To set the ball rolling, Employer branding can be defined as all the operations carried out by a business to create and communicate its own identity to a target group composed of candidates and employees, so that the brand attracts and holds onto these subjects in line with the corporate culture and values.
The Employee Is the Customer
Over the last few years, employees are increasingly behaving like consumers when choosing to join or stay with an employer. It states that a positive employer brand can be a way of differentiating one organization from another and a way of creating a strong, distinctive and attractive identity with which current or potential employees can identify. This brings us to a set of questions one also needs to look at i.e. How strong is your product? Will it survive the expectation of the ever-so-changing consumer?
The Need to Create an Employer Brand
If we look at an employee as someone out to buy a TV set and the employer as the brand, the question is, what do you look for while buying a TV? Why do you prefer a certain brand over another? That also brings us to a fundamental question of, what does your existing and potential talent pool think about you? Why would someone want to work with you? Is there a certain perception about you as a company in the minds of existing and potential employees? With a shrinking talent pool, increasing cost of talent acquisition and fierce competition, there is an increasing need to become an employer of choice for people. A company that people want to work with! Think of a company that is flooded with requests in the ‘careers’ section with people wanting desperately to work with and you’ll get the picture. If the above holds true, you need to ensure that you are doing the right things to get through to people at all levels. If not, you need to look at what’s going wrong and to that effect, having a concrete Employer Branding Strategy in place is critical.
