Whether you’re new to employer branding or a pro that’s been around the block a few times, it’s still sometimes difficult to describe exactly what an employer brand is to those outside the industry.

There’s no single roadmap or strategy to follow. For each company, an employer brand will embody something entirely different, even while working towards many of the same goals, or when looking to attract similar talent. 

So what if we try to humanise an employer brand, and take a step back to really put ourselves in the shoes of the prospective candidate?

Let’s not think of it as a roadmap or strategy and take it right back to basics. As a candidate, what are the key things you would want to see, hear, think and feel about a company?

In this article, we’re going to explore the key candidate ‘senses’ that brands should look to engage, and all the ways it can be done… 

What candidates want to see… 

Employee satisfaction

There’s no greater cheerleader for your brand than those who already work for you. If your candidates can have access to real-world testimonials and trust factors from employees, they are more likely to form a positive opinion about your company. 

While it’s not the be all and end all, more often than not GlassDoor is one of the first destinations for candidates. If you’re putting some great stuff about culture out to the world, but your reviews on GlassDoor are overwhelmingly negative, you’ll need some damage control. 

Active social media

When a company isn’t very active on social media it can imply three things:

1. There’s nobody there to take care of it
2. The team is too overworked to manage it
3. The company is very traditional and will be reluctant to change

Keeping your channels fresh, engaging and populated will help candidates take your brand seriously. And what better way to tell your brand story?

Likewise, it’s not uncommon to have a friendly stalk of a prospective company’s employees’ LinkedIn profiles, so it’s important to encourage employees to be as active as they can. If not on their personal channels, showcasing them on your brand’s main channels can still work wonders.

Team spirit and culture 

Now this is an important one, but one of the trickiest to do. Company culture has been catapulted to the top of many employers’ priority lists, but when the pandemic struck it became difficult to maintain. Now we’re seeing a slow ascend back to some kind of normality, employer brand teams can really start embracing company culture once more. 

A big part of this is retaining the option to work flexibly or in some kind of hybrid capacity.

Benefits in action 

Think bigger than stocked fridges and massage Wednesdays. What are the perks that are going to really pay off for your employees and keep them happy longer term? 

Perhaps a paid sabbatical after a certain amount of years’ service. Or a free gym membership to keep their health in check. Small recurring gestures such as free fruit are a really nice touch, but there needs to be some bigger acts that can actually help your employees reach their goals – both inside and outside of work.

Detailed job descriptions 

Vague job roles are a red flag for anyone, but they’re guaranteed to make your candidate feel uneasy about applying. A job is a huge life commitment. You wouldn’t enquire about a house if there was a lack of detail – it would be suspicious and off-putting.

Provide as much detail as possible, and if the role is set to evolve, make that clear from the outset. Plus, be careful not to omit the salary as that’s a big red flag for most candidates.

What candidates want to hear…

Support and encouragement

When high-level jobs are advertised, the language used can sometimes be complex and intimidating. 

While it’s important to attract the candidate that matches your desired profile, remember to keep an element of friendliness and warmth or you may deter strong candidates from applying. This is a particular danger when allowing external recruiters to write job ads on your behalf, you should ensure you always get the final sight of any job advert or description that goes out.

Additionally, giving candidates the option to interview via video call or in-person will help to widen your talent pool, particularly if a candidate is interviewing for the role and considering relocation.

It’s advised to weigh up whether a virtual interview will help or hinder the process, and assess what’s available on a case-by-case basis.

Inspirational messaging

While the practical and matter-of-fact information takes primary importance in any campaigns you put out, remember you could be against any number of competitors offering a similar role. Whether it’s a Spotify ad, a radio recruitment drive or virtual careers fair, don’t miss any opportunity to inspire and let the world know just how incredible it is to work for your company.

Voices from inside the business as well as the brand

If you’ve got plenty of branded content going out, that’s great news, but it will only take you so far. Candidates want to see real faces and hear the voices of your employees, whether that’s a general insight into working for the company or department-specific information.

What candidates need to think about your company…

“This is a company I want to work for”

How this is achieved…

• Having a strong employer brand
• Creating engaging and exciting recruitment campaigns
• Boasting positive reviews from existing employees
• Offering competitive salary and additional benefits

“They treat their employees so well”

How this is achieved…

• Putting existing employees at the heart of your recruitment assets
• Encouraging individuals to post about their experience on professional social media networks
• Filming and promoting lots of high-quality video content about working life and culture

“I can’t wait to get started”

How this is achieved…

• Keeping open, honest communication throughout the process, from application to hire
• Providing new starters with an agenda of their first week/month
• Putting together a welcome pack to make them feel welcome
• Incorporating virtual or in-person ‘meet the team’ session prior to start date

“I can see a future here”

How this is achieved…

• Promoting stories about employees who have been around a long time
• Speaking about positive retention rates in collateral
• Informing employees of incentivised loyalty benefits such as paid sabbaticals, increasing holiday or other rewards after ‘X’ years of service

How your employer brand should make your candidates feel…

Confident that what they’re seeing is genuine

Everything needs to add up. If the story you’re telling through your campaigns and social media isn’t supported by positive employee reviews or contradictory information online, candidates could disengage before they’ve applied.

Excited about their prospects and the potential of the company

If the company has ambitious plans for the future, ensure this narrative is woven through the recruitment and hiring process. Candidates need to be aware of when they’re starting at a business that’s going in the right direction. The greater the potential success of the brand, the more career growth opportunities they could be presented with. 

At ease asking questions and with the recruitment team

The interview process can be daunting at the best of times. But when your hiring managers are confident, engaging and welcoming, candidates will feel more at home being themselves and more likely to delve into the questions they really want to ask. 

Get every aspect of your employer brand on track with BAM by Papirfly™ 

By now we hope we’ve helped you understand the candidate’s experience from their perspective. Everything we have covered also needs foundations in a powerful employer brand.

With BAM (Brand Activation Management), you can create, access, manage and share every aspect of your campaigns and brand in one place.

• Create infinite digital, print, social, email and video assets without professional support – all delivered on time and on-brand
• Store, share and edit pre-existing assets and files – all perfectly organised with no need to waste time on searching or duplication of effort 
• Manage campaign timelines, the sign off process and more effortlessly in our centralised portal 
• Educate teams with a dedicated selection of assets that help them understand your brand and how to showcase your employer brand

If you would like to see the power of BAM for yourself, a demo is a great place to start. Find out more about our software or book your demo today.

There are few things that leave a more powerful impression on the human mind as a well-told story.

Whether it’s a blockbuster movie or the latest ad for a global brand, strong storytelling captures the imagination of audiences and imparts messages, lessons and emotions that, when conveyed effectively, stay with people for the rest of their lives.

But the art of storytelling is not restricted to Hollywood or publishing houses – it also has a vital role in the persuasive power of employer branding.

The decision to join a company and remain there is largely driven by emotion. Prospective candidates want to feel what it is like to work for that brand, to experience how it will engage and motivate them day-to-day. Meanwhile, existing employees need consistent reinforcement of the purpose behind your brand, and their role in bringing that to fruition.

Good storytelling is essential in getting these points across in a way that standalone facts and statistics simply can’t. 

Stories inspire emotions. They move people. They forge connections.

Here, we advocate the value of storytelling in employer branding and how it can greatly enhance your efforts to recruit and retain top talent, illustrated with real-life examples from top brands.

How storytelling conveys employer brand values

At a fundamental level, employer brand storytelling should be purpose-driven. This means it conveys a message or lesson that the reader/viewer takes away, having recognised the experiences and emotions of the characters within that story.

Take the timeless tale of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”. Although you could simply tell someone the moral of this story outright, that if you lie too often then people won’t believe you when you’re actually telling the truth, framing it in its true ‘story’ context leaves a more potent, vivid impression as to why this lesson is so important.

Employer brand storytelling should take the same initiative. Simply presenting candidates and employees with statistics, benefits and perks of being part of your company will not inspire the same emotional response as a well-told story. 

They want to know what it feels like to be part of your team. 

• What skills will they pick up?
• What challenges will they face?
• Who will they interact with?
• What will make them happy? 

This can only be effectively conveyed in a well-constructed story, harnessing the history and values of your brand and the authentic experiences of your existing employees.

67% of employers believe their retention rates would improve if candidates had a clearer picture of their company’s values (Glassdoor)

A compelling story is the most valuable gift that organisations can give their employer brand. To breathe personality and experience into the glossy imagery and polished messages. When done well, employer brand storytelling should:

• Inspire available talent to become part of your organisation
• Plant the seeds in passive candidates’ mind that you would represent a great place to work one day
• Provide the information on-the-fence candidates need to deselect themselves if they don’t feel connected to your company values
• Differentiate yourself from competitors within your industry
• Consistently reinforce your brand values and objectives into your existing workforce, so they always feel connected to your company
• Create internal brand advocates, who will in turn share their own stories that will inform and encourage future candidates

It requires a firm understanding of your target audience’s characteristics and ambitions. Emphatic content writing and creative direction. Knowledge of the most appropriate channels to use and a number of truthful employee experiences to lay the foundations.

Below we’ve identified some top-notch examples of employer brand storytelling and the lessons to take away from these, divided into three overarching categories:

Employer brand storytelling through social media

75% believe companies are more trustworthy if their leadership teams communicate their brand values over social media (Glassdoor).

It’s impossible to escape the pull of social media platforms in today’s landscape, making them essential places for companies to promote their employer brand story.

Microsoft Life

The Microsoft Life Instagram page weaves powerful stories about what it is like to be part of their community through the journeys of their team members across the globe.

This delves into the real-life experiences of their talent, both positive and negative, and how being part of the Microsoft family helped them overcome any challenges and achieve their ambitions. 

By harnessing these authentic stories, from people representing all backgrounds, cultures and personalities, their IG page paints an extraordinary picture of how supportive the brand is to its workforce, which should encourage others to join.

Lesson learnt – by utilising identifiable human stories of triumph and challenge from within your own team, you help forge real emotional connections towards them and, consequently, your brand as a whole.

Salesforce

The #SalesforceOhana Instagram tag is all about emphasising the pride the company has in its employees. Ohana is the Hawaiian word for family, and by using this expression, it immediately creates a narrative that the people working for Salesforce are more than just employees – they are family, connected to each other and the brand as a whole.

This framework is then fleshed out with images, videos and stories of their team members worldwide doing fun and interesting things, often with other employees. This highlights the fantastic company culture within the Salesforce brand, making it appear as a welcoming and enjoyable place to work.

Lesson learnt – create a unifying hashtag or term to bond your employees together across the globe on social media, making your team members always feel part of your community and the values that this represents.

Mailchimp

Mailchimp’s Instagram page often presents behind-the-scenes footage of life at the company alongside the experiences of specific members of their team. These videos and imagery illustrate the culture of the brand and the humour and creativity of those working within it, framing it in a way that is very slick and aspirational.

