Biggest mistakes you can do in Employer Branding

Failure to do the employer branding in the accurate way leads companies to lose its employees as well as the top talents available in the market. If a talent hired with a mistaken employer brand strategy there's is a high tendency of his contributing to increase the employer turnover by his leaving.

Here are the four biggest mistakes that a company may make in employer branding.

False promises to prospect employees

There is a high likelihood that when the workplace does not meet the expectations of employees, they are more likely to feel less satisfied with their jobs. (Zaho et.al. 2007)

Therefore employer branding must an authentic representation of the company's culture and values. The biggest mistake that the companies tend to do is that they are going to imitate their competitors employer branding strategies and apply them in their organization which do not reflect the company's true image and values. They fail to identify that it's competitors' values and culture and strategies not theirs. Therefore after hiring, what the employer find in the company is against his perception and directly impacts on the employer to be frustrated and leave.

They think that Employer Branding is one time effort  

Employer branding is not a one time effort. may organizations think that the employer branding process limited a temporary campaign or one time effort that automatically ends up with its execution. Employer branding is a continuous effort that needs adjustments and reviewing as the company reshapes, resizes or evolve with time.

Featuring overly posed photos

In your employer branding advertisement or a message you are featuring the overly posed photos. Those photos are tactfully posed to get the attention by the actors to attract the relevant audience with may be a fake gaze or a smile which does not reflect the real experience within the company. Another example to clarify this bit more is, take the background of the photo. for the picture purpose the background of the work environment is set to appear more professional or captivating. But when the recruited comes to the premises, it's not what he saw before. It basically avoids prospects seeing the real company as it is. (Moy R., 2017)

Absence on internet

If your career site is not in the first search results in your organization, there's a high tendency you might lose to attract great talents in the market. Most of the companies do not pay that much of attention on this. But the presence in the cyberspace is worth more than thought. Therefore the companies need to do SEO practice to make sure that the employer brand is visible to its clients and easy to access the relevant job posts. So that it is easy for the prospects to go through and have a complete idea before they attend to the interview making the perception gaps minimal.

Moy, R. 2017. Employer Branding Mistakes That Ruin Your Company's Reputation. [Online]. Available at: <https://www.stackoverflowbusiness.com/blog/4-employer-branding-mistakes-that-ruin-your-companys-reputation> [Accessed on 02 May 2019]

Ley phan, L. 2018. The #1 Most Common Employer Branding Mistake They See Companies Make. [Online]. Available at: <https://b2b.kununu.com/blog/10-most-common-employer-branding-mistakes-from-experts> [Accessed 02 May 2019]

Common Employment Branding Mistakes to Avoid. [Online]. Available at: <https://www.recruiting.com/blog/5-employment-branding-mistakes-to-avoid> [Accessed 02 May 2019]

Zhao et al. 2007. The Impact of Psychological Contract Breach on Work-Related Outcomes: A Meta-Analysis Personnel Psychology.PERSONNEL PSYCHOLOGY. [Online]. 60(10), 647-653. . Available at: <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/211396575_The_Impact_of_Psychological_Contract_Breach_on_Work-Related_Outcomes_A_Meta-Analysis> [Accessed 03 May 2019]


Moy, R. 2017. Employer Branding Mistakes That Ruin Your Company's Reputation. [Online]. . Available at: <https://www.stackoverflowbusiness.com/blog/4-employer-branding-mistakes-that-ruin-your-companys-reputation> [Accessed 02 May 2019]

Employer Branding Challenges

If you can make your strategies in the right way to position your organization in the potential job seekers' mind, the result will be amazing. But the market is so competitive. you've got to differentiate your brand among others and make it unique. Therefore getting there does not come without challenges.

Here are the common challenges that the organizations face in Employer Branding 

Not knowing where to begin

Many organizations struggle to find where to begin in taking branding initiatives. This happens usually when the employer and employee relationship is not that strong especially when the employers do not listen to their employees and their issues. in thee face of such challenges what the organizations will have to do is try being in the applicant's shoes and understand their perception of the company, choosing the most appropriate communication channels and it is also recommended to review the interview process before hiring.

