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.

Up until recently, employer branding has been seen by many as a ‘nice-to-have’. Something that gives employees a few extra perks and helps improve morale.

Better late than never, senior-level CEOs have come to realise its true potential for their business’s profitability. Here’s why you should too.

What can employer branding do for your company?

Higher employee engagement. Better recruitment campaigns. Lower staff turnover. The direct benefits of a successful Employer Value Proposition (EVP) are pretty clear.

• Companies that actively invest in their employer brand reduce turnover by as much as 28% (Source: Officevibe)
• 50% of candidates will not work for a company with a bad reputation, even if they were paid more (Source: HR Daily Advisor)
• A strong employer brand attracts 2.5x the applicants of a weaker equivalent (Source: Startup Bonsai)

Less obvious are some of the indirect ways these and other factors can have a big impact on profitability. Employer branding is still a hugely underestimated way of increasing revenue. Businesses are missing out on the enormous potential it can have when you give it the time and resources it needs.

If allowed to realise its full potential, a strong employer brand should reach every employee and enable them to do their best work – as well as empower your company’s ability to capture consumers’ attention in an increasingly competitive landscape.

Building your reputation

In a packed field of competitors all fighting for the attention of the same group of customers, the strength of a brand’s reputation directly influences how positively they stand out from the crowd. A good reputation could be the difference in who they choose to buy from, and your employer brand plays an active role in establishing this perception.

Whether it is highlighting your company’s culture through videos or on your website, or harnessing your employees’ experience on social media, your employer branding is a big influence on how incentivised customers and the wider world are to buy from your company.

Why this boosts profitability

Your employer brand helps you build a positive reputation by reflecting the purpose and values that come through in your advertising. As well as being hyper-aware of modern marketing tactics, consumers are now more in tune with the inner workings of well-known organisations. Research shows that the way a company treats its employees will have a significant effect on buying decisions.

Consequently, creating campaigns around your employees’ happiness and development will build customers’ trust in your brand. Plus, what they say and share about your products and services on their own personal channels often holds more weight than your conventional adverts or messages from the CEO.

If you commit to creating an authentic, positive environment for your employees, this will resonate with both them and your customer base. Don’t underestimate the power your employees yield in your overall reputation – when former employees at Brewdog accused the company of having a “toxic attitude” and creating a “culture of fear”, their positive reputation plummeted, as did overall buzz surrounding the brand.

Earning positive reviews

You should also never underestimate a positive (or negative) employee review. When we buy something online or pick out a restaurant to visit, many of us instinctively turn to review sites to gauge others’ opinions. The same goes for candidates planning their next career move.

Even with a suite of benefits and a recruitment campaign that ticks all the boxes, looking at what past and present employees are saying about a company is the logical way to find out what it’s like working there. 

As well as being one of the most cost-effective recruiting tools, employee reviews are the best way to attract the sharpest minds to your business. In the same way that many companies encourage product reviews to win over customers, your hiring managers have an interest in using positive employee feedback to attract in-demand candidates.

Why this boosts profitability

A strong employer brand means engaged employees who will put the word out that your company is a great place to work. Research from The Harvard Business Review has shown that 80% of employee turnover is due to bad hiring decisions. 

When you combine this with the fact that the average cost of employee turnover is estimated at over £30,000, bad hiring decisions – made as a result of a limited pool of talent due to negative reviews – stand to cost your company significantly.

Having a wider choice of better talent, attracted to your organisation by a strong, inspiring employer brand with numerous positive reviews, makes it more likely that you’ll make a successful hire, limiting your turnover rate… 

Improving employee performance

When your teams are engaged, they are more driven to achieve. This may sound obvious, but many companies fail to see the link between a strong EVP and high performing staff.

Getting your staff engaged with your business goals takes more than offering face-value perks. To build on your employees’ drive to succeed and make the most of their talents, it’s important to set clear goals, provide regular praise and feedback, and give them opportunities to grow through courses and learning opportunities.

Why this boosts profitability

Engaged employees have a knock-on effect throughout a company. It’s often the case that if one team achieves well, it will help another perform better too. Companies with higher employee wellbeing have long been associated with higher business performance. Recent research has proved this to be more true than many may have thought.

Make your employer brand shine with BAM

We hope this has illustrated the direct and indirect influence that strong, effective employer branding can have on your organisation’s financial performance. Getting the maximum ROI from your employer brand efforts can be a major difference-maker in how motivated customers are to buy from you, how long employees stick around, and how productive they are day-to-day.

