The Power of Employer Branding: Attracting Top Talent in a Competitive Market

Are you at risk of losing out on top talent because of an unfavorable employer brand?

If your organization isn’t taking strategic steps to design its employer brand, then the unfortunate answer is: Yes, it may be.

Especially considering 86% of employees won’t apply to or continue working for a company with a bad reputation. 

A strong employer brand can help you retain and attract quality employees by becoming an organization they want to work for, which is especially important in today’s competitive labor market. 

So, what is an employer brand and why do you need one?

What is an employer brand?

A company’s brand is its personality and reputation -- what it is and what makes it unique from other companies in the industry.

A lot of people are familiar with the idea of a brand as it relates to the marketing and sale of a company’s products. But organizations can and should create a separate employer brand, one that’s designed around attracting and retaining employees.

A constellation of different factors constructs your employer brand. Such as: 

• How you discuss and promote your organization as an employer
• The experiences employees and job seekers have with your organization
• You organization’s mission, values, and culture
• How people talk about your company amongst themselves and on social media
• How media outlets talk about your organization. 

Each of these factors work together to shape people’s perception of your organization and reveal what your organization is all about. 

And because your brand is constructed in part by others’ perceptions, it exists whether you’re managing it or not. 

The real question is: What are they saying about your organization?

The benefits of a strong employer brand

69% of employees want to work for a brand they are proud of, which means strategically designing a positive employer brand is critical for employee satisfaction, retention, and acquisition. 

A strong employer brand has a much deeper value than good feels when people talk about you. It has a tangible impact on your organization and can even reduce your cost per hire by 50% and reduce turnover by 28%. And whether you’re actively building your brand or not, a negative brand can have detrimental consequences, even increasing hiring costs by 10% per hire. 

And hiring professionals feel the impact. 80% of talent acquisition managers claim employer branding has an impact on their ability to hire quality talent.

The right branding turns your organization into a place they care about and want to work for, which means you don’t have to work as hard to attract candidates. 

With the potential payouts in mind, to secure and retain top talent, you must actively manage your employer brand. 

How to build a strong employer brand

Employer branding begins by defining how you want present and future employees to perceive your organization. 

You’ll start with an audit. 

In your audit, you will identify what is special about your company (and sets you apart from the competition) and discover what the public thinks of your organization now (to set your starting point). You can use employee surveys, social media searches, career review sites, or the help of a reputation management firm to uncover this information. 

From there, you’ll outline your new employer brand and choose the channels through which to promote it. 

There are many ways to promote your brand, such as:

• Employee advocacy: Encourage current employees to promote your brand
• Social media: Meet job seekers where they are by posting about your organization on their favorite sites 
• Content creation: Create content like blog posts, ebooks, infographics, videos, and whitepapers to communicate your brand

And since your brand is created by the public’s perception of your organization, optimize your career page and application process so every interaction with your company is positive. 

So, what are people saying about your organization?

Don’t lose out to competitors in the hunt for talent because of a dull or off-putting employer brand. With a strong branding strategy, you can become the place quality candidates dream of working for.