Employer Branding: What It Is, Why It Matters, And How To Build It For Your Business

It takes more than merit to stand out and thrive in today's fiercely competitive market. While merit can eventually build up market credibility and goodwill, the aspect of actively building a positive brand persona is what truly sets apart an organisation's employer and talent brand. And with Employer Branding, organisations today can do just that.

What Is Employer Branding?

Unifying the organisational objectives of human resources and marketing, Employer Branding aims to build a favourable corporate entity for the organisation to establish itself as an employer of choice for its employees, stakeholders, and the targeted talent pool. In essence, it’s an exciting and influential intersection of two of the most important domains of any organisation. According to a recent report, while almost 50 per cent of Chief Human Resources Officers (CHROs) are focused on improving the employee experience to attract and retain talent, improving the employer brand, has become the top priority for most CMOs this year.

Why Employer Branding Matters?

As the job market continues to evolve, so does the talent landscape. From only prioritising good remuneration to now seeking better work-life balance and holistic wellness, today’s talent has grown more conscious of their needs as an employee. With employer branding exercises, organisations can better understand the pulse of their targeted talent pool and craft an Employee Value Proposition (EVP) and talent brand that appeals to them. After all, companies with a favourable employer brand get twice as many applications when compared to other organisations with a less appealing employer brand.

Furthermore, research by randstand noted that 50 per cent of today’s talent would not work for an organisation with a bad reputation, even if they were to be offered an increase in pay by the regular market standards. In fact, the same research also states that companies with a poor employer brand pay at least 10 per cent higher per hire.

Hence, it’s vital that organisations today invest in building a solid employer branding strategy that represents a healthy work environment and fosters a positive attitude among its employees and potential hires. Amongst the many advantages, employer branding also significantly lowers the cost of the company’s hiring process, as candidates tend to flock together to join a company with a strong and established employer brand.

How To Build An Employer Brand For Your Business? 

More than 60 per cent of the talent pool today relies on their research of the organisation to gauge employee sentiment before they apply. And their preferred channel of communication to seek more information about a potential employer are Company social pages, career website, employee review sites and Informal interactions with the current employees and company alumni.

So, if a company continues to showcase its healthy work culture through its employer branding strategy, its employees inevitably become its ambassadors. And for most organisations, a successful employer branding strategy would be broken down into Awareness, Consideration and decision making. 

During the awareness stage, organisations must work towards generating interest and education to influence their brand perception for the targeted talent pool. The intent here should be to carve out its niche in the target market.

It’s crucial to establish relevancy in the eyes of the targeted talent pool during the consideration phase. It's one of the sure-shot ways to get the talent pool to think about the company over its competition.

The entirety of the employer branding exercise is done with the aim of inspiring faith and confidence in the targeted talent pool to apply and join the organisation. And in this last phase, the company needs to actively publicise its USPs and EVP, which must be crafted keeping the talent sentiment in mind.

While the strategy may seem straightforward, it takes patience, rigour, and deep market analysis to be able to create the perfect EVP that not only does justice to the organisation's vision and mission but also appeals greatly to the targeted talent pool.

Despite emerging as one of the most effective methods for talent management, attraction, and retention, employer branding is surprisingly and significantly underutilised in the majority of demographics. That said, it's encouraging to see more and more organisations recognise the value of employer branding. After all, the success of an organisation is directly and inherently tied to the success of its workforce. Therefore, I'm certain that in due time, employer branding will become an essential part and department of organisations similar to finance, HR etc.

(Author is Founder and CEO of TrueBlue Advisory - An Employer Branding Consulting firm.)