While employer branding represents a sensible investment in your company’s future, BAM by Papirfly™ empowers it to reach peak performance. Offering the freedom to create consistent print, digital and email marketing without agency support, free your teams up for initiatives that drive employer brand excellence.

Enjoy cost and time savings, eliminate duplicated effort and gain a birds-eye view of your global recruitment activity – discover the full benefits of BAM today by booking a demo.

Ensuring your brand’s unique proposition for employees is maintained and communicated effectively can be difficult at the best of times, let alone amid a worldwide pandemic. In this environment, global organisations are having to evolve and adapt to the prospect of recruiting and onboarding remote workers, while simultaneously preserving their employer brand.

While many businesses are sadly struggling, others are still looking to expand their team during these unusual times. However, traditional methods of successfully finding and onboarding candidates have been put on the back-burner for the time being. As brands look to keep the talent rolling in, they need to explore more unorthodox methods to ensure their brand remains prominent.

We’ve broken down some essential tips to consider when recruiting and onboarding remote workers…

Your recruiting checklist for remote employees

Make the most of video interviews

Though some companies utilised video interviews prior to the crisis, it will never quite live up to the experience of a candidate’s physical presence. As remote employment will be here for the foreseeable future, it’s important to try and normalise the experience for candidates as much as humanly possible.

An in-person interview provides many natural opportunities for small talk and rapport to build. That’s why providing a loose agenda for the interview prior to the video call can help put candidates at ease, and, without revealing too much, give them enough confidence to progress certain parts of the conversation more confidently. Ensuring that you and any other representatives from your company arrive early will prevent the candidate from becoming increasingly nervous while waiting for you to appear. 

They might not be able to see the office, feel the buzz and culture or all of the faces that keep the company running, but the impression given by those on the call will be integral for a potential recruit’s first impression. Your hiring manager may want to consider having someone from your branding team on the call, to answer some of the questions the candidate may have and help weave in the narrative that conveys what the company is about.

Finally, remember that tech issues can’t always be avoided, so make sure you don’t penalise any candidates if they struggle to get connected – it could happen to you, too! 

Choose questions that encompass the essence of your brand

Outside of your regular interviewing process, special emphasis should be placed on ensuring the candidate is a cultural fit for the business during this age of remote employment. Ask them how they would handle certain situations or challenges to determine whether they’re aligned with your company values and ways of thinking.

For example, if part of your EVP is empowering your employees to make decisions, and every answer the candidate gives you doesn’t include them finding a solution for themselves, they may either be unsuitable or require more training. 

While candidates typically ask anything from 2-5 questions at the end of an interview, allow additional time for a video interview. As they have lacked the experience of your brand and company in the physical sense, they may want to probe further on company culture and get a feel for what it’s like to work for you.  

Your onboarding checklist for remote employees

Be flexible but not disorganised

From the moment a job offer is made, the range of steps to getting an employee on board can take up to 6 weeks with notice periods and other considerations. It’s possible that a higher volume of candidates being interviewed may have been let go from their prior jobs as a result of the current climate, or that because of this period of remote employment, onboarding time could be significantly reduced. 

Candidates are going to feel a lot of unease between being offered the job and signing the contract, so ensuring that they’re kept informed at every stage possible is absolutely critical. Particularly when it comes to onboarding remote employees, the challenge of not having face-to-face contact can make the whole experience feel more distant and unwelcoming if not handled correctly.

As a hiring manager or another member of the leadership team, you may be stretched with time and therefore unable to answer every question or support the training of a remote employee. Assigning them a ‘buddy’ could prove beneficial in relieving some of the pressure from your team, and also giving them a chance to virtually socialise with someone they will be working alongside. When teams do return to the office, they will have made a friend, not just have to rely on recognising faces from Zoom calls. 

Whilst new employees work from home, you may want to introduce one-to-ones more regularly than you typically would. This will allow them to ask any questions they have or voice concerns.

Company literature is more important than ever

While many conversations will have taken place during the recruitment phase, it’s important for remote employees during onboarding to have something tangible that really solidifies what it means to be part of your company. 

Digital PDF brochures, toolkits or handbooks are a great way to introduce the company in more detail and, in particular, the departments the individual will be working in or alongside. It may be worth updating documents to include sections such as ‘Meet the team’ or ‘Life at Company’ if these don’t exist already. Anything that can paint an accurate picture of what working life will be like upon the workforce’s return will help new employees feel more embedded. 

