Employer branding is a way to influence and manage the perception of your company among job seekers and stakeholders. People’s perception of a company’s values and work environment determines its reputation as a workplace.
Employer branding is the business identification and reputation of your company. This makes your company stand out from the competition as an employer. Also, it strengthens your recruiting team’s ability to attract and retain talent.
This article will discuss the different factors that affect your employer branding and tips and tricks to strengthen and maintain it.
Factors that Penalize Employer Branding
As we just mentioned, employer branding is key because it’s how people perceive your company culture. Every organization should be alert and aware of the various negative factors that affect it.
Let’s look at some factors that penalize your employer branding:
1. Negative Press and Media Coverage
Media criticism that damages your reputation can be categorized as negative media coverage. A breach of these values could undermine the network’s core values and your company’s professionalism or put off potential clients and funders.
Negative press of the company significantly hampers employee branding. Some examples of negative press include workplace harassment and discrimination, legal and labor disputes, controversial social and political stances, and other scandals.
To reduce the impact of negative press and deal with them, here are some tips and strategies you can follow:
- Respond as a unified team promptly and responsibly.
- Be transparent and authentic to make them trust you.
- Identify the issue and solve it in the long term.
- Always be comprehensive and accountable.
- Through employee testimonials and stories, promote positive aspects of the company and culture to the press and media.
2. Social Media Criticism
With the rise in the popularity of social media, it plays a vital role in promoting and demoting your employee branding. Similar to negative press and media, negative comments and reviews change the perception of people. It also affects recruiting potential candidates, as job seekers may be less likely to apply if they see negative reviews online.
Negative posts and comments on social media about the company’s policies, management, culture and practices can affect the employer’s brand on social media.
Furthermore, social media criticism can adversely affect an employer’s brand reputation. It can damage the company’s relationship with its customers and business partners and its ability to attract and retain talent. Comments and negative reviews on social media can spread quickly and amplify, leading to a decline in public perception.
Companies can take several steps to deal with social media criticism:
- Properly monitoring social media for negative comments and responding professionally to them.
- Ask them about the issues and what you can do to solve them.
- Companies can use social media management tools to manage their online reputation in social media.
Business owners can protect themselves from offense through phone abuse and threats if they don’t share their personal phone numbers on social media platforms.
Instead, they can use virtual phone numbers for secondary social media accounts to keep their personal information private. By doing so, you can control how much your personal information is available online and prevent toxic people from harassing you.
3. Employee Turnover
When a company has high employee turnover, productivity and work efficiency decreases, which affects the employer branding. It ends up in recruiting new employees and losing the morale of the remaining ones.
High employee turnover is caused by:
- An overload of work.
- Lack of employee recognition and appreciation.
- Bad company culture and relationship with the managers and team leaders.
- Lack of emotional compensation, flexibility and benefits.
- Lack of learning and developing skills.
When employees keep leaving a company, it sends the message that the workplace is undesirable and there are better opportunities elsewhere. It makes it hard for the company to hire and recruit new employees as they may find themselves dissatisfied with their future working conditions.
When existing employees see high resignation rates among their colleagues, they may feel uneasy about the security of their careers. This creates an atmosphere of distrust between employers and staff members.
As you see, it isn’t a secret that high employee turnover can be a huge problem for any kind of business. To solve the problem, it is important to create an engaging and interactive workplace culture that encourages employees to stay at the company.
You can reduce employee turnover by optimizing employee lifecycle. You can provide benefits, and competitive salaries, offer professional skill development opportunities, and recognize their talents and achievements. Employers should strive to create a feedback culture and foster an open dialogue between management and staff to discuss issues openly without fear of penalty or judgment from either side.
4. Poor Reputation
A company with a poor reputation can discourage employees from applying for jobs and the current ones from working in the organization. Negative reviews and comments about the culture could lead to fewer applicants and lower employee retention levels due to dissatisfaction.
A poor reputation can severely damage the employer and the company’s brand. It occurs due to:
- Bad customer service.