Inconsistency of Messaging

Failure to deliver organization's employer brand message is commonly found in the context. Therefore you need to be consistent in delivering the right message addressing EVPs through the relevant communication channels. Because without this, both potential and current employees may get confused of employer values and finally lose the good image of the company making the potential employees go to competitive brands while the existing leave the company. Hence, maintenance of consistency of messaging remains as a huge challenge.

Lack of capacity

When the companies have not specifically staff for branding activities, companies face this challenge as the lack of capacity leads other departments to be involved in the same branding activities making their work load much more heavier.


Managing multiple employer branding  channels

Managing multitple employer branding channels is a huge challenge. Employer branding channels used by different companies are different from one another. a channel may work well for you and the same channel will not make fruits for the other employer depending on many factors as products, culture, corporate strategy, audience and so on. 

Forich. 2019. Top Employer Branding Challenges. [Online]. Available at: <https://www.forrich.net/top-employer-branding-challenges> [ Accessed on 02 May 2019]

Roberts, M. 2016. Employer Branding Campaigns: 5 Hurdles You’ll Have to Jump at Some Point. [Online]. Available at: <https://www.jibe.com/blog/5-employer-branding-challenges-most-companies-face> [Accessed on 02 May 2019]

What is EVP and how to develop it

For a product or service branding, we use USPs (Unique Selling Propositions) to brand positioning and building brand perceptions. When it comes to employer branding, we use EVPs (Employee Value Propositions)

An EVP is about characterizing the substance of your organization and how it is special and what it remains for. (Avinash Pawar et.al, 2015). EVP is affected by an organization’s values, culture, society, initiatives, environment and talents. Employment branding is internally and externally advancing a reasonable perspective of what makes a firm diverse and attractive as an employer (Lievens, F & Slaughter, E. 2016).

There are so many ways to approach in developing EVPs. But most of them follow the following key steps.

1. Analyse your data

What you need to do is to have all the data available on the table and analyse them first. data could be of employee engagement, board and exit interviews, employee retention rates and measures, recruitment and employee progress etc. Once you have all these details it is easy for you to identify key themes and trends. 

2. Discover and go deep

This is the most significant step in developing the organization's EVP and it should include senior management, HR, marketing, existing and target employees.(Mckee K, 2017)
This stage usually includes interviews with key stake holders and focus groups with employees to dive deeper into the themes identified.

3. Develop the EVP

Now is the crafting part. Now you have a broader view after going through first two steps. crafting message will include a statement in which the essence of employee experience and employer brand commitment is reflected. At this stage you will have to clarify which areas should be focused mainly to support EVP. For instance, career development, work life balance, career security etc. And in this situation we will also have to check whether the EVP developed goes against the HR strategy as well. If if EVP does not support the HR strategy, it's better get revised (Mackee, K. 2017).

4. Message Delivery

Crafted EVP has to be delivered across each stage of recruitment processes, through to on boarding, career development and even through the exit stage. In this stage, you need to make sure that you would deliver the intent of the EVP at each of these stages in materials such as recruitment adverts, performance development materials.

Finally building methods to measure EVP is necessary as it will reveal its results, ROI and value of the EVP.

Avinash Pawar et.al., 2015. International Journal of Management Research & Review -The Indian Organizations Outlook 12(5), pp.1195-1203

Mackee, K. 2017. EMPLOYEE VALUE PROPOSITION. HR Minute.[Online]. Available at: 
<https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.sbhra.org/resource/resmgr/docs/HR_Minute_4_26_17_EVP.pdf> [Accessed on 01 May 2019]

Lievens, F & Slaughter, E. 2016. Employer Image and Employer Branding: What We Know and What We Need to Know -Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior .10(3), pp. 44.

Employer Branding and Social Media

Without doubt social media has reshaped the way we communicate today. It has now lifted you from penning on a paper to sharing your personal experience on a worldwide virtual platform at a click. Users not only get updated of what's being shared on the platform but they also engage, access shared information.

Having understood this and the importance of social media in the business, companies are now making use of social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter etc. to boast about themselves. Because they know that social media influences immensely on the potential job seekers' mind about the company as a good place of work.

