Employer branding: strategy and measures for the employer brand
The labor market in Germany is more fluid than ever. Jobs are easy to find and are quickly given up again. Money is no longer everything for employees. Your company is more in the public eye. Strategic employer branding helps you to retain employees who match your values. In this blog post, we explain what you need to do to create a strong employer brand.
“The best employer branding strategy is the one you think about when times are good,” explains Ronny Uhlemann, Senior Consultant at PIO. In fact, good employer branding consists of much more than just individual benefits. Companies often make a mistake here: they advertise their social benefits, office space or corporate culture and forget that this counts for nothing if the employer brand as a whole is not trusted.“
“Potential employees no longer just look at the name of your company, but also at what's behind it. Are you sustainable, are you doing something for society? Do you live what you say to the outside world? Money is important here, but it only helps for a certain amount of time. Employees have a much stronger desire to have a stake in the company themselves. They want to be involved in decisions and possibly also share in the success,” explains Ronny.
What is employer branding?
Strategic employer branding makes your employer brand more attractive and sets you apart from the competition. What counts is the story around your employer brand. This is how your company shows potential and current employees who you are as an employer, what you believe in and what you offer. Highlight what makes your employer brand unique in terms of its vision and corporate culture. With the right core message, you can appeal to people who believe in this vision and want to contribute to achieving it.
How to develop a strategy for your employer brand
If you want to strategically develop or sharpen your employer brand, you should first take a close look at where your company currently stands and where it wants to go in the future. What are your values? How are they reflected in the corporate culture? Are you currently doing enough to present your employer brand correctly to the outside world?
After analyzing the current situation, it helps to take a look at the competition and the target group. What is important here? How can you convince your target group? This is where the positioning of the employer brand begins, where you develop measures that help to build your brand and your external presentation in a sustainable way.
Seven steps to an attractive employer brand
These seven steps will help you to create a clearly defined and attractive employer brand when planning measures:
1. Explore your corporate identity and mission statement: purpose, vision, mission, values
2. Understand your corporate culture: benefits, community, working methods, environment
3. Analyze your employer brand: current story, measures, impact
4. Take a close look at your competitors: How do they position themselves? How do they differ? Are there best or worst practices?
5. Get to know your target groups: Demographics, needs, media usage, employee journey
6. Formulate your employer positioning: anchor, driver, differentiator
7. Define your content strategy: target group needs, key messages, implementation, evaluation
How to secure your position as an attractive employer
Once you have clarified all the questions about your strategic direction, you can tackle specific actions. To communicate your employer brand, you can initially use traditional measures such as job advertisements or welcome packages. However, your company should also consider which unique campaigns could fit in with your employer brand.
First of all, it is important to give employees as many insights into the company as possible. Entertaining video content in the form of “Behind the Scenes” and detailed onboarding convey a strong employer brand. Small awards or distinctions convey appreciation, as do regular coaching and mentoring. Employer branding outside of working hours helps to strengthen team cohesion. Offsites, excursions or company events where colleagues can get to know each other in an informal setting are ideal here.
These measures depend on which phase of the employee journey your addressees are in.
Employer branding turns employees into fans
“Employees may leave your company because they don't identify with the new employer brand. But that's not a problem - new people will come back and they'll be a much better fit for you because they joined because of your values,” explains Ronny.
So if you can show both externally and internally what makes your employer brand stand out, you will turn employees into real fans who want to work for your company in the long term. It also makes recruiting easier and employees are more likely to recommend your company.