How is communication a powerful lever for the development of the employer brand?

Communication, whether internal or external, has a significant impact on a company’s employer brand. It makes it possible to transmit information, improve exchanges and create trust and support within teams.

It is therefore an essential lever for the productivity and attractiveness of a company. For employees and future recruits, the company’s reputation is a source of interest and commitment.

From now on, new talents are turning to structures that enhance their image and human capital. How is communication a key factor in promoting the company’s employer brand and what mistakes should be avoided when executing it?

What is employer branding?

The employer brand is the image of the company, its reputation and its identity with its employees, partners, future talents and stakeholders.

It is fundamentally based on the company’s culture, history, public brand and internal policy. Its purpose is to encourage the employee’s support for the company to the point of defending its standard in professional and private life.

It thus makes it possible to retain employees and attract new talents essential to operation and innovation. It is a real lever for productivity and growth.

To develop its employer brand, the company must first develop an excellent communication plan.

How to use communication to develop your employer brand?

On the one hand, good communication around its employer brand can generate trust and productivity within the company’s teams. On the other hand, it brings strong value to the company in the eyes of the outside world.

There are a plurality of examples of employer brands that have made use of this development lever to ensure the sustainability of the companies to which they belong.

To be effective, employer brand communication must be conducted internally and externally.

Internal communication: An essential lever to promote your employer brand

Internal communication has a big impact on the employer brand. It is defined as the set of actions allowing employees to access information and communicate with each other.

By valuing the employee experience, the company will be able to have a team fully invested in developing its customer portfolio and turnover.

Internal communication is thus a real tool for promoting the employer brand. Its challenges have several dimensions:

• Employee loyalty at the heart of the employer brand: this results in better involvement of work teams. They now feel they belong to the big family that is the company;
• Understanding and solidarity between colleagues make it possible to better succeed in missions and achieve results much more quickly;
• The most experienced pass on their know-how to the youngest and the latter infuse new and modern ideas: we talk about knowledge sharing in companies.

To achieve good internal communication and boost the employer brand, the human resources department must take the following actions:

• Motivate employees to be innovative;
• Reassure employees in critical times;
• Inform about the news of the company;
• Promote talent;
• Celebrate the innovations made by work teams;
• Train employees;
• Federate all interventions.

All actions taken must be in harmony with the company’s objectives. Their adoption is based on the results of surveys and informal interviews with different categories of employees.

They are based on true and humanized content: professional and personal initiatives, significant events in the lives of employees, etc.

Employees must also have equipment to not only communicate well with each other but also to receive information from their superiors.

These are marketing tools and their choice is linked to the type of content to be transmitted. The main ones are as follows.

• Internal newsletter: appreciated by most employees, it allows you to receive information by email;
• Various meetings: they have an agenda to discuss important elements;
• Internal activities: they are used to federate work teams to communicate or do fun activities;
• Internal journal, welcome booklet, and memos: they allow the presentation of the company through its projects, its successes, its major decisions, and its news;
• Suggestion box: it is useful to collect the opinions of employees ;
• Webinar: it is used to facilitate exchanges between employees, regardless of hierarchical level. It also makes it possible to train and implement the tools necessary to achieve missions;
• Teambuilding: it allows employees to get to know each other better and strengthen social ties through fun or didactic activities.

The interest in external communication in promoting the employer brand

Using external communication to develop the employer brand helps attract talented people to the company.

For external communication to effectively promote the employer brand, here are some axes on which the company must focus its actions.

Discover the company through videos

The company must present a good image of itself to the public. It must produce reports to show the public how the activities are carried out internally.

Candidates will not only be able to get an idea of the atmosphere and quality of life at work in the company, but they will also be able to discover the premises.

However, one should avoid presenting a perfect company. Candidates are now researching company employees or forums for real information.

Offer advice to candidates

All external communication strategies used to develop the employer brand should not only be company-centric.

It is necessary to include the candidates for them to pay more interest. It will therefore be necessary to propose content that relates to their needs and make it viral.

For example, you can give tips for successfully writing a cover letter or professional resume. Tips for preparing and succeeding in a job interview are also actions that will have a positive impact.

Propose the discovery of the company’s professions

This is an effective strategy adopted by major brands to attract talented candidates. For implementation, interviews must be conducted in which the person in charge of the position will talk about their training, their professional background, and the obligations of their position.

It is a sharing of experiences to encourage people with the same profile as them to make a career within the company. It is also a way to promote a recognized profession that is difficult to exercise.

Valuing the company in the drafting of recruitment notices

We need to rethink the drafting of recruitment notices. To use communication to optimize employer branding, recruitment notices must highlight the company’s culture.

It is necessary to make a description of the company while highlighting its strengths, achievements, and promises for better personnel management.

The goal is not only to enhance the company but also to create attraction, to push the best profiles to apply for the job offer.

Humanize the recruitment process

For the receipt of applications, the human resources department must set up a tool whose functionalities make it possible to send personalized acknowledgments of receipt. This action creates a sense of confidence among the various candidates.

They are assured that their applications have really been taken into account by the company. Typically, standard automatic replies automatically prove that it’s a robot and not a person.

This action is even more important to implement to respond to candidates who have not had the chance to be selected. By sending them a reply to inform them of the outcome of the recruitment, it is necessary to find warm words that can cheer them up.

This good image will be ingrained in the minds of candidates and they will not hesitate to try their luck again to join your workforce or to recommend you to more qualified people.

Mistakes to avoid in a communication strategy on your employer brand

In the process of developing employer branding, there are certain actions that could actually harm the company.

Focus only on social networks

Communication on social networks is very useful for developing your employer brand. However, it is not enough to make publications about the company on social networks. This approach no longer brings satisfactory results.

Candidates no longer pay attention to it, being already accustomed to the news of the company. It is therefore necessary to place candidates at the heart of the digital strategy.

To do this, it is necessary to offer quality content on the various social networks. The said contents must be able to edify them in their professional career in general.

Want to perfect interview videos

Promotional interviews conducted by company employees lose credibility when they look too perfect.

Candidates are well aware that employees will not reveal the company’s internal problems. They will therefore choose their own source of information.

The solution is to address the sensitive issues that are of interest to most candidates. This may include remuneration, work tools, means used to facilitate work, etc.

Over-emphasizing company values

Excessive communication about company values sometimes puts off candidates. They are aware that by joining a company, they espouse its values. The ideal would be to find a more interesting way to promote your values.

Evidence of the application of these values must be shown in the various communication actions. Communication and employer branding are two intrinsically linked concepts that can be used to contribute to the development of a company.