It is evident that the Internet has become one of the most popular sources of information for job seekers and especially Millennials often evaluate companies through the Internet before they apply for a job; they want to be sure before they connect their professional lives with them.(Backhaus, 2004; Soulez & Soulez, 2011) Therefore the employers try to best describe themselves via social media and set strategies to make sure that there's no gap between what the potential job seekers perceive about the company and their actual experience after recruitment.

How Employers use Social Media to Employer Branding

McDonald's on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a powerful social media platform where a large audience of talents live and interact. McDonald's therefore have chosen LinkedIn to position their brand in the mindsets of their potential job seekers.

Source: https://www.linkedin.com/company/mcdonald's-corporation/

In this post what McDonald's has tried to position is that McDonald's is a place where health is a primary concern. It indirectly says that McDonald's is not a junk food company anymore but a company that gives priority to health practices. Therefore the notion of junk food over their brand and the employee stress that the employees experience at the premises with the busy work environment is not something that lives there with McDonald's. In a way it is also trying to make an image that McDonald's is an ethical company. And importantly, with the quote "Where you want to be", it can be assumed that they are trying to pass the message that the employee experience at McDonald's makes the employees develop themselves with skills and that experience.  And those skills and experience gained through, can be practiced anywhere as it is not limited to the restaurant only.

Qatar Airways on Facebook

Qatar airways is one of the most popular and the top airline carriers in the world. They conduct interviews in many parts in the world to hire the best talents for their organization. To name few countries they conduct interview programs, USA, Qatar, China, England etc. They hugely use Facebook for their Employer Branding.

Source: https://www.facebook.com/pg/qatarairways/photos/?ref=page_internal 

Qatar Airways is an airline and its cabin crew is working within the airline. Then what's this image talking about. The image shows the cabin crew's life away from where she's supposed to do. What's all these? What message Qatar Airways is assumed to be deliver to its audience is that being a cabin crew is about enjoying life beyond airline, exploring new places and finding 

Soulez, S., & Guillot-Soulez, C. (2011). Recruitment marketing and generational segmentation: a critical analysis based on a sub-segment of Generation Y. Recherche et Applications en Marketing, 26(1), 39-55.

Qatar Airways (2018) 30 April. Available at: http://www.facebook.com(Accessed: 28 April 2019).

McDonald's (2019) March. Available at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/mcdonald's-corporation/(Accessed: 28 April 2019).

Employer Branding and Employee Retention

Employer Branding is integrated with two key areas. Branding and Human resources. Because of this combination companies most of the companies have been able to hire the right talents to their organizations.  These two entities together gives an overview of how to attract the candidates and retain most suitable employees (Backhaus & Tikoo, 2004). An employer brand should represent an organization as a potential employer

and the organization should position itself as a employer that provides a superior employment experience against

competitors to enable competitive advantage (Love & Singh, 2011)

An orgaization uses its employer branding strategy to attract new talents

to an impact on their desire to stay with the company or leave. (Socro, 2012)Therefore an organization with a strong brand

image always tends to be the desirable place of work for the potential employees. Hence, obviously the place of

work becomes the place of choice as no one would want to leave the company due to the desire established by

so called employer brand strategy.

How to improve employee retention through employer branding

Perception matters

An ambiguous brand message or image of the organization the on potential employees' mind would do more harm than you might think. Because it's about employees' perception on your brand of organization. If the employees perceive the company really different from your employer brand, it will not help your organization build the employer-employee relationship. Therefore it is better to see the company through the eyes of the employees before you step to employer branding campaign. Then you can develop how your organization want them to see by evaluating the gap and setting strategies to bridge them.

Accurate Employee Proposition (EVP)

EVP gives an idea of what makes the company good to work for. For instance, EVP may comes as innovation, career growth, leadership, exploration etc. That's basically what helps employees differentiate the company among its competitors. Therefore EVP plays a significant role in attracting talents and retention. Because if the promises involved with EVP breached, that will lead the employees to leave the company and seek for another company that might best suit him/her with that company's attributes or value propositions. 

