Employer Branding: Your brand on the job market
Our tried-and-tested values development method lends itself perfectly to strengthening your employer branding and gaining a potential advantage in being seen as an attractive employer.
Why is employer branding so important?
Companies are increasingly treating employees like a relevant target group to ensure they have a plentiful supply of qualified and motivated employees in the future. Which is why it is so important to build an authentic brand strategy and infuse it with life, not only for recruiting purposes but employee retention too.
What is employer branding?
Employer branding is all about recruiting and retaining the right employees. To do this it uses marketing strategies, especially those from brand building. Employer branding is therefore an employee marketing strategy that highlights the attributes that make your company stand out from other employers. And when skilled workers are in short supply, employer branding is all the more important. The more authentic this employer brand appears, the better an employer can recruit and retain sought-after skilled workers. In order for the respective communication strategies to be effective, it is first of all important to (re) discover the company’s purpose and values.
Employer branding conveys the identity and purpose of your company
Or, as Simon Sinek would say: “Start with why”
PICTURE MISSING – WHY HOW WHAT
He believes it isn’t what you do that people buy but why you do it. Translated to employees and applicants, this means the reason people want to work (or stay working) in your company isn’t the products you make or services you offer. Rather, they want to work for you because they see an underlying purpose or cause.
This purpose is often no longer present in companies that have been around for some time. In order to shine light on the “why” of a company, it’s a good idea to ask managers and employees to tell some typical company stories. Valuable information can be gained from the feedback, shedding light on the values actually lived and shared.
If you don’t do this, there is a great danger that management will define values that are neither seen nor felt in the corporate culture, and thus make zero contribution to employer attractiveness. The goal therefore must be to work with employees to find a common purpose. This is a challenge that goes far beyond conventional HR marketing.
Core values shape the employer brand
But how do we find these common values? To do this we have created a process which gets important information from intuitive sources. To get started, we use a specially developed values test. Along with a few surprising discoveries, it also kickstarts a dialogue about values among employees. Your Dictionary has some useful terminology that helps with defining values.
PICTURE MISSING – VALUES TARGET / VALUES SUPPORT …
The values test is followed by a thorough analysis of the values you can use for your employer positioning and branding. This includes analysing to what extent these values are already visible in your corporate designand marketing – especially in your web communication. The culture and leadership analysisand a qualitative employee surveyalso provide valuable information. Employee feedback has proved to be invaluable for employer branding
Given this information we will then jointly develop a strategy for enhancing your employer brand. We not only take your HR marketing into account, but also the overall company mindset. Management selection and development is of particular importance in this context.
Which mindset is being lived out? Does this mindset hold promise for the future, or would it make sense to evolve? Consciously assuming a mindset frees us from our automatisms. Being aware of your own mindset is a huge help when it comes to recruiting the right people.
In practice: The mindset behind employer branding.
What this can look like in practice is illustrated by two companies which have become, with our support, strong employer brands. These companies specifically targeted developing their employer branding strategies and simultaneously managed to gain significant impetus for their brand as a whole by virtue of the values development process.
Mit Werten statt Kontrolle zum Top-Arbeitgeber (Become an attractive employer through values and not control): Clarity of shared core values clears the path for a unique leadership model.
Die wertvolle Kultur als Unternehmenswert (Valuable culture as a corporate value): Uncover, exploit and nurture hidden riches.
Would you like more information about how you can accelerate your brand positioning strategy? We’re happy to help!
