Employer Branding
Employer Branding: Brief Summary
Employer Branding is a marketing measure that aims to make your company engaging to applicants by presenting you as an attractive employer in order to strengthen the recruitment of new staff in the long term and improve the quality of applicants.
Employer Branding: Detailed Summary
Since the turn of the millennium, the competition for the best talents and most skilled professionals, which was already fierce, has gained additional momentum. Highly trained or experienced experts are more or less free to choose where they want to work in industry, research or finance. Many agricultural or craft businesses are also desperately looking for motivated and capable employees. In some sectors, hundreds of apprenticeship places remain unfilled. This is partly due to many companies not being able to make the vacancies attractive to promising candidates. This is why it has never been more important for companies to present themselves as attractive employers.
After all, in addition to a lucrative salary, employees now place increased value on quality of life and a balance between working hours and leisure time. The ideal job is family-friendly, does not involve unmanageable over time and allows freedoms such as working in a home office or so-called trust-based working hours. Employees can freely arrange their days and hours – on condition that previously set goals are nevertheless achieved on time. Nowadays, many job seekers state that good working conditions and a functioning work-life balance are more important to them than a high salary. If a company offers these or other benefits to its employees, it is important to communicate them.
The creation of an “Employer Brand” naturally serves not only to attract new employees but also to retain existing, proven employees. In order to be successful in the long term, it is important to keep know-how in the company.
Last, but not least, Employer Branding also has an impact on customer satisfaction. Branding as an attractive employer should be in line with all other marketing measures in order to present the company as a first-class brand to both customers and applicants. Satisfied and motivated employees do a better job with customers, especially in service-oriented industries – appearing friendlier, more confident and trusting of their employer. If employees love what they do and who they work for, that will be reflected in their work.
Core Factors of Employer Branding at a Glance
Corporate identity and a set of values
What does a company stand for, and what values does it uphold? Are these values that potential applicants can identify with? The Ocean Cleanup Project, for example, has set itself the goal of ridding the sea of plastic waste – a very worthy and important undertaking. It is more difficult for cigarette manufacturers, oil drilling companies or defence corporations to give themselves a charitable veneer. The latter, for example, often present themselves as conglomerates that are also active in sectors perceived as useful, such as aerospace. In the US, in particular, the defence industry presents itself as a helping hand that provides every citizen with effective personal protection. Every company should strive to bring out its best sides and turn flaws into strengths.
Quality of services or products
If a company produces particularly high-quality goods or offers proven top-class service, employees can proudly support their employer. Happy employees enjoy driving the vehicles, taking out the insurance policies or furnishing their homes with the furniture their company offers.
Attractiveness as an employer
What career opportunities are offered, and what benefits does the company provide for its employees? The perception of status in working for a major brand, as well as the desire for work-life balance and job security, all play a role here.
Transparency and honesty
It is important for a company to take responsibility for its workforce and to be honest about the duties and benefits of its employees. Promises must be kept.
Comparison with the competition
Which competitors are particularly successful in employee retention and talent development? What do these companies do differently?
Self-analysis of the Employer Brand
How do things currently stand? How is the Employer Brand perceived by potential applicants and existing employees? It is worthwhile to obtain feedback from the workforce in order to adjust working conditions, remuneration or other factors if necessary.
How Does Employer Branding Happen in a Company?
Here is an overview of the most important starting points for Employer Branding in a company:
- Employee recruitment and retention
- Performance management
- Talent management
- Corporate culture
- Work-life balance</li
Recruitment and retention
Recruitment describes all activities related to covering the required staffing level. Vacant positions need to be filled with the best possible personnel at the lowest possible cost. From an Employer Branding perspective, the following questions also need to be answered first:
- How many vacancies need to be filled now and in how many in the foreseeable future?
- What qualifications do applicants need and what physical or mental requirements do they have to meet, if any?
- From when and for how long will the new employees be needed?
- Where is the place of employment? Do the employees have to travel, or are they being sought for a location abroad?
These are all important factors that lay the foundations for a company’s Employer Branding. For example, if an expert is sought for offshore oil drilling platforms in the North Sea, this difficult and possibly dangerous job must be made more appealing to possible applicants.
All employee retention measures are about keeping proven specialists in the company for the long term. Their feedback and testimonials on the internet are also important factors for Employer Branding. Nowadays, applicants often thoroughly inform themselves about potential employers, and testimonials from current employees are often the deciding factor in their final decision.
Performance management
The purpose of performance management is to evaluate the performance level of a company and to keep performance high. Factors such as working hours, absenteeism or the use of employees’ resources are evaluated. How long did individual employees or teams work on their projects, and how efficiently was this time used?
Here all sides must be assessed fairly. This applies to both the employees and the management decision-makers. Fairly assessing the performance of the individual as well as the whole team is important for employee morale. If someone works hard and performs well, this should be appreciated. Satisfied employees work far more efficiently and are more likely to remain loyal to their employer even in hard times.
Talent management
In practical terms, talent management is about filling the positions that are most important to the success of the company with the best possible candidates. It is particularly difficult to find capable managers who have the necessary know-how, leadership qualities and resilience for important projects. In software development and other technical sectors, for instance, there are often very few candidates who have all the necessary skills. Thus, promising candidates for critical business areas should be brought into the company as early as possible to be developed and promoted in the long term.
Corporate culture
How does it feel to work for the company in question? Every company has its own unique working atmosphere – the more harmonious, the better. Professional duties and private needs have to be balanced, conflicts among employees have to be resolved. Setting certain standards and rules – a set of values for which the company stands – creates guidelines that are valid from the management floor down to the trainee.
Work-life balance
Work-life balance involves balancing leisure and work in such a way that fatigue and stress are avoided, and employees can have a fulfilling private life alongside their job. By balancing work and private life, stress-related illnesses such as burnout can be prevented. Employees have more time to recharge their batteries for their professional activities. To achieve this, many employees even forego a higher salary.
Conclusion
Employer Branding is an area of marketing that all modern companies should be concerned with. A company’s reputation as an employer develops on its own – but it can also be channelled in favourable directions by taking into account the measures mentioned above. Companies themselves are responsible for creating a harmonious working environment with good career opportunities or other benefits in order to attract the best talent and retain experienced professionals. The effort is worth it because in the end, not only does the workforce benefit but also the brand itself, as satisfied employees have nothing but good things to say about their employer.
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