10 ways to strengthen your employer brand

But lots of companies don’t have a complete approach to employer branding. They focus on the great lunch scheme, but don’t consider that the talent might be more interested in development and training. The employer brand has simply not been implemented on all levels in the organisation nor in all periods of the employee life cycle. Here’s how you can develop or strengthen your employer brand on all levels in the organisation.

Start building your employer brand today

Your employer brand is like your workplace culture. You can’t order it online and have it delivered. You need to develop it, nurture it and live it day by day in order for it to manifest itself in your company. Don’t wait until everybody quits and you have to rebuild from scratch. Start building your employer brand today. It will pay off when trying to attract top talent to your company.

Get involved - It’s not just an HR-exercise

Employer branding is not just something you should hand over to HR and relinquish yourself of all responsibilities. This is an organisational exercise where the process starts from the top, the executive positions, and flows through the organisation in order to uncover the current employer brand and work towards a new brand. You and the executives must get involved in the process for it to stick with the employees - you need to sell the idea to the rest of the company so everyone gets onboard.  

Be clear in your message

Take a step back and find out what story you want to tell. There are probably an abundance of things you want to tell the whole world about, but that might muddy the message. Stay on course and define what your message is and how you want to communicate the message, your employer brand. Find your key messages: The things that define your employer brand the most and that you want to market yourselves with and use them consistently on all platforms and communication channels.

Involve your employees

Echo chambers are dangerous because you can keep reinforcing the same message by repetition in your work culture, website and social media which can prevent you from evaluating your employer brand: Are we as good as we claim we are?

There is a huge resource in your company that can help you with that question, also known as your employees! Research is important in order to know how strong your employer brand is and where to improve it and your employees know your culture from the inside.

Beware of blind spots

Many companies fall into the same trap. They tell the story from the company’s perspective. That can be dangerous if reality doesn’t match perception and expectations. Focus on the employees and not the company - don’t waste valuable time selling your story from the company’s perspective.

Stay humble

Don’t act like your company is the best thing since sliced bread. It may as well be, but it’s not in your best interest to showboat about the things you believe are the best things about the company. This is actually in continuation of the previous points because your employees will help you keep your feet on the ground.

Sell the experience of working at your company

Everybody has it and it’s both boring and generic. The buzzwords don’t sell your company. Most don’t live up to them anyway. No matter how great your company is the talent will always ask “What’s in it for me?”. That’s why you sell the experience of being onboard with you. Show it by using your social media platforms to tell the story of your company from the inside.

Let your employer brand shine in job boards

Job boards are filled with cliches, boring descriptions of qualifications and tasks and a dull 3-5 paragraph short company presentation. You expect original materials from applicants but you dish out the same unoriginal copy-paste job board every time you’re looking to hire new talent.

Do you want to attract the best talent while receiving original and interesting material? Start with your own job boards and let your employer brand shine. An original and interesting job board where the applicant feel your employer brand gets you better results and thus, a better pool of talent to pick from.

Your employees are your brand ambassadors on social media

You’ve built the pillars of your employer brand. Everything is in place, it’s been launched on all digital platforms and now you want to walk the walk. Employer branding is dynamic and in constant development. How can you do that? Spread the word on social media with the help of your employees. Your employees are your standard bearers. When their foundations are great and secure, they're more inclined to talk positively about their employers on social media like LinkedIn.

Just like mentioned at the start of the post, it all starts at the top. When you start doing it, everyone else will follow suit: Talk about your great employees and the workplace culture - why you think it’s a great place to work at. When your employees become your influencers then your employer brand has come a long way!

Never stop improving your employer brand

Your employer brand is not a product that you launch and don’t keep developing on. It’s there to stay and you’ll have to keep evaluating and improving it. Whether you introduce yearly feedback interviews with all employees or implement interview with new employees after the onboarding process to get inspired or evaluate your employer brand is up to you. Just never stop developing your employer brand.

Building or strengthening an employer brand is a long and time consuming process but it will pay off in the long run. With a great employer brand that is present and implemented on all levels in your organisation you’re going to attract top talent that will keep moving your company forward.