An effective way to do this is by setting up your own onboarding portal. With all this critical company literature accessible in one central, online location, the process of welcoming, onboarding and training remote employees can be made significantly simpler, both for recruits and employers.

Likewise, if there are any guidelines, DAM systems, or other resources critical to this person’s role, they should be provided with instructions for these and guided by the hiring manager, department manager or their assigned buddy. 

Training remote employees is a challenge more global companies are waking to in this current environment. Utilise interactive training courses where possible and pre-recorded product demos to engage your new recruits when you can’t work with them face-to-face. And, of course, make sure someone is there to follow up these sessions to answer any questions your new team members may have.

Make sure their technology is set up correctly

For many companies, the process of onboarding remote workers has opened a potential can of worms of ensuring the candidate not only understands your values and culture, but also can access all of the relevant information and tools they need to perform their work. This is a crucial part of your onboarding checklist in the current landscape, as without this in mind your remote workers can be cut adrift from the rest of your organisation.

The last thing you want on their first day is a flurry of back-and-forth messages between them and IT. Not only does this make for an unpleasant experience for a new hire, who may feel the organisation doesn’t care about its staff enough to be prepared for their arrival, but it also hurts the productivity of your IT team as a result of these distractions.

To prevent this, ensure you have delivered all necessary hardware to the person in question well in advance of their start date, and you have arranged any necessary training for the remote employee with your IT department to help them set up their digital workstation. This ensures they feel comfortable with their role and responsibilities early, minimising any awkwardness at the start of their remote employment.

Encourage transparency from leaders

If you’re part of a big firm, it’s easy for news from the top to get filtered down incorrectly if there’s not a watertight communications strategy in place. While decision-makers might not be able to address everyone individually, at the very least you should try to set up bi-monthly calls or email newsletters. 

With regards to onboarding remote employees, they could potentially feel tense about their new environment and the restrictions of not being able to meet their teammates face-to-face or see their workplace first-hand. So, updates and guidance from the top of the organisation will give them reassurance that their company prioritises communication, isn’t interpersonal with employees and will likely be responsive to any ideas and concerns that they may have moving forward.

This is where the value of assigning either a dedicated buddy or mentor again proves effective – they can build on the transparency displayed by the leadership team in order to help them feel welcomed and embedded in company culture, which is especially important at a time where they’re compelled to stay at home.

Teams have their hands full with recruiting and onboarding remote workers

We hope that these tips will be useful in your efforts to overcome the challenges presented by the current landscape and support your recruitment and onboarding of remote workers. These times will prove challenging for many but we’re certain that brands will come out of this stronger and more defined than ever – perhaps even a little different than before. 

In fact, it might be a cloud with a long-term silver lining. As you refine your recruitment and onboarding processes, this not only allows you to be more flexible and contemporary in how you connect with the next generation of employees, but extends your reach in terms of bringing qualified people from around the world into your team and embedding them into your culture.

Whatever circumstances you’re facing – less budget, increased pressure to recruit, team redundancies – we hope this article has helped to shine a light on some remedies to the issues of recruiting and onboarding remote workers.

If you feel like you’re pulling your hair out trying to keep up with demand for branded materials, you might want to consider BAM by Papirfly™. An all-in-one powerful platform for the creation of studio-standard assets without the need for professional help. Pre-defined yet flexible templates ensure your team is always on-brand.

You also get a powerful DAM to store & share assets remotely, an educate section that gives your employees essential guidelines and information, and a whole range of campaign management tools. 

Find out more about BAM by Papirfly™ for employer branding or request a demo today.

As recruitment and brand perception continue to intertwine, the employer branding landscape is more competitive than ever. Empowering your teams with the right tools is essential for attracting and retaining top candidates and, ultimately, shaping the future of your organisation.

There are hundreds of tools out there designed to help you streamline your recruitment campaigns, boost employee engagement and increase collaboration. To narrow the list down a little, and help you understand which is best for your brand, we’ve rounded up some of our favourites.

LinkedIn Recruiter for headhunting 

With over 600 million users, LinkedIn boasts ‘the world’s largest network of professionals’. Using the LinkedIn Recruiter tool, you can quickly identify your top applicants, communicate with them directly and snap them up before your competitors.

Speed up the candidate search

With LinkedIn’s Smart Spotlight feature you can speed up your hiring times and automatically refine your search for candidates. For tailored results, the search tool will identify candidates who have already engaged with your company or those more likely to engage in the future.

