Sustainable strategies to develop your employer brand

Developing your employer brand should be a priority for any company looking to build a good reputation and attract new talent.

That said, several specificities must be taken into account in this development process. These may concern the type of tools to be used or the action plan and the conditions for its implementation.

What is the interest of employer branding for a company? This article explains in detail the steps to be followed by the company to develop its employer brand sustainably.

What does employer branding mean for a company?

Employer branding concerns different elements of a company. Here are a few.

The company’s reputation

The employer brand is one of the aspects that can strongly influence the reputation of a company. It reflects the thoughts of its workers, partners, and potential candidates.

It is actually how a company is perceived by the various actors mentioned above.

Indeed, the actions that a company takes on a daily basis in the management of its human resources can bring satisfaction or be a source of frustration for its employees.

The image of the company among its employees and future collaborators can therefore be tarnished or enhanced depending on the importance that this company attaches to its employer brand.

The company’s values

Any action taken by the company is a message it sends to its employees. Through this message, each actor can identify the company’s values. These values typically include:

• Benevolence;
• Ethics in work;
• The employer’s responsibility;
• Valuing the effort of employees;
• The redistribution of wealth.

All these values are based on moral principles sought by partners, employees, and job seekers. If the company manages to develop its employer brand by promoting these values, the results will be noticed through the commitment of its employees.

Why does the company need to develop its employer brand?

Developing your employer brand has significant benefits for a company. These benefits include the recruitment of competent people, employee retention, and the improvement of the company’s reputation.

Recruit the best talent for the company

For a company, developing its employer brand facilitates the process of recruiting new employees. Indeed, finding competent people and convincing them to join their teams has always been a real challenge for companies.

Since the reasons for this difficulty mainly concern the poor image of recruiters among young talent, the company has the duty to work on its employer brand to attract them.

To develop its employer brand, the company must take positive action not only internally, but also externally.

These actions concern the improvement of working conditions, the management of human resources and careers, the sharing of experiences beyond the company environment, etc.

Increase the number of applications

A company that carries out actions to develop its employer brand is likely to attract a large number of candidates during its recruitment.

Indeed, the more positive the image of the company, the greater the number of people looking for professional opportunities wanting to integrate it.

Consulting employee reviews is one of the most used ways by new applicants to learn a little more about the functioning of a company and the working conditions of employees.

Collecting employee opinions is therefore an excellent way to develop your employer brand in order to attract more applications.

The company can obtain the opinions of its employees by providing a specialized page on a website where they can leave their opinions. It may also ask former employees who are no longer with the company to leave comments.

Positive reviews will help attract more applications and negative reviews will provide useful information for the company to improve its employer brand.

Retaining employees

Another reason for the company to develop its employer brand is employee loyalty. If the employees working within the organization are satisfied with their working conditions, they will have the motivation to move the company forward.

You should know that employees are always looking for well-being. They do surveys at the level of competing companies to compare the privileges they grant to their employees. If they feel they deserve better treatment, they can quit and go to the competition.

A company that implements an employer branding strategy multiplies its chances of keeping its employees in their positions and keeping them for many years.

Improve the company’s reputation

The image of the company is one of the determining elements of its success. Therefore, the company must develop its employer brand to have a good reputation with the public, customers, and partners.

The employer brand allows the company to have control over its image and shape it according to the situations it faces.

The steps to develop your employer brand sustainably

If the company is to develop its employer brand, it must also focus on making it sustainable.

