an expensive inevitability. But not all companies are built equal. 

Organisations that work hard to build a strong employer brand have seen their staff turnover rate drop by as much as 28%, allowing them to hold onto their highest performers for longer and reduce the strain on their hiring process. They achieve greater stability within their workforce, and reap the rewards through more sustainable performance.

But how do you build an employer brand that can support your ambitious talent retention efforts? In this guide, we’ll explore the greatest challenges your company faces in the fight to retain talent, the steps you can take to reduce employee turnover, and the wider benefits of investing in your employer brand.

Why do employees leave their jobs?

No company can realistically achieve a ‘clean sheet’ when it comes to retention. Many employees naturally progress from their roles, even if they’re completely engaged and satisfied at work. People move, life evolves, and preferences change.

However, these external factors aren’t the only reason why employees seek greener pastures. Whether a company cannot provide flexible work arrangements or their budget doesn’t stretch to meet salary expectations, there are many answers to why staff leave that can be addressed.

Poor onboarding experiences

One of the biggest hurdles to long-term retention is bad onboarding experiences. The process of securing talent starts from day one, so without a strong, well-established process for welcoming your newest joiners, as many as 80% of your recruits could be eyeing the exit door before they’ve even gotten settled.

Lack of recognition

If top performers’ efforts are rarely ever recognised, they may start to feel disheartened at work. Even simple initiatives like personalised thank you cards and internal shoutouts can be an excellent way of encouraging your employees to reconsider their next move.

Minimal opportunities for growth and development

Most employees don’t aspire to be in the same role for their entire career, especially the latest generations of candidates. If your staff feel that they aren’t being afforded the opportunity to develop, evolve and unlock their true potential in your company, then this can inspire them to look elsewhere.

Subpar company culture

Whether it’s down to a lack of flexibility or due to a feeling of overwhelming negativity, 73% of professionals say they have quit their jobs due to clashes with company culture. To encourage your top talent to stay with you for longer, it should be one of your top priorities to foster a strong sense of belonging at work.

Opposition to company values

When your teams can’t buy into your company’s overarching missions or values, they’re unlikely to connect with your organisation on a deeper level. If you want to give your staff a strong incentive to remain, you need to build an employer brand that aligns with their expectations and outlook.

High turnover

As well as causing employees to question their own position, high rates of turnover can create a feeling of uncertainty and disposition internally. Retaining employees for prolonged periods relies on the creation of a strong, stable organisational culture that rewards long service.

7 proven strategies to build a retention-focused employer brand

Holding on to your hardest workers takes more than great work and good pay. While these factors certainly matter to many, in a world where the competition for talent is reaching new heights, your employees need genuine reasons to stay.

That’s why employer branding is so important. Acting as a rallying point that your employees can get behind, strong employer branding is all about making your existing workers feel part of a united entity, aligning your people around shared values and goals.

It’s what separates good employers from the great, and how companies like Cisco and Deloitte have retained such a high percentage of their top talent for years.

So, how do you build a winning employer brand strategy to retain your existing employees? Like any brand management exercise, unlocking the true potential of your strategy demands a thoughtful, well-considered approach.

1. Improve internal communications

Arguably, one of the most important aspects of any employee retention effort is internal communication. Put simply, when your employees feel heard, understood and in the loop, they’re more likely to be actively engaged and committed to your company and their responsibilities.

While all companies are unique, initiatives like monthly newsletters, company-wide emails, ‘ask me anything’ sessions and internal surveys are all simple and effective methods you can try to help bridge the divide between individual departments, regional offices and leadership teams.

Just remember, effective internal communication isn’t just accessible – it’s regular, structured and works best when it begins from the top down. Establish these measures to give your teams a voice and network across your organisation.

2. Host team building and company culture-focused events

Another powerful way to bolster your employee retention programme is to host regular team building and company culture events, like wellness workshops, cultural celebrations and department days out. 

Providing opportunities for your teams to build stronger relationships is a great way to foster a tangible sense of community at work. Encouraging communication and collaboration company-wide can also be a great way to get your workers to feel like they fit in.

Why is this important? When employees feel as though they ‘belong’ at work, they’re 54% more likely to stay in their current role.

It can be easy to take a laissez-faire approach to initiatives like this, incorporating events and activities you think would resonate, as and when work schedules allow. But to get the most out of team building, consider taking a regimented approach by:

• Sending out an employee engagement survey to gauge how people feel about your organisation
• Using what you learn to set a handful of specific objectives you’d like to achieve
• Planning out regular activities to help you resolve the biggest reservations about your culture
• Polling your workers about their sentiment toward your company after the 6-month mark

3. Invest in career development and training opportunities

By committing to training and development throughout your company, you do more than just enhance the capabilities of your workforce. You also send a clear message to new and existing employees that you care about their long-term growth.

