Employer Branding Action Plan: How to Become a Top-Rated Employer?
Employer branding (EB) is one of the most important fields in recruitment. As the competition for talent intensifies, employers are compelled to invest in their employer branding strategies.
In this blog post, we will guide you through the process of building your own employer branding action plan.
What is an employer branding action plan?
An employer branding action plan is a strategic initiative that includes all of the company’s activities to attract, engage, and retain top talent.
A well-defined employer branding action plan can help you attract higher quality applicants. As well as showcase your company as an attractive place to work.
That’s why your employer brand is crucial to your recruitment success. It sets you apart from your competitors and prepares your company for success.
What’s the importance of an employer branding in recruitment?
Employer branding is a process that involves crafting a company's identity, improving the public perception of the company, and attracting talented workers.
An employer branding action plan can be developed by detailing all activities that need to be undertaken to maintain the firm’s competitive edge.
They're the attributes and qualities of your business that employees will experience on a day-to-day basis. Which shape their perception of the company.
Your employer brand will dramatically improve your:
- Attractiveness to higher talent pools.
- Greater employee loyalty, motivation and output.
- Reduced costs in recruitment and retention fees.
- A proud workforce who actively promote and advocate for your brand.
- A unified and clear organisational mission.With all people involved working towards a shared goal.
Employer branding action plan
1) Understand the Roots of Your Company's Employer Brand
Employer branding is the process of promoting your company’s brand to potential employees.
EB is not just about advertising or marketing. It's about attracting the right talent, while building a culture where employees are valued and satisfied.
We must first understand what our employer brand identity is. It can be formally defined by company values, key messages, positioning statements and the communications that are used to get this message across.
You’ll want to create an emotionally engaging workplace that attracts new talent through your employer branding campaign. To do this you need to know:
- Who are you targeting for recruitment purposes?
- What values or messaging do you want prospective employees to take away from your employer brand campaign?
- How best to communicate with them.
2) Define What Makes You Unique as an Employer
What makes your company stand out from the rest?
Happy employees lead to reduced turnover. This is obvious. However, finding a USP as an employer will increase your employee satisfaction.
There are many things that you can do to make sure you offer a better experience than your competitors. The following ways can help:
- Offer great perks and benefits. Some of these might include free food, paid time off, lots of vacation time, and more.
- Office space that is modern and updated on technology.
- Have a friendly work environment where people can be themselves without feeling judged or pressured by others.
- Offer flexibility with work hours.
- Provide opportunities for growth in the company.
3) Identify and Cultivate Your Employee strengths
Employers are often looking for employees with specific qualities. That is why it is important to identify your employee strengths and cultivate them. Once you understand the talent and skills already within your organisation, you can more easily identify what you are missing.
Some of these strengths may include creativity, empathy, organization skills, affinity with people from different cultures - the list goes on and on!
The most important thing is that you integrate your talent development into your HR processes. This is to keep your workforce growing and improving to keep up with market changes.
Creating your candidate persona
The best way to begin this is to create your candidate persona.
Your candidate persona is the idealised version of your missing candidate. Define the characteristics and traits they would have.
With this in place, you can choose your messaging and communication to best draw in your prospective candidates.
Things to consider include:
- The main personality traits of my ideal candidate
- What do they value and care about
- Their daily motivations
- What are their responsibilities and roles
- Who/ what influences their decisions
- Where do they conduct their research for information
For each department and role, your candidate personas will differ.
4) Communicate and Apply Your Employee Value Proposition
The Employee Value Proposition is the reason why your employees should come to work every day. It is the answer to the question “What’s in it for me?”
There are many ways you can communicate your EVP to your employees. You can do this through emails, in-person meetings, or blog posts. And whichever method you choose, make sure it aligns with your company culture and personality.
To align your EVP with company culture do it through company-wide announcements. A great technique is through team meetings where everyone has an opportunity to contribute their ideas.
To begin on your EVP, gather feedback from your current workforce. What do they appreciate the most within your company?
Above all, you also want to see how you currently rank and are viewed in the public eye.
By checking employment review sites like Glassdoor or Indeed you can gauge an accurate perception of your brand. Likewise, you can also take a look on social media using hashtags or mentions to see how people view your brand.
This will give you a clear idea of where your strengths and weaknesses lie.
5) Deliver on Promises by Showcasing Successful Talent Programs
Talent programs are one of the best ways to keep your employees happy and engaged. Talent programs provide a unique way for companies to show appreciation for their employees.
The benefits of talent programs are endless. Including improved work-life balance, company engagement, and employee satisfaction. Your company can have even more success with their talent program by making sure that they have a plan before starting it.
This process involves:
- Identify what type of talent program you need
- What you would like it to do for your company
- Why people should apply, and how it will be rewarded
6) Keep the Process Going with Ongoing Evaluations and Updates
Assessing your branding strategy over time is key to staying current and adapting to the market.
As the industry, customers and business landscape evolve you must remain current. Over time, you should analyse your efforts and see where improvements can be made.
This is where essential KPI’s come in.
KPI’s to monitor include:
- Cost-per-hire
- Number of applicants to each vacancy
- Time-to-hire
- Improved brand reputation
- Frequency of employer brand marketing
7) Keep up Regular Communication With Employees
An employer brand strategy is never complete. Employees and the business evolve so rapidly, and as a business grows they need to redefine what they stand for.
By having regular conversations with your employee's representatives, you can avoid becoming too subjective and stay rooted in what matters to your staff. If you're a part of a company with overseas offices, conversing with employees in person will be more effective than via email.
Every team would ideally be looking after their own, in their own area. So make sure you get the necessary insight on the ground in all areas.
8) Invest in video
Paid advertising is effective if you want to reach everyone in your target market. However, it’s not always the best option for smaller companies, which may need to focus on one specific niche. Consider using video content instead so that you can highlight your company’s true values.
Prospective employees can read handbooks and company pages until they know them off by heart. Therefore, hearing experiences from people in person has a far larger impact and humanises your brand.
This can create honest advocacy. The authenticity of hearing from real people from within your organisation is a powerful tool.
The future of your employer branding action plan
We hope this employer branding guide helps you offer a more attractive and comprehensive proposal to candidates. As well as to keep your current team members motivated.
The importance of employer branding cannot be underestimated in the future of your company and how it conveys a workforce that is motivated, committed and inspired to be part of your company.
For more information on engaging with your employees see a past post of ours here: Examples of employee engagement.
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