Your new recruits are Googling you before they send a CV. The Glassdoor reviews, the tone of your LinkedIn page, the energy of your office party photos that somehow made it onto the internet: all of it is your employer brand, built intentionally or otherwise.
“Whether or not you have done anything to build an employer brand, you have one,” says Fiona Byarugaba, employer brand manager and DEI lead at tech consultancy Thoughtworks. “It’s written on the faces of your people, it’s in the gory or glorious detail of your Glassdoor reviews, it’s in the energy or malaise of your everyday working environment. Your brand is your reputation as an employer.”
What is employer branding?
Employer branding emerged from recruitment marketing. Its job is to engage potential talent before they apply, then make sure the actual employee experience doesn’t betray the promise made on the careers page.
“Employer branding is simply what an individual thinks it’s like to work at your company,” says Byarugaba.
The discipline spans human resources, recruitment, capabilities, leadership and marketing, borrowing from all five to build a coherent picture of what life inside the organisation actually looks like. It is also deeply tied to the DEI programs and policies that determine whether individual employees stay.
“Lots of organisations say ‘DEI is in our DNA’, but if that was the case, we wouldn’t have to work as hard on it,” says Byarugaba. “DEI strategies and the employee experience are intertwined.”
What are candidates already asking about your organisation?
Future candidates want to know whether your pay is fair and whether people who look like them have made it to leadership. The answers are already out there, written into review sites and LinkedIn posts and the general atmosphere your current employees carry into the world. The talent market forms a view before your recruiter picks up the phone.
How do leaders improve their employer brand?
Byarugaba gives four clear steps. First, acknowledge you have one. “Being aware of it will challenge you to be intentional about it.”
Second, get your heads of HR, recruitment, marketing and training talking to each other about it. “It’s like an orchestra, the instruments on their own won’t create music as beautiful as when they play together.”
Third, work out who owns the belonging dimension of the employee experience — what Byarugaba calls “the vibe within the team after employees have joined.” (In most organisations, the honest answer is nobody.)
Fourth, build a defined employee value proposition. “If you don’t have one, create one.”
What is an employee value proposition?
An EVP is the structured balance of what an employee receives in return for what they contribute. The objective side covers salary, health insurance and leave days. The subjective side covers autonomy, engaging work and interesting clients. Most organisations nail the objective and forget the subjective, which is precisely where the interesting employers live.
ALSO READ: Do You Know The Difference Between EVP, Employer Branding and Culture?
“An employee value proposition is like your company’s soundtrack. When you hear the James Bond theme song, you know what to expect,” says Byarugaba. “So, when people think about your organisation, what comes to mind?”
How do you measure employer brand success?
Measurement here is genuinely hard. External ratings and employee surveys handle the quantitative side. The qualitative side is harder to score but, Byarugaba argues, more revealing.
“We have metrics like external ratings and employee surveys, but we also have qualitative subjective measures,” she says. “Do employees say ‘I don’t want to leave, I feel I belong, I feel like I’m in a safe place’? When you establish that credibility is when the magic starts to happen.”