This is especially important to younger talent, as a recent study revealed that 74% of Millennials and Gen Z have considered quitting their jobs due to a lack of skill-building opportunities.

Whether this involves getting teams to attend industry conferences and events, or providing them with digital classes and webinars in the office, the best internal training and development programmes:

• Are tailored to meet the specific skills gaps of your teams
• Utilise technology for the best learning experience
• Foster a culture of continued education
• Remain adaptable and flexible to employee feedback 

4. Recognise and reward employee performance

When you consider that 79% of employees cite ‘underappreciation’ as a key driver for quitting their job, it’s clear to see the value that an employee recognition programme can have in your talent retention strategy. 

Not only do the uplifting effects of positive reinforcement strengthen your workers’ connection to your organisation. A rewarding work environment can also elevate overall job satisfaction, improve your workplace culture, and position your business as an employer of choice in the competitive global talent market.

For these programmes to work well, it’s important you give them the time and attention they need. That means ironing out specific details early on, like rewards and success criteria. You should also look to establish a process for monitoring other colleagues’ performance on a regular basis, and creating resources you can use to educate people about your scheme all across your enterprise.

With this in place, you can reward staff for:

• Surpassing performance goals, like sales or reach
• Spearheading helpful, innovative solutions at work
• Displaying exceptional collaboration and leadership
• Providing excellent customer service

5. Embrace DEIB initiatives at work

No member of staff wants to work somewhere they’re treated unfairly. To help nurture a culture of acceptance and understanding throughout your company, DEIB is the beating heart of any fair and equitable organisation.

Standing for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging, initiatives like this help instil a sense of identity in every worker, enabling individual employees to feel heard and respected at work, regardless of their background, preferences or beliefs.

As you can imagine, creating a culture where everyone feels included is one of the best ways to hold on to your top talent. In fact, in a recent poll, 92% of employees agreed that an inclusive culture had a big influence on whether or not they wanted to remain with their employer.

In other words, by aligning your company’s values with your employees, and creating a work environment where everyone feels seen and respected, you give your enterprise a solid foundation from which to retain talent.

6. Incentivise brand ambassadors

Brand ambassadors are another tried-and-tested strategy for improving long-term talent retention. The way it works is two-fold.

Firstly, by instilling your most engaged supporters with a sense of pride and ownership, you recognise their value and make them feel more connected to your employer brand. Naturally, these added responsibilities can form the basis for a strong and productive long-term partnership with your top talent.

Secondly, the genuine endorsements your ambassadors share can promote trust, credibility and positivity among your other colleagues, crafting an attractive image of your workplace that can entice people to stay far longer than industry averages.

To learn more about brand ambassador programmes and how to set yours up for success, check out our in-depth guide: 6 techniques to turn your employees into true brand ambassadors.

7. Integrate the right technology

Finally, to shape a bright future for your organisation and help your teams actually implement some of the winning talent strategies we’ve discussed, you need the right technology by your side.

In practice, finding the best platforms for your needs can be its own challenge. Countless tools exist that can streamline everything from remote working and employee advocacy to internal feedback and communication.

To help you narrow down your list, we’ve rounded up some of our favourite talent acquisition and retention tools that can transform your approach.

Our first pick is PostBeyond, a clever solution that allows you to harness the power of your employees on social media with greater ease, so you can empower your talent to get talking about your employer brand.

Another great solution is Small Improvements. From enabling managers to praise coworkers for a job well done, to allowing individuals to request feedback any time – this software can pave the way for strong internal communication and collaboration.

Finally, two more key tools for today’s employer brand experts are Digital Asset Management (DAM) systems and content creation software:

• DAM systems directly engage people with the essential components of your employer brand, and enable you to oversee and share this content across the entirety of your teams and locations
• Content creation software enables you to scale up the development of your employer brand assets, using templates to speed up production, simplify the process and lock-down consistency

These tools can be contained within a broader, end-to-end brand management suite, giving you a firm foundation from which to control and elevate your employer brand materials.

The value of a retention-focused employer brand

With the right steps, you can create an environment and culture that resonates with your teams, opening the path to stronger connections and longer tenures.

This does more than simply save precious resources. Uniting your departments behind your brand values can be an effective way of motivating your employees to work harder, boosting your business’s overall productivity by as much as 12%.

Pair that with the morale-lifting effects of a well-considered employer brand, and it’s easy to see how investing in a happier, longer-tenured workforce can minimise friction, conflict and absenteeism. This also enables your company to stand out when it comes time to hire someone new.