Develop your employer brand

To develop its employer brand, the company must rely on an adequate strategy. The latter aims to build a strong image of the company and set it apart from the competition. Here are some actions to insert into the employer branding strategy:

• Consider the brand as a marketing strategy integrating communication techniques: the company first collects information on the current state of its employer brand. It must then define the various objectives of the latter while ensuring the support of all its employees;
• Find the right location and the right way to meet your target: booths in corporate forums and on campuses are very useful for attracting new talent. Platforms like LinkedIn can be used to promote workers’ expertise;
• Making employees brand ambassadors: the experience lived by employees is very valuable. To operate it, the company must ensure the well-being of the staff (valorization and training, integration of sport, flexibility of the environment, etc.);
• Carry a strong message: the company’s communication strategy should not be based solely on its actions, but above all on the reasons behind them. In doing so, it shares its corporate culture internally and externally;
• Take care of job offers: beyond the candidate’s missions and the profile sought, they must promote the “human”. The call for applications can therefore include a description of the work environment, the benefits offered, the professional assets, the working atmosphere, etc.

The points listed will help improve the company’s employer brand.

However, developing employer branding is not enough. This development must be sustainable so that the results are noticeable in the long term.

Sustainably maintain your employer brand

To sustainably maintain its employer brand, the company must constantly listen to employees, new talents, prospects, and customers. Without them, it no longer has a reason to exist. The open-mindedness of the company’s leaders is essential.

There is a close relationship between internal communication and employer branding. Indeed, employees are much more impacted by the way they are treated and the mechanisms put in place to send them information.

The company must therefore ensure the satisfaction of its employees and the improvement of working conditions.

This communication must be both social and interactive. It must be based on truthful, appropriate, relevant, understandable, authentic, and clear content. Failures and periods of crisis are also to be shared with employees without any transformation.

The objective is therefore not to present the image of a perfect company to the outside, but to be transparent.

Communication about real facts can reveal the authenticity of the brand. Employee testimonials are therefore content to be shared.

In addition, potential and former employees want companies that give meaning to their careers and lives. Obtaining labels is therefore an indicator of performance and sustainability. These labels characterize companies with a societal vocation and noble ambitions.

Thus, the B-CORP Label is awarded to companies involved in a logic of Corporate Social Responsibility. BSUS indicates companies committed to social solidarity. As for the French Tech Label, it characterizes start-ups with high potential for the future.

Finally, for an employer brand to be sustainable, its impact must be regularly measured. This is done through internal surveys and by measuring the turnover rate.

The acceptance rates of job offers and the presence of employees online are also elements to be evaluated regularly. The same is true for the positive interaction and conversion rates of visits to professional social media profiles.

These analyses are indicators to identify the relevant actions to be taken to improve a company’s reputation. The latter will thus be able to adjust the strategy of enhancing its image and maintain it in the long term.

Tools to develop your employer brand

For the development of its employer brand, several tools can be used by the company. While some are recent, others have already proven themselves for many years. Here are some examples of levers and tools to develop your employer brand:

• The working environment: it must be attractive, comfortable, and equipped with the best tools and a relaxation area;
• Quality of Life at Work (QWL): it places the well-being of employees at the center of the company’s concerns;
• Social networks: they make it possible to create a showcase, a melting pot of exchanges in order to enhance and highlight the company and its employees. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn are some examples;
• The career site: its role is to explain the corporate culture, the recruitment process, the values, commitments, actions and principles of the company;
• HR videos in simple format: fun and effective, they develop the different aspects of the company’s image and the importance it attaches to human capital;
• New technologies (virtual intelligence, augmented reality, virtual reality): they are used to generate buzz, prove the modernity of the company, and conquer new markets and targets;
• Inbound marketing: it is effective in attracting the target audience and retaining them through value-added content online;
• Human resources management tools: this can be the human resources audit, career assessment, skills assessment, or annual interview. They make it possible to probe the opinion of employees and to strengthen the effectiveness of the strategy;
• Job boards: these tools facilitate the development and publication of neat job offers for recruitment, the consultation of CVs of potential candidates, and the purchase of advertising space.

Attracting talent, retaining employees, and improving its image have a significant positive impact on a company’s activities. Therefore, any company benefits from developing its employer brand using the strategies and tools developed above.

Do you want to sustainably develop your employer brand?

Thanks to the Custplace platform, companies are able to easily collect employee opinions on a dedicated page. This offer also includes the possibility for the company to respond to these different opinions. Click here to benefit from it.