Especially since the transition to more home-working, Mailchimp has also used their social media platforms to depict how they are bringing their remote workers together with community activities, from yoga and meditation exercises to group cooking classes.

Lesson learnt – tell stories on social media that go behind the curtain of your business, allowing prospective candidates to envision themselves being part of that environment.

Employer brand storytelling through video

Video has quickly become the go-to source of content across the entire Internet, and represents a perfect medium to bring your employer brand story to life.

Zendesk

In one compact, well-structured video, Zendesk presents a clear picture of who their brand is, where they are based, what you will experience when you go there, and the type of people that you will be working with.

It blends the right amount of humour and irreverence to present it as a fun, light-hearted brand where you will enjoy working. But, it doesn’t steer too far away from the actual work, illustrating how they make it exciting. Plus, it signs off by saying they hire interesting people with interesting backgrounds – a category most people would like to find themselves in!

Lessons learnt – inject your employer brand story with personality, and make it abundantly clear what candidates can expect when they join your team.

Etsy

After Etsy announced it would offer employees six-and-a-half months’ parental leave, they produced this video containing interviews with their parent employees about what this support from the brand has meant to them.

This projects a powerful message to both existing employees and potential recruits about how much Etsy cares about its workforce, and how it doesn’t present a barrier to their personal lives. For those with plans for having kids in the future, hearing these stories will provide immense reassurance that this company will continue to have their back.

Lesson learnt – identify specific pain points or concerns that your audiences may have relating to where they work (parental leave, flexible working, overtime, etc.) and create story-driven content that clearly demonstrates your stance.

Heineken

The “Go Places” video by Heineken is incredibly clever and creative, depicting the questions and doubts potential recruits might have about joining their brand (or any other brand for that matter) and providing snappy, encouraging answers.

Through this, Heineken strongly positions itself as a brand where people can join and forge their own path and find their niche. By casting a large number of their employees alongside the main narrator and throwing in selective facts and figures like their 250+ brands and 70+ countries, it illustrates the scale and variety of the company in a way that is neither too corporate nor arrogant.

Lesson learnt – revisit the questions, thoughts, and journeys of your existing employees before joining your brand, and tie these to your company values to demonstrate that you understand what your audience is thinking and what they’re looking for.

Employer brand storytelling through career pages

Charity Water

Quit your day job and come change the world. Right from the opening line of their career page, Charity Water immediately tells the story of how working with them means you are making a difference, and reinforces that spirit throughout.

Weaved into this overarching narrative are distinctly defined perks and benefits, photos and videos of company-wide activities, and copy dedicated to the diversity of their employees. Blended together, Charity Water’s career page emphasises that they are a brand that gives people a purpose in a welcoming, inclusive environment.

Lesson learnt – start your employer brand stroy with a punchy, powerful statement, and then reinforce that with data, testimonials and more that illustrate that you practice what you preach as an organisation.

VTS

The VTS career page effectively utilises video content throughout to showcase the unique experience that they offer for employees. The first element you encounter as you scroll down is a behind-the-scenes video that highlights their employees in action and tells the story of how they are transforming the world of commercial real estate.

Further down the page, VTS’ company values are put in full focus, and then reinforced by interviews with employees explaining how these values work in practice. This is particularly important as while any organisation can say how they are different, the authentic testimonies of their workforce give these a lot more weight, and will signify to potential recruits that you are what you say you are.

Lesson learnt – back each and every one of your company values with a narrative, whether that is a backstory behind each one and what it means to your leadership team, or examples from employees putting these values into action in their everyday lives.

Twitter

At a time when Millennial and Gen Z talent is motivated by the difference they can make to a company, Twitter pivots off of this with their career page. The page focuses on how its workforce drives conversations across the globe and the values that underlie their organisation, from being totally transparent within their team, to helping people maintain healthy work-life balances.

Each of these is backed up by beautifully produced videos spotlighting members of their team in a variety of roles, with each of them advocating the role they and others play in making Twitter the world-renowned platform that it is today.

Lesson learnt – harness the voices, skills and experiences across your team and connect these to your company values to illustrate their authenticity and pinpoint the type of people who would excel in your environment.

Bringing story into your employer branding

We hope that these examples of employer brand pieces that capably tell engaging stories about who their organisations are, what makes them different and why people want to be part of them will give you the inspiration you need to forge the same for your own company moving forward.

Storytelling is the most powerful weapon for employer brand professionals in stirring the right emotions from their audiences. Approaches such as those highlighted above are how you put candidates in the shoes of your existing employees, so they can vividly recognise what it would be like to join your team, and whether that aligns with their own ambitions.

As a final recap of how to maximise the potential of storytelling in your employer branding, we recommend you keep the following in mind:

• Build a thorough, watertight understanding of your target audience, and use this to guide the direction of the stories you craft
• Always remain truthful and authentic – fake stories and broken promises will only lead to low retention rates, and potentially harm your ability to attract talent in future
• Where possible, adapt and adjust your brand story for the specific audiences that you wish to target
• Leverage your existing employees to be the foundation of these authentic, purpose-driven stories, and give them all the support they need to tell them
• Identify the most appropriate channels based on where your target audience can be found and the type of message you are looking to share
• Experiment with different content mediums and make the most of each resource – one employee interview could inspire multiple videos, blog posts, images, infographics and more!

Discover how far your employer brand can go with BAM – get in touch with our team today.

For many businesses, COVID-19 has dramatically altered the way they work now and moving forward. Nowhere is that truer than how it has accelerated how companies embrace and adapt to remote working.

According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), 49.2% of employed adults in the UK were working from home as of April 2020. While the trend towards remote working has been recognised for several years now, this rapid shift has forced organisations to think on their feet about many factors, like:

• Do they have the technology in place to support efficient remote working?
• How do we support the wellbeing of employees that need to work remotely?
• How are we going to maintain communications with our customers and other audiences?
• What will this mean for our company culture?

That final question is what we are focusing this article around. Many organisations are understandably fearful about employees feeling abandoned or disconnected from their employer brand if they aren’t in their traditional workplace.

They may have invested in brilliant workplace bonuses like cafe areas, beanbags, ping pong tables, exercise machines and more to encourage a positive, fun atmosphere and engage their employees. Without these cool perks, how will existing staff and new hires feel part of the team and understand its core values?

Well, in this article we will explain why maintaining company culture is possible while working remotely, and why it might in fact enhance the strength of this over time.

What is company culture and why is it so important?

As great as a table football set or an in-house cinema can be to make work a more interesting place to be, those that think they represent the essence of company culture are going about things all wrong. They may make people happy in the short term and even tie in with your company values, but they are no more than “nice-to-haves”.

In reality, your company culture is the mission, visions and values that underline who your brand is and what it stands for. It represents the attitudes and behaviours that team members demonstrate on a day-to-day basis.

For instance, are you a company that’s rooted in tradition and your local community, or one that’s laser-focused on the future and globalisation? 

Do you promote a formal, hierarchical style of management, or a more free-flowing approach to employee participation?

Do you push a practice of 9-to-5 office hours from Monday to Friday, or do you favour a flexible approach to working times?

The great thing about company culture is that there is no wrong answer to these questions, as it will depend on what values you uphold within your organisation. The key is building this culture and getting employees to buy into it, as this will ensure they’re connected to your brand and that everyone is working towards a shared goal – the continued progression of the company.

You may be thinking “that sounds great, but what impact does a strong company culture actually have in practice?”. We’re glad you asked, as the all-encompassing nature of company culture impacts an organisation in many ways, including:

• Recruitment – 77% of job seekers will assess a company’s culture before applying there
• Retaining staff – 63% of employees say company culture is one of the main reasons for staying in a job
• Productivity – Employees satisfied with their workplace culture are 12% more productive than unhappy employees
• Stronger leadership – Employees are 23% more likely to stay with a company if their manager clearly explains their role and responsibilities
• Revenue growth – Companies with strong cultures can see revenue growth of up to 682% compared to just 166% for those without

Now, establishing and reinforcing company culture is easier said than done, and it definitely takes more than setting up a slide in the middle of your building.

Is remote working actually great for company culture?

We believe this forced transition to remote working, while problematic in the short term for many, could actually inspire more companies to take a well-thought-out approach to developing their company culture.

In a communal office environment, for instance, it is easy to fall into the trap that many have in the past that perks = culture. A pool table, a branded poster down the main corridor and after-work drinks on a Friday and the job’s done, right? Wrong.

By adding the additional challenge of keeping a remote workforce engaged and up-to-speed with the values that the company upholds above all others, particularly if it involves bringing a completely fresh face into the mix, it forces those responsible for company culture to think more clearly.

There’s no assumption that it will develop naturally over time or a few incentives will do the work for them. They enter the process with their eyes wide open. So, if you find yourself in this situation, what steps can you take to keep your culture strong while your team is spread out?

How to inspire company culture across your remote workforce

Define and document your core values

Firstly, it’s important that you take the time to assess the values that make your company what it is. What do you stand for as a brand? What do you aspire towards? How do you look to make life a better place for your customers and the wider world?

Clarity on these is essential – if you’re fuzzy on what your company’s core values truly are, then that confusion will trickle down to your employees, making it likely they feel disconnected or disengaged with your brand. Once you have nailed down your values, these can be communicated internally to help bring the team together under a common goal.

And remember, when you have your values, put them somewhere virtually so your team can access them and understand them. That’s a huge factor in why BAM by Papirfly™ incorporates an “Educate” section, where our clients can house critical documents like their core values to ensure that your team members, even those working remotely, know what your brand stands for and will present that through your marketing collateral.

Plus, your values may change over time as the world around us evolves, so make sure that you review them annually or quarterly.

Make your values central to internal and external communications

Once you have your core values cemented, instilling them throughout your remote team takes more than just slapping it on a poster or a page on your website. They need to become inherent to how you communicate and operate as a team, and be a constant presence within your organisation.

How can this be achieved? Techniques we’d recommend include:

• Institute a company-wide newsletter to share big wins and exciting news within the company
• Establish designated channels in your chat systems like Slack or Google Hangouts to encourage communication among remote workers
• Celebrate achievements through your social media platforms as well as through internal channels
• Ensure all team members utilise the same communication channels when working, rather than being left to their own devices
• Hold frequent performance reviews and one-to-one meetings with team members to discuss their work and reinforce your values
• Host creative learning courses or training sessions with remote workers built around company values
• Guide staff through new processes virtually so they can work autonomously and capably without the need for micromanagement

By instilling each of these communication points with your core values, they become a more constant presence for your employees, connecting them with your overarching culture.

Showcase your company history during onboarding

As part of the onboarding process for new employees, or even as a recurring meeting or session with all members of your team, present a timeline of your company and how your connection to your values and visions has contributed to your progression.

This historical example will not only present tangible examples of why your company believes in its approach, ensuring your employees don’t consider your brand as “all talk, no action”, but it will help new recruits feel like they’ve been part of your organisation for a while by giving them a strong sense of where you’ve come from.