It will also remove a step from the process by only presenting candidates who have switched on their ‘open to opportunities’ setting to share their availability and career interests with Recruiter users privately.

Show off your employer brand

LinkedIn Recruiter provides so many opportunities to showcase your company culture and freshen up your employer brand personality. It’s a great way to attract new candidates with news, insights and success stories, and convert company followers into new hires.

Target the most relevant candidates

To stand out among the most relevant talent, LinkedIn’s helpful ‘Jobs you may be interested in’ feature allows you to entice passive candidates by appearing in their ‘recommended jobs’. Understanding how users engage with the search feature from a candidate point-of-view is key to maximising its potential.

Recruitee’s applicant tracking system 

Recruitee is a centralised talent pool that makes it quick and easy to track and manage candidates in the hiring funnel. 

This highly collaborative tool helps large and small organisations make better hiring decisions with their entire team. As well as having an incredibly user-friendly interface, it’s also easy to optimise, and scalable for all kinds of recruiting needs.

Simplify the hiring pipeline

Recruitee’s ATS allows for quick and easy sorting of large numbers of applicants. Its visual layout simplifies hiring pipelines by giving your brand an intuitive, editable job site, capturing the information of all your candidates and helping you automate time-consuming tasks such as email responses. 

With almost every part of the recruitment process covered, Recruitee’s ATS system can help you implement clear best practices at each stage.

View tailored insights through one platform

Recruitee’s ATS gives your team a single, intuitive platform to work from. Through individual log-ins, they’ll be able to use the same shared view or, if they’re a manager or head of department, see tailored jobs that are most relevant for them. 

Optimise for your brand

Whether you need an ATS to align with your existing strategy or to launch your recruitment drive from scratch, Recruitee’s software can be customised to support your brand mission. It allows you to advertise jobs on your chosen sites, set appropriate permission levels for different users, integrate APIs and more.

BAM by Papirfly™ for campaign creation and management

We might be a little biased, but BAM by Papirfly™ easily makes the shortlist – it’s already being used by leading global brands including Unilever, Coca-Cola and IBM for employer brand campaign creation and management. It’s packed full of features that will completely transform the way you think about employer brand marketing.

Create studio-quality assets in-house

Custom design templates give you full control over your employer brand marketing materials. With an easy-to-use creative suite, your teams can create on-brand digital, print, social and video assets without having to source help from an external agency.

Be on-brand anywhere in the world

BAM allows teams around the world to view, edit and share marketing materials and brand guidelines. That means easier translation for global markets and no more lost or inconsistent assets – just a single source of truth for everything your brand represents.

Take control of your marketing materials

With a bird’s-eye-view of all your recruitment campaigns, BAM allows you to organise and edit briefs and timelines in an initiative visual planner. Analyse campaign effectiveness and add extra layers of approval that will save you time in the long run by helping your team become more autonomous.

PostBeyond for employee advocacy

Year-on-year, we’re seeing the positive impact that employees can have on employer brand marketing and their increasing potential to influence positive brand perception. PostBeyond is designed to help you empower your employees to become your best brand advocates, attract new hires, and new business. 

Turn employees into influencers

PostBeyond will help you humanise your employer brand with an authentic voice that comes from your employees. Each user can customise their homepage feed and use the ‘Explore’ feature to discover specific types of posts and branded content that resonates with them.

Make sharing simple

PostBeyond makes it easy for your employees to access all the assets you want them to share — whether that’s third-party content or branded materials like articles, videos, product releases and job postings. The software also allows you to monitor sharing and engagement with a built-in dashboard and analytics feature.

Create employee incentives

The Team Leaderboard feature incorporates a fun way to keep employees engaged using an element of gamification. They’ll get a personal score based on their activity and can see how they rank in their own department, as well as overall in your organisation.

Small improvements for employee retention 

Small Improvements facilitates two-way conversations between employees and line managers. Together, they can set objectives, monitor progression and better understand the issues affecting both sides. 

By making it much easier to manage feedback, spot high turnover in individual teams and communicate effectively with employees, Small Improvement’s user-friendly software is great for staying on top of employee retention.

Predict where to focus on retention

Small Improvement’s dashboard analytics helps you predict which employees might be leaving in the near future with colour-coded low, medium and high-risk categories. Having this valuable oversight means you can focus your retention strategy and reduce the chances of losing your best employees.

Spot trends in your turnover

Using a wide range of data, Small Improvements helps you evaluate turnover more effectively. By highlighting issues within specific teams, you can be ready to address the situation before it becomes a major pain point for employees. The software also captures data to tell you how long employees stay with your organisation on average.

