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.