The sooner you can get recruits invested in company culture and motivated by your brand vision, the faster they will be delivering top-quality work for your cause.

Encourage video conferencing for more than meetings

Programs like Zoom, Skype and Google Hangouts have enjoyed a boom during 2020, as more and more businesses begin to rely on them to keep in touch with employees, customers and more in this challenging environment.

But, to support your company culture further, try and find ways to harness this technology for more than meetings and training sessions. Just because remote workers can’t all gather around the water cooler for a chat doesn’t mean the same effect can’t be achieved virtually. In fact, it’s better, because now you can schedule these well in advance!

Dedicate time during your working day or after work to informal discussions and catch-ups among your workforce. This will not only familiarise them with their co-workers, build stronger relationships and ensure people don’t become isolated, but it will also help them let their hair down.

Take these informal chats further by hosting gaming sessions, movie nights and more through your video conferencing technology.

Blend core values into company workflows

As noted earlier, it’s crucial that your core values are integrated into working practices, and recognised when they are upheld among your team members. Discuss these values when interviewing or onboarding new recruits and during team training sessions, and then celebrate it when an employee does something, whether it’s related to work or not, that embodies your core values.

For example, if one of your key values is being environmentally conscious, if somebody does a fun run that raises a lot of money to save the rainforests, then shout it out. By identifying and rewarding people who are engaged with your company culture, it makes them feel more connected with the team and encourages others to follow that example.

Bring the team together from time to time

With lockdown restrictions coming to a halt, take some time to plan out company-wide retreats and get-togethers than bring your remote workers together. 

There is sometimes really no substitute for face-to-face interaction, but if your team typically is spread far apart, it makes these events even more meaningful and effective than if it was just spending time with the people you’re sharing a building with 8 hours a day.

These events can concentrate on team bonding and building that united front without the pressure of work, which will then translate into employees being more connected with their co-workers and more empowered in their own working environment.

5 brands nailing company culture while working remotely

American Express

As part of their commitment to Relationship Care, employees at American Express regularly receive coaching on how to connect with their customers and inspire loyalty. In this new age of remote working, this is now achieved by side-to-side virtual training as opposed to in-person coaching.

Buffer

Buffer, which has a 100% remote workforce, maintains a strong, unified culture by frequently asking for team feedback and suggestions through surveys, and by establishing a People Team that is dedicated to employee engagement and experimenting with new approaches to building company culture.

ICUC Social

ICUC Social’s commitment to developing a capable remote working culture incorporates initiatives like Happy Hour Fridays on Google Hangouts, cluster parties in various cities for their global teams, and a Sherpa Program, where someone is assigned to closely support and guide new recruits for their first month in the role.

SitePen

Activities that have helped boost employee engagement at SitePen include all-hands meetings on Monday mornings, an array of project chatrooms where remote workers can discuss an array of topics, and frequent one-on-one mentoring catch-ups.

Toptal

In order to promote the company’s value of celebrating travel and adventure, Toptal will often encourage team members in meetings to discuss where they’re working from, and this will often lead to discussions about exotic locations and traditions. They also regularly host team meetups in a variety of places worldwide.

Communicating your company culture

We hope that this has been an eye-opening examination of how company culture can thrive in a remote working landscape. While the creature comforts of on-location working have their undoubted benefits for boosting employee engagement, we feel the challenge presented by this reliance on virtual technology will encourage organisations to think more about what they can do to cement and express their values throughout their workforce.

At Papirfly, we are supporting our clients’ efforts to achieve this united front through our all-encompassing BAM portal. Through our software’s dedicated Educate section, we ensure all guidelines, training videos, assets and more are available to team members across the globe, so everybody is conscious of who their brand is and what they stand for.

To learn more about this and the wide-reaching benefits of BAM by Papirfly™, get in touch with our team or arrange your first-hand demo.

If you have an account on LinkedIn, you are likely exposed to thousands of ‘personal’ brands each day. From what you post on social media to how you sign off an email, a personal brand can be a powerful thing that shapes how the people of the world see your professional self.

When companies invest time and resources into helping their employees propel and magnify their personal brands, it can be highly beneficial for the person and the brand they represent.

Anyone can use the corporate brand’s narrative to help carve their own. Let’s take a look at which roles in particular should be actively encouraged to propel their personal brand.

Sales Professionals

Those sending out emails, inMails or hosting sessions with prospects are not only representing the company, but in most cases are the first point of contact for individuals. They are responsible for building trust in the brand and establishing a positive relationship with business decision-makers across the world.

It’s vital that sales professionals have the basic sales tools and documentation they need to do their job, but above this, they need support to create an impressive online presence. If a prospect is being reached out to by a sales professional, more often than not, they will check them out on Google. If the prospect is met with a poor online presence, it may tarnish the respect they have for the brand. If the individual is a thought leader or active poster online, they could be more likely to engage.

Sales Professional:

• Needs access to videos, social assets and email templates
• Nees access to tone of voice guidelines
• Should understand brand values

Customer Service Professionals

Much like Sales Professionals, those in customer service play a crucial role in how they portray the brand to new and existing customers. They too need access to documentation that can assist them with queries and company information, but if they actively made being helpful and knowledgeable part of their personal brand, there could be an exponentially positive ripple effect on the company’s reputation.

Customer Service Professional

• Needs detailed documentation
• Needs access to tone of voice guidelines
• Should understand brand values

Managers and Director-Level Professionals

Your brand’s content strategy may not extend to the experts in your business, but it most definitely should. Not just from a corporate perspective, but from an employer brand view.

People want to know the company they’re investing in, whether as a customer or a potential candidate, is as expert as it claims. If each head of department is creating their own content (or assisted in creating it), those in each respective team can share, comment and engage – further casting the net for your brand to get noticed.

Managers and Director-Level Profession

• Needs access to professional resources such as copywriters and videographers
• Shoukd pioneer brand values
• Needs specific area of expertise to become thought leader on

HR and Employer Brand Teams

Showing the world that you lead by example is a great way to attract recruits. Those that are responsible for attracting and retaining employees should shout about what a great place it is to work, and keep everyone updated with any new or impressive policies.

HR and Employer Brand Teams

• Helps brand to practice what it preaches
• Understands employee brand inside out
• Needs access to pool of assets

What will motivate employees to build their personal brand? 

Employees that do not have a strong personal connection to your brand are unlikely to be willing to build their personal brand in conjunction with your corporate story. Your employer brand must be strong in the first place and rooted in a positive culture in order for personal brand building to be effective and beneficial.  
Here are some key ways to help motivate employees:

• When setting guidelines on what they can and can’t do, make them easy to read, understand and implement. 
• Provide easily accessible resources and assets that can be edited or shared directly. 
• Don’t expect this personal brand building to take place outside of work hours – it’s a big ask. Allocate some work time to personal development and brand building – once they’ve reached a certain level, employees are more likely to invest their own time.
• Don’t leave them hanging. If they want to be involved but are unsure of how to get started, put them in touch with whoever can help, such as your agency, marketing consultants, designers or copywriters. You could even do in-house sessions that help individuals in certain aspects of personal brand building.
• Don’t be too militant about which websites they can access on the company network. Restricting access to social media, for example, will discourage employees from building any form of personal brand. 
• It’s important to remember that not everyone will want to partake in representing the company on their personal channels. It’s a big step for many, so think about rewarding those that do contribute – this can help incentivise others.
• Know your brand mission and identity – if your brand is misaligned internally there’s little point in getting employees to shout about it.

Building a personal brand: what they need checklist

Now we’ve covered the who and the how, let’s get into the what. This list is by no means comprehensive, but it is the bare minimum your team should expect to implement should you wish to recruit more employees into building their personal brand:

Professional photography

Without a professional photo, an employee has little chance of making a good impression. If a photographer isn’t available then someone should be available internally to help shoot them professionally.

LinkedIn (or equivalent) training

If social media isn’t part of their job, it’s a huge ask to expect employees to get involved. A crash course or ongoing support to help them progress and answer any questions will be critical.

Access to a company laptop or phone outside of work hours

If you want your employees to represent your brand at all times, they need access to the technology that can help them facilitate it, even if they don’t engage outside of work hours.

A copy of the company mission and values

Employees need to be aligned to their corporate mission and brand values, otherwise it’s a wasted effort trying to build their personal brand. Someone that doesn’t share your vision will be instantly obvious on any social media feed.

Brand and tone of voice guidelines

This may be a smaller, more focused version of your wider guideline document. It could contain all the key brand terminology, dos and don’ts, and some key information about their industry or area of expertise.

A digital resource for assets and files 

Appearing professional starts with looking professional. This may begin with a nicely shot photo, but the content that appears on social feeds must look and feel like it’s part of the brand. Having a central, digital repository that teams can dip in and out of when needed will break down any barriers to engagement they have and actively encourage them to get involved.

A simple approvals process

If you’re using a Brand Activation Management (BAM) system, you should have a built-in DAM and approvals process for any new assets created. If your asset creation and sign-off process isn’t digitised, then try to make sure employees only have one hoop to jump through to get their content signed off – any more than this and they are likely to disengage.

Idea and topic generation sessions

Whether it’s in the form of a company meeting or a Friday whiteboard session, it shouldn’t be down to just the individual to come up with every topic they write about. While most content will be focused on their area of expertise, wider company updates and discussions are paramount, otherwise things can become quickly misaligned.

Assistance from other employees or an agency

If your employees are from a technical background or aren’t used to writing about themselves publicly, offer them access to resources inside or outside of your organisation that might be able to assist.

Empower your employees to build their personal brand with BAM by Papirfly™

One of the biggest barriers for brands is being able to produce high-quality, varied content on demand. Add brand advocates in the form of employees into the mix and that’s an entire content stream that needs to be accounted for. What BAM does is provide a central place for marketing teams and employees to create, edit, share and manage campaign materials.

Videos, social media assets, emails and more. Every digital and print asset team could need, produced in-house, by anyone, an infinite amount of times. The best part is that there’s a digital audit trail and an in-built sign-off process, so you can guarantee that only approved content makes its way onto the internet. 

Find out more about BAM today or book your demo.

Employer brand is for everyone

So, a strong employer brand makes the chances of capturing the imagination of top talent and inspiring existing employees much greater. That begs the question: is your employer brand living up to its full potential, or is there room for improvement?

Here, we share 9 ways to assess the strength of your employer brand to ensure it is having a positive impact on your recruitment efforts. For information on other aspects that will help with attracting and retaining talent, check out our complete guide to employer branding here. 

9 telltale signs that you’ve got a great employer brand:

#1 Employee retention rate is high

Employees come and go in any organisation. However, the rate at which employees voluntarily depart is a useful indicator of how well your employer brand is performing.

When you are able to retain employees for numerous years, it indicates that they see value in being part of your organisation. Whether it’s due to financial incentives like salary and bonuses, or a close affinity to the values and missions that your brand stands for, it shows that your employer brand is keeping people engaged.

