From celebrating your employees during the holidays to thanking them for their contributions to the workplace, having a positive employer brand is important.
Your employer brand is part of your employee value proposition. An employer brand is your reputation as a place to work. It’s how people perceive your work environment and values. Multiple stakeholders play a role in developing an employer brand, including business owners, managers, the HR team, and the marketing team.
With a strong employer brand, you’ll get more applications without spending as much to do so. Employees will want to proactively apply to places they know have a positive environment. You can reduce your time to hire, improve retention, and you’re more likely to attract the best talent.
With all that in mind, the following are seven things you can do to improve your employer’s brand.
1. Know Your Value Proposition
As an employer, you need to do a self-assessment and figure out what you bring to the table for candidates and your current employees. Why are you a great place to work? It’s not feasible to be the highest-paying employer across the board, so as you audit your value proposition, you need to build a brand that’s based on things aside from compensation.
Maybe it’s a diverse workplace, a flexible culture, remote work, or a combination.
The way you support your workers in different ways is part of your value proposition too.
In a study from Deloitte, 80% of respondents said well-being was important or very important to their organizational success. To be a successful business, you need happy, healthy employees.
2. Spotlight Your Employees
When you have a strong employer brand, your employees are your ambassadors. They are who define your employer’s brand. Interviewing them is a good way to spotlight and showcase them as ambassadors. Do profiles on employees who will share and detail their employee journey. They can do so in different formats, like in employer brand videos or a blog.
3. Encourage Empathetic Leadership
Too often in the business world, empathy is seen as a weakness. In reality, it’s a strength, and it can be one of the most important parts of your employer’s brand.
Empathy in the workplace will help your leadership team see everyone not just as workers but as people. As people, we have diverse things that need our time and attention. We have not just work responsibilities but family responsibilities and other things outside of our work life. It’s important to be an employer that takes the needs of the whole person into account.
An empathetic leader is someone who really listens without interrupting, is fully present, and doesn’t judge. Empathetic leaders also have a genuine curiosity about the lives of the people who are working for them. They show this interest by asking questions, learning about strengths and challenges, and checking in regularly.
Empathy is especially important right now because people are facing so much stress following more than two years of a pandemic. Mental health is declining, and it’s taking a toll on people personally and professionally.
More and more people are leaving their jobs because of burnout or extreme stress, and this is the opportunity to scoop up top talent if you can show that you have a strong employer brand solidified by empathetic leadership.
Empathy in the workplace can help support innovation and engagement, as well as retention, inclusivity, and a sense of work-life balance to combat burnout.
4. Be Better About Your Application Process
Something that can diminish your employer’s brand even among people who don’t work for you is not having a good application process. Applying for jobs is disheartening for a lot of people, and they get discouraged when they hear nothing back. In your application process, there are things you can do that are going to build a better brand.
First, you need to be clear about job requirements and expectations in job listings. Include the salary range if at all possible as well. No one wants to feel like they’re wasting valuable time applying for a job that’s not the right fit for their skills or one where the pay is lower than their salary expectations.
Keep applicants informed of what’s going on throughout the process. Let them know if they don’t move on to the next step in the application process, and thank them for applying.
If you have a reputation for leaving applicants hanging, it’s going to have a big impact on your employer’s brand, no matter what it’s actually like to work for you.
5. Build a Social Media Presence
You can just use social media to build not only your general consumer-facing brand but also your employer brand. You want people to see inside of your company and what it’s like for your employees on a daily basis. You can provide day-in-the-life videos and profiles and other stories of your employees.
Use your profiles on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook to highlight why you’re the best place to work.
Around 70% of respondents in a study from Betterteam said they trust what employees say about companies over brand ads, so by showcasing your employees, you are simultaneously making a positive impact on your consumer brand.
6. Listen to Your Employees
We briefly talked about the value of listening to employees above when discussing empathy, but it’s something that’s important as a standalone too. The companies with the best employer brands throughout the world ask for and listen to authentic feedback from employees. It can be anonymous feedback in the form of surveys, or it can come from one-on-one conversations and consultations.
Just like you do regular employee performance reviews, ask them to do the same for you as an employer.
7. Test and Measure
Finally, you have to remember to test and measure your employer’s branding efforts. Places to measure and assess data include reviews and ratings, calculating your tension rate, and tracking the source of each hire.
You can also do anonymous surveys on employee satisfaction at regular intervals.
