Employer branding is a concept that tackles the promotion of a company or organization as a top tier employer to a target group of choice. This group of people usually revolves around talent pools of prospective employees with a set of skills the company is looking for.
Finding the right employer branding can be quite a hassle and a challenge to pull off correctly. Many companies often face some employer branding challenges while building their talent brand.
What is Employer Branding?
Employer branding is your brand image, an image of your organization which represents your culture, values, and goals as a company. A strong employer brand can help attract both customers and qualified candidates that might want to work with you as well as help you retain current employees who will start feeling like they are at home, not at work.
Employer branding is a form of language used to transfer a message to the world about your company, what you provide, and what you stand for.
Optimizing your employer brand strategy to a higher level can help you attract and engage talented candidates. This includes both candidates looking for work as well as candidates in competing companies who are looking for a job change. It helps you in recruiting and retaining talent by involving your employees in the process and building a better workplace.
You can thus reduce recruitment costs, increase the applicant size, reduce your time to fill vacancies and increase employee retention thereby streamline your talent acquisition efforts.
However, when you tackle the challenge of bringing this form of branding to life, there are certain challenges that arise along the way. Building a brand is not a one-time task. You need to thoughtfully plan out your branding campaigns and implement them on a regular basis.
Employer Branding Challenges Most Companies Face
Here is a list of some of the employer branding challenges you should look out for. You should also try to resolve them when searching for the perfect employer branding solution.
Finding the Right Starting Point
Not knowing where to start your branding activities is a major employer branding challenge for most employers. This is usually the case due to the fact that most employers do not take into account employee feedback and issues.
The best way to understand your company culture and what message you want to send across is to put yourself in the perspective of an applicant.
Try to grasp the perspective and reputation your company has in the eyes of an outsider. You should pay attention towards a person who is trying to be a part of your company. Try to find out why they find your company a great place to work, or why they do not. Go through the review of his feedback and take actions to resolve his issues. You can begin by optimizing your interview process and communication strategy with your potential employees.
In addition to this, you should find what makes your work environment special and why your employees love working with you. You should know how they perceive your company.
Your existing employees also play a major role in strengthening your talent brand. Find out how your current employees describe their experience with their friends and people they meet. You should build your employee brand image based on that information and your own mission.
Team Collaboration
The lack of collaboration and communication within a company is also one of the many employer branding challenges that companies face today.
Most bigger firms have different sectors with a different set of people working on various projects. These teams seldom communicate with each other let alone discuss about company branding. This can surely lead to duplicated efforts and an inconsistent brand image.
Improving the level of communication and collaboration between these teams can help boost your brand image tremendously. Similarly, it will also help you find a common ground and information about what message you want to share across the world.
Sending the Right Message
When you are building your employer brand, you should always know what you are striving for and remain consistent in that mission.
Changing your message or shifting the reality of the situation constantly may cause a commotion. And, it can even be seen as deceiving in the job market. This can lead to candidate confusion, and can, in turn, end up costing you both your current employees as well as future applicants.
The best way to have a high performing branding solution is to have one true goal and mission that you will follow throughout your career. You should also make sure that every member of your team is always on the same page as the team. You should also be consistent with it. Try not stray to different directions too much and remain true to your brand message.
If your candidate’s expectations are shattered, and his experience is lesser than the hype, it could ruin your hiring process as well as employer brand. It can also cause other candidates to withdraw their applications altogether.
Remember that you cannot fabricate the employer brand image, as it will inevitably come out to light.
Don’t Stop Believing
Everyone involved in the company must believe in your employer brand. You should aim towards building a better workplace by constantly keeping your employees and human resources team involved.
Bring a focus to your internal team and communicate with them. It is your duty to help them build experiences that will have a lasting impression. The last thing you want for your campaigns is to send one message across the world while a totally different one to your employee. Do not forget that word of mouth is still an important medium for advertisement about your talent brand.
Your employees are basically your brand ambassadors, or in other words, unofficial recruiters. They can share across real stories about their life as an employee within your company on their social media accounts.
The Conclusion
We are usually so involved with our tasks and our tight deadlines that we seldom look any other way. Instead, we head straight to our office chair to get things done. But what if that was not always the case and we took the time to review something else?
The next time you visit your workplace, take a second to look at the other employees. Monitor their routine, and try to figure out what their experience is like. With this information, try to improve their experience, collaboration, communication and involvement with bigger projects.
Most employees today feel that they are just some people working towards someone else’s goal. Make them feel like they are a part of something bigger than themselves. This will give you an employer branding image more powerful than ever before.
You will face the above mentioned employer branding challenges at every step of your branding process. It is up to you and your team how you tackle them.
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