Building your Employer Brand is not just about how your content and careers site look. It’s a combination of how you understand and articulate your employee experience; gauge external candidate perceptions, build your value proposition and market position, then activate it in the right way.
If those brand components fail to align, then an Employer Brand will often lack the necessary focus, punch and power.
Why does Employer Brand alignment matter?
In a world full of uncertainty, people want to know why the work that they do matters. An Employer Brand built on strong research and messaging, a clear value proposition and a differentiated market position helps employees and candidates to see the real purpose behind the mission and vision.
What causes misalignment?
Organisations change and organisational cultures evolve. The authentic employee experience may not be accurately reflected in a value proposition that was created a year or eighteen months ago – especially in a world where technology is accelerating the rate of change like never before. An outdated value proposition leads to inaccurate messaging – and what candidates see from the outside fails to reflect the reality of what employees are experiencing on the inside.
What is the impact of a disconnected narrative?
When an Employer Brand overpromises and underdelivers, word gets out quickly. Word of mouth, employee reviews on sites like Glassdoor, comments on LinkedIn, AI results – reputational damage moves fast and it can be difficult to reclaim once the market has formed a collective opinion. Just as importantly, morale can suffer amongst existing employees and new joiners.
How can organisations own their employer narrative?
The compartmentalised nature of an Employer Brand means that a gap analysis is a good place to start:
- Which part of our brand is currently our weakest link?
- Is our understanding of the employee experience authentic?
- Is our value proposition credible and relevant?
- Is our messaging differentiated and inspiring?
- Is our creative work visually powerful and consistently well-activated?
- Is there a gap between employee experience and candidate perception?
- Where do we need to invest to strengthen our Employer Brand – research, insight and positioning, messaging, creative?
- What data do we need to gather to successfully track brand relevant, consistency and performance?
Understanding where the potential disconnects are occurring in your Employer Brand is the first step in building a more consistent, coherent and credible narrative that communicates the purpose behind what you do; the sense of belonging that your organisation fosters and the values it upholds; and the opportunity it offers for employees to engage in meaningful work and fulfil their aspirations.
If you’d like to learn more about strengthening your Employer Brand, get in touch with us.