Transform your employer brand into a retention powerhouse

Few things benefit your long-term talent retention than a winning employer brand. But taking the steps to build one is often easier said than done.

With the right expertise and investment, however, the benefits can be astounding. Beyond creating a culture that entices your existing employees to stay for longer, you can drive productivity, improve job satisfaction, and cement your organisation as an employer of choice in an increasingly busy talent market.

Combined with the right employer branding software, your long-term employees can become a springboard for your company’s ongoing success.

Attracting top talent takes more than strong compensation packages. Today’s more discerning job seekers are looking for employers that reflect their values and create work cultures that suit them.

With trust, transparency and authenticity at the forefront of candidates’ minds when searching for a new role, how can you make your employer brand stand out in an ever-competitive talent market? 

The solution lies in leveraging the power of your workforce, empowering them to become true ambassadors for your employer brand.

In this helpful guide, we’ll explore what brand ambassadors are, how to encourage your colleagues to embrace this responsibility, and why an approach like this is so valuable for your recruitment efforts.

What are employee brand ambassadors?

An employee brand ambassador champions the organisation they work for through their personal profiles and in their day-to-day lives.

While you can nominate anyone from any department to become an employee ambassador (the more the merrier!), the best advocates are typically individuals who personally embody your employer brand values and genuinely love working for you. Authenticity is key – shrewd job candidates can see through any half-hearted or “forced” employee advocacy.

Promoting the company in everything from social media posts to testimonial videos, blog posts and news stories, employee ambassadors add an extra layer of trust to your employer branding and give potential applicants a glimpse into what it’s really like to work for your organisation.

6 steps to transform your employees into brand ambassadors

Capturing the attention of modern candidates and gaining a competitive edge in the crowded talent market requires more than simply stating what your company stands for. You must demonstrate how your Employer Value Proposition (EVP) and employer brand values translate to your working environment.

That’s why employee brand ambassadors are so valuable. They live and breathe your business every day, and can give potential candidates an unfiltered look at your company culture. They make it easy for top talent to understand your organisation and picture themselves within your team.

However, as amazing as it is for eager employees to post about your business of their own accord, this can become haphazard and irregular over time. Like any successful marketing strategy, unlocking the true potential of your employee ambassadors demands a thoughtful, structured approach.

Step 1 – Understand the conversation around your employer brand

Before turning your employees into brand ambassadors, first focus on conducting a thorough brand audit of your existing touchpoints.

While your company’s employer brand ecosystem and the attitudes of your employees will be unique, here are a few ideas to recognise the vibe surrounding your workforce:

• Explore where employees new and old are leaving reviews about your organisation
• Ask your team to learn if they already advocating for your brand online or in person
• Assess if potential candidates are talking about your business, and find where those conversations are happening

With this foundational understanding of people’s feelings towards your employer brand and their willingness to shout about your culture, you can better determine how your employee ambassador program must work in practice.

The last thing you want is to enter this process blindly, encouraging employees who are unenthused by your branding to speak up, or proceed without acknowledging peoples’ existing advocacy efforts. Doing the initial research will guide you on how to get the most out of your ambassadors – and outline if any initial rehab of your employer brand strategy is needed before you reach the next step.

Step 2 – Seek out the right ambassadors

Every employee is a potential spokesperson. To identify the right people to put in the spotlight, it’s first imperative that you actively “audition” your options.

This might involve referring to your initial audit and shortlisting individuals already batting for your brand online. After all, who better to tell the world about working in your enterprise than those who show their support for you unprompted?

You could also use data inside your company to find people actively engaged with your business. In practice, this could mean talking to people who frequently spearhead internal initiatives, are more productive, or who have been with you for a long time.

Other factors that help determine the best advocates for your employer brand include:

• Employees with substantial social media followings, especially on LinkedIn
• People who represent different departments or types of employees on your team
• Employees already highly regarded or well-known in your industry
• People who advocate for or have a keen interest in DEIB trends

Whoever you choose to represent your organisation, confirm they share a genuine enthusiasm for their work and your organisation. As we’ve said above, authenticity is integral to a strong employer brand – and it all starts with the people you choose.

Step 3 – Establish a tone that’s natural for your advocates

When ambassador-shared social content can generate 24 times more engagement than traditional branded materials and build significant trust among future recruits, you start to understand the power your people can add to your brand materials.

However, with such impressive figures, you might be tempted to apply the same rigid, consistency-focused tone that defines your enterprise’s offline and online presence. Restrictions like these can strip away the very thing that makes this strategy so effective – authenticity.

So, when it comes time to establish your employee ambassador guidelines, leave room for what comes naturally to your employees. Don’t dictate the language they must use but be specific about the topics to avoid – it can help make ambassadorship duties less daunting.

