It is widely believed that every company has several brands to market. The first brand is the product they sell. The second is their company culture and the way it is perceived by the public. The third brand is the employer brand or how the public sees the employer, the one in charge of the entire operation. Employer branding is what will make people trust your company, what will make talent come to work for you, and what will eventually dictate the worth of your company overall. Let’s dive right in.
So what is employer branding? In short, it is the way that the public sees an employer, or a CEO, or a prominent figure in any company. Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Jeff Bezos, the holy-trio of contemporary entrepreneurship, are great employer branding examples: when buying their products, you know exactly what you’re getting and there is not a grain of doubt in you as a customer. So, employer branding strategy can make or break a company. What follows are best practices for employer branding.
Involve Marketers to Brand You as an Employer
In a digitalizing world, it is obvious that digital products make up a large portion of what the market consumes. Jeremy Korst, a former marketing executive for T-Mobile and Microsoft, explains that CEOs do not take advantage of the team they have and often neglect their marketeers. However, it is these guys who know WHAT the market wants and HOW to deliver it to them. The same way this philosophy is used to benefit the sales, it can be used for employer branding, for an extra cumulative effect. Further research into the field of marketing people and not only products will bring you to your advisors on sociology and psychology. Use both the team you have and the academia for a unified approach to your customers. This is your most powerful advertisement. After all, how many Tesla® ads have you seen lately? And how many articles on Elon Musk?
Use Social Media to Your Advantage: Present Yourself to the Public
In early 2000, no website meant no access to the market. The TV and newspaper ads meant some form of access to the market, but gave no great results compared to search engines. Some 20 years forward, in the 2020s, the same can be said about social networks. To properly market yourself, you should be branding yourself on social networks. “A good Instagram profile will speak volumes about you, volumes that no blog post ever could,” says Frank Hamilton, a social media consultant at SupremeDissertations. “Bad social network profiling will lose millions, much more than a good social media presence could make you,” he continues, “So, equipping yourself with a proper team of social media experts and marketers will enable you to build the kind of image you want and not rely on the one that was given to you by the market.”
Make Researching Your Company Easier
Any employee who would like to join your company will research it even before submitting an application. You should use this bit of information to your advantage, since presenting yourself in the right light online will contribute to your company’s and employer branding in public and make more people gravitate to your company whenever there is a job posting. Use TrustMyPaper to create truly unique and catchy articles and bits of intro texts for any career website. These bits can present you in the true light on:
- LinkedIn,
- Fiverr,
- About.com,
- Betts Recruiting,
- CareerBliss.com,
- Dice.com,
- Enternships,
and many more. Bringing in more possible employees also saves you embarrassment and public image loss by helping you find and retain top employees, which brings us to the next topic.
Create a Great Company Culture That Your Top Employees Will Thrive In
Always remember that Your Culture is Your Brand. The better your company culture, the more words on the street about you. Combine this knowledge with the previous point and try to attract as many great job applicants as you can. Then, sieve through them and see whom you find the best and who could bring most of the value to your company. Create a company culture that will make them thrive and want to stay. Encourage their strong points to make them thrive in your environment and create an employer brand of an enabler. In the same way, you enable your employees, and you will also enable your customers.
A great example of an enabler culture is Google. Google has always been known for its legendary work conditions, saunas, quiet rooms, and open-floor design. Facebook joined them a bit later, but both companies have managed to ensure that they get and keep the cream of what the job market has to offer. Surprisingly enough, what Google did was equate their company branding with employer branding. After all, if you work for Tesla, you work for Elon Musk. If you work for Google, you work for Google. Great company branding and employer branding have brought the company to a gods’ level on the market.
Do Not Damage Your Brand When Recruiting
When employing, make sure you understand exactly who is joining your company. Signing a contract is much easier than canceling one, and taking all the precautions you can to avoid employees who could ruin your company culture. Business Insider has managed to pinpoint 4 unexpected ways bad employees destroy companies. Having a flawless, or near-flawless customer experience and public image is much easier to maintain than correcting a negative company and employer branding.
Employee negative impact is difficult to predict and scale. Everlane’s Ethical Scandal in 2019 did start out because of the company’s negative company culture and unsupportive environment. However, it was a handful of employees who decided to defend themselves and their rights who could actually bring the company down. The Everlane Scandal is a great example of how the few can turn a company’s and employer brand around by 180 degrees. Provide the best work conditions you can to your employees, and THEN bring the best employees to your company and keep them there.
Final Thoughts
Behind every successful company, there is that one central figure. A strong and resilient leader who does not have to take up all the workload on his shoulders, but rather organize and optimize and use proven employer branding strategies. Our proven employer brand-building strategies will help you build, enhance and maintain a proper level of public exposure and with results that are easy to predict.
