Employer brand: what it is and why it matters
Your employer brand is one of your company’s most underrated assets. A strong one differentiates you from other companies in your space and is essential to helping you compete for the top talent you need to reach your goals and engage your team. And while some of its key concepts lie at the intersection of marketing and human resources, your employer brand is shaped and influenced by everyone throughout your organization. Intentional strategic focus in this area will help you turn a strong employer brand into a competitive advantage or minimize damage from a historically neglected one.
What it is
Much like your corporate and product brands are core to your identity to your customers, your employer brand is your identity to your employees, to job seekers, and to former employees. It is shaped and reinforced by every interaction this group has with your company, from browsing your website and reading your job ads to interacting with HR and hiring managers during the hiring process, policies and culture, and even how offboarding and terminations are handled at your company.
Most core to your employer brand though is your company’s culture, and more specifically your vision, mission, and values, and how they are internalized and executed across the organization. This includes the qualities and capabilities you hire for, tolerate, and celebrate, and those that are deal-breakers.
Why it matters
A strong employer brand is critical to hitting your hiring goals, with a strong employer brand reducing your cost per hire by half. In fact, employer review site Glassdoor finds employee ratings of culture to be significantly more impactful than pay, reporting that increasing scores by just one star drew six times as many applicants as raising the salary by $10,000.
What you think of as your brand, and what you aim to convey to potential customers, doesn’t exist in a vacuum. You should view your employer brand as an extension of your corporate brand that supports the mission and goals of your business. Employer brands that focus too heavily on perks like ping pong tables and unlimited vacation, rather than company purpose and values, often feel disparate and disingenuous to jobseekers.
Today’s workforce places high importance on connecting personally with their work, and with 79% of jobseekers reporting that they took into account a company mission when deciding whether to apply and 73% reporting that they would not apply to a company whose values did not align with their own. Similarly, a poor employer brand can hurt your recruiting efforts, with 35% of jobseekers reporting that they would pull out of the process if they read negative reviews online about a potential employer.
A strong employer brand is important for your existing team as well, creating a sense of loyalty and pride that are essential for self-esteem and wellbeing. These positive qualities make employees stay at your organization longer and lower turnover by 28%.
One famous example of this is Salesforce, whose award-winning culture is reflected in their talent brand. Salesforce uses their website and social media platforms to highlight key components of their culture, emphasized with values-focused articles, transparently presented demographic data, and employee videos to bring to life their mission and core values.
And while your organization may not have the scale of companies like Salesforce, taking some of the key ideas, such as having a clear mission statement and highlighting your values, can help jobseekers connect with your organization.
Final thoughts
Whether or not you realized it, if you have employees, you have an employer brand. Making it a strategic priority in your organization by ensuring it aligns with your corporate brand and identifying gaps and opportunities can help your company more easily recruit and retain top talent