Step 4 – Invest in educating your teams

As employees come and go, how do you bring new hires up to speed on what your brand stands for and maintain a globally consistent employer brand?

It all starts with a dedicated brand hub. Housing ambassador guidelines, exemplary employee advocacy assets, EVP documents and more, this technology can store everything your ambassadors need in a single, accessible portal to preach your brand to the masses.

Alongside these powerful employer brand solutions, it pays to invest in employee training for your representatives, particularly on social media usage. This is important for two reasons:

• Firstly, access to learning and development opportunities is one of the biggest incentives for Gen Z job seekers, and can inspire new and existing employees to speak highly of your brand
• Secondly, the skills your ambassadors gain will give them the confidence to post and grow their following, avoiding common pitfalls or mistakes that risk tarnishing your image

Step 5 – Reward your most active ambassadors

Some employees will immediately fly the flag for your company on every channel. Others may not be as outspoken and need a little more coaxing. 

While you can’t force anyone to be an ambassador, you can reward those who take this leap. Employee recognition is a powerful motivator. Whether this takes the form of tangible gifts like branded merchandise and extra annual leave, or shout-outs in the company newsletter or on your main company social feeds – there are numerous ways you can inspire advocacy within your company.

Alternatively, encourage employees to contribute to the formation and evolution of your employer brand and company culture. When your people feel personally invested in your organisation’s progress and that their voice matters, they are more likely to use it in your company’s best interests.

Step 6 – Empower your strongest advocates to share

With your touchpoints accounted for, guidelines established and ambassadors shortlisted and educated, you almost have everything in place to inspire employees to become brand ambassadors. There’s just one barrier left to overcome – on-brand asset creation. 

Traditionally, this is one of the biggest barriers to any strong, consistent employee ambassador programme. Unless you are a design-focused organisation, your ambassadors may lack the skills or knowledge to craft quality collateral for their channels. And even if your team contains expert designers, that can still be a massive drain on time and resources.

The solution to this is smart design template software. With this providing a base for your employer branding and an easy-to-use interface for users of any design expertise, your ambassadors can feel empowered to create powerful content without:

• Compromising brand consistency
• Wasting precious time and resources
• Hurting their own personal brands

You could assign this duty to your in-house designers, but ad hoc requests from representatives eat up resources and can be difficult to execute, requiring time-consuming back-and-forth exchanges to realise their original vision.

With a more universal, accessible brand management platform at your employees’ fingertips, you can unlock your people’s potential and make sure you never need to micromanage their advocacy posts.

Elevate your employer brand with a robust employee ambassador programme

Although the content you publish on your corporate channels plays an essential role in attracting top talent, your employee brand ambassadors can be the biggest difference-makers when harnessed effectively.

By showcasing your company’s culture and daily work life, advocacy materials give potential applicants a clear picture of what to expect. This transparency and personal interaction helps them determine if your organisation is the right fit for them, and makes them enter the job application stage with real enthusiasm.

The result? Brand reputation and brand awareness improve. Recruitment efforts become more impactful and more successful. And the time and money required to attract top talent is minimised long term.

Engaging employees within your organisation through initiatives like ambassador programmes can also have a meaningful, positive impact on your company at large:

Combined with the right talent acquisition software, your global employees individually and collectively can be the deciding factor for your company’s next top hire.

In today’s highly competitive landscape, the best talent doesn’t just arrive at your website ready to apply. To truly succeed, you need to tell candidates why they should consider you for their next career move.

In the same way a customer must be nurtured along their journey to buy, modern candidates must be guided along the path to apply, led by content that places your employer brand at the centre of every conversation.

From social media posts that highlight your core values to prospects, or onboarding documents that emphasise your company’s values to your latest recruits, a constant flow of compelling content keeps applicants on the hook. 

But how do you maintain the quality and brand consistency today’s job seekers expect across every touchpoint, within increasingly tighter schedules and budgets? How can you efficiently and practically scale your employer brand content with your changing talent acquisition requirements?

The answer: investing in custom design templates. Below, we explain what they are, how they can revolutionise your recruitment strategy, and the key signs of great template creation software.

What are custom design templates?

Think of custom design templates as a constant head start for any kind of on-brand asset creation. A framework based on your brand guidelines, enabling your designers, recruiters and wider employer brand team to produce high-quality content with speed, precision and assurance.

To achieve this, effective design templates include locked-down elements, such as asset dimensions, logo positions and design layouts. These cannot be moved or changed, so users stick within the fixed parameters of your guidelines.

From here, they can then switch out customisable elements, such as calls-to-action (CTAs), colour schemes, imagery, copy and more with creative freedom, knowing that they cannot steer far from your brand identity.

