Canadian Marketing Blog

Employment Branding: What’s Your Proposition?

In order to attract and retain top talent, a lot of companies often lose sight of the fact that they need to give their company (not just the products & services that they offer) a brand identity. Many fortune companies do a great job at this and have comprehensive marketing strategies in place specifically for recruitment and brand awareness. They spend millions ensuring that the integrity of their organization is communicated through various marketing vehicles specifically designed to attract potential employees and broadcast positive organizational messages.

You don’t have to be a multi-million dollar organization to do an exceptional job at communicating your employment proposition. By considering a few key tactics, you can be well on your way to appearing on one of those “best companies to work for” lists.

Culture.
Prospective employees are interested in more than just a pay cheque these days. They want to know what the corporate culture is like. Is there flexibility, opportunity to grow, career development, employee perks…? Is there an employee lounge with a TV and a Playstation…? Is employee teambuilding big at your organization?

Cultural fit is extremely important to employees, especially well educated ones… They’re not looking for a sweat shop, especially when there are plenty of companies around who believe strongly in work/life balance.

Awareness.
It’s one thing to have a well-kept secret; it’s another to try to get the right people to discover your secret. Brand awareness is absolutely imperative to maintaining an attractive employment proposition in the marketplace.

Engage in marketing, advertising and public relations ventures to increase the perceived value of working for your organization. Advertising your company as a great place to work will ensure that those resumes keep flowing.

Knowledge.
Arm prospective employees with as much knowledge as possible for them to make an enlightened decision about whether your company is right for them. It’s not just about finding the right candidates; it’s about ensuring that the candidates feel mutual about the relationship. People don’t like changing jobs often, and are quite happy to stick around if you make it worth their while.

Simply posting job openings on your website (especially when they are severely outdated) isn’t enough. Why not set up a separate recruiting site? Allow employees to upload their resumes directly to your site. Let them create alerts, letting them know when new positions become available. Set up social networking sites to foster dialogue and create conversations about what it’s like to work for the company. Take out ads, participate in career fairs, partner with recruiting sites. It is things like these that create positive perceptions and valuable word of mouth ambassadors.

Keeping employees happy and inspiring them to do their best, can not only lead to greater profits and increased morale, but it can push the boundaries of possibility and open many new doors.

Selina Jane, I enjoyed reading your blog, and agree entirely with what you have to say about branding. I'm an independent consultant specializing in HR, and you talk about the concept of branding that in my mind has generated little attention and movement from the business community. Sure there are a select group of organizations that "get it" but most don't.

I'd like to add one critical component to what you said, which is about branding from 2 angles: the first being "external branding", which is what your article is really about. How does the public perceive an organization as a place to work? That is really what branding is! The second angle that I'd like to mention is "internal branding", which focuses on current employees of a company. It's one thing to communicate and paint a picture of what an organization is but it's another to actually walk the talk, so internal branding is a whole other bottle of wax all together.

Without getting into the nitty gritty about what I consider internal branding, let me just say that it's probably a million times more important than external branding. What you do internally with your employees goes a long way in contributing to business performance and results. In fact, it probably is the biggest contributor to business results.

In conclusion, your "internal brand" is essentially how successful and "on the same page" the organization is in following a well thought out and business strategy aligned HR strategy. The internal brand is your people strategy!!

This website made all the difference in how I hire people: www.aboutfacereading.com. Bill

What happened to good old fashioned 'perks'?

It's fantastic when you end up at a company with pinball machines in the snack room, a water-slide, or a roving barista dispensing free cappuccinos but those cultural enhancements lose their charm after the first few weeks. On the other hand a company car, fancy, take-home lifestyle gadgets, club memberships and paid vacations never go out of style. Better yet, every time your employee uses his fancy company laptop, or relaxes in the sauna of his company-paid-for health spa he (or she) reflects on the luxury his continued job continues to afford him. This builds into retention. Something that in the end proves much cheaper than recruiting.