Conversely, if employees leaving after a few months in the role is a regular occurrence, it could be a strong signal that their reality as an employee isn’t living up to the promises of your employer brand. 

So, when does turnover become a problem? While employee turnover rates vary from industry to industry and location to location, in the UK it averages out to around 15%. Use this as a benchmark – how does your turnover rate look in comparison?

To work out your monthly turnover rate, simply divide the number of employees who left your company during the month by the average number of employees at your organisation in the same period. For example, say you had an average 100 employees in your company and 7 leave, that month’s turnover rate would be 7%. 

To quickly calculate your turnover rate in any given period, work out:

A – The number of people you employed at the start of that period of time

B – The number of employees who left during that period of time

B/A = Turnover rate  

If your turnover rate is lower than your regional or industry average, it is a good indication that your employer brand is doing an effective job of keeping people tied to your organisation.

#2 You receive many unsolicited applications

Do you find that, despite having little to no vacancies listed, you still receive job applications and CVs from interested recruits? If so, that’s a powerful sign that your employer brand is resonating with top talent, and they like what they see.

While there is little statistical evidence as to what a ‘large number’ of unsolicited applications amounts to and will vary depending on the scale and reputation of your organisation, receiving these approaches indicates that people aspire to be part of your team. 

The fact that they are willing to make a completely speculative effort to join you should be a clear illustration that you’re sending the right messages out there. If the number of these applications you’re receiving is rising, then it’s a good indication that your employer brand is getting stronger. 

#3 You have a high job offer acceptance rate

If the majority of your job offers to potential recruits are accepted, it’s a strong sign that your employer brand is:

• Connecting with the right candidates
• Providing the right incentives to join
• Motivating people to be part of your team

In 2020 the average offer acceptance rate across all industries globally was 95%. To work out yours, simply divide the number of offers accepted by the number of offers issued:

If your percentage matches or exceeds this level, then it’s another positive marker for your employer brand. However, it is useful to assess those who didn’t accept an offer and find out their reasons for doing so where possible, as this could highlight potential improvements for your branding:

• At what stage did they reject the offer?
• Why did they refuse?
• Which company did they join instead?

#4 You are securing quality hires 

It’s a highly competitive recruitment landscape – the best talent is hard to secure. For today’s top-tier talents, salaries and perks will likely only go so far in attracting them to your organisation. They will want to join a brand that aligns with their own values:

92% of people would consider switching jobs if offered a role at a company with an excellent reputation (HR Daily Advisor)

Knowing whether your employer brand has secured the best candidates is difficult to measure, but these factors are a good way to tell whether you’ve made a good hiring decision.

Are you securing quality hires? Here’s your checklist…

✅ Your hiring manager is satisfied 
✅ They are very competent or go beyond expectations at their job
✅ They meet or exceed the seniority level they displayed in their interview
✅ They have made an immediate positive impact
✅ They have become embedded within the organisation

#5 You have a high employee referral rate

If your employees recommend your job vacancies to friends, family or people in their wider network, it indicates several positive things about your employer brand:

✅ They have a strong grasp of your values and can see them in resonating with others
✅ They enjoy the culture of your organisation
✅ They are happy to act as advocates for your brand

Referrals are still one of the most effective recruitment methods for securing great talent – in 2020, the average number of jobs filled by referrals was 51%, and 45% of hires sourced from referrals stay at a company for longer than 4 years.

So, not only does it take an employee to be passionate about their job to recommend your company to someone they know, but they are also more likely to have confidence in the person they are recommending for the role.

If you feel this aspect of your approach to recruitment is lacking, try offering referral bonuses for staff who bring in successful hires from their network. In 2019, the average referral bonus was over £1,800.

#6 You have a positive giveaway/takeaway ratio

This ratio denotes the number of people you’ve hired from competitors against those who left your company to join a competitor.

Between two similar roles with equally matched salaries, your employer brand is often a candidate’s deciding factor and sometimes the only basis upon which they have to choose. So if you’re attracting employees from your competitors, it’s a big win for your employer brand.

Conversely, if you are losing potential hires or your existing employees to competitors, it should start to raise some red flags about the strength of your employer brand – particularly if the promise of a salary increase is not enough to win them back:

• What did your competitor offer them – pay increase, career progression, personal incentives, etc.?
• Did your own company culture or employer value proposition contribute to their choice to depart?
• What are their core values and mission? Are they highlighted more prominently than your own?
• Is their employer branding more visible than your organisation’s?

For more information, check out our insight on “14 reasons why you’re losing good employees to competitors”.

#7 You have a happy hiring manager

One of the easiest ways to tell whether your employer brand works is to speak to your hiring manager.

If they’re satisfied with recent hires and confident in your company’s recruitment campaigns, then they are almost certainly onboard with your employer brand.

#8 Your marketing and HR teams work side by side

Communicating your company values, posting job adverts and launching recruitment campaigns is a team effort between marketing and recruitment. And the thing that links them together? You guessed it, your employer brand.

Combining the expertise of your employer brand and marketing teams is one of the best ways to improve engagement of internal communications, keep staff in-the-know and instil your brand’s shared goals and values company-wide.

#9 Your employees are active on social media

When your employees are engaging with your company’s content on social media, you have visible proof that your employer brand is working. Even better if your employees are creating their own content through employee advocacy programs.

68% of Millennials visit a company’s social media channels to evaluate their employer brand (CareerArc)

To break down barriers between employees and organisations, staff need a way to share their stories and show the world what it’s really like to be part of your brand. Social engagement can be encouraged using platforms built for this very purpose, such as PostBeyond and EveryoneSocial.

Both these employee advocacy solutions actively encourage staff to share high-quality content with their wider networks and engage prospects.

How does your employer brand measure up?

If your company is falling short against the tangible metrics above, then it might be a sign that your employer brand isn’t working as well as it could be, and that you’re missing out on top candidates as a result. 

As well as exploring the 9 signs of a strong employer brand, it can be helpful to look for inspiration from the global brands that are leading the way. Here are a few pointers to take away from three employer branding examples we love.

Tony’s Chocolonely

In an effort to remind people that profits in the chocolate industry aren’t evenly distributed, Tony’s Chocolonely fair trade chocolate bars are not moulded into neat squares like other brands. 

This powerful mission statement to end unfair practices in the chocolate industry is combined with their bright, colourful packaging and informal typography to present a brand that is fun and inviting on the surface, with a strong, meaningful message inside.

Why we love it

The Tony’s Chocolonely brand mission and core purpose come across in every part of their employer branding – from their brand manifesto video to the way they showcase their team on their website.

What makes this such a success is the effective way that they walk the delicate balance between an important purpose to improve the lives of others, while maintaining a light-hearted brand packed with humour and joy.

Zappos

In addition to a highly engaging employee-driven social media presence through #insidezappos, the success of this company’s employee branding goes a step further to secure the best talent during their onboarding processes.

Every new hire undergoes a 4 week training process where they learn about the company’s values and gain experience working in the customer service department – regardless of the role they have been hired for. 

Before their ‘onboarding graduation’, new hires are offered payment to quit if they feel the job isn’t the right fit for them. According to Tony Hsieh, Zappos CEO: “The original motivation for doing it was to make sure that people were there for reasons beyond a short-term paycheck.” 

Why we love it

Zappos’ purpose and personality are embodied at every employer brand touchpoint. From keeping the world up to date with what’s happening within the company through social media, to making the interview process match their positive values.

It has helped them garner a passionate, engaged workforce who share the same drive and purpose for the exceptional service Zappos has become renowned for.

Greggs

In recent years, UK-based bakery Greggs has excelled in building positive brand perception through witty campaigns and publicity stunts that won the hearts of consumers and loyal customers. The brand is also becoming regarded as a highly ethical employer, thanks to its support of mental health initiatives and help for people from disadvantaged backgrounds through The Greggs Foundation.

These are values that can also be seen in the way they treat their employees. After the resounding, and somewhat unexpected, success of launching the vegan sausage roll, all staff received a bonus from the incredible sales and profit boost that it resulted in.

Why we love it

It’s clear that Greggs understands and celebrates the value of its employees and the work they put in. They are careful not to forget that their biggest success is a result of their people and make sure they communicate this with actions not just words.

Shaping positive staff experiences goes a long way to shaping positive customer experiences. For Greggs, this has given them the perception as an ethical brand that values its employees and wants to give back to local communities.

Support the strength of your employer branding

With these 9 signs highlighted in this article, we hope that you are able to use them to check the strength of your own employer brand, and determine whether any improvements can be made to raise these all-important metrics. The continued success of a company’s employer brand plays a pivotal role in shaping its future, whether it’s attracting impressive candidates, to retaining its most exceptional employees for the long term. Keeping it strong and in shape will help ensure your organisation consistently expands and thrives with a motivated, engaged workforce behind it.

Keeping your employer brand in good shape requires an honest assessment of its current condition. The sooner the better.

Perhaps your employer brand is currently fit and healthy with hires steady, retention high, and perceptions positive. Or maybe it’s not currently in its prime state. Either way, it can be tempting to take your foot off the gas when it comes to employer brand investment – be that in terms of time, effort or budget.

Yet if the last few years have taught us anything, it’s that you never know what’s around the corner. Teams need to be agile with streamlined processes – ultimately, your employer branding framework should be working as hard as possible every day.

Conduct a health-check today and take the essential steps to keep motivated teams together, while winning the race to attract new talent by persuading them to choose your brand over your competitors.

How strong is your employer brand?

Measuring the direct impact your employer brand is having on your overall business’s profitability can be difficult as there are many contributing factors. You can, however, check whether your employer brand is reaching its full potential in several ways.

Work out your employee turnover 

The number of employees coming and going is a strong indication of how engaged staff are with your EVP (employer value proposition). 

To work out your monthly employee turnover rate, simply divide the number of employees who left your company during the month by the average number of employees at your organisation in the same period. For example, say you had an average of 100 employees in your company and 7 left, that month’s turnover rate would be 7%.

High employee turnover will have significant costs for your business. If you’re struggling with employee retention, it’s important to investigate the reasons why they are deciding to leave. This can highlight common patterns that will show you where you could improve as an employer, or whether you need to adjust your recruitment strategy for attracting and retaining talented employees. It may even be that you need to attract a different kind of candidate.

Check employee engagement activity on social media

When your employees are engaging with your company’s content on social media, you have visible proof that your employer brand is working as your talent can be a brand ambassador. 

Establishing employee advocacy programmes and empowering employees to create their own content is a great way to get them more engaged with, and build an employer brand.

Discover if you have a positive giveaway to takeaway ratio

This is the number of people you’ve hired from competitors against those who left your company to join a competitor. 

If you’re losing good talent to the competition, it can be easy to jump to the conclusion that they have been offered a higher salary. This may not be the only reason. Factors like work-life balance, flexible working, company culture and opportunities for growth have overtaken pay on the list of employee priorities and are key to building a great place to work.

