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.