- Bad quality products.
- Negative comments and media coverage.
- Unethical work practices and employee disrespect.
- Lack of profit and transparency.
Eventually all these action will make customers less likely to purchase products and services. This obviously hurts the overall sales and revenue of the company and employee morale.
Also, employees are the hands of the company, and with a poor brand reputation, they will not feel proud to work there.
When a company has a poor reputation, it is essential to address and try to fix the issues. Here are some of the strategies to identify the issues and solve them:
- Identify and analyze the root of the company’s poor reputation, such as poor-quality products or customer service.
- Research and find solutions to improve the company’s performance in each area.
- Conduct customer service training and quality control processes for products.
- Improve communication with customers and gain their trust.
- Your employer brand will be enhanced, and you can attract better candidates if you provide a good candidate experience.
- Improve the workplace culture of the company and treat your employees nicely.
- Invest time and resources into building positive relationships with stakeholders who influence public opinion about the company’s brand image. Make social media advertisements by collaborating with influencers.
Strategies for Building and Maintaining a Strong Employer Brand
A strong employer brand helps recruit top talents that help the company grow and retain its reputation. Unfortunately, many companies do not invest time and resources to maintain a strong employer brand.
Your employer branding policy impacts how applicants perceive your company, how they are treated during the recruiting process, and what happens after they are employed to keep them on board.
Let’s learn some strategies for building and maintaining a strong employer brand for your company.
1. Develop a Strong Employer Value Proposition
Employee Value Proposition (EVP) is a set of monetary and non-monetary benefits an organization provides in return for their dedication, hard work, skills and talents, and contributions to uplift the organization.
EVP is important because it makes the company more attractive to top talents and helps reduce employee turnover. It also improves employee engagement and satisfaction to help your company and commitments. Keep your best foot forward and give benefits to deserving employees.
Have a look at some of the ways you can develop a strong employer value proposition:
- Collect information from employees, customers, and experts to understand what does the audience values most in an employer.
- Explain your benefits and values to the employees. Waltk them through your employee wellness progam: flexibility, paid leave, career and skill development opportunities, and positive workplace culture.
- Make sure that your business’s mission, vision, and values are reflected in your EVP.
- Build a feedback culture. Gathering information and feedback from the employees to measure the effectiveness of EVP and make changes, if necessary, in real-time.
2. Communicate the Employer Brand Consistently
A company’s employer brand communication improves its reputation, makes it more attractive, increases employee engagement, and reduces recruitment costs. To remain competitive in the long term, it is essential to make contact with the employer brand regularly.
Some ways to communicate the employer brand are given below:
- Create a clear and precise definition of your company’s employer brand, including its values, culture, and mission.
- Establish brand standards to ensure a consistent brand message, tone, and visual across all internal and external communications.
- Employer branding should be blended into all internal and external communications. This includes job descriptions, employee newsletters, and social media.
- Maintain consistent communication by teaching employees the importance of the employer brand.
- Communicate regularly with your employees, customers, and other stakeholders to ensure your employer brand is accurately reflected.
- Evaluate and adjust your employer’s brand communication to ensure consistency.
- Integrate LinkedIn message automation to streamline communication with employees and potential candidates.
3. Foster a Positive Company Culture
Fostering a positive company is very important in maintaining strong employer branding. An employer’s image and reputation can be improved by making the workplace more appealing and helping to attract and retain the best employees.
You can set a positive company culture by following the given strategies:
- Explain and communicate company values to your employees and applicants. Having clear and consistent company values can guide decision-making and behavior.
- In a safe and supportive environment, encourage employees to share their ideas, opinions, and feedback. Regular check-ins, team-building activities, and open-door policies can all aid in the development of open communication.
- Create a workplace where all employees feel valued, respected, and included regardless of their background, gender, race, or other differences.
- Teach your employees to balance work-life by separating personal and professional work.
4. Encourage Employee Advocacy
Employee advocacy is everything your employees do and say that depicts what it’s like to work for your firm. It gathers the content posted about your organization to in-person interactions about your brand. It is one of the ways to build a strong employer brand.
