Employer Branding is a long-distance race, but it results in loyal employees

In the latest recommendations of the Business Leaders Forum, you will learn:

• what role employees have in building Employer Branding;
• how to maintain the consistency of communication inside and outside the company;
• how to be a reliable partner for employees even in times of crisis;
• why companies should pay attention to the generation of millennials.

You can download the latest Business Leaders Forum Recommendations in Slovak here.

Employer Branding vs HR marketing

While in the mid-1990s, there was a considerable synergy between the processes of building a brand and human resources, experts today consider this perception obsolete. What is the difference between the two concepts?

Employer Branding is a systematic and never-ending process of changing a company into the best possible employee partner. On the contrary, HR marketing offers a one-time advertising campaign which aims to attract more job seekers. Unlike the ongoing and comprehensive building of the employer brand, it has an immediate but short-term effect. However, according to Emil Čižinský from the HEROES-EB agency, there is a certain relationship between these concepts: “The better you build your Employer Branding, the less you need to invest in the campaign to find the required number of employees.”

What should be kept in mind when building Employer Branding?

Employee Value Proposition

The first step in building a brand should be to think about the question: “Why should a potential employer choose our company, why should an employee remain here? ” The Employee Value Proposition (EVP) is a set of all the benefits and rewards that an employer gives to employees and potential candidates in return for their work. The EVP must stem from research conducted through focus groups, surveys and interviews with employees. Only a correctly set EVP will guarantee your brand a clear, attractive and value-oriented image.

Positive evaluation by employees

People are much more inclined to trust a brand based on what its employees say about it. If employees are engaged and speak about the company positively, attracting new talent is much easier. One way to strengthen Employer Branding is to create meaningful content on social networks and motivate employees to share this content voluntarily, thus contributing to the building of the Employer Brand.

Authenticity

If a company cares about building a trustworthy brand for its employees, it should communicate openly and transparently under all circumstances. In a global survey by Weber Shandwick and KRC Research, only 19% of employees said that their experience with what the employer declares publicly coincided with reality. According to Miloš Svitek from HEROES-EB, the inconsistency between the company’s communication and reality can cause employees to leave: “It harms brand-building. Employees will share their impressions, feelings and reasons for why they left.”

Employer Branding is important in times of crisis, too

Although companies deal with much more pressing issues in times of crises, experts say that Employer Branding should be kept in mind even then. It can support employee engagement, which is key to coping with difficult times in the company. Further, if the company does not pay attention to Employer Branding for several months, it may lose the trust of employees and will have to rebuild its brand again. It is ideal to have a contingency plan in place, which will help the company to remain a reliable partner for its employees, even in difficult times.

Emphasis on millennials

Demographic developments show that shortly, the labour market will be dominated by a generation of millennials who have completely different expectations from their work lives than the generations before it. According to a Deloitte survey, millennials expect companies to transform their mission, which is communicated externally, into concrete actions. They are loyal to employers who are boldly involved in important topics, such as, for example, environmental