What are the best practices for optimizing your employer branding strategy?

Your employee population can be a valuable asset for defining your EVP culture messaging. Meet with some of your leaders and high performers to find out what they love about your organization.

The EVP should be a clear and compelling statement that communicates what an organization offers to potential and current employees. HR can begin by identifying the unique strengths and benefits of their organization, such as the company culture, career development opportunities, and employee benefits. From there, they can craft an EVP that captures these strengths and resonates with their target talent audience. The EVP should be consistently communicated through various channels, including job postings, career websites, and social media, to build a strong employer brand that attracts and retains top talent.

Get your EVP from all possible HR customers, then check if the message you get is attractive (satisfies external customers' expectation), is based on real life (not C-level's manifestation board), is sustainable (aligned with the strategy), and is unique. If all checks out, then go and tell everyone your concrete promise (the EVP) to your current & future employees.

One thing I've learnt is to keep to 1 key message in a story. Less is more. If you try to communicate too many things in a story, the message can get lost.

One effective approach is to leverage social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram to share stories and experiences from current employees. HR can encourage employees to share their experiences through branded hashtags or employee spotlights, showcasing what it's like to work at the organization. HR can also feature employee testimonials on the company's career website and other marketing materials to build credibility and attract top talent. Additionally, HR can create videos, podcasts, and blog posts that showcase the company culture, values, and mission, providing a more immersive and engaging experience for potential candidates.

High-performing, engaged employees tend to refer other high performers. Additionally, having at least one friend at work is a strong predictor of employee retention. So, it behooves you to work with your employee advocates, if possible.

Even if C-level and managing board is not very active (social-media wise), you should entice them to. They might not always ready to become professional ambassador (some guidance needed!), but they naturally are the voices that would impact the most with the seniority and the years of experience in the game (assumed that they get their job by merit). Get them hooked into creating value for the company, build their personal brand to buy in their involvement too. After they are well accustomed to the whole content creation process, sit there and reap what you sow.

HR can start by ensuring that the company's career website is up-to-date and user-friendly, with a clear description of the organization's culture, values, and mission. They can also optimize the website for search engines, including relevant keywords to improve its visibility to potential candidates. Social media platforms can also be leveraged to improve online presence. HR can create engaging and informative content that showcases the organization's culture and values, encouraging employees to share it with their networks. HR can also leverage online review sites, such as Glassdoor and Indeed, to engage with candidates and respond to reviews to address any concerns or issues.

Other than the normal brand guideline, employer branding should have its own brand guideline too. With this set of guidance, your HR colleagues would know what to do in their scope of work, to update and align what they can to the EVP themselves. Items to update for each role could be: - Talent acquisitor: job description, job postings, job boards - HRIT: career website - Internal communicator & employer branding PIC: social media, review boards See my point? You get a guidepost, and let everyone walk the right way with you.