With some planning and teamwork, improving your employer and employee branding isn’t as difficult as you might think. Especially during a time in which there has been a big shift in what employees are looking for in their next jobs.
Even though improving your employer branding can be a long process, there are nevertheless things that you can do to get on the right path. Attracting the right talent as a small brand is all about your reputation and values, we’ve put together the list below to help you on your way.
Read on to discover more about:
- Company culture and leadership
- Aligning vision and values
- Customising job roles
- Employer branding
- Benefits
- Flexibility
- Opportunities for fast growth, and
- How JOIN can help
1. Company culture and leadership
Any good talent acquisition strategy starts with company culture. Caring about your employees’ well-being and being supportive of their career and personal development will get the ball rolling when trying to improve employer branding.
Great company culture is built from a collection of ideas and opinions from different people throughout the entire organisation. However, leaders should know that their top-down influence is huge and can have a real positive impact on company culture and employee satisfaction if they’re empathetic and open.
You’ll find that if this is the attitude at the top of the organisation, it will filter down into all departments and levels, giving all your employees a feeling of trust and honesty.
Here are a few things you can add to your calendar to start improving your company culture:
- Organise regular team events
- Communicate company-wide milestones and achievements
- Hold department-wide lunches
- Encourage a knowledge-sharing environment
- Ask your team for feedback on their opinion of the culture
2. Aligning vision and values
During the onboarding process, it’s important to communicate your company values and ensure that they align with your potential candidates. This can improve employee retention and employee experience.
If you hire a candidate with differing values to your organisation it’s much more likely that neither side will feel fulfilled. And a high employee turnover is not a positive metric for improving employer branding, which is discussed further below.
During the interview process, make sure to communicate:
- Your company values
- The way your team prefers to work
- How you communicate as a team and with cross-functional teams
- Any regular team-building events you organise
- If there are any mandatory update meetings
3. Customising job roles
Something really encouraging from a candidate’s perspective is seeing a company adjust and accommodate the job description to their individual skills, especially if the candidate fits with your organisation’s vision and values.
Discuss with each candidate what they’re looking to gain in the short term, and what their future career path might look like. You can then support them in the right areas once they start, giving them greater satisfaction.
This will encourage trust in candidates that your organisation is dedicated to growth in individuals and supporting the team as a whole. Candidates (even those that don’t accept a final offer) will talk positively about your brand if they have a positive and fun experience during the interview process.
4. Employer branding
Working on improving your employer branding publicly is a long process that takes a lot of input from across the organisation as a whole. But putting a plan in place and understanding the aims and objectives of employer branding with your HR & People team is a great first step.
A great employer branding strategy should include:
- Storytelling: Telling a story of how your brand came into being, what your CEO is like, and how you’ve overcome great challenges as a team are all good topics for building trust. Candidates can envision how they might fit into the company much easier after reading about the day-to-day life at your organisation. You can also factor in accomplishments and milestones that you’ve achieved together.
- Strong branding: Branding, as a whole, is a huge topic that can take years to develop properly. Some things you can do to make sure you have a good base for the future are setting up an internal style guide, using your logo everywhere externally, and being specific about your company’s missions.
- Social media strategy: It’s the public that needs to understand your brand, business, and objectives of your company. The easiest way to do this is of course by using social media. Make sure to capture the ‘life’ of your company, with one aim of your social media strategy dedicated to improving awareness and employer branding.
Career page: Your career page should reflect all of the above. Make sure that on your career page you include things like benefits, vision & mission, positive employee reviews and photos of your office and team-building activities. Your career page should answer the question: Why should anybody work for your company over others? Find out how you can improve your career page further with our step-by-step guide.
5. Benefits
Participating in ideal employee research will give you a good idea of the types of people you’re searching for, but more importantly—what your ideal candidates are looking for in their next job.
What benefits would be good for them? If most of your employees have children, it might be worth adding a childcare benefit, or if a lot of people would need to travel to the office, then a travel ticket would be ideal.
Talk to your current employees and ask them what would have made their offers more attractive, and try to integrate those answers into a benefits program. Keep a healthy feedback round going during the onboarding process to stay relevant and ahead of the competition.
But, it’s not all about potential employees, word of mouth works wonders in the realm of recruitment. Having an employee appreciation program can make your team feel appreciated and valued.
6. Flexibility
Since the pandemic, there has been a global shift in the way people want to work. Employees now feel like working from home or working remotely gives them a better work-life balance and more trust in their role.
There are a wealth of benefits to remote working, you can find further reading here:
- Supporting employees working from home
- Improving remote productivity
- Remote vs Hybrid
- Improving remote collaborations
7. Opportunities for fast growth
The learning curve in small but growing companies can be tough and fast.
Setting up an onboarding process that includes career and growth plans is attractive and beneficial to both the employer and the employee. It can make the difference between a decision of accepting an offer with a start-up over a corporation.
Make sure to speak to your candidates during the onboarding process about their career development so far, and in which direction they’d like to go in the future. Discuss with them what they might need from their future employer to support this growth, and put together an action plan for both employer and employee.
How can JOIN help?
Now that you’ve worked on your employer branding, you should have a pool of quality candidates that are excited to work with you.
With JOIN, recruiters can use the job description editor, post to 100+ platforms, manage and screen candidates, share notes on their progress, and get insights on job board performance. Read more about JOIN’s features or simply sign up here and see for yourself!