Marketers can use brand advocacy tools to plan, execute, and evaluate branding strategies over time and manage and oversee promotional activities with influencers.
You can provide training and development, promote employee recognition, make them valued and respected, and share important information to improve employee advocacy. Use surveys to get employees’ feedback and create content for employees to share. These types of activities improve employee advocacy and strengthen employer branding.
5. Monitor and Respond to External Feedback
Developing and maintaining a strong employer brand requires monitoring and responding to external feedback. To gain insight into how employees and potential candidates view the organization, employers can use social media, surveys, reviews, etc.
This information can be used to inform decisions regarding company culture initiatives or marketing campaigns that may help attract new talent.
Employers should also respond thoughtfully and professionally to negative feedback to maintain a positive reputation and demonstrate their commitment to improving areas as needed.
Employer branding: a key to employee engagement
Employer branding is very important for the prestige of your company. It not only brings and keeps top talents within your organization. Having a good employer branding means that your company puts people first and worries about their wellbing. This is equivalent to high levels of employee engagement and satisfaction!
So yes, keeping your employer brand strong is important since you’ll likely have a very backed-up talent acquisition and pipeline, which is great for the hiring manager. You can get help from the mentioned suggestions and strategies to improve yours. Is there any strategy that works to enhance your employer branding? Let us know!
FAQs about employer branding
In case you have any further questions about employer branding, here are some FAQs that migh help you out!
How do employer branding impact recruitment and hiring?
Employer branding significantly impacts recruitment and hiring as it helps to attract top talent, increase employee retention rates, and improve the overall quality of applicants. It also helps to ensure that potential employees have accurate information about working for the company to make informed decisions when applying for jobs.
Can an employee's individual actions negatively impact the employer's brand?
Yes, an employee’s individual actions can negatively impact the employer’s brand. This is especially true in today’s digital world, where information moves quickly and easily. Poor conduct or inappropriate employee behavior can lead to negative publicity, damaging a company’s reputation and image.
How often should a company review and update its employer branding strategy?
A company should review and update its employer branding strategy at least once a year to ensure that it is up-to-date with current trends, technologies, and best practices.
How does a global workforce impact employer branding?
A global workforce can positively impact employer branding by helping to create a diverse, multicultural workplace and increasing the visibility of an organization in international markets. This can help attract top talent worldwide and enhance its reputation as an attractive workplace.
Can employer branding be measured and tracked?
Yes, employer branding can be measured and tracked. There some KPIs for Human Resourses professionals that might help you with it. Some metrics to track and measure employer branding are:
- Candidate NPS.
- eNPS.
- Employee turnover rate.
- Employee referral rate.
- Cost per hire.
- Social engagement.
- Employer Brand Index.
- ROI of employer branding.
- Career page analytics.
- Candidate quality.
How can an organization recover from a major employer branding crisis?
Recovering from an employer branding crisis takes time, effort, and a well-thought-out plan.
- Evaluate the situation and understand the root cause.
- Take responsibility and apologize for mistakes.
- Develop a plan and communicate effectively.
- Make changes and reinforce strengths.
- Monitor progress and continuously improve.
Is employer branding only important for large companies?
No, employer branding is not only for large companies. It is for all sized companies as it helps attract top talent, increase employee satisfaction, and enhance its reputation, even for small and medium-sized businesses.
How can technology and digital platforms be used to enhance employer branding?
Technology and digital platforms can be used to enhance employer branding in the given following ways:
- Social media: Companies can promote their workplace cultures, employee satisfaction, and job board openings through sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.
- Company websites: Businesses can include separate career sites, which include employee testimonials, company values, and benefits.
- Employee referral programs: companies can implement referral programs through digital networks to reward employees for promoting friends and family to job openings.
- Video content: businesses can utilize promo videos to display their workplace and draw in prospective employees. Examples include virtual office tours, staff testimonials, and company culture movies to expose their employer branding.