Evaluate all the time

Time runs and everything around you changes. So will your organization. You might have set a employer branding strategy that suited at the first time. but now your organization may have grown better than previous time and your workforce and the functions have increased and widened. So you will have to re-evaluate your brand strategies to adjust to the situation. 

Eg. General Electrics was once an industrial company but now it is a digital company with so many functions added. Therefore their corporate and employer branding strategies have changed accordingly. 

Gilani, H & Cunningham, L. 2017. Employer branding and its influence on employee retention: A literature review. The Marketing Review.17(2), pp. 239-256.

Backhause, K & Tikoo, S. 2004. Conceptualizing and Researching Employer Branding. Career Development International. 9(4), pp. 501-515.

Noor, U & Ahmed, S. 2018. Role of Employer Branding Dimensions on Employee Retention: Evidence from Educational Sector. Administrative Sciences , pp. 1-14.

Randstad, 2019. How to boost employee retention through your employer brand. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.randstad.com/workforce-insights/employer-branding/how-to-boost-employee-retention-through-your-employer-brand/. [Accessed 26April 2019].

Employer Branding in leading companies

Branding influences purchase decision of customers. With branding people subconsciously form different perceptions or images over  particular brands. A positive association of the brand name has been shown to increase perception of quality and purchase rates along with positive customer evaluations (Weitz and Wensley, 2000). Therefore the customer purchase decision happens with a pre evaluation over the brand. Sameway, job seekers are judging your talent brand as the same way as customers evaluate in brand purchasing. Having understood this, employers use brand strategies to attract the matching talents to be recruited.  

Employer Branding Applications in leading companies

Following are the several employer branding strategies used by leading companies.

Heineken (Leading Beer Brand)

Heineken set a campaign called  “Go Places” recently and campaign appeared to be one of the most effective employer branding advertisements. The campaign invites talents to respond to a series of questions. Each question takes approximately three to five seconds to respond. Based on a model called Enneagram Model the response for the series of question reveals an employee profile. And the advertisement asks for the candidates to submit their CVs along with the responses for those questions.

Heineken wants to position their brand as a brand that has been revolved with its employees ambitions
and personalities.
Below is the advert link to better understand of its application

https://youtu.be/UtoyMEFKb6o

General Electrics

General Electrics is one of the most popular companies that has a long history. General Electric was established focusing on the delivery electrical solutions for its customers. But the company is now re-positioning itself as a digital company. With the re-positioning strategy company is now seeking for the talents that can make this transition happen.
Below is the advert that General Electric has used in their Employer Branding.  

https://youtu.be/wJZHXfcNZBU

The message says that the candidates should be motivated by valuable cutting edge work.

References:

• Beamery. 2017. The 5 Most Unique Employer Branding Campaigns. [ONLINE] Available at: https://beamery.com/blog/employer-branding-campaigns. [Accessed 25 April 2019].

•  theHEINEKENcompany (2016). Go Places with HEINEKEN - Take the Interview!. [video] Available at: https://youtu.be/UtoyMEFKb6o [Accessed 25 Apr. 2019].

• Funny Curious (2018). General Electric What’s the Matter with Owen BBDO New York.[video] Available at:  https://youtu.be/wJZHXfcNZBU  [Accessed 25 Apr. 2019].

Corporate brand Vs Employer brand

From the design perspective, there’s no much of a difference between these two concepts. Not much of a difference means

that there has to be something that differentiates one another without any major differences that help them fall in opposite
contrasts. Therefore, let’s be clear on this.

Branding is a multidisciplinary concept. The emphasis is placed upon the organization as well as on the goods and services.

D. Aarker explains this in the term “corporate branding” simply the brand of the organization. Corporate brand emphasizes

the need to focus on the organizational values, culture, communications, workers who create positive associations and can

be a source of competitive advantages (Aaker D., 2003).

Employer brand on the other hand is a component of the corporate branding. The employer brand is based on the theory of

the "internal branding", as a component of the corporate branding conception (Mokina S, 2014)


Comparison: Corporate Brand and the Employer Brand Characteristics

Source: 

Mokina, S. 2014. Place and Role of Employer Brand in The Structure of Corporate Brand. March. Economics & Sociology.