As you can imagine, having access to these branded templates can massively ramp up the production of recruitment ads, job listings, corporate communications and much, much more. The right templating tool is a real game-changer – giving your hiring teams the confidence and skills they need to break away from costly third-party agencies, time-consuming approval processes and design limitations.

How can custom templates help with your recruitment efforts?

When you consider that 71% of recruitment-focused teams face challenges creating the content they need, custom templates can be a powerful tool to create the variety of collateral required to properly promote your employer brand. 

This is because design templates can:

Expedite the creation of personalised social content

In our increasingly digital world, it’s no surprise that 79% of applicants turn to social media platforms to conduct their job searches. But the breadth of these channels, with distinct optimal posting frequencies, can make it a challenge to generate the content required to stay top of candidates’ minds.

To tap into this marketplace of millions, customisable templates empower your teams to produce on-brand, studio-quality assets in minutes. 

With elements like CTAs, colour schemes and imagery able to be instantly swapped out to suit the nuances of a particular region, platform or branch of the business, intelligent templates make it possible to produce well-optimised social media posts in a truly scalable way, without sacrificing consistency or impact. 

Empower employees to become brand advocates

While a strong employer brand instils confidence in your potential candidates, it’s hard to ignore that 76% of individuals are more likely to trust content shared by a brand’s employees over assets from a brand itself.

To allow your most passionate employees to champion your culture, values and company mission through compelling, highly engaging material, custom templates give your strongest advocates an avenue to express their views and build trust, without compromising your brand’s identity.

By allowing employees to follow a helpful framework, even those with zero design skills can be empowered to develop exceptional assets for their personal profiles. This means your employer brand can reach a wider audience in a more targeted, organic way than simply through your company pages.

Create a full suite of onboarding content

If you’re at the stage where your job openings are filled and your new hires are well on their way to becoming full-fledged team members, it can be easy to direct your employer branding technology toward the next campaign. 

But in recent years, so many organisations have lost potential hires at the final hurdle due to a negative or frustrating candidate experience. To ensure your employer brand is just as strong inside as out, customisable templates allow for the quick, easy and scalable creation of company manuals, brand guidelines and other essential internal communications.

With these templates, you can guarantee that your new hires have the information they need to start work swiftly and confidently. And, to give them a real sense of belonging from the outset, these can also allow you to easily personalise standard guidebooks and manuals for each recruit.

Streamline video production

Over 65% of businesses use video in their recruitment efforts. You can see why when 43% of candidates say they’re more likely to apply for a job promoted through video content.

Able to turn this traditionally long, costly and intensive process into something effortless, custom templates are a lifeline for any forward-thinking recruitment team eager to stake their claim in the video-centric future of search.

The right custom template software will include tools to make dynamic, on-brand edits in a standardised format, so you can produce this eye-grabbing content with greater ease.

5 benefits of using custom templates for recruitment

1. Speed up time-to-market

Filling an open position takes an average of 44 days. When you factor in the weeks, months or even years it can take for a new hire to settle in, skill up, and reach the desired level of competency, talent acquisition is a lengthy and disruptive process for any organisation.

Quicker and more scalable asset creation with design templates enables your team to produce videos, job adverts, office posters, employee testimonials and other collateral as quickly as possible – especially important if you’re running a high-volume recruitment campaign.

2. Achieve complete consistency 

In a world with more opportunities for candidates than ever, first impressions matter. Inconsistent visuals, incoherent Employer Value Propositions (EVPs), fluctuating tones of voice – they simply don’t cut it with today’s savvy job seekers. 

Inspire the right kind of relationship with your ideal candidates from the very beginning. Intelligent templating allows you to align every piece of collateral with your unique brand guidelines. This helps you secure complete coherence in any design, across any platform, at any time.

But how do you ensure that the employee experience meets expectations? While there’s much to consider, custom templating tools are unquestionably important, unlocking the creation of studio-quality onboarding documents that prioritise what matters to your candidates – be it DEIB and employer branding, work-life balance or monetary perks.

Plus, with the effort behind the creation of employer brand collateral reduced and shared among your entire workforce, your employer brand specialists and senior leadership team can concentrate on establishing initiatives that propel your company culture forward.

What to look for in the right template creation software

Now you know what customisable templates are, how they can be applied to your talent acquisition efforts, and the plethora of advantages they offer, there’s just one final topic we want to discuss – the key signs to look out for in template creation software.

Although any templating tool can improve the quality, consistency, cost and time of your asset creation, not all software is created equal. If you’re keen to truly revolutionise your recruitment efforts, here are our 7 must-have features to prioritise in your search:

1. Limitless on-brand asset creation

The last thing your team members need is software that stifles your output and limits creativity. When looking for templating tools that can help you find, engage and attract the best talent, it’s essential you find a solution that allows you to create on-brand assets without restriction. No limits, no monthly credits – just the means to produce any volume of assets whenever required.

