Q. Research has revealed that a strong employer brand has a greater impact on employee engagement and organisational performance. What is your take?
A. The employer brand is an incredible intangible corporate asset. It represents a valid source of value. Doing effective employer branding enables a company to distinguish itself in the market. If the company has built a strong and authentic employer brand experience, it means the company has effectively focused on satisfying employees’ tangible and intangible needs. It means that all corporate values and purposes have correctly permetead the organisation. It also reflects that company has efficient leadership. It is the key to concretely generate innovative ideas that could take companies further and keep them on the right trajectory for achieving planned organisational and financial goals.
Q. What are the most popular communication channels for employer branding messages?
A. Website career sections represent the primary channel through which companies communicate and provide full information about their own enterprises, employer brands and employer value propositions. It represents the place where companies create their own content strategies for successfully telling who they are, what they do and what does it mean working for them. However, for today’s employer brand communication, it is not important to choose popular channels, but the relevance and consistency they have with regard to target audiences and corporate business peculiarities.
Q. What are the market trends in vogue presently regarding the employer branding and employer attractiveness?
A. Having a localised employer value proposition is imperative for companies having international strategies. According to the 2012 PWC (PricewaterhouseCoopers) CEO survey, hundreds of managing directors of multinational corporations have pointed out the need to localise their own business strategies instead of looking from a global perspective in terms of value proposition of their business and marketing strategies. Companies now have the obligation of adapting all their corporate strategies to the local market dynamics to succeed. Integrating personal branding strategies with employer branding, corporate branding and product branding strategies is also important. Leaders within the company must be clever and ingenious in managing all these brands in a holistic and integrated way because they are all connected to each other and mutually influence each other.
Q. What makes a company an employer of choice?
A. For a company, the only way to become an employer of choice is to build a good place to work. Most of the time, companies are used to communicate that they are an ‘employer of choice’ without being that. This can be risky because when new people join the company, they will feel the employer value proposition communicated to them outside the company for attracting them does not correspond to the truth.
Strategically speaking, companies must be able to satisfy the intangible and tangible needs of current employees. To do that, in terms of managerial operations, employer branding managers must study market trends to understand the target audience.
Q. How important is it for employer branding strategy to focus not only on recruitment but also on retention and motivation?
A. A strong employer brand not only helps in attracting future high value people but it also creates a solid internal identity, increases engagement, loyalty and retention. Performance is composed of two key elements: motivation and competence. If a company decides to run compelling employer branding initiatives to retain and motivate people, it will get the value that needs to take organisational performance to the next level. Retention and motivation strategies are more important than attraction strategies.
Q. What are the ways to understand where an employer is positioned in the market and how do you determine the appropriate action plan?
A. Firstly, I implement audits related to all employer branding processes. Internally, surveys and focus groups help me in understanding how the employer brand of a company is perceived by current employees. But I also do checks to verify the employer brand authenticity by involving CEOs and top managers. On the other hand, I monitor employer brand reputation on web to discover the buzz about an employer brand. Lastly, I use business intelligence tools to track ROI about communication campaigns that are carried out.
Q. How can an organisation clearly define employer brand strategy?
A. Employer branding is part of the branding process. It is no more a buzzword or a trend, but represents a vital element in corporate brand strategy today. It is related to the glocal business plans especially in multinational corporations. Pragmatically speaking, there is still a lot of confusion about what employer branding really is and what are the objectives behind it.
To clearly define an employer brand strategy, managers of employer branding strategy have to focus their efforts making the experience valuable both internally and externally. That means managing all the touchpoints they have with their own internal and external target audiences. It touches all important moments of your candidate and employee experience.
In other words, employer brand is the physical and intellectual experience of people who work in a particular company and the anticipated experience of candidates who might work there. It is the sum of intangible and tangible value that an employee can obtain. However, to build a strong employer brand, it is important to find answers to these three question:
– Who are you?
– Who would you like to be?
– Who people think you are?
