#ThriveInFive: Essential Tips for Your Employer Brand

It's edition #15 of Thrive In Five. Our weekly newsletter designed to help your people and business thrive.

This week, we’re talking about your employer brand.

The talent market has been revolutionised by the digital era. Job seekers and employees have more insights than ever to inform their decisions about whether a business is right for them.

Nowadays, 75% of job seekers will investigate a company's reputation before applying for a job. And 50% of job seekers refuse to work for a company with a bad reputation, even with a pay increase.

So, the employer brand your business projects has become increasingly important. You need to showcase what makes your workplace unique. Think: what’s special about your culture, mission and purpose?

At Charlton Morris , we’ve partnered with businesses large and small on employer brand and talent attraction projects (as you can see from the video below). In this week’s #ThriveInFive , we’re sharing tips from what we’ve learned along the way.

#1 Think like an applicant.

Put yourself in the candidate’s shoes. If you were applying for your new role, what would you want to know? The more attention you give this part of your talent attraction, the more informed and engaged your candidate will be.

To truly stand out, why not go above and beyond? For example, if you’re planning to hire a high volume of commercial professionals, then why not get your hiring manager or CCO on camera talking about their plans for this arm of the business? We’ve received fantastic candidate feedback from this approach, with it also attracting a higher quality of candidate and leading to more efficient processes.

#2 Put your employees in the spotlight.

People like people. We trust people (much more than brands).

For job seekers and candidates, your employees have the stories and experiences that will provide the true picture of what it’s like to work for your company. That’s why they are your most important asset when it comes to employer branding. They are your brand ambassadors that need to be front and centre of all your campaigns.

Create content that showcases your employees’ journey with the business and showcases your amazing culture. Then, empower your employees to share these stories with their networks in advocacy campaigns.

We spoke about ways to do this in a recent #ThriveInFive titled “Creating a Culture of Employee Advocacy That Benefits Your Business & People.”

#3 Listen.

Your employer brand is the perception your employees and stakeholders have of your company (at every level of the business). So, listening is key.

Run anonymous engagement surveys to get the temperature of how your current employees are feeling. Read the Glassdoor and Indeed reviews of your company to understand what people are saying about you.

When you have this information, determine a strategy to improve your people experience and then build your employer brand around this.

#4 Consider every touch point in your hiring process.

A strong employer brand begins with happy employees and ripples through every touch point in the hiring process, from the application to the interview to the job offer or rejection letter. Consider each step from a job applicant’s perspective. Is it on-brand? What will people of your brand after this experience?

#5 Don’t promise what you can’t deliver.

Your employer brand must mirror the people experience you provide. Otherwise, new hires will feel misled, causing serious harm to your brand. If you’re struggling to think of ways to attract talent to your business through employer branding, ask yourself “why?”. It could be the case that you need to rethink your EVP. After all, there’s no point attracting people to your business if they’re not going to stick around.

Don't miss next week's webinar!

Join HR & Talent experts Kris Holland , Matthew Phelan & Lisa Lister , as they provide tips to help you apply a data-led approach to your talent attraction, acquisition and retention.

Click to attend!

That's all for today! Please let us know if you'd like your business to be a part of it by emailing us at [email protected].

We'd love to get your feedback too - if you'd like to discuss any of the above points or have a suggestion for a future edition of #thriveinfive , just drop us an email through to [email protected].

For info about Charlton Morris, go to charltonmorris.com .