Employer Branding: The one where HR weds Marketing

Despite the multi-crisis, we have a brain drain with migration. So the need of the hour is clear. Talent Acquisition & Retention. Employers don’t compete with other local companies when it comes to the IT industry, employers compete with global giants to survive, retain talent, and close off those multi-million dollar projects within billable hours.

I generally get a bit annoyed when everything under the sun falls into the plate of marketing, or the “marketing department should have looked into it” mode, but when it comes to employer branding it is actually the case. HR knows talent, marketing knows channels. For a successful strategy, we need both. Most importantly we need a vision, and that comes from top management – the employee vision needs to align with both departments.

HR meets Marketing

Many HR departments have employees who work on Employee Experience, Culture & Engagement and Marketing have members who work on Branding and Story telling. It’s time we take the best of the both worlds and build a strategy around it. What are the touch points from candidate attraction to employee experience? How can marketing work on bringing out the best brand experience to employees? Marketers are trained and skilled to make customers happy 24/7, this skillset and practice have to be blended with Employee Value Proposition where HR tables what keeps an employee happy.

Build Personas & identify the channels

Marketers master buyer personas, HR needs to build the employee personas and let marketing identify the channels to reach out to them. This should not be only limited to Talent Acquisition but Talent Retention & Engagement too. If your employees don’t read emails, then there is no point in having an email marketing channel, instead where do employees hangout? Where do they like spending most amount of time? Is it outside the office, lunch room, or play area? A society or club within the company? Identifying what employees like and communicating via the ideal medium is key.

Creating content towards different chosen channels of communication

LinkedIn has been one of my favourite channels. While it allows you to give space for employee experience, it lets you showcase trending co-worker content and allows you to flaunt your company culture by making it as inclusive as much as possible.?For a company that recruits more fresh graduates, TikTok might be a channel to explore. It purely depends on the EVP (employee value proposition) & employee persona.

Success stories & referrals can go a long way

Marketers are good at storytelling, and they can use their creativity to do something fun. There might be interesting stories on exposure, work-life balance, career growth, and honest sentiments on why they love working at your company. Capture it, use it, and amplify it. There are so many channels to do it formally and informally. Encourage happy employees to put google reviews and Glassdoor reviews. ?

Success metrics matter. Always.

Let’s not forget how we can measure these, the number of referrals, the number of testimonials received, anonymous survey results, glassdoor reviews and google reviews can be indicators of having a great employer brand.

If HR & Marketing can build a good strategy, working together, the employer brand can do wonders.?