2. Multichannel compatibility

To reach your target audience wherever they are, it’s also important to have template creation software that can accommodate asset creation for any medium. Be it graphics for LinkedIn, videos for career pages, banners for job fairs, or posters for internal communication – ensure the solution you invest in enables you to create templates for any purpose.

3. Straightforward functionality

Creating and executing professional, persuasive recruitment campaigns demands an intuitive templating system. One your recruiters and advocates can easily pick up and use whenever they need to produce effective, on-brand content at pace.

Accessibility and functionality should therefore be top priorities in your template search, so anyone in your team can be elevated to create without a steep learning curve.

4. Approval measures

For complete confidence that everything your recruitment teams or employee advocates produce is in service of your long-term business goals, acquiring a platform with approval measures can be incredibly advantageous.

With these extra security measures in place informing users of what’s off limits, and a seamless way to send assets through for final sign-off, your recruitment campaigns reach audiences far sooner.

5. Streamlined localisation

Responding to recruitment needs in any region is a must for any global brand – and something only possible when you opt for a platform with dedicated, time-saving localisation tools. Look for a platform that instantly enables you to switch up languages and cultural imagery, so you can meet the demands and sensibilities of your local markets.

6. Cloud-based accessibility

Whether you’re a local business of dozens, or a conglomerate of thousands, manually installing software to employee machines one by one is a long and tedious task. Avoid this logistical headache by choosing a recruitment template creation tool backed by cloud software, meaning your worldwide teams can access it with minimal fuss.

7. Wider brand management features

Finally, while consistent, high-quality content is an important pillar of your recruitment campaigns, it’s far from the only part you have to consider when it comes to building, administering and evolving your employer brand. 

By broadening your search to an all-in-one brand management platform featuring customisable design templates, you can also effectively educate your users on the foundations of your employer brand, store all collateral in a dedicated DAM system, and gain a bird’s-eye view over the execution and performance of your campaigns.

Launch a new era of success and scalability for your recruitment campaigns

When it comes to recruitment, content is crucial. It’s how your employer branding stands out, captures the attention of top talent, and ultimately fills your open roles. But not any content will do. In today’s competitive landscape, potential employees have become increasingly selective about who they work for. 

Customisable templates give your recruitment teams and wider employees the keys to create captivating, consistent content on an otherwise unachievable scale. Look into the options available to understand how they can drastically reduce the costs, time and resources involved in building professional recruitment collateral, and make meeting your ever-growing recruitment demands a seamless formality.

In the relentless pursuit of top talent, few things capture the imagination of modern candidates and employees more than a diverse, inclusive workplace.

Especially among the latest generation of recruits, a culture of belonging and tolerance plays a huge part in where they choose to work. According to research by Glassdoor, approximately two-thirds of job candidates seek out employers with distinctly diverse workforces.

This intent has given rise to an increasingly adopted term: Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB). For today’s company executives and employer brand managers, this is an acronym you must become fully familiar with to maximise your recruitment and retention efforts.

In this helpful guide, we outline what DEIB means, highlight its importance to the attractiveness of your employer brand, and share our top DEIB trends for 2024 to make diversity and inclusion centrepieces of your talent attraction strategies.

Defining DEIB: What is Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging?

DEIB stands for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging, four concepts at the heart of a fair, equitable and all-embracing organisation. To properly define DEIB, it’s best to examine each component separately:

Diversity

Diversity is all about ensuring everyone is represented in your workplace. Age, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, disability status, economic background – a truly diverse workforce contains a healthy mix of these and other factors.

Diversity is incredibly valuable to encourage different viewpoints and gain unique perspectives within a company. It’s also beneficial for expanding your talent pool, building team camaraderie and developing a better understanding across your diverse customer base.

Equity

Equity means affording the same opportunities for career progression to all employees, regardless of their backgrounds. If an employee has the requisite skills, works hard and develops over time, there should be no barrier to success.

Equity also means that each team member should have access to the right resources to do their jobs to the best of their ability. Fundamentally, a focus on equity ensures a fair, impartial work environment.

Inclusion

Inclusion ensures that every employee or candidate feels welcome, accepted and valued by the people around them and their company as a whole. Do co-workers uplift each other? Is feedback provided constructively? Do people feel involved in their work environment?

Examples of inclusivity in the workplace include gender-neutral restrooms, flexible and remote work inclusion, and celebrations for cultural holidays and traditions. These and further inclusivity-driven measures often inspire higher productivity, stronger performance and greater employee retention.

