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Since its inception in the early 1990’s the concept of Employer Branding has been the domain of the Human Resources department. Today, best practice employer branding is involving the input of the internal marketing and communications departments to support the HR function in what can be a complex process to develop an employer brand for competitive advantage in today’s economic climate. Companies who neglect their employer brand will be less likely to emerge from the current economic crisis in a state that allows them to be ready for the next growth cycle.

What is employer branding?

Your employer brand is the image of your organisation as a ‘great place to work’ in the minds of current employees and key stakeholders in the external market (active and passive candidates, clients, customers and other key stakeholders). Employer branding is therefore concerned with the attraction, engagement and retention initiatives targeted at enhancing a company’s employer brand. Strong employer brands have employer value propositions (EVPs) which evoke both emotive benefits – 'I feel good about working here, my friends want to work here, this company has a great reputation,' – and tangible benefits – 'This organisation cares about my career development, I am paid well and I have a clearly defined career path,' – for current and prospective employees. These EVPs reflect the employment experience the organisation promises to deliver to its target audience.

Strong signs marketers are getting involved

The Employer Brand Institute recently published the world’s largest independent study on employer branding of over 2 000 respondents. Forty-three per cent of employer brand projects are being managed by HR departments and surprisingly (but importantly) 34 per cent of projects are now being managed by teams of HR, marketing and communications. This is a good sign marketers are starting to engage in employer branding projects – only two years ago over 75 per cent of projects were being managed solely by HR departments.

When internal communications, marketing and HR departments fail to collaborate on the firm’s employer brand strategy you will likely end up with nothing more than a HR project that burns cash and creates employee cynicism.

The major role marketing (and communication) specialists play in the employer branding process can be grouped into four key areas:

1. Educating the employer brand team on brand management principles and practices

2. Conducting rigorous internal and external research to define the employer brand promise, Employer Value Propositions (EVP’s) and positioning

3. Ensuring the delivery of highly targeted EVP messages using segmentation analysis to reach active and passive candidates and key stakeholders through integrated communication channels

4. Optimising the role of the company’s online brand and career website to attract talented candidates and passive candidates to build a talent rich pipeline.

How do you measure the impact on the bottom-line?

To measure return on investment in employer branding there is no standard of measurement that fits every organisation, nor should there be – all organisations are different. Metrics should be established which allow employer brand objectives to be assessed against. Cost per hire, turnover rates, absenteeism, head count, engagement levels, time to fill, retention rates, time to productivity, total costs of labour to revenue, and candidate satisfaction rates are all examples of metrics that will assist managers to measure their ROI on employer brand programmes.

Signs your employer brand is working for you

Some of the signs you know your employer brand is working for you include:

• survey results show employees are highly engaged
• retention rate is low and unregretable turnover is low
• quality of candidate ratings are high
• customer satisfaction levels are higher than the industry benchmark
• company ranks high in “best place to work’ surveys
• the number of unsolicited resumes seeking to work for you is high
• your talent pipeline is optimised for talent attraction and retention
• your company is financially sound.

Brett Minchington

chairman/CEO, Employer Brand Institute and managing director, Collective Learning Australia

brett@employerbrandinstitute.com