How to build an employer branding strategy?

August 20 2021

How to build an employer branding strategy?


Are you frustrated with slow-paced recruitment processes and the candidates don’t meet