When we think about the employer brand, we often think about it from the recruiting perspective. A healthy employer brand does indeed make it much easier to attract potential employees, and it saves a business significant dollars in other ways as well. Great brands allow you to hire employees at a lower cost premium than poorer brands because there is a value that is placed with working for a great company versus a not so great one.
However, building a brand means that it must be first generated from the inside, rather than simply being propaganda that is issued to the general public. At the same time, the brand, once built, must be maintained or the organization risks losing the brand image it worked hard to create.
ISR’s research and experience reveal that brand building is as much about external image as it is about its internal cultural elements. Companies that do well financially are able to align their external image with internal cultural elements that this company needs to address in order to better support, through its culture, its brand strategy. ((ISR, 2005. “Inside-Out Approach to Brand Building.” Retrieved from ISRinsight.com.))
“Values and Pride” and “Belief in Product” reflected employees’ sense of attachment to the company’s public face. Critical to a strong image, employees must feel proud to work for the company and believe in the product produced. Feeling they could better serve the customer would also be a great motivator for employees. Failure to serve customers would have the opposite effect. Not surprising then, “belief in product” had a polarizing influence, acting to inspire the strongest regard for company image, as well as the highest disregard.
The other key drivers, “Integrity” and “Leadership” reflect views of internal processes – integrity in dealing with employees and the need for effective and competent leadership at all levels in the company. ((Ibid))
Most of us realize what a great employer brand does for us. The brand delivers an employee base more easily than otherwise. However, delivering on the brand is what gets us to achieve more through productivity, quality, and innovation. The brand is a great tool not to be forgotten.
One response to “Building the Employer Brand”
I find the idea of basing a corporate brand on its values (at least in part) quite compelling. The issue is: how do you quantify and measure these values — determining, for instance, whether employees truly believe their company has integrity and good leadership? And then, that information has to be delivered in some kind of presentation form (I refer to it as a Corporate CV). Also, there’s something that’s inherently hard to test in these categories. I.E. if you were to survey your employees, would you ask: “I believe my company has integrity.” … Etc. Anyway, great topic for discussion.