Build positive brand perception from the inside out

The reason that your EVP is so closely linked to the financial success of your businesses – now more than ever– is because consumers care about employer branding.

As we’ve discussed before, building a positive brand perception is the key to winning the hearts and minds of consumers. It’s no use hiding behind your external messaging when what happens behind closed doors doesn’t match the ideals your brand is pitching to consumers. At best, your messaging will come across as inauthentic. At worst, your hard-earned trust and customer loyalty can all come tumbling down with a single post on social media – hence the importance of employer branding.

To let your positive company culture shine through, start from the inside out. Your external and internal employer branding should be natural extensions of each other, centred on the same purpose and core values.

How senior leadership teams can strengthen their company’s employer brand 

As a CEO or senior-level employee, you have the power to make or break the success of your company’s employer brand. If you’re not engaged with your EVP, why should your teams be? 

Here are three relatively simple ways you can instil belief in your employer brand and boost your profitability:

#1 Create an authentic EVP and embody it

Once you’ve established your employer value proposition with your team, it’s vital that the values and aspirations you are promoting to others come through in your own actions and decision-making. Lead by example to bring your staff on board with what your company stands for.

Unsure if your EVP is in the right place? Read up on the crucial components of any employer value proposition.

#2 Communicate regularly

You may not get to work directly with every employee in your business, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get to know them. Opening two-way channels of internal communication, like intranets and staff portals, will make all teams feel more equally valued and help you better understand their day-to-day impact on the business.In addition, having brand guidelines in one place will also help align everyone to the same message to stay consistent with the brand they work for which, as a consequence, can strengthen your company culture.

#3 Promote content around your company culture

As a member or key influence on your company’s senior leadership team, it’s important to have a visible online presence. Showcase your company’s big wins. Celebrate your employees. Let consumers see the human side of your brand.

Give your employer brand a regular checkup

There has never been a more important time to invest in your employer brand. No matter how successful it is, the attitudes of employees and prospective talent can switch at any time, and it’s important you have processes, tools and skills in place to respond. 

You can make your employer brand work smarter with brand management solutions from Papirfly.

With our brand management platform, you have a centralised portal for all recruitment and brand assets, which teams can edit, share or even create from scratch. Digital, print, video, social, email – everything you need to keep your employer brand front and centre.

 
Make this quarter count, find out more about unleashing your employer branding with Papirfly. You can even book your demo today.

 

Many companies have embraced the power of employer branding over the years. Even those previously sceptical about the investment required vs. the tangible outcome have bought into its potential through the pandemic.

Employer branding could be one of the single most important parts of your overall brand and marketing strategies. If you don’t attract the most talented people, roles won’t be filled, the business will suffer, and your bottom line will be impacted as a result. 

In this article, we’ll explore how employer branding can veer off in the wrong direction, and how you can get it back on the right track again. 

First, let’s take a moment to think about your Employer Value Proposition (EVP)…

If it doesn’t exist, isn’t up-to-date or properly formed, then you may as well have thrown the towel in already. It’s the absolute foundation of your strategy, shapes how you are perceived and is ultimately what attracts and retains talent. 

An EVP is an entire education piece in itself – if you need to build on this before you tackle the rest, you can find everything you need in our guide Crucial components of any good value proposition. 

Managing the perceptions of candidates

How your brand is perceived by prospects will largely shape your ability to attract quality candidates. This perception can be influenced by social media, your employees, your campaigns, coverage in the press… the list goes on.

50% of job candidates won’t work for a company with a bad public image (HR Daily Advisor)

Negative perceptions can increase a company’s cost per hire by up to 10% (HBR)

Having control over these factors starts with a solid employer branding strategy. By influencing the narrative surrounding you as an employer, you can help build a more positive impression of your brand in the eyes of prospective recruits. This makes your brand appear a more appealing place to work.

However, authenticity is essential. Simply promoting why your company is a great place to work without following through on these reasons will only enhance negative feelings towards your brand if the truth is revealed. And with sites like Glassdoor and Indeed enabling employees to anonymously discuss their work experience, the truth will get out.

Moreover, many make the mistake of focusing their strategy on external communications. That’s a big part of it, but it’s far from the whole picture. Ensure you invest an appropriate amount of effort, budget and resources into both talent attraction and retention – to appeal to viable candidates and to keep your existing employees satisfied. 

What could go wrong?

❌ Not monitoring why employees are leaving or taking action over issues they raise
❌ Negative comments and bad press go unnoticed or are responded to badly
❌ Ex-employees reveal that your employer brand is all talk and no action
❌ Potential candidates are left discouraged by the lack of employee-driven content you produce
❌ You lose out on top talent both inside and outside your company to competitors with more renowned reputations

How to make it right…

✅ Hold exit interviews with departing employees to nail down their reasons for leaving
✅ Make a conscious effort to address problems presented by your team members
✅ Feature your employees’ experiences and expertise on your website, social platforms and further marketing channels
✅ Respond to all reviews – positive or negative – to show people you are a brand that listens to feedback and is making an effort to correct problems
✅ Produce content that evokes the messages of your core values and important causes, to illustrate that you practice what you preach

Determining your strategy

You understand first-hand that an employer branding strategy is ever-evolving with the needs of the candidate market. Yet at its core, it embodies a solid foundation of principles, ideas and goals that you believe strongly in. 

While this foundation layer is fundamental, the way it is tailored for different markets and audiences is what builds upon this layer to create an effective global strategy. A lack of detail, resources or time can see your employer brand fail to resonate in specific areas.

Therefore, establishing a strategy that can adapt your employer brand to appease diverse cultures and audience motivations – and future-proofing this to contend with how attitudes change over the years – is critical to continued success in attracting and retaining talent. Of course, this is easier said than done, and requires real investment into managing your brand for the long term.

However, the alternative is that your employer brand is left static and inflexible – incapable or unwilling to address the unique concerns of particular audiences or evolving with the constantly changing recruitment landscape.

Furthermore, devoting the time and effort into establishing a solid, actionable employer brand strategy helps ensure it is actively maintained. This will help keep your attraction and retainment efforts consistent, rather than allowing them to taper off over time.

What could go wrong? 

How to make it right… 

✅ Treat your employer brand like you would marketing – with a separate strategy and budget
✅ Hire or assign someone (or a team) to actively develop, manage and evolve the strategy over time
✅ Introduce tools that enable you to be reactive and go to market quicker
✅ Have frequent meetings with teams overseas to discuss cultural nuances and trends, or introduce budgets to access regional and international reports
✅ Evaluate your competitors’ employment packages regularly to assess their techniques and what you can do to steal a march on attracting talent
✅ Conduct internal surveys or discuss with your employees directly what their goals are and why they joined your team, as this could influence your recruitment and retention strategies
✅ Dedicate time quarterly or annually to review your employer brand strategy alongside your recruitment/retention statistics to see whether updates are needed

For more insight into creating and implementing a robust employer brand strategy, make sure to read our article 13 steps to developing your employer branding strategy.

Setting guidelines 

Finally, investing in your employer brand must extend beyond developing a strategy and producing content. In order to present a clear, united image of your organisation to both prospective candidates and existing employees, it’s vital that consistency is maintained.

Those you hire represent your brand as much as your products or services do – and therefore they need to understand it in order to accurately exhibit this to others. The same applies to people or agencies you employ to create content specifically designed to appeal to potential recruits or motivate current staff. Any inconsistencies or vague messaging can weaken the strength of your proposition and render it ineffective.

So, once you have an employer brand strategy in place, it is important to invest in educating and training people to fully understand it inside out. This will help protect the consistency of your employer brand, as your teams will know what it represents and why, and can project this across your company channels and their own personal networks.

Steps like introducing a distinct set of employer brand guidelines and producing internal training materials and videos surrounding your company values can make a big difference in locking down the consistency of your messages.

Remember, it is believed to take 5-7 impressions for someone to remember your brand. This applies to your employer brand too, so it is crucial that the messages you and your team are sharing are compatible to prevent candidates from getting the wrong perception.

What could go wrong? 

❌ New employees lack a strong understanding of your brand identity, which may negatively impact their impression of your company
❌ Content produced to support recruitment or retention efforts is disjointed, hindering their effectiveness
❌ Employees share incorrect or misinformed details about your company culture and values through their personal channels
❌ Candidates get an unclear picture of your employer brand, making it appear unreliable in their eyes
❌ External agencies and teams you work with become confused about your employer brand, meaning the content they produce is inconsistent and detrimental

How to make it right…

✅ Produce clearly defined brand vision and guideline documents, and make these readily accessible to your team
✅ Incorporate these materials into onboarding new employees so they are brought up to speed immediately
✅ Develop training videos where possible that make understanding your employer brand more interactive
✅ Invest in a Brand Activation Management tool, as this will:
#1 Enable you to bring employer brand content creation in-house, removing the risk of external teams confusing your messaging
#2 Establish templates and parameters for content production, meaning there is no chance of going off brand
#3 House all brand guidelines and further resources in one central location
#4 Adapt and localise existing employer brand materials for international audiences
#5 Allow you to store and share approved employer brand materials for your teams nationwide and globally

Good employer branding takes time, effort and significant financial investment…

Without a strong employer brand, candidates aren’t properly engaged, markets feel neglected and people are left to form opinions about your company that aren’t aligned with what you’re trying to portray. It only takes a few small things to go wrong and be left unaddressed to start a PR nightmare. 

Emulating your brand’s core values has always been at the heart of securing and engaging top candidates. But as uptake in the hybrid working model increases, it’s becoming more important to find standout ways to communicate company culture without in-person interactions.

There is a common misconception that company culture is something that can’t always be accurately described, or that it can only be felt when you’re settled into a role. However, with new tools, better communication and the right approach, brands can showcase their company culture in practical, tangible ways regardless of where their employees are working from.

The current state of company culture 

In a study by Glassdoor, 77% of 5,000 respondents would consider a company’s culture before applying for a job there. Over half of them said it’s more important than salary when it comes to job satisfaction.

Building culture into the everyday fabric of your business will ensure that it’s present in all employee touchpoints — through onboarding, during their day-to-day work and even after they part ways with the business. This means that everything your brand makes, says or does has to be infused with its overarching purpose.

In a recent report, 90% of people said that brands must do everything they can to protect the well-being and financial security of their employees even if it means suffering big financial losses until the pandemic ends. And 66% of consumers consider elements like company culture and employee welfare as factors that determine whether they buy from one brand over another. 

This is part of an overall move towards value-based loyalty and further proof that company culture is directly linked to business success.

 

The human gap left by remote working

With the myriad of online messaging and video conferencing software available, it’s easy to rely on technology to bring your teams closer together. While these tools have been a game-changer for the modern-day corporate landscape in terms of communication and the streamlining of collaborative processes, they are not enough on their own to connect employees in a way that builds company culture.