Belonging

Belonging centres around the individual employee experience. If a workplace is truly inclusive, fair and diverse, an employee should feel as though they belong. They should feel valued, that they contribute to the company, and are respected by their colleagues.

When your employees feel welcomed, they come to work excited, engaged and enthusiastic, with a better opinion of your company and a desire to reach their full potential.

DEI vs DEIB: What’s the difference?

DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) is a well-established term in the global employment landscape, and is the base that DEIB has evolved from. So are they essentially the same, or does the ‘B’ make a big difference?

It’s a little more than that. DEIB is the acknowledgement that belonging is the end goal of effective diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. Belonging is the feeling an employee should have if a company is truly inclusive.

Extending conventional DEI practices into the modern DEIB framework places the individual employee experience firmly in focus. It ensures that every initiative is underscored to make the workplace safer, kinder and more comfortable for everyone, so that each employee feels at home in the organisation.

The importance of DEIB in attracting, recruiting and retaining today’s top candidates

We’ve touched on this already, but the importance of DEIB for today’s generation of employees cannot be overstated. 

Truly committing to DEIB strategies and dedicating the time to establishing an inclusive workplace culture has ripple effects that unlock numerous benefits for your organisation. Here are just some of the ways it makes a huge difference:

Engages Millennial and Gen Z candidates

As noted earlier, DEIB is a major incentive for the latest generations of job candidates. 73% of Gen Z employees and 68% of Millennial employees say they prioritise DEI programs when choosing a company to work for.

Communicating and demonstrating your dedication to this cause – be it through specific DEIB training programs or as part of your wider company culture – will put you in a stronger position to hire than your less progressive competitors.

Increases brand reputation

Your brand’s reputation says a lot to prospective candidates. When polled, approximately 70% of recruits said they would reject job offers from companies with negative reputations, even if they were unemployed. To ensure your company’s reputation is on the trajectory for success, it’s important that DEIB plays a big role in your day-to-day operations.

If reviews on your Glassdoor profiles are littered with accusations of biases, favouritism, unfair pay or discrimination, the best candidates will look elsewhere.

Raises employee retention

According to Equalture, workplace and recruitment diversity can significantly reduce employee turnover and improve retention by over 68%.

When your staff feel included, accepted and comfortable in their environment, they’re far less likely to seek other opportunities. Focusing on diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging cultivates these feelings, so you can hold onto your top-performing talent for longer.

Boosts productivity and employee engagement

Creating an environment that naturally fosters a sense of belonging helps people work their best. When people feel happy, motivated and welcomed in their jobs, productivity rises and performance improves, leading to better business outcomes.

For instance, inclusive teams are estimated to be 35% more productive than those lacking this essential element. Furthermore, Millennials are 83% more likely to be engaged at work at inclusive companies.

Inspires creativity and innovation

With a diverse, multifaceted workforce, you have a melting pot of ideas and experiences that you can harness to drive your brand forward. 

Without this variety of perspectives, you get homogenous ideas and a stale work environment. Company growth stagnates and your staff feel stuck in place. With this in mind, it’s not surprising to learn that inclusive companies are nearly twice as likely to be innovators in their space.

Enhances decision-making

Greater communication and sharing of unique ideas leads to better decision-making. By exploring a problem from multiple angles with different viewpoints, you can reach a more considered, strategic solution.

As they say, two heads are better than one. And the stats back this up – diverse teams are 87% better at making decisions than non-diverse teams.

Improves financial performance

What about the bottom line? Focusing on DEIB has unlocked significant financial benefits for organisations across the globe. Inclusive companies generate over twice the cash flow per employee, while diverse, inclusive leadership generates 19% higher revenue.

Beyond this, three distinct McKinsey studies determined that ethnically diverse companies deliver up to 36% more profitability, while greater gender diversity led to a 25% increase in financial performance.

6 DEIB trends to enhance the power of your employer brand

As DEIB becomes increasingly important to the career ambitions of modern employees, it is also a pivotal element in a robust, high-performing employer brand strategy.

Based on the latest trends and techniques we hear from employer brand and HR professionals worldwide, here are 6 ways to make DEIB a core focus in your organisation and talent attraction methods.

1. Adopt AI to sense-check your DEIB communications

Today’s candidates are hyper-vigilant when it comes to the language you employ in your various employer brand communications, from job descriptions to recruitment adverts. With the evolution of AI algorithms, you can use these to review the copy of any content, to ensure nothing you publish unintentionally discriminates against potential candidates.

AI can also enable your hiring managers to review resumes impartially, analysing the relevant details without any consideration of gender, ethnic origin or similar factors. You may also use it to assess any salary discrepancies, so your company can make progress toward a more equitable work environment.

