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.