Key investments in employer branding
With the talent wars heating up, more businesses are putting heavier emphasis on their employer branding to help attract the best workers. In fact, three in five companies in India aim to increase their employer branding budget by at least a quarter, based on data from Indeed and People Matters Recruitment Outlook 2022 report.
What exactly is employer branding – and why should companies invest in such a strategy?
What is employer branding?
Employer branding is the reputation of your company as an employer and what value it provides your employees. Simply put, it’s what your own workers and potential job applicants think of your organisation.
If you have a positive employer brand, you have a better opportunity of attracting top talent to your company. You’re also more likely to retain quality workers, which is important to the growth and success of any business.
However, if you have a negative employer brand, you’ll have a harder time keeping your own employees happy and engaged with work. Job seekers might also pass on your company in favour of other organisations when applying for a job.
Employer branding has become so integral to a company’s identity that organisations are investing more time, effort, and money to build their brand. Many are committing a significant portion of their marketing campaigns to create the best story-telling about their company.
Investing in employer branding
Building a solid employer branding can be the difference making in recruiting top talent to your business. Beyond the pay package that you’ll offer, a job seeker might also consider your company’s reputation among their peers. Whether they accept a role in your organisation or not could depend on how well you are perceived by the public.
Because of this, more employers are willing to invest in their branding. In 2022, over 60% of employers we surveyed said they are looking to increase their budget for employer branding by more than 25%. An additional 34.7% said they are also investing in their branding more though only at less than 25%.
To get their brand messaging across, companies plan to distribute their budget across different platforms. A majority (80.1%) of employers said they will focus marketing on social media. Meanwhile, nearly 3 in 5 (58%) said they invest more in job boards, career sites, and job aggregators like Indeed.
Word of mouth still plays a significant role in spreading employer branding among workers. Of the companies surveyed, 42.4% said they will promote their employer branding through word-of-mouth and other employee advocacy programs.
Other key platforms for employer branding marketing include company career pages (40.0%), internal communications (34.0%), online forums (31.5%), email campaigns (27.6%), webinars (20.4%), group messaging platforms (18.3%), video-sharing platforms (17.3%), and news outlets (11.9%).
Focusing on the right areas
Companies have identified several key areas of their employer brand marketing to focus on. Topping the list is candidate experience, which many employers are keen to improve on given the increase in applicant withdrawal rates in the past 12 months.
Organisations are also leaning on their own employees to build their good reputation. Of all employers surveyed, 48.6% have already started training their workers to become advocates for their companies, and 45.7% want to invest in the program even more.
Another important area that businesses are focussing on is their online presence. These include becoming more active in promoting employer branding on social media and career websites. We found that 42.2% of companies have done so over the past 12 months, while 41.9% are planning to keep the program for the foreseeable future.
Businesses are committing to improving the diversity in their recruitment process as well. In 2022, 43.4% of employers are looking to add people from a more diverse candidate pool. That’s noticeably higher compared to the 39% that did so over the past 12 months.
There has also been an increase in the percentage of companies who are planning to diversify their existing workforce. Our study showed that 41.2% of employers are committing to the plan in 2022, compared to the 32.2% from last year.
Leadership teams could soon see some major changes in their ranks, as 30.5% of companies want more diversity among their managers and supervisors. By comparison, only 27.8% of employers said they wanted to switch up their company leaders from 12 months ago.
In 2022, companies are also looking to increase their investment in adopting more inclusion programs and highlighting inspirational stories of their workers. They are also planning to launch more campaigns that promote their employer branding, as well as encouraging their workers to leave positive reviews of the company on career sites.
Conclusion
As companies continue to struggle to recruit talent to their ranks, it’s important to keep an advantage over your competitors. How you build your employer branding could determine whether you get to hire the best candidates. The investment you make today to improve your branding will pay dividends in the long run.