Align your brand vision

To keep your employees up-to-date with your employer brand strategy, you can set email reminders and make it easy for them to create and share objectives. This feature is perfect for organising personal and professional goals that align with your overarching brand vision.

What works best for your employer brand?

All these tools and features have their place in helping you navigate the ever-changing employer brand landscape. Choosing what’s right for you will depend on how well they align with your company’s values and brand vision.

To learn more about the game-changing features from BAM by Papirfly™, get in touch to book your personal demo. 

You’ll be guided through some of our favourite tools in the creative suite, and learn about the innovative ways it can transform your employer brand and boost your success as a business.

Employer brand marketing has the power to make or break the future success of an organisation. Whether you have a strong team of 15 or 500 employees, an effective employer brand is one of the most important investments a business can make — getting it right is crucial; getting it wrong can be devastating.

Look out for these huge, but all too common, mistakes when rolling out your next employer brand marketing campaign:

#1 Putting all your eggs in one basket 

Before you put out your employer brand marketing materials across every channel you can think of, do your due diligence on your audience… 

One size does not fit all, so it’s vital to consider how different age groups and candidate personas engage with different channels. You may need to adjust your messaging, explore different mediums or devise a new campaign strategy altogether. A simple blanket approach could result in alienating swathes of great applicants.

#2 No attention to detail on localised campaigns 

Consistency is key, but what works in one country, may not work in another. Putting out inaccurate translations or culturally inappropriate marketing materials will have a detrimental effect on your brand that can be difficult to recover from. 

Building strong relationships between teams around the world will help you gain a better insight into cultural nuances and what resonates with audiences in different parts of the world. Lack of understanding and bad communication will make employees in local markets feel undervalued and disconnected from your brand vision.

#3 Not owning your identity

Defining one golden thread that unites every employee, wherever they are in the world, isn’t easy. But, for a leading global brand, it’s probably the most important (and often overlooked) factor of employer brand marketing.

It’s what solidifies your identity as a global brand and lets consumers, employees, and potential employees know exactly what you do and don’t stand for. Find that single source of truth and make it accessible and easy to get behind for every single one of your employees.

#4 Little focus with messaging

When a brand loses control of its messaging, its communications become disjointed, contradictory, and begins to undermine the overarching brand purpose. This mistake gets worse over time, causing marketing to erode its meaning as it becomes more difficult to find the one solidified message that encapsulates your brand. 

Having a bird’s-eye-view of all your global marketing materials, and making your brand guidelines easily accessible, will bring inconsistent assets under control and streamline your output with crystal clear messaging.

#5 Overlooking candidate needs

When your teams are concentrating on putting out employer brand marketing campaigns that communicate all the amazing reasons to join your organisation, it can be easy to overlook the deciding factors for candidates as individuals. 

Understanding and catering for the different needs of potential employees are absolutely key in attracting and retaining talent. This goes back to your employee personas and defining what your brand can offer beyond a competitive salary with perks.

#6 Ignoring employee review sites 

No candidate will expect an organisation to have 100% outstanding employee reviews — a dream working environment for some could be a nightmare scenario for others. What really stands out to potential employees looking on job sites like Glassdoor and Indeed, is the way an organisation handles feedback. 

While it’s natural for employee opinions to differ, it’s important to acknowledge what people are saying about their experiences at your company. Be sure to respond calmly and take action on any recurring comments the reviews might highlight.

Take control of your employer brand 

With an all-encompassing Brand Activation Management tool like BAM by Papirfly™, you can take control of your employer brand campaigns with a bird’s-eye-view of all your marketing materials. 

Your teams will have:

• An easy-to-use creative suite that allows them to create studio-quality print, digital, social and video assets within predefined templates for watertight consistency.
• A local globalisation feature that makes sure your campaign translates and relates to local markets.
• Access to assets, images and up-to-date brand guidelines in one centralised location.

Take control of your employer brand today, with the power of BAM. Book your demo here. 

Everything you put out to promote your employer brand is telling the world this is who we are, this is the type of talent we want to recruit and this is where we’re heading. When you have a strong strategy to follow and deliver against, there’s no stopping you. But just because your strategy has been delivering so far, you should still question any big move before committing time, money and effort to it.

