Building a strong employer brand that reflects your team culture is not only a way to attract and retain talent, but also a way to communicate your values, vision, and purpose to your customers and stakeholders. In this article, you will learn how to create and promote an employer brand that showcases your team culture and aligns with your business goals.
Your team culture is the set of shared beliefs, behaviors, and norms that shape how your employees work together and interact with others. It is influenced by your leadership style, organizational structure, core values, and mission. To define your team culture, ask yourself and team members questions such as what common traits and skills your team members have, how you collaborate, communicate, and solve problems, how you celebrate successes and learn from failures, how you support each other and foster trust and respect, and how you balance work and life. The answers to these questions can help you identify the strengths and weaknesses of your team culture as well as the gaps and opportunities for improvement.
Here is my take on this- Pay attention to how team members interact and behave on a day-to-day basis. Note common practices, rituals, and communication patterns. Consider how leadership within the team influences the culture. Leaders often set the tone and expectations for the group. Once defined- Continuously reinforce the desired culture through recognition, feedback, and coaching. Be open to evolving the culture as the team grows and faces new challenges. Remember that team culture is not static; it can evolve over time. Define, nurture, and refine it to create a positive and productive work environment. -TM ????????
Talk to people. As many colleagues as possible across the entire org. Defining culture should be a brutal reality check where you need to be truthful about what the workplace is really like.
Your employer brand is the perception that potential and current employees have of your company as a place to work. It is based on your value proposition, your reputation, your benefits, and your culture. To align your employer brand with your team culture, you need to ensure that it reflects and reinforces the positive aspects while addressing and improving the negative ones. For example, you can highlight the stories and achievements of team members on website, social media, and blogs. Showcasing diversity and inclusion embraces different perspectives and backgrounds. Additionally, demonstrating how you invest in learning and development, provide feedback and recognition, foster innovation and creativity, encourage risk-taking and experimentation, balance work and life, offer flexibility and autonomy will all help to reinforce a positive employer brand.
In order to build a strong employer brand that accurately reflects your team culture, you need to communicate it consistently across all channels and touchpoints. This means crafting a clear, authentic, and relevant message that is in line with your customer brand message. To ensure that your employer brand message is communicated consistently, you can create a compelling statement that outlines your value proposition, culture, and goals. Additionally, you should use a consistent tone of voice, style, and imagery that matches your culture and personality. Furthermore, engaging with employees and potential candidates on social media, forums, and reviews sites is important for gathering feedback. Participating in events, webinars, podcasts, and awards can also showcase your expertise, thought leadership, and culture. Finally, it’s essential to monitor and measure the impact of your employer brand communication on recruitment, retention, and engagement metrics.
I believe storytelling is one of the most potent ways to communicate your Employer Brand; its just intuitive and natural to us, because we are all emotional creatures. Storytelling reverses the perspective from the corporate to the employee and that's why it adds authenticity to employer brand communication. Caveat, storytelling is not based just on a flash of inspiration. There's a method to this madness.
Your team is the best ambassador of your employer brand, as they are the ones who live and breathe your culture every day. Therefore, you should involve them in your employer brand strategy and make them feel part of it. Incorporating their input and feedback on your employer brand message and channels is essential, as well as empowering them to create and share their own content, stories, and testimonials that showcase your culture and values. Recognizing and rewarding them for their contributions and achievements, celebrating their milestones and anniversaries, encouraging them to refer their friends, family, and network to your company with incentives and tools, and training and coaching them on how to represent your employer brand in a positive and professional manner are all important steps towards involving your team in your employer brand strategy.
As a storyteller, I believe a design thinking based approach can really work well here. This means: 1. Picking a small number of employees to empathize on needs, aspirations and expectations of their fellow employees 2. Brainstorming ideas that can serve as valuable inputs for an employer brand strategy 3. Tesing out the winning ideas with a limited employees 4. Rolling out an organization-wide campaign
Your employer brand is not a static concept, but a dynamic and evolving one. As your team grows, changes, and adapts, so does your culture and employer brand. Therefore, it is important to update your employer brand regularly to keep it fresh, relevant, and accurate. To do this, you should conduct periodic surveys, interviews, and focus groups with employees and candidates to assess their satisfaction, expectations, and perceptions of your employer brand. Analyze the data collected to identify trends, patterns, and insights that inform your employer brand strategy. Review and revise your statement, message, and channels to reflect the changes and developments in your culture and business. Make sure to communicate the changes and updates to your employees and candidates and explain the reasons behind them. Finally, test the effectiveness of your updated employer brand on recruitment, retention, and engagement outcomes.