Article: How to make them want you

Employer Branding

How to make them want you

Employer branding is about capturing the essence of an organization in a way that engages current and prospective talent
How to make them want you

In today’s competitive world, branding isn’t just for your favorite household products anymore. All good companies know that they should be aware of their brand identity and what it says about the company at large. On an individual level, with the increasing importance of internet and social media, everyday workers are also becoming more savvy about their personal brand. So why aren’t more companies concerned about branding when it comes to employment and recruiting?

The economy is tough and every penny counts. The concept of branding for products and services is well known and it is becoming more important to organizations. Employer branding is a way to get the best ROI from your hires. It will tell you where to allocate your precious resources to make sure you’re attracting the right kind of jobseekers to grow your business. Happy employees positively influence your brand, and with it your bottomline.

Employer branding is about capturing the essence of an organization in a way that engages current and prospective talent. Today, an effective employer branding is essential for competitive advantage. Increasingly, Indian corporations are becoming intentionally strategic to utilize the employer branding to attract and retain talent and, ultimately, to expand and grow. There is a radical shift in fundamentals of how a business is conducted. Corporates are moving from labor-based businesses to knowledge-based ones. They are trying to capitalize on their intellectual assets i.e. the employees rather than their infrastructure. Today’s businesses are positioning themselves within the new economic realities. Employer branding is not a logo, letterhead or a clever advertisement but rather the communication of an organization’s personality and unwritten promises about its culture to potential hires. It is a combination of factors that differentiates the organization as an employer and shapes the perceptions of past, current and future employees. There are two ways to do employee branding: Internal Branding and External Branding.

Internal Branding

Policy Information: Always design your policies very strategically. A policy should be designed in such a way that it holds good even after a long period of time. A frequent internal policy change sends a message to the outer world that the company is not consistent, knowledgeable and reliable.

Employee Satisfaction/ Participation: Employee satisfaction is always very important for any organization to grow. A satisfied employee is a productive employee. If your employees are satisfied, you can be pretty sure that they’ll create a good and positive rapport for the company in the market outside. Also an adequate remuneration and attractive incentives are vital in keeping the motivation levels high.

Trained Employees: Always ensure proper training of employees before they are engaged in work. The training should be in all the different aspects like policies, vision, mission and organization. This will project a good picture of the organization to the new employees.

External Branding

Tagline: Create a nice, attractive tagline or a punch line for your brand and give it a significant visibility in all your branding efforts. The tag line should be in accordance with the organization values, goals, work ethics etc. so that it reflects an overall image of the brand everywhere.

Corporate Social Responsibility: Corporate social responsibility refers to corporations getting associated with societies for noble cause of public good. The association can be in any mode either by getting associated with a Charitable Trust, an NGO or some other public venture. Corporations can align and attach with any of these and share the stage. Always keep in mind that you should choose as per organization status, meaning if it’s a small firm, do associate with a medium sized organization and if medium it can align with either a large or a medium one. Idea should be to get a nice coverage in the popularity cake.

Newspapers: Branding can be done through newspapers as well. Articles in newspapers or advertisements in the newspapers create credibility in the eyes of the people.

Banners: Banners are also a good means for branding. Banners can be of both types i.e. online banners and street banners. By online banners, your organization's name will flash on different web pages as per your choice and price. Street banners are good for bigger requirements.

Use of Job Sites: As HR, the first thing that comes to one's mind is recruitment. Job sites also offer good branding opportunities through different means like pop ups, pop ins etc. It’s always better to go for pop-ins as most of the web browsers come with pop-up blockers.

Email: For mail ids related to job portals, you can create an auto reply which may contain a brief description of the key aspects of candidate and public interest and at the same time, introducing your company to the public. It should be informative as well as crisp, so that the audience reads it and just doesn’t perform the Shift+ Delete action.

Employer branding gives an organization a competitive advantage. Employer branding is a tool to attract, hire, and retain the “right fit" . It also has an impact on shareholder value, creating positive human capital practices, contributing to the bottom-line. Thus it can be concluded that not only is there a need of creating a satisfaction in the minds of employees (Internal customers) but there is an urgent need of creating this positive feel in the minds of external customers and stakeholders too. The created image has to be monitored and sustained in such a way that it helps in increasing profits as well as creating belongingness, pride, self-actualization and true commitment in words and spirit.

Disclaimer: This is a contributed post. The statements, opinions and data contained are solely those of the individual authors and contributors and not of People Matters and the editor(s).

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Topics: Employer Branding, #TalentBrandingWeek

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