External employer branding in Poland – the most effective tools

It is hard to find a better PR tool in Poland than a well-chosen and systematically implemented external employer branding strategy. More precisely, the strategy of building a positive image of the company as a noteworthy employer among potential candidates. According to the?Employer Branding in Poland 2020 report?conducted by the HRM Institute, as many as 30% of companies operating on the Polish market claim that EB is currently one of their top priorities. The budgets allocated to external employer branding are constantly growing.

On which tools do Polish employers spend the most?

Which of them are the most effective?

Employer Value Proposition

Before a company operating on the Polish market begins work on building an external employer branding strategy, it should start by defining the organisation’s culture and its values, as well as determining its EVP. EVP (Employer Value Proposition) is a set of distinctive features of a unique offer, which a given company offers to its employees. It is a promise to the candidates we care about. As many as 51% of the companies surveyed in Poland declare having developed an EVP strategy for their employer brand.??

The EVP should be the result of market research and take into account:

• Expectations of Polish candidates for the job.
• Opinion of current employees about working in the company.?
• True statements about the culture of the organisation.
• Language that is relevant to both the company and potential candidates.?
• Long-term development plans of the company.

Defining the EVP is of key importance for the external employer branding strategy in Poland. It is the EVP that will influence the company’s external communication language, communication platforms, the appearance of recruitment advertisements, the strategy of employer branding campaigns and the selection of KPIs to measure effects. So, what attracts Polish candidates? Which attributes of the employer brand do Poles appreciate the most?

What are Polish workers looking for?

There has been absolutely no change in this field for three years. According to HRM Institute, the most desirable EVPs for Polish job candidates include:

• working atmosphere,
• a favourable system of employee appreciation,?
• remuneration and benefits.

Company reputation, working environment or clear career path are less appreciated by Polish employees. However, it is worth noting that this trend is changing somewhat. Here the main reason is the ongoing pandemic. A large part of employees work remotely, so the importance of attributes such as office design or work tools (chairs, equipment) is gradually decreasing. Poles are also no longer attracted by such “lures” as a young team, “fruit Thursdays” or “attractive salary” (an increasingly common practice – fortunately! – is to inform candidates directly in the ad about the specific amount of salary).

Offline activities

Today, most external employer branding activities in Poland have moved to the Internet. However, this does not mean that offline activities should be completely abandoned. There are still a number of quite effective (especially in some industries) EV tools that go beyond online.

These include:

• participation in university career days?(here attention should be paid to the profile of the university, faculty, or field of study, which should correspond to the company’s industry),
• meetings in vocational schools with company representatives?(especially for manual workers and professionals such as hairdressers, beauticians, etc.),?
• presence at job fairs?and other organised meetings for people actively seeking a career path.

If you want to learn more, see our blog post here!