To help employees feel part of your overarching brand purpose, you need to do more than make sure that everyone can jump on a Zoom or Teams call. Company culture is built on understanding the human needs of your employees, making them feel aligned with your goals and expressing authentic appreciation of their efforts.

 

Get your company culture noticed 

Your company culture may be ingrained into the thinking and everyday behaviour of long-standing employees, but to keep up momentum and instil the same values in new talent, it’s vital to bring fresh ways to make them seen and heard by everyone — for culture to be tangible, it first needs to be noticed. 

As remote working, hiring and onboarding becomes commonplace, companies have had to get more creative about how they share what’s great about working for them. 

In the case of company culture statements, the phrase “actions speak louder than words” rings especially true… for people to believe the values written on your company website, and for your employees to take them on board, you need to show them what it looks like day-to-day.

 

5 ways to prove your company culture

#1 Employee spotlight posts for new starters

As well as showing appreciation for individual employees, spotlights are a great way to give potential candidates the opportunity to learn a little more about the people they’ll be working with.

An employee spotlight can be created in a number of ways — from short quotes to videos — but generally they are a one-to-one interview covering topics such as company culture, accomplishments, success stories, passion projects, perks and benefits, and something unique about themselves in the context of their work. While providing prompts can be helpful, it’s important to avoid sounding scripted or forced.

#2 Behind the scenes 

Give the world an insight of what day-to-day life is like working in your company. By focusing on specific teams within your business, you can show the authenticity of your company culture and demonstrate how your employees practice what your brand values preach.

#3 Invest in tools that counteract loneliness for remote workers

While we mentioned the fact that software shouldn’t be the only thing that brings your team together, there are a number of tools with less focus on productivity and more emphasis on wellbeing. For example, Fond gives remote employees somewhere to go when they need a morale boost from their team.

#4 Recognise and reward value-centric behaviours

Give employees the opportunity to earn rewards for more than just work performance. This helps to reinforce culture by demonstrating that they are valued on an equal level to profits. This could include peer-voting (where employees can nominate co-workers for encapsulating what their brand stands for), written recognition in newsletters, or feature pages on your website.

#5 Teach your values in orientation and training

Incorporating company values into formal training or orientation is an effective way to communicate what matters. It means that new employees are familiar with what your brand stands for from the get-go and gives them context on how it can be instilled in the work they do every day.

In any organisation, the skills and dedication of the workforce is the lifeforce powering its future. You want to attract the best possible talent to your company, and retain them for the long term to bring continued success to your business.

Employer branding is critical to achieving this objective. How effectively you market the values that underpin your organisation, emphasise the unique benefits of working for your company, and demonstrate a strong, defined culture will have a powerful influence on your ability to capture the imagination of those at the top of the talent pool.

This guide is designed to help you unlock the true potential of your employer brand in 2021 and beyond. Settle in and discover everything you need to know in today’s landscape.

What is employer brand?

Employer branding at its most basic is the way a company promotes itself as a place to work. It comes from the external reputation the company has as a business and the way its employees view it. Having an effective employer brand in place can lead to benefits including:

• Reduced turnover of staff
• Attraction of high-quality talent
• Help in retaining valued employees
• Less money spent on hiring new staff
• Engaged employees

In the modern world of business, employer branding and recruitment have become entwined, creating strategies that are as much Human Resources department initiatives as they are marketing.

Employer branding and employee branding are different too. Employee branding is really a focus on how the employees act in accordance with the values of a company, and how the organisation promotes this.

Employer branding and corporate branding differ in that the latter focuses on a value proposition to customers, defining what your organisation offers to the marketplace.

Some employer branding statistics

When you’re successful in employer branding, the numbers really stack up. These are just some of the statistics reported in the employer branding space:

• 43% decrease in hiring costs
• 67% of employees would accept a lower wage if a company has positive reviews online
• 69% of employees are likely to apply if the company actively manages its brand
• 84% of employees consider leaving their current job if another company has a better reputation
• 88% of millennials believe that being in the right culture is important
• 72% of global recruiting leaders believe that employer brand has a significant impact on hiring
• 79% of jobseekers are likely to use social media in their job search
• A good employer brand leads to 50% more qualified candidates

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Why employer branding matters

Staff have serious expectations of what they want from a company. And one of the very bottom line commercial benefits of employer branding is that staff turnover can be reduced by 28%.

High turnover is demoralising for other employees and costly for a business. Taking into account recruitment hiring fees, it can cost an SME £5,500 to replace a member of staff on a national average salary wage.

Stats revealed by Staffbase below show just how costly employee turnover can be for corporates:

While a company may consider its staff as its greatest asset, so many organisations still don’t employ effective processes when it comes to hiring staff. And retaining staff once on board, is often something that falls by the wayside. Even companies who do recognise the importance of retention, sometimes struggle to dedicate the time to implement change.

In an increasingly competitive market, hiring and retaining talent is tough, but attracting the right people to your positions can be pretty much impossible without a powerful employer brand.

Messaging, creative and distribution of campaigns need to be targeted and carefully considered. That’s only made possible with employer brand initiatives, driven by the employer branding teams.

…For hiring and retention

Your business should make employees feel proud to work there. Company culture is of course important for most people, but particularly for those from generation Y, who are more likely to read reviews and use social media to determine if they are a good fit for your brand.

Having an effective employer branding plan really helps retain employees and recruit new ones. People are the core of any business, so you will want to find the best. Having a popular brand makes it easier and faster to hire good staff.

This is because with good employer branding the Human Resources team will spend less time trying to find quality candidates. Talented people will want to work for your company and be drawn to it for all the right reasons. Hiring time can be as much as two times quicker with a strong employer brand. Generally, the hiring process will differ depending on the candidate’s circumstances such as how much notice period they need to give, but this top-line process from Google shows how an average application might unfold.

…For more engaged employees

When employees are happy and engaged with the brand they work for, they’re more likely to evangelise about these positive experiences. They become ambassadors and you’ll likely see more applications as a result of direct referrals.

…For reducing costs

There are two ways of looking at cost reductions in relation to great employer branding:

Firstly, if you have a good reputation a lot of the hard work in recruiting the best people is already done for you. Staff are looking for good companies with positive reviews and experiences. Applicants will seek out good companies to work for, and will see your brand as a good place to work.

Money is saved as hiring is quicker and talent is placed in the business sooner. It can be spent strategically instead of on recruitment costs.

Secondly, having a lower staff turnover reaps significant savings to the overall recruitment budget.

Cost per head goes down and potential staff are willing to accept a lower salary if the company had very positive reviews online. This is because the value of a good environment is worth more than a higher salary in the wrong environment.

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How has the global pandemic reshaped employer branding?

The ground-shaking consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic turned the marketing landscape on its head several times over, and employer branding was not immune to its effects. While the pandemic itself will eventually subside, its ramifications will live on for significantly longer.

In times of crisis such as what many in the world experienced in 2020, or the uncertainty with which we entered 2021, employer brand teams will need to work harder to meet the expectations of available talent and existing employees.

Here’s a breakdown of what changed for employer branding since the start of the 2020s – and how you can adjust to meet this new landscape.

The response to COVID-19

Many organisations were hit hard by the global pandemic. The hit to the economy and restrictions to certain industries, namely retail, leisure and travel, resulted in many redundancies and cost-cutting measures.

Unfortunately, no matter how unavoidable these were in the circumstances, a brand’s response to COVID-19 will live long in the memory for many past and prospective employees.

75% of prospective employees consider a brand’s reputation before deciding to make an application (CareerArc)

Brands that demonstrated a desire to put people over profits during the hardest months of this pandemic will have strengthened their reputation among today’s talent. Even if they were forced to proceed with mass lay-offs, companies that handled it with compassion, like Airbnb, came away with credit for when the world returns to some semblance of “normal”.

Conversely, those brands that failed to convey this will need to spend the coming months and years rebuilding their image.

COVID-19 left employer brand teams with a valuable lesson – it’s not enough to say you care about staff, but this must be reinforced when times are tough. It will pay dividends for employer brand managers to explore the best and worst brand responses to this crisis to inform how they approach circumstances like this in future.

Values matter more than ever

The fallout from COVID-19 has put a magnifying glass on company values like never before. The worst company responses to the pandemic have made talent particularly skeptical of the values that an employer brand emphasises. To combat this, employer brand teams should go to greater lengths to demonstrate these values in action across their content.

Promote the ways you have prioritised the wellbeing of your employees throughout this challenging period, and harness employee stories of how they’ve appreciated your support in these strange times. 

Any authentic stories of this nature will hit home with prospective employees in a way they never have before, helping your company stand out as a destination that cares about its team.

Global talent wants more from employers in 2021

• Newly-hired remote workers want their onboarding process to be as robust and reassuring as it would be for ‘traditional hires’
• Employees want to know their company has clearly defined remote and hybrid working models
• Talent wants to see companies pushing their diversity and inclusion efforts further than ever, especially following the events of 2020

The need for clear communication

The excessive amounts of misinformation and hearsay about the global pandemic have made it more important for employer brands to deliver clarity and consistency to both existing employees and available talent.

In order to meet people’s need for clarity in times of substantial uncertainty, employer brand managers should:

• Facilitate regular meetings/video conferencing calls with teams to communicate important information and check on employees’ wellbeing
• House up-to-date company policies and guidelines in a shared, accessible space
• Share positive events and stories where possible to build morale
• Approach any bad news earnestly and empathetically
• Investigate straightforward chat/workflow management systems that will keep remote employees connected 

Up to a third of employees have contemplated leaving their job due to poor communication from management (Dynamic Signal)

Remote recruitment and onboarding

The greater emphasis on remote working inspired by the pandemic will have a long-term impact on how recruitment and onboarding will take place. Video interviews are now commonplace. Employees are hired and start work without ever having stepped inside an office.

While traditional, face-to-face interviews will never disappear entirely, employer brand teams should work to better facilitate these evolutions in order to deliver the biggest benefits to new recruits and your overall organisation.

• Consider including someone from your branding team in video interviews to give recruits a strong picture of your company culture that they can’t experience in person
• Account for technical issues on either side that might affect the interview
• Make clear company literature available for newly-recruited employees to inform their understanding of your operations
• Assign recruits with a remote “buddy” to ease their integration into your team and handle any initial problems they may be facing
• Immediately engage them with your IT team to demonstrate anything they need to know to work effectively from home
• Include them in team social events and gatherings so they don’t feel distanced from the brand following their introduction to your team

Remote working is not the only recruitment-based challenge that employer brand teams will need to confront and conquer this year:

Harness data for continuous improvement

Employer brand teams should be empowered to track the response and engagement to the content they promote, and use this data to inform agile adjustments over time and to guide future campaigns based on what resonates most with their audiences.

Restructure company material for the new reality

With a marked shift towards recruitment materials that prioritise empathetic, authentic storytelling over lists of perks, now is the time for employer brand professionals to reassess their content and determine the right story to tell prospective recruits in the current climate.

