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Crash Conference:
How Much Does Image Really Matter?
Building Success Through Your Employer Brand.
What is an Employer Brand?
An employer brand describes an enterprise’s reputation as a place to work in the minds and hearts of its former, current and future employees.
This reputation is the result of enterprise culture, company values and management from an employee perspective.
In a way, employer branding is a sort of internal marketing, as it represents the proposition you make to your employees, as opposed to the more general corporate brand and value proposition you make to customers.
Employer Brand is Internal Marketing
Marketing and sales professionals make a living selling products, but the importance of internal marketing is often forgotten. The fact is, it is a very low-cost, yet efficient tool for organizations’ success!
Because employees are at the core of businesses, they can be the best ambassadors: focusing on employer branding can earn an entreprise the positive reputation that will give it a true competitive edge.
The Competitive Edge of a Strong Employer Brand
Having a prestigious employer brand has multiple benefits, including the most important over the life cycle of employees. It allows enterprises to better attract the workforce, to engage its employees, and to retain them, which is essential as hiring is becoming increasingly difficult.
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A company’s good reputation allows it to attract a high-potential workforce. Then, effectively communicating its values to the workforce helps to naturally bring out candidates whose vision aligns with the corporate vision. This reduces recruitment costs.
69% of candidates would not accept a job in a company with a bad reputation even if they didn’t have a job. (source: LinkedIn)
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Strengthening the corporate culture and improving employee engagement enables them to take better care of their customers: it goes without saying that an employee who enjoys his work provides a much better service.
Companies with a highly engaged workforce are 21% more profitable. (source: Gallup)
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When a company successfully attracts candidates and continues to engage its employees through employer branding, retention is a given. Then, loyal employees means a lower turnover rate, which in turn means lower recruitment costs. This is how the benefits of a strong employer brand make a complete circle.
86% of workers would not continue to work for a company that maintains a bad reputation. (source: LinkedIn)
Employer Branding
Crafting a strong employer brand is about good storytelling, and about living out that story. This means defining the essence of the company — how it’s unique and what it stands for — and aligning its aspirations with those of the people it wishes to count among its work force.
Careful! Corporate brand values must align with the core values shared internally. Most importantly, the promise made the employees must align with reality. Any discrepancy between the two can lead to a loss of credibility and engagement on the part of employees. After all, a respected employer brand is based on its authenticity.
Visual Culture Representation
While the brain’s sensory neurons naturally have more ease in interpreting images than words, it is very important to articulate the employer brand in a visual way.
This requires establishing clear values and messages, and bringing them to life in inspiring ways through communication tools and experiences. Whether these are posters, graphics, animations, corporate attire and merchandise or team-building activities, the main objective is to transform ideas into actions within the company: visually articulating a culture helps companies ensure that everyone’s visions align.
Depending on the resources available, different media will best communicate corporate values within an enterprise and showcase its unique cultural differentiators.
For example, it may be a Career page on a corporate website. This is a good place to showcase how it is to work within the organization, list employee perks and benefits, or give a sneak peek of what the offices look like.
It could also be a section that highlights the team members. Showing the faces of a company is important: ultimately, an employer brand is the sum of the personal brands of all its employees.
A true culture fit can also be achieved through an original recruitment campaign. This is an occasion to capture the attention of the best talent with a job description that stands out from the competition and to attract candidates whose values align with the organization’s.
Another relevant medium is an internal newsletter. Highlighting gains and achievements is essential to strengthen the corporate culture. Employees appreciate regular recognition, and it is this validation that keeps them engaged and motivated.
In a nutshell, these are just a few examples, but any opportunity is good one to showcase employer brand! When these communication tools are packaged in corporate colours, they will promote the enterprise culture directly.
An example of a visual representation of Ubity’s employer brand is its playful “survival kit” for employee on-boarding, decorated in Ubity colours and spirit and in line with its warm corporate tone.
As part of an ongoing process to enhance enterprise culture, it was an excellent initial exercise to ask ourselves what are the potential insecurities of an employee starting at Ubity, and what tools could help them better settle into their new position. Today, it allows new employees to be immediately immersed in the spirit of Ubity and its values on their very first day.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Finally, as it is the case for any effort, if one wants to enhance their employer brand, they need to start measuring it in specific ways. While it remains rather abstract, there are many metrics that can help evaluate the quality of an employer brand, but here are examples of some performance indicators to do so:
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
To calculate this score, it is simply a matter of asking the simple question “Would you recommend that your friends or colleagues work here? ” to which current or former employees answer on a scale of 1 to 10. Those who give a company a score of 7 or 8 are considered to be passive, since they will not talk about it in a bad or good way. Those who give 9 or 10 are promoters who will recommend the brand, and those who give 6 or less are detractors, that is to say they will give it poor publicity.
The percentage of promoters minus the one of detractors represents the Net Promoter Score. As recommendations are reputation currency, if a company ranks high enough with its employees, it will earn the positive reputation to attract the best workforce.
Employee Satisfaction
Surveying employees provides insight regarding workload perception, personal growth and general well-being in the workplace. A formal approach is to undergo a survey using an objective, third-party tool, such as Officevibe. An informal approach during one-on-one meetings where managers ask their direct reports can reveal issues that are influencing performance.
The latter approach requires a trusting and authentic relationship between managers and their coworkers. Ironically, people will often be more honest and open with a complete stranger than with their superior by fear of personal or political interest, hence the objective third party.
Public Platform Rating
Employees can give their current employers ratings and comments on platforms such as Glassdoor, or share their opinions and comments on the web: this ranking can give a good idea of where an employer brand stands.
In today’s digital age, this type of reputation travels quickly. Considering that people are generally more inclined to write a low review rather than a high one, encouraging your employees to partake in writing good reviews when they are satisfied can earn you a less biased reputation.
Turn Over Rate
With an average of 16 per cent, Canada ranks among the top countries in terms of employee turnover, ranking worse than the US. The main factors leading to the resignation of employees are the lack of advancement opportunities, dissatisfaction with corporate management, and a weak corporate culture, which demonstrates the impact of the employer brand on employee retention.
When looking at a company’s turnover rate, it must be compared it to its industry to remain relative: for example, the technology and software industry is one of the sectors with the highest turnover rates.
A wide range of other key performance indicators exist to assess the employer brand, such as recruitment costs, the number of candidates applying, the quality of the candidates applying, etc. It is by combining several KPIs that you can accurately identify its strengths and weaknesses.
So, Does Image Really Matter?
Absolutely. In this day and age, having a strong employer brand is crucial.
Having employees as ambassadors of a brand promotes it from a completely different angle, delivering a much more authentic message than many sales pitches.
Happy employees will turn around and shout their positive experience out loud to other open talent, clients, prospects, partners and stakeholders. That is the employer brand an enterprise can proudly stand behind! In fact, it is directly beneficial to its success, because the simplified benefits cycle of a strong employer brand is: happy employees make happy customers.