2. Establish diversity & inclusivity champions and ERGs

While the right policies are important, a diverse, inclusive environment must be nurtured over time. Hiring DEIB specialists, or promoting people from within your teams to act as diversity champions, helps ensure these issues are addressed from the ground-up.

Your representatives must have passion for the causes they represent, and be equipped with the relevant training materials, resources and freedom to fulfil their role. Setting up Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) can further support these individuals by creating voluntary, employee-led groups based on shared characteristics and experiences.

This organisational structure can help ensure your workforce’s unique wants and concerns are addressed directly, by people who understand them on a deeper level. It helps confirm DEIB policies are upheld and all employees are educated about these fundamental issues.

Plus, giving these groups the power to create content supporting your diversity and inclusivity initiatives can enhance your DEIB efforts internally and externally, especially through your staff’s social media profiles. Always keep in mind that candidates are more prone to trust a company’s employees over the company itself.

3. Integrate intersectionality into your DEIB strategies

A term coined by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989, intersectionality is a growing concept that notes how differences in people’s backgrounds, whether it’s their age, gender, race or abilities, shape their experiences in the world.

Creating policies and programs around intersectionality will help your various employees better understand the challenges and discrimination their co-workers face, leading to a more empathetic work environment. This could take the form of monthly meetings or presentations from team members expressing their experiences.

Steps like this reinforce that your DEIB efforts are more than a token gesture. It shows you care about your people’s backgrounds, want to open dialogues and break down systemic barriers to create fair opportunities for everyone.

4. Create a culture of greater transparency

Transparency has become increasingly vital in building trust between employers and employees, particularly in the issues of diversity, equity and inclusivity:

Building a culture of transparency over pay, hiring practices, career development and more can help your staff feel significantly more acknowledged and respected. It demonstrates that you value a fair, equitable environment and have no hidden barriers hindering their progress.

To foster a more transparent work environment, you should aim to:

• Introduce pay transparency commitment guidelines
• Disclose your diversity metrics publicly
• Illustrate clear pathways for promotions and career advancement
• Publish details about the diversity of your suppliers and contractors
• Share your company’s DEIB goals and targets across your organisation

5. Set up inclusive recruitment processes

Are your hiring practices aligned with your DEIB commitments? Every layer of a candidate’s recruitment journey should be structured around this if you want to meet your diversity and inclusivity targets, ensure that no candidate feels alienated, and further boost the likelihood of long-term retention.

To evolve your recruitment strategies with DEIB at their core, consider the following:

• Implement a “blind” resume review to eliminate any biases over a candidate’s name
• Audit your job benefits to check they align with your preferred candidates’ wants
• Offer dedicated DEIB training to your hiring managers and recruiters
• Use inclusive language in your job adverts, correspondence and onboarding materials
• Post on niche job boards that focus on promoting diverse candidates

6. Upscale your DEIB communications with brand management technology

As today’s recruitment teams are expected to deliver more with less, engaging and attracting diverse talent becomes that much harder. 57% of talent leaders say hiring a more diverse workforce is a top priority, but 43% feel sourcing candidates is a serious challenge.

You want to advertise everywhere, with tailored content that reflects the diversity and inclusivity of your organisation, so you can truly connect with a wider talent pool, but time and design expertise are finite.

High-quality employer branding tools can unlock the full potential of your DEIB recruitment, enabling you to create, structure and unleash your brand like never before. By investing in the right software, you can:

• Establish a digital brand hub for your employer brand guidelines, DEIB framework and more, so that your entire team is educated on your values and mission
• Scale your content production with smart design templates, enabling anyone in your organisation to create high-quality content consistent with your brand identity
• Rapidly tailor assets with the right language, imagery and styling to attract a diverse pool of candidates
• Store any DEIB-focused images, assets, videos and more in a dedicated Digital Asset Management system, making it easy for your recruitment teams to locate and share these in your campaigns

With a strong, reliable brand management platform in your corner, you gain the power to present a consistent, far-reaching employer brand, one that illustrates your commitment to diversity, equity, inclusivity and belonging to the fullest.

Building your up-to-date employer brand around DEIB

DEIB is here to stay. With the latest generations placing a premium on an employer’s diversity, inclusivity and fairness, you must put these four letters at the heart of your employer brand to keep your recruitment efforts on the right trajectory.

We hope that these recommendations and top trends enable you to activate DEIB in your branding and build a truly inclusive work environment. 

But remember – authenticity is everything. This can’t just be a token gesture during Pride Month – prioritise DEIB within your existing workforce and ask your current employees how you can improve. 

Once you have these matters settled at home, you can make real strides to engage perceptive, progressive talent across the globe.