Even though the term employer branding has been around since the 1990s, the importance given to the topic has risen more recently.

This is because, in recent times, our understanding of consumer behaviour and market conditions have evolved drastically.

As a result, employer branding has risen as a special field within HR and Marketing in general. A major contributor to the importance of employer branding has been the limiting amount of talent available in the market.

For instance, the unemployment rate in the UK stands at a measly 3.9% today. This is the lowest rate in the last 44 years.

This means that major employers are fighting for a limited pool of high quality candidates. This is especially true in STEM disciplines, where the number of high quality candidates has been low anyways historically.

There has also been a shift in the way high quality candidates look for work today.

It is not simply a case of finding a nearly related job and applying anymore. Candidates want to know the values and conditions within organisations before applying for any positions. Therefore, it is important to have an employer branding strategy to place yourself attractively for suitable candidates.

From a more direct perspective, research has shown that companies that invest in employer branding save time and money across business departments  

This leads us nicely into how we develop your employer branding strategy.

Employer Brand Management is where reality meets the talk.

Want to save time and stress? Doing your homework and setting the correct tone goes a long way –  one step at a time.

Many organisations fall into the circle of planning without giving enough regard to application. Employer branding does the heavy lifting to attract talent that shifts your business up a gear , but there is an added internal positive too.

By putting the values of employer branding in place, the working conditions for the current employees can also be improved. But, this requires an extra bit of effort.

Employer branding needs to be top-down. By doing so, leadership delivers a consistent message. As they say, culture begins at the heart.

If you’ve recruited before, you’ll know a common issue among teams. Teams don’t change mentalities with new members. Instead, new employees become part of an existing environment. And, an unpreferred environment leads to greater issues. Simply, this will lead to an overloaded turnover rates.

In a way, without this step, the whole process is redundant. You need to bring your word closer to reality. You need to keep the promise you are making to new and existing employees.

The next stage then is to make sure that the message is spread across the organisation and the overall organisation benefits from it.

Internal marketing in employer branding is a tricky business.

Changing the working environment can be difficult if a foundation has been set.

Then, if the management is making untrue claims, your team will call you out in various ways. Change needs to go through your team, one day at a time. Otherwise, why should your team work for you?

Employer branding and employer brand management set the stage for putting the right conditions in place for employees to perform. Then, internal marketing circulates the value that is supposed to come out of the exercise. And, people are more likely to perform well for the organisation when the working conditions attract and nourish the right behaviours from your workforce.

In all these steps, we have kept one detail out. We have the tools to make the whole process exciting and fun.