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Future-proof your business: Focus on your employer brand

Written by: Hazel Mason
Published on: 13 Apr 2020

In the current climate, it’s important to look at how you can future-proof your business. Whilst most teams are being reactive to the emerging developments, intelligent businesses are looking at how they can use this time to be bigger and better once normality returns.

Employer branding

This article explores why your employer brand is so important and how you can start work now to improve your recruitment and retention efforts.

Why should you care about your employer brand?

94%* of candidates will consider an employer’s brand before applying for a role and 70%* stated that poor company reputation would put them off applying. Therefore, it’s vital that you concentrate on building your employer brand to support recruitment and retention efforts.

Employer branding helps you to present your company as an attractive place to work, which will encourage potential candidates to apply for your roles. It can also support your company culture and ensure that recruits are a good cultural fit for your organisation.

It has also been shown to support your retention efforts. When an employees’ beliefs, values and attitudes align with a company’s, they are more likely to remain at that organisation and find greater job satisfaction.

Therefore, creating a strong employer brand that truly reflects your company culture and values will help you to recruit more suitable candidates and hold onto top talent.

Find out how we can support you

Why is now a good time to focus on your employer branding?

It’s likely that recruitment is not your top priority in the current crisis. We know that lots of organisations have implemented a recruitment freeze or have slowed down their efforts. But this does not mean that your employer brand should fall by the wayside.

We would argue that it is more important than ever to focus on your employer brand right now. As we alluded to earlier, employer reputation is key when it comes to applying for a role and there are many potholes ready to trip well-meaning organisations up.

At this time, it would be easy to fall into the trap of prioritising revenue over the safety of your employees for example - just look at Sports Direct’s boss, Mike Ashley or Wetherspoons Tim Martin. Whilst this makes business sense, it’s going to hugely damage your reputation, not only with customers but your current and future employees.

Now is a great time to focus your efforts on presenting your organisation as a fantastic place to work - one that cares about its staff’s wellbeing and has a friendly, supportive culture of incredible individuals.

Find out how we can support you

What should you be promoting at this time?

Naturally, if you have frozen recruitment, advertising your jobs isn’t the best use of your time. Instead consider your employee value proposition, culture and values. What opportunities are you providing your staff during this time - do you have a really strong flexible working policy that has made the transition much easier? Have you topped up the salaries of your furloughed staff?

You could consider sharing success stories or all the ways in which your employees are staying positive, productive and, most importantly, connected during the lockdown period. How are your employees upholding your culture and values from the comfort of their homes? How have they pulled together and supported one another?

These are all important factors that build an impression of your organisation and what it cares about, which will make the difference between a candidate hitting apply or skipping past your job advert.

How can we help?

Wonderful Workplaces is an employer branding and recruitment marketing agency owned by Haymarket Media Group, People Management’s publisher. Our clients (which include Graphcore, GatenbySanderson, One Housing, Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust and Wigan & Leigh College) rely on us to deliver an end-to-end employer brand and recruitment marketing solution tailored to their specific business needs.

We help organisations to attract and hire people who are a great fit with their culture in a way that reflects their unique business brand purpose. We help you to tell your story, show why your organisation is a great place to work, and maximise the impact by serving that story in the right places to the right people.

Our services range from careers content to live events; perception surveys to awareness campaigns. Whatever your needs, we can tailor a solution to help you build your employer brand and start attracting top talent.

Get in touch today

020 8267 8436

peoplemanagementjobs@haymarket.com

*Employer Branding Insight Report 2019