Your employer brand is a multi-lane highway. How your employees perceive your company and their workplace strongly impacts how they perform in their jobs and advocate your brand to others. Do you have an idea of how your employees feel? Internal branding and communications matter a lot. These can be the drivers of employee engagement at your organization.
Businesses spend a lot of time in shaping their external brand. They need to focus on building an internal brand that can speak loud to their target and future employees. Employees are the heart of every organization and by focusing on them, companies will soar. A company with a bad reputation has to spend more money on recruiting new talent, compared to the one with a good reputation.
Your business always has an employer brand and if you’re not utilizing it to its full potential, it’s time to take the control back.
Internal Branding: Why is it Important?
Internal branding is an approach to align your employees with company plans, values, and mission. This involves education, communication, feedback, and active care for your brand and values internally. Before setting new goals, missions, plans, culture, or a better workplace, ensure your team is on the same ship, otherwise, you will be sailing alone. This is what internal branding does and what makes it so important. Some of the major benefits of internal branding are:
Good emotional connection between employees and your company and its goals.
An impactful and loyal team on the same ship.
Better alignment between what your employees do and what your external brand promises.
Boost in employee engagement rates.
Improved retention and recruitment rates.
Internal branding is essential to how your team views and connects with your company and how much effort they put forward to achieve business goals. Not to mention how confidently they convey your employer brand to customers. If employees have trust in the company’s mission, they can promote it better. However, if you don’t already have internal branding underway, here are some fortuitous times to start:
At the beginning of the new employer branding effort.
During changes in the leadership.
At times of mergers or large changes in the organizational structure.
According to the Harvard Business Review, starting at key watershed moments profoundly impacts the success rate of internal branding. No internal branding campaign is complete without an Employee Value Proposition.
Understanding Employee Value Proposition
EVP or Employee Value Proposition is an extension of your company’s culture, values, and mission. It is a statement of what benefits and unique advantages your company offers to current or potential employees. What will they get from working for your company and why should they work there? These benefits can be experiential, financial, or personal but together they must provide a strong case for why your company is the right choice for an employee or a candidate.
Building Employer Brand Inside Out
Your employer brand helps prospective job applicants buy information about what your company is all about your people, culture, purpose, and values. Your employer brand highlights the quality that makes your organization a special place to work, setting it apart from the crowd and ultimately inspiring the
prospective candidates to apply for consideration.
1. Cultivate Your Culture
Your employer brand is a reflection of your culture and values. So, building a culture of positivity is the key to building a strong employer brand. Ask yourself – what type of culture are you looking to create? What type of talent do you want to hire to create that culture? What do they want?
2. Leverage Brand Acuity
Employees leverage platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Glassdoor to share their experiences with an organization. According to Glassdoor, 70% of people look at reviews before they make career decisions. These platforms are a valuable source to identify and tackle pain points that might deter right-
fit candidates from applying as well as improve the company’s EVP as a whole.
3. Respond to Online Reviews
It’s impossible to control what people say about you online, but you can definitely control how you respond. You can use the feedback you receive from different online platforms or your candidate experience survey to build your employer brand. For Example: If past candidates share negative interview experiences, you should look at training your hiring managers on different interview techniques.
4. Embrace Social Media
Leverage social media to showcase and build your employer brand. Depending on your culture and messaging, you can choose to be active on one or more social media platforms. For example, you could capture company moments on Facebook or post jobs on LinkedIn. When it comes to social media strategy, you ought to be you. People can tell when you are faking it.
5. Tell and Share your Employee Stories
Your current employees are your biggest brand ambassadors. Most candidates strive to know what their future coworkers like about their jobs. Use genuine employee testimonials to add a human element on your careers page. You can even shoot videos of your employees at work providing a complete office tour. Storytelling makes your brand personal and helps you attract the right candidates who could see themselves crafting similar stories.
The Bottom Line
A successful employer branding strategy for one company might not work for another as your employer brand is what differentiates you from your competitors. Take time to craft your employer brand, making sure it’s unique, embodies your values, and attracts the right people you want in your organization.