Remove barriers to internal recruitment

Internal mobility gained a lot of momentum in 2020, and employer brand managers in 2021 should work harder to emphasise this possibility within their teams. Consider what obstacles must be eliminated to educate talent on their potential to switch roles within the same company.

Supporting company culture

Finally, it’s important to recognise the impact of the pandemic on company culture. The transition to remote working across numerous organisations has rendered traditional office hotspots for socialising and creature comforts unavailable for the time being.

But, that doesn’t mean that company culture can be put on pause until COVID-19 is behind us. For many in the modern landscape, a strong, welcoming culture trumps salary and other perks in attracting them to work for an organisation:

With this in mind, the onus is on employer brand experts to rise to the occasion and find ways to maintain (and even strengthen) company culture for the remote-working era.

• Document your company’s values clearly and make them accessible to all
• Ensure consistency across all communications to make your values and identity inherent to everyone
• Showcase the history and future of your company to help employees find their identity within your company
• Harness your video conferencing technology for company social events like gaming, movies or friendly get-togethers

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The importance of employer branding to an organisation

Two in five organisations say that hiring is becoming tougher. Businesses are having to become more flexible in finding the right candidate.

With a powerful employer brand strategy, you’re looking to become an employer of choice. By creating a strong, positive reputation you’ll stop talented employees from voting with their feet.

Potential candidates will often look to an employer of choice before all others. Positioning yourself in this way starts with the following:

• Creating a positive candidate selection process
• Having a focus on career growth opportunities
• Putting the company’s values at the heart of everything
• Reviewing your pay scales and benefits

You might also like to consider these eight values when positioning yourself as an employer of choice. They’re part of what may help attract a person in the first place:

Flexible placement – this is where an employee has opportunities to work in a variety of roles and settings within the organisation, where they have an interest in expanding their understanding. Employers should encourage staff to work in a variety of roles too, to give them a better view of the overall business.

A customer focus – business should be customer-centric and understand that for the employee the customer comes first. Managers should give staff the tools needed to achieve this, and support the idea that the employee serves the customer’s needs first, before those of the manager. For example, a customer service employee would want to satisfy a customer’s complaint, before serving a manager’s needs. This would require the entire organisation to have a customer-centric mentality.

Performance focus – employers should use performance and benefit-based rewards to support staff development and keep them motivated. This might include additional days off or performance-related pay bonuses.

Project-based work – where possible, employees should have work structured around internal projects rather than organisational functions. For example, this might see employees in a marketing department working collaboratively on a new project from the start, rather than being focussed only on their singular role within that project at the time it’s ready to go to market.

Valuable work – work needs to be meaningful for staff. If tasks become menial or meaningless, it can cause them to become disengaged.

Commitment is important – staff should be committed to the outcomes of the organisation, while employers should be committed to helping staff do their jobs to the best of their abilities.

Ongoing learning and development – the company should encourage staff to learn and develop within the organisation. Whether that’s a certified CPD course or discovering the way another area of the business works – professional development can be invaluable to employees. A typical process for keeping employees at their best can be found below, but will of course vary from business to business:

Share information – employers should help staff by giving them access to a wide range of company data. In return staff should be willing to digest this information and show initiative to help move things forward, address any issues and drive productivity.

Creating and maintaining these processes are part of a culture change that needs to be supported in the long term by the HR staff. Building this relationship is critical when it comes to an effective employer brand strategy.

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How to build employer branding

Whether it’s holiday allowance, perks or salary, great talent demands great benefits. But they also want a culture they can identify with.

So, in this context employer branding strategy becomes a combination of economic benefits, functional rewards and psychological attributes that make employees connect with your company on an emotional level too.

If you can understand these benefits and what they mean to staff, you can create an attractive benefits package, which helps create a stronger employer brand.

By investing in your employer branding tactics, you can engage better with prospective and current employees whose values fit yours. It’s this that will make your brand stand out to the right people. 

Always begin with understanding who you are trying to reach, and what they want.

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What is an employer brand strategy?

To be successful, and as with any form of marketing, you need a good employer branding strategy to help create and promote your campaigns. 

Audit your brand’s perception

How does the world see you? What do your employees really think about working for your company? Unless you’re fully engaged in your internal employer branding you probably won’t understand how employees genuinely feel about working in the organisation. And working in hectic global organisations can mean these get forgotten, albeit unintentionally.

There’s a host of places to look. Check employment review sites – did you get five stars as an employer? Staff often post on social media too. Are they proud of their work or are they critical? Do they say nothing? Look for the underlying message. Other options for feedback include internal surveys or using an agency to monitor your reputation.

Whichever method you choose should uncover where staff are happy or where changes can be made.

Also check for brand consistency. Do you convey the right message at all times? Do your visuals and tone match that message?

It’s important to have a realistic understanding of how you are perceived. Then you can begin to address the issues with your employer brand. 

Decide what makes your company unique

Once you know what makes your company unique you can create your story. Look at your company’s mission statement, its values, its social responsibility and culture. Look at what makes your company stand out. Is it the best? Is it the fastest? What do you stand for? Do you have a social responsibility stance?

From here you can create your brand story for prospective employees. By having a brand story you’ll be helping candidates to match their personal values to those of your organisation and your employer brand marketing. A story will also help provide clarity for existing staff too, and drive better employer branding internally and externally.

Create an EVP – an employee value proposition

This is a mission statement or marketing promise to employees. It’s important that it’s truthful, and that you intend to stick to it.

And it’s important that it creates a sense of passion for the business and working there, as well as relaying how many days’ holiday you get by joining. It might include any positives about corporate social responsibility, or how valuable staff are at your organisation.

It can also be shared with recruiters. It’s designed for everyone who interacts with your employer brand.

The employee should be at the centre of your EVP and ideally your proposition should have been well received within your organisation. Think about all the things that are important to staff. These might include:

• Professional development
• Workplace culture
• Additional benefits such as healthcare
• Flexitime
• Quality of work
• Bonuses
• Office location
• Perks such as free fruit, gym memberships and social outings
• Company values
• Work-life balance

People want to feel their work is valued and meaningful, and that the company culture is the right fit for them. Creating an Employee Value Proposition cements this for the entire organisation. It’s a chance to showcase your positive impact as a brand.

Offer career development and learning opportunities

What’s the reason most people leave their jobs? Its staff feeling bored and wanting a new challenge is at the top of the list.

By offering learning opportunities to staff you’re showing a commitment to the employee, and gaining a staff with an improved skill set.

By making their roles challenging will help stave off the risk of staff feeling like they’re stuck in a rut. You should find they’ll be less likely to move on, or in reality won’t move on so quickly as they might have otherwise.

Developing staff skills is an easy solution to the age-old problem of workplace boredom. Perhaps it’s strange then that still employees cite lack of challenges as the primary reason to leave, and organisations aren’t responding.

Employer branding begins at home

Current employees will be your best advocates, provided they’re happy. Candidates frequently use testimonials from current employees in the research as to whether to join a company or not.

Use testimonials on your website or encourage employees to leave reviews on sites where staff talk about where they work. Recruitment company Glassdoor is one of the most widely used in terms of encouraging testimonials.

Encourage staff to use social media to post about fun events that have taken place in the company. Staff posting about these things, whether corporate team building or a night out, will show your company as an exciting place to be and a vibrant place to work. If someone likes it enough to post about it in their spare time it shows you to be an employer that promotes a happy workplace.

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Employer branding measurement

This is important. Test and refine – success is only measured against goals or targets. Doing all the above is imperative but measuring the effectiveness of your employer branding marketing is the only way to know if it’s working. The list below should help with how to measure employer branding in your business.

Useful employer branding metrics

Quality of hire 

It’s hard to measure, but the quality of hire defines the value a new employee brings to the company by performing and improving tasks and helping others. It is one of the most important metrics if you can get the data.

The value or performance of an employee generally drops when dissatisfaction kicks in so it’s a good indicator of the effectiveness of your employer brand. Unhappy employees are less productive and will not stay with you for long.

Job offer acceptance rate

Keep track of how many applicants reject your job offers and ask for feedback on why you’re not their employer of choice. Also, try to find out which company they have chosen instead and note at what stage of the process they dropped out.

Employee referral rate

Employees recommending your organisation to their family, friends and network as a great place to work means they like your employer brand. Employee referrals are a great source of talent. So if you don’t have a referral programme in place it’s probably time to start one.

Employee retention rate

There is no such thing as a static workforce. Employees will leave. However, the lower your voluntary attrition rate, the better because happy employees will want to stay and keep working for you. It also reduces the amount of confusion and disruption to daily projects and delivery.

It’s a powerful indicator of a strong employer brand and the savings in having a reduced staff turnover are great. Be sure to conduct exit interviews, as you can get valuable feedback.

Giveaway/takeaway ratio

This measures how many of your applicants come from direct competitors and how many of your current employees leave to join the competition. It’s a good direct comparison of employer brands.

Hiring manager satisfaction 

Companies often overlook the hiring managers, but their feedback is valuable in determining the strength of your employer brand and the candidates it attracts. Are these managers satisfied with the number and quality of applicants, their fit with role expectations and company culture?

Number of open applications

Open applications are those received for no specific job opening but more to express interest in the organisation. Candidates are applying to you as a company because they feel there is a good cultural fit. If you’ve got a high number of open applications, it’s a good indicator of a strong employer brand.

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More ways on how to improve employer branding

For many prospective employees, the first engagement with a company’s culture is often their website. An attractive and engaging website remains a powerful tool in an employer’s arsenal when it comes to attracting new talent.

Modern progressive companies use their site to set themselves apart, fostering a positive, welcoming employer brand through their inclusive approach, open engagement and simplicity in navigation and application. They demonstrate care for their employees, a pride in their image and cultivating a desire in candidates that this is a company worth working for.

The careers hub

Beyond simple job ads and application procedures, a careers hub offers space and scope to introduce the candidate to additional content that supports the positive employer brand message. Think testimonials, links to your employee value proposition and company values. These should all make a good case as to why candidates should come and work for your organisation.

Staff contributed blogs

Just as happy staff are your greatest advocates; staff blogs can offer a glimpse of the company culture too. Having employees share positive stories is often directed towards social media. But populating staff-led content on your website shouldn’t be overlooked.

For example, look at the following themes:

Contributions on industry issues – shows that you trust your employees’ levels of expertise and value their opinions enough to publish them under the corporate banner.

Contributions around ‘out of work’ topics – employee biographies, stories of fundraising or personal achievements foster an inclusive culture. The organisation cares about the person beyond their job.

Prospective employees are immediately being offered an environment of inclusivity, engaging them in the culture of the organisation even before they’ve started their application process.

Brand-promoting content

It’s worth remembering that your website offers you complete control when it comes to building a positive employer brand. Again, this can be achieved by incorporating inclusivity into the content used on the site, as well as creative use of video and new media technology.

