An employer branding strategy is a vital component of a business’ recruitment and retention program. Your employer brand defines what employees’ value most about working for your organization. It speaks to employees and potential employees.
A strong employer brand is crucial because we live and work in a time where trust and transparency are vitally important to jobseekers. More than ever, it’s the employees’ voice that needs to heard and shared to attract and retain the best talent. Leandra Harris, Managing Director, Blu Ivy Group
Developing a strong employer brand is essential to hiring top talent and increasing employee satisfaction, but it can be challenging. Often organizations think a great tagline and a revamped careers page are a sufficient employer branding strategy when, in reality, those are perhaps the very last items to be considered when developing your employer brand.
Why Businesses Need A Strong Employer Brand
Today, business information is available 24/7. This doesn’t just mean your company website. Platforms like Glassdoor and LinkedIn allow potential employees to gain valuable information about your company directly from the employees who work there. It’s easier than ever for a candidate to research an organization before and during the interview process and to gain unbiased, honest assessments of what it’s really like to work for a company.
Finding the right fit is increasingly important to today’s jobseekers. They aren’t interested in working for a company that does not value their employees or doesn’t align with their own personal values. They can, and do, research businesses, reach out to current employees, and delve deep to learn as much as possible about the company before they accept a job offer.
Developing and defining your employee value proposition (EVP) will help to differentiate your workplace and speak about the authentic reasons why employees value working there. Not only that, a strong employer brand helps retain quality employees too.
Organizations can see as much as a 40% increase in engagement, 10% drop in voluntary turnover, and 50% increase in talent applications just 12 months after launching an employer brand stategy.
This carries over into the digital realm too with an average 20% increase in employer rankings on social sites. Improvements like these are one reason why employer branding is quickly being recognized as the ideal platform for both corporate culture and employee experience.
How Working With An Agency Helps Organizations Develop A Strong Employer Branding Strategy
87% of North American employers have indicated that they are building their employer brand in 2018. Fortunately, companies don’t have to jump into the world of employer branding on their own. Agencies like Blu Ivy Group can help you identify your employee value propositions and use that information to develop an employer branding strategy that will help you recruit and retain top talent.
Here are 6 reasons why working with a professional branding agency leads to a successful employer branding effort:
- Neutral Parties Encourage Honesty. Having an experienced, neutral third party research the EVP leads to more honest input and discussions with employees and other stakeholders. Participants are more likely to share honest insights with someone who doesn’t work for the company because there is less risk of anything negative that they might say coming back to haunt them.
- Improved Risk Management. Related to point #1 above, honest insights and discussions will identify areas of risk or those needing improvement that employees were too hesitant to bring up themselves.
- Know-How. One of the biggest benefits of working with an agency is the experience and know-how they have in employer branding. An employer brand consultancy understands how to operationalize and activate the employer brand. They bring with them experience and expertise, training and coaching, best practices, and knowledge of potential challenges. The wrong message or story can hurt instead of help your employment brand.
- Communications Pros. Employer branding requires a fair amount of experience working with key stakeholders and all levels of the organization including the C-Suite, leadership, HR, marketing, communications, and talent acquisition – not to mention various levels of employees themselves! The process requires a lot of communication across departments and vertically within departments that can be challenging if you don’t know how to navigate those conversations. Organizations tend to value the support and experience that branding agencies provide when trying to activate and operationalize their employer brand company wide.
- Strategic Solutions. Branding agencies have the tools to set KPIs, track success, and provide clear strategic direction to elevate results, ensuring organizations get the greatest ROI from their employer brand strategy.
- Streamlined Support. Anytime you work through an organization wide change, there’s potential for “too many cooks in the kitchen”. Working with an agency means you have just one key point of contact who has project management experience and cross functional skills with HR, talent acquisition, communications, social, digital, and leadership development. Having just one key point of contact to develop the branding strategy helps streamline the process and avoid the hurdles that can arise with too many “cooks”.
Blu Ivy Group Can Help
Blu Ivy Group offers proven results and expertise that allows internal leaders to gain hands-on experience in employer branding while still implementing best practices in a timely manner. Let us help your organization find its’ employee value proposition and develop that into a strong and successful employer branding strategy.
Employer branding should be owned top down as it not only addresses talent acquisition solutions, but also engagement, retention, training, communications and leadership. Successful development and implementation requires buy-in from all levels of the organization and strategic direction from someone with oversight on all aspects of the employee experience to garner holistic and timely business results.
Whether your organization is just beginning your employer brand work, looking to amplify results, or to ensure it is a deep and meaningful part of the employee and candidate experience, Blu Ivy Group has helped companies like Starbucks and Scotiabank strengthen their employer brand.
Contact us to get an assessment of your organization’s existing strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats as well as a custom benchmark report within your industry.
Contact Stacy Parker, Managing Director of Blu Ivy Group and Client Manager for some of the biggest employer brand projects in North America to get a personalized assessment and advice on how to approach your employer brand project next steps. Stacy can be reached at sparker@bluivygroup.
About Blu Ivy Group
Blu Ivy Group is a leading employer branding and employee engagement consultancy that aligns your organization with contemporary workplace paradigms. Blu Ivy Group’s mission is to help client’s build award-winning people practices, inspire extraordinary employee engagement, and cultivate unique and desirable workplaces.
We provide integrated solutions in employer brand and engagement research, strategic consulting, employer brand integration, creative and talent communications. Blu Ivy Group is a trusted partner to many of North America’s most respected employer brands. For more information, go to www.bluivygroup.com