It’s not about second-guessing decisions; it’s about never becoming complacent. The attitudes of candidates are continually evolving based on each generation and the societal circumstances we all find ourselves in. Likewise, what worked yesterday may have seemed successful, but who is to say it couldn’t have been even more so? The attitudes of candidates are constantly evolving, so it’s important to keep your team on their toes.

We’ve put together a short checklist that will help you weed out flawed strategies and concepts, and guarantee you stay aligned with your employer brand strategy.

Ask yourself…

1. What do we want this creative content to convey about us? Does the idea do the job effectively? Are we telling a story?

A very simple notion, and one you will likely know instinctively. But it’s always worth referring back to the basic messaging strands to ensure everything is kept aligned. This is particularly useful to ensure that new recruits are kept on brand.

5 second checklist

• Appropriate tone of voice
• Relevant to candidate
• Tells a story

2. Does this message align with our values?

When trying to attract the right candidate, it can be tempting to do something very clever and off-the-wall when a bright idea or topical event arises. But if this is very far removed from your original values, take a moment to consider whether the short-term exposure could cause long-term confusion.

5 second checklist

• Re-visit values
• Ensure it’s not controversial
• True to purpose

3. Have the candidate’s priorities changed post-COVID?

If you’re adapting an old campaign or continuing with an ongoing strategy, it’s worth taking a step back to consider how much has changed since this was initially developed. For the most part, candidate priorities had been pretty consistent over the last few years, but in the wake of COVID, brand purpose and values have catapulted from a marginal priority, to a more critical decision-clincher.

How big brands have treated their employees and communicated with their audience during the crisis has helped to cement the great qualities portrayed by some, and highlighted previously hidden flaws in others.

5 second checklist

• Candidate priorities identified
• Candidate priorities addressed
• Accurate reflection of career offering

4. How is this campaign going to translate into other markets? Are there any cultural nuances that need to be identified?

When a head office benefits from a generous budget, often the core campaign creatives stem from this team or the associated agency. Sometimes this means that by the time the creative reaches teams in other countries, the creative feels misaligned, misunderstood or not entirely relevant for the market. 

As part of any campaign brief, how the creative will be adapted for other key markets is crucial, particularly when it comes to employer branding or more general awareness pieces. More than this, being able to deliver the strategy effectively for each location without compromising on quality or too much budget is integral.

The BAM by Papirfly™ creation platform gives teams access to relevant content, imagery, logos, translations and more, allowing them to change up campaign creatives and make them totally tailored to their markets. All on-brand and with cultural nuances considered.

5 second checklist

• Understands cultural nuance
• Obtained visually relevant resources
• Plan of action for delivery

5. Is there anything on this creative that will encourage candidates to deselect themselves if they’re not right for the role?

While an influx of applications is often a good sign as the role is deemed attractive, getting too many unsuitable applications for the role could mean your communications or messaging is misdirected in some way. This is why it’s important that the campaign and all supporting career materials convey the tone of voice, EVP and brand purpose in a way that fitting candidates can relate to.

To give a tangible example, if you work for a cutting-edge tech brand and your brief is to recruit new developers, focusing on outdated channels or including old-fashioned imagery could send the completely wrong message about the role.

Likewise, if your employer brand has an emphasis on in-office culture and team spirit, and you receive mainly remote working or freelance applications, this messaging was likely not strong enough for the candidates to realise they were unsuitable.

5 second checklist

• True to tone of voice
• Strong persona established
• Creative tailored to persona

6. Is the call-to-action clear and does the candidate have more than one way to apply?

Whether you are exhibiting at a physical career fair or recruiting candidates digitally, the stages they go through to apply will be make-or-break for their application. Too many barriers or hoops to jump through may cause them to disengage, but too little and you may attract a lower quality candidate. Giving people multiple ways to submit their CV, covering letters and/or portfolio will ensure you give a fair chance to as many potential recruits as possible.

Once the submission is made, what happens next? Do they get confirmation, and will they be contacted regardless of whether they are successful or not? If your candidate management portal is automated, ensure you craft emails to sound human-like, not cold and robotic.

5 second checklist

• Call-to-action is clear
• Multiple ways to apply
• Communication is consistent

Ready to go to market?

Now you are certain you’re on the right track, ensure you can deliver all the assets you need to support your global teams. BAM by Papirfly™ is used by employer branding teams across the globe, with licenses held by the likes of Coca-Cola, IBM, Vodafone and many more. Over 500,000 users worldwide are empowered to create their own digital and print marketing materials, on-brand, on-time and with no additional budget needed.

Learn more about the power of BAM here or speak to one of our team and book a demo.