It’s a chance to blend the corporate nature of the business with the personal side. On the one hand, you have space to deliver video presentations that take candidates on the journey from application to successful career. While ‘off-setting’ this with supporting content from throughout the company, creating the rounded view that everyone has bought into the company philosophy.

Translating your global employer brand

Having campaigns that are country-specific isn’t just about having the copy in the correct language. There is culturally appropriate imagery, legal details, contact information, colour palettes, logo considerations and a whole host of factors to think about. Trying to make one campaign apply to multiple countries by tweaking it slightly won’t land well with prospective and existing employees.

If you don’t have a tool like BAM by Papirfly™ in place where all of this is made easy, you should consider involving team members that are based in the country you’re promoting in. Ultimately you will need to make sure your employer brand is consistent but the insight will need to come from someone that truly understands the market.

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Employer branding and social media

Employer branding online goes beyond just posting company updates and recruitment drives on LinkedIn. Sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Quora and Pinterest can all be excellent places to represent your employer brand.

But it is easy to get social media wrong. When using your employer branding through social media remember it’s a conversation, not a soapbox. Your first step should be to understand the conversation people are already having about your company. Then join in.

Here are some tools that can help you find out what people are already saying about your company:

• Social Mention – These tools look at what people have been saying about you on social media and provides useful data such as the number of comments which are generally positive compared to those which are negative.
• Google Alerts – The free Google Alerts service is a great way to find out what is being said about your company and have it delivered straight to your inbox.

Sites like Reddit and Quora can also be great for discovering what employees want from an employer in general. Here people are more than happy to express opinions about their experiences in detail.

Your communication should be friendly and open while still maintaining a sense of professionalism. Having your employees contribute to your organisation’s Facebook fan page is another great way to create content and show a human face for your company.

LinkedIn groups and company pages are another good way to develop your employee brand. Potential employees who follow your company page will receive updates into their news feed. This is a good way to share videos, articles and other content which helps people understand what your company is about. Pinterest is less used than the other major social networks but is perfect for showing the fun and creative side of your business.

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Employer branding for Generation X

Candidates from this group want idea sharing and innovation. Remember the co-founder of Google, Larry Page, is a Gen X, so don’t think digital is lost on this generation of employees. They’ve seen how digital has changed the working world.

They’ll visit your website and they’re sometimes on social media too. They’re looking for work-life balance and forward-thinking organisations, so ensure your messaging really reflects this where you offer it. Remember to tailor your recruitment campaigns depending on your audience’s needs. While you can’t generalise every person in a generation, you can use guides to steer your strategy, such as the one below:

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What is employer branding in HR?

Employer branding is definitely as much HR as PR.

A focus on employer branding reflects a change in the hiring market. Employees want to work for companies that have an excellent reputation, for example where a company has a particular corporate social responsibility in place.

Graduates are becoming more discerning when choosing a company to work for.

This means there’s an opportunity for a new approach for HR departments. Maintaining brand reputation becomes more of a consideration when building HR policies, because it has important implications for how HR departments recruit and retain staff.

The HR function becomes an extension of a brand achieving dominance in the market. They can get more access to, for example, marketing or other areas where traditionally they might have struggled to be an influence.

For HR practitioners, the focus on employer and employee branding is all part of an overall goal of getting existing employees and potential employees to identify with the brand. It’s not a ‘facing out’ process. It’s facing both in and out.

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Trends in employer branding

Consider the three following things:

This Reputation Management Study from global recruiters MRINetwork, shows 35% of job candidates think that a strong employer brand is important and a further 34% regard it as ‘very important’. Employees want to see a strong, definable identity – and if it is not there, they will likely look elsewhere.

In tech, the skills gap is huge. Talent shortages are a global phenomenon – affecting sectors as diverse as construction through to healthcare. So, when it comes to talent, it’s most definitely a seller’s market.

And resource management is becoming more difficult. One estimate suggests that 85% of the jobs that will exist in 2030 have not yet been invented.

It’s becoming increasingly hard to predict precisely what type of roles you will need to fill in a few years’ time – and you may need to redeploy or recruit staff into new roles at short notice. If you have already built up a definite employer brand identity, you have a head start in attracting the right people into those new positions.

Trends to consider

Authenticity and employee authorship

Whether candidates are thinking of joining a company or mulling over whether it’s time to move on, people want to hear what real people have to say. And your employees are your most valuable asset.

Consider snippets of info that showcase the working environment, updates on projects they are involved with, individual career progression updates, fly on the wall videos, news relating to internal redeployments. Collectively, they provide an incredibly compelling and authentic picture.

Companies need to get creative – but stay consistent

How do you make sure that your central brand message stays consistent? If companies are doing more campaigns and content types this year, they will also need to look very carefully at ways to overcome this challenge.

For this, you need a clear set of rules, governing everything from what you can and cannot say in individual Tweets – right through to how and where your logo and straplines should appear.

The continued rise of VR

Virtual Reality makes it possible for new candidates to dive right into the workplace environment and to help employees get to grips with an organisation’s unique culture.

If you are considering making immersive digital experiences part of your branding strategy this year, just make sure that these experiences are authentic.

Doing more with less

Faced with the pressure of reduced budgets the focus is on doing more with less. For instance, is it possible to reduce your agency spend and still produce effective employer branding initiatives?

That’s why this is the year to equip your people with employer branding solutions that enable them to produce amazing assets – even without specialist knowledge.

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Why employer branding?

You can understand why employer branding initiatives are important in an organisation. If a company’s biggest asset truly is the staff, then the quality of the staff is the same as the quality of the business itself. And therefore, investment should be put into getting the best.

But it’s not just about employer branding and talent acquisition, it’s about retaining that talent too.

Your culture is fast becoming the main reason candidates take on a role. So make sure your values are clear and communicated in everything you do.

Get feedback from both successful and unsuccessful candidates and ensure that your selection process is engaging. Career development and growth opportunities matter to employees. Review your pay and benefits where possible.

In summary

• Involve, not just marketing, but HR, the CEO and find brand champions within the organisation. The combined efforts of all involved will reap benefits.
• As an organisation you’ll find the speed of recruiting is increased, costs are decreased and staff churn is reduced.
• And measure what you do to track its success. Even the smallest piece of data can lead to an improvement.

Employer brand building. If it’s not your present, it needs to be your future.

Feeling empowered and being empowered gives us a great deal of confidence, and a sense of purpose and value in our careers. What can be difficult though, is transferring empowerment into something tangible.

Because empowerment might mean different things for different employees, or take a range of steps to initiate, it can also be hard for senior management to justify the time and expense this may take to action. However, the benefits of empowering employees often far outweigh that of the investment.

Particularly in today’s climate, employees are feeling uncertain in their roles. Having absolute empowerment starts with some basic steps and can progress with further nurturing, all of which we will explore in this article.

Knowing the role, understanding expectations 

If you asked your team to write down an exhaustive list of their responsibilities and duties, could they do it? Often when we progress in a role we end up taking on more and more until the lines become blurred.

Having a definitive job description, including who to report to for what, from day one will help your team know exactly what they should be doing, avoid confusion and give your employees the confidence to deliver. If a role evolves, ensure your employees get updated digital job descriptions to ensure absolute clarity. 

Allowing for growth through mistakes  

Though mistakes in the workplace can cause a lot of additional pressure, stress and tension, it’s the way in which they’re dealt with that determines whether they can help or hinder an organisation. If training and CPD have been lax, you will have to expect mistakes to happen at one point or another.

What’s important is that, once identified, a de-brief takes place. From this debrief you can create a plan of action, or introduce a new process to prevent this from occurring again. In doing so, you tighten processes, and your team members learn a valuable lesson. Your team also gets used to the debriefing sessions, and could use this method to problem solve with their own workload. 

Providing the opportunity to upskill 

When an employee’s knowledge becomes stale or outdated, it can leave your company exposed to a substandard pool of information, and greatly misrepresent what your brand signifies. There are a few ways you can ensure people stay developed:

• Provide a training allowance for online courses, books and other materials
• Introduce regular CPD sessions, either individually or for whole teams
• Encourage self-development hours once or twice a month, they can use this time freely to explore subjects they feel will help them with their career and put together a short slide deck or document in order to share with others 

Investing in an employee’s development is good for business whichever way you look at it. For example, the employee feels they are valued and progressing their career, and your organisation benefits from a new skill. The only negative in the financial commitment is if somebody leaves, they take this skill with them. Ensure that any person bringing these new skills into the business are documenting any new processes or knowledge so this can be used for training further down the line.

Likewise, if you’re going to make a considerable financial investment (such as for a degree), ensure there are terms surrounding this – for example the employee would have to pay back the cost of the qualification if they leave within a certain amount of years. 

Investing in tools and processes that streamline 

Work smarter, not harder. An employee shouldn’t need to be constantly running around stressed to showcase how hard they work. Aside from stress having a negative impact on workplace culture and general happiness, things that can make life easier for employees will make them more productive and free up time from monotonous tasks for more strategic or creative thinking.

What you get…

Giving people the ability to make decisions means they are accountable 

With responsibility comes accountability. When an employee is empowered to make decisions for themselves, they understand that the pressure falls on their shoulders, and will usually do all they can to avoid any failures. 

Quicker problem solving 

When the right individuals have their positions elevated, they feel more confident to make contributions to higher-level conversations.  

Better job satisfaction 

When people feel they are trusted and their opinions are valued, they generally have a better experience in the workplace and a more positive perception. Those that are happy may evangelise to others, either through word of mouth or through advocacy on social media. This helps strengthen your employer brand and recruiting prospects.  

More stringent processes, less room for error 

Giving someone a new responsibility or training is usually coupled with new processes, systems or tools. This means looking at an area of a business that may have been previously unexplored, and provides an opportunity to tighten the workflows within an organisation. 

Employees are more aligned with the organisation’s goals

Being empowered in the workplace makes people feel more emotionally invested in a company. When they feel part of the conversation and valued as a colleague, they are buying into the brand, the business and the ethos the company holds. 

Empowering employees doesn’t mean giving inflated responsibility for the sake of it. It’s much more about identifying opportunities to enhance the working lives of promising team members. 

By doing this, in turn you create a much more rewarding place to work and a more efficient, streamlined workforce. 

Global brands across the world are empowering employees by giving them the freedom to create through BAM by Papirfly™. The all-in-one brand activation management tool gives teams the ability to: 

• Create an infinite amount of assets to support your marketing and with easy-to-use design software. Give employees complete autonomy to create professional brochures, videos, emails, social media assets and more without any design skills needed.  
• Adapt campaign materials, text and imagery for use in markets across the globe in just minutes.
• Organise, filter and store every campaign asset in your collection. Logos, fonts, imagery, videos and more can be found, downloaded, shared and modified by teams across the world.
• Share and distribute guidelines, training videos company-wide to keep everyone on the same page. 

Find out more about BAM today or get in touch for a demo with one of our expert team.