Employer branding is just as important as corporate branding – if attracting and retaining top talent is important to your organization.
So, what exactly is employer branding and how can it help your organization? First of all, employer branding is not a series of vague qualities like flexible and caring. In the simplest terms, an employer brand is your organization’s reputation as an employer. It is the promise that you make to your employees and deliver on day in and day out. Employer branding must go deeper than a stated value proposition because your values and benefits must be reinforced internally and match the actual experience of your employees.
Do your employees feel valued? Would they recommend your organization to friends? What story does your career site tell? What do job applicants say about the candidate experience? How does your organization rate on social media and review sites? Is your organization a good place to work? These are all important questions that play into your employer brand.
As you contemplate whether to invest in formulating and articulating your organization’s employer brand, consider these five important benefits.
1. Improved Talent Pool
To state the obvious: people want to work for an organization with a good reputation where employees are treated well and feel valued. Recent research found that job seekers may even be willing to consider a lower wage if an employer can offer non-monetary benefits like a great culture, flexibility, growth opportunities, and more. A strong employer brand can tell your organization’s story through word of mouth, online employer searches and social media research.
Regardless of economic conditions, a strong employer brand can be the secret to building and maintaining a solid talent pipeline. When candidates are plentiful, it helps create a healthy pipeline of candidates eager to join your organization. In a tight labor market, it can help attract quality candidates who might not otherwise consider leaving their current position.
2. Decrease Time and Cost Per Hire
With a strong and desirable employer brand, your talent pipeline will likely be robust because your organization will attract more qualified candidates. This is great news for your hiring managers and your bottom line. With more qualified candidates in your pool, it will take less time to hire for key positions and less money and resources will be spent on sourcing and vetting potential candidates. Referral hiring also becomes easier with a strong employer brand. Employee referrals can be one of the most efficient and cost-effective ways to bring talent into your organization.
3. Higher Employee Engagement
There is a sense of pride that comes from working for a great organization and a lot of credibility in employees knowing that they are seriously and fairly taken care of by their employer. Investing in training and support, developing career paths, offering competitive compensation and benefits are all ways to ensure that your employee brand is laying the foundation of a culture of inclusion and engagement.
4. Lower Employee Turnover
When employees are engaged and feel valued, they are more likely to stay for the long haul. Most managers intuitively know that high employee turnover hurts the bottom line, but experts estimate that the cost to find and train a replacement could be upwards of twice an employee’s salary. In addition to monetary, time, and resource considerations, constant turnover can damage morale among existing employees.
5. Better Company Performance
There is one constant regardless of your industry: happy employees create happy customers. Satisfied and engaged employees are more focused and dedicated to their work which translates to better individual performance and better corporate performance. Having a consistent and hard-working team in place helps create a consistent, efficient, and meaningful experience for your customers.
Building and managing an employer brand might feel overwhelming, but employer branding is only going to get increasingly more important as job seekers become savvier in their research and decision-making process. Every employer brand is unique, and the process of building that brand is different for every organization. The key is to recognize it as a priority and start small.
