Tuesday, February 21, 2023

5 steps to employer branding

If you are looking for an effective way to attract new talent to your company and retain employees in the long term, you need a well-developed employer branding strategy. After all, with an effective employer brand, you can attract missing professionals who are in high demand in the labor market.

Image source: https://unsplash.com/de/fotos/eC0idQ0eek4, 27.01.2023.

Use employees as brand ambassadors

In today's job market, companies need to stand out from the competition to secure the best employees. Skilled workers are a rare commodity that must be won over with attractive benefits and offers. For example, equal opportunities and attractive corporate values represent a sustainable business model for potential employees. A strong offering of employee benefits is seen as a value-added initiative to create a strong employer brand while fostering loyalty among the entire team.

But it's worth emphasizing that with the right combination of discounts, leisure activities and employee benefits, companies can not only attract, but also retain, highly sought-after professionals. Of course, employer branding is more than just printing hoodies and embroidering blankets with the company logo - these measures may make employees happier in the short term, but in the long run, you need a sophisticated strategy.

Employer Branding Process

Developing a strategy is only the first step in the entire employer branding process, because it is followed by implementation and controlling of the measures. Therefore, the individual steps that contribute to building an employer brand are explained here.

Step 1: Developing a strategy

In general, strategy development requires extensive research to define the company's core values. In doing so, one must understand the needs and desires of potential and current employees in order to successfully implement the strategy both online and offline. For analysis, one can ask the following questions as a guideline:

● What does the company want to stand for?
● What is the long-term vision?
● What makes the company unique and what can set it apart from other employers?
● Why do existing employees stay with the company?
● On which channels are potential employees reachable and how can they be approached?

In addition, creating a company culture that focuses on employee satisfaction can be essential to building a good image. Therefore, marketing should have a consistent tone, align with company values and be tailored to each marketing tool.

Step 2: Create a communication plan

The second step is to communicate the value proposition to the right target audience. For this, one should figure out the common contact points so that one can reach potential employees. Accordingly, you can use traditional communication channels such as career site, intranet or your own website to draw attention to vacancies.

Other online recruitment opportunities arise through social media channels, where one can post creative ads in the form of images or videos. Because nearly everyone has a profile on social media, this is an inexpensive and effective way to reach potential applicants.

Step 3: Implement content ideas

Once the corporate brands and communication channels have been outlined, the content of the strategy needs to be defined. For this purpose, one should consider, on the one hand, what messages one would like to convey in personnel marketing and how this can be implemented. Accordingly, materials must be compiled that represent the company's identity and culture: Interviews with employees, insights into team events, cooperations with social institutions and an image film are often used.

In addition, employees can serve as brand or corporate ambassadors by giving the company a face. However, care should be taken to ensure authentic messages and realistic self-portrayal, otherwise the measures will be perceived as promotional by the target group.

Step 4: Attract new employees

Once the first steps have been successfully implemented, the number of applications and interest in the employer may increase. Nevertheless, the uniform appearance and core values should continue to be conveyed in the further application process until the employees are ultimately hired.

Step 5: Retaining employees

A positive working environment must be created to ensure that the employees recruited remain with the company in the long term. Therefore, you should evaluate your current offering and ask employees what they like and don't like about the workplace. While financial benefits are important, you should also emphasize an open corporate culture, transparent communication, training and development opportunities, and new, efficient technologies.

After all, flexible home office arrangements and team events are also benefits for employees. This creates an ideal working environment that not only attracts new talent, but also retains the existing ones.