Employer Branding

Strategies for strengthening your own brand

13 Apr 2023

In times of a shortage of skilled workers, many companies find it difficult to fill vacancies with suitable employees. The reasons for this are often home-made, as many companies neglect to market the added value of the company in the best possible way in the recruitment environment and to build up a target-oriented brand as an employer. This indispensable process is called employer branding. The following article describes exactly how this works and which concepts are used for this purpose.

WHAT DOES EMPLOYER BRANDING MEAN?

It is common knowledge that highly qualified and motivated skilled workers have become a rare commodity today. This makes it all the more important for companies to present themselves as an attractive employer to future employees. Even the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology emphasises the importance of employer branding in its study "Securing skilled workers" and states that the employer brand is directed at potential and already employed workers. According to this study, the goal is to convey a credible, distinctive and attractive image of a competent employer.

Thus, the importance of a well thought-out employer branding for the recruitment of suitable skilled workers is increasing. For well-educated graduates in particular, starting a career can feel like choosing products while shopping: Many ready-made meals and yoghurt varieties vie for the customer's attention on the supermarket shelves. This situation is comparable to the job market, where renowned companies struggle to find their next generation.

The days when companies could choose new employees from a large pool of applicants are long gone. Today, it is the job seekers who decide which company they want to bring their skills and expertise to. And so it comes about that today companies have to present themselves to the outside world in an attractive way in order to promote their employer brand.

If you present yourself positively as an employer to the outside world, you can benefit from the following advantages:

More applicants
Accelerated application processes
Accurately fitting applicants
Faster success in recruiting new employees
Strengthening of the company's success through more suitable employees

EMPLOYER BRANDING AND PERSONNEL MARKETING - THE DIFFERENCEs

Employer branding is not only directed outwards, but also inwards. While it is primarily about attracting new employees, retaining existing staff is equally important. After all, you don't want to lose valuable employees.

However, internal employer branding only works if a corporate culture is lived within the company that appeals to and binds its employees. This corporate culture will then also be transferred by the employees to potential applicants.

And this is precisely where HR marketing comes in, although it is often confused with employer branding. Employer branding is a holistic strategy to build an employer brand. HR marketing, on the other hand, merely describes the active marketing of the employer's brand. Thus, HR marketing is only one of many sub-strategies of employer branding.

WHAT IS IMPORTANT IN EMPLOYER BRANDING?

A well thought-out employer brand requires a targeted concept. It must be taken into account that today (only) a top salary and attractive career prospects no longer count when choosing a job. In addition, an attractive employer means different things to different target and age groups. While the generations from the 60s and 70s tend to strive for career and salary, a pleasant working atmosphere, flat hierarchies, exciting tasks and, last but not least, a good work-life balance are more important for younger generations today.

BUILDING AN EMPLOYER BRAND - PHASE 1

The process of employer branding is essentially divided into four phases:

Analysis of the current state
Development of an employer value proposition
Development of a communication strategy
Measuring success and further optimisation

In the analysis of the current state, the following questions arise first:

Are we really an interesting employer and how do we know?
What can a suitable employee expect from us when he puts his expertise and manpower into our company?
What do we do better than our competitors?
What do former employees say about us?

BUILDING AN EMPLOYER BRAND - PHASE 2

In phase 2, the employer positioning is developed. This is also known as the employer value proposition, or EVP for short. This involves honestly answering the question of what the essential promise to future and existing employees is and what the company and its corporate culture essentially stand for. It is important to work out core values and special features of the company in order to communicate to applicants why one's own company is better than others.

In the following step, a communication strategy should be developed and implemented. Based on the developed EPP, the following questions must be answered in this phase:

Where do we find the target group we want to reach on the net, and how do they prefer to communicate?
How does the target group express itself linguistically?

The most important goal in this step is to reach future employees with suitable messages on channels relevant to the target group in order to convince them of the advantages of one's own company. Depending on the target group, suitable channels include job fairs, the company's own career website or social media channels. Especially with the latter, there are clear differences. While older age groups tend to hang out on Facebook, younger generations are more likely to use Instagram or Pinterest. Across generations, almost every target group can be reached via YouTube, because video formats are enjoying growing popularity. In addition, pure text messages hardly reach their target group on all channels today. Here, therefore, one should increasingly rely on multimedia. Videos, pictures and graphics are the means of choice here.

Complementary to this, an "employees recruit employees" programme can also be considered, which is already successfully implemented in many companies and rewarded with bonuses. Satisfied colleagues often have contacts to suitable candidates for vacancies whom they can recommend and thereby convey an authentic image of the company.

CONCLUSION

In today's labour market, applicants have a wide choice of suitable companies and their vacancies. Employees here choose their jobs very specifically and inform themselves in detail about an employer brand and the company's reputation. Companies that do not establish strong employer branding will not only lose out on potential applicants, but may even lose out on their own workforce as soon as a competitor with better job opportunities emerges. The solution is a well thought-out employer branding concept that helps to increase recruiting success.

GAL Digital assists in building your company's brand for successful employee recruitment. Feel free to contact us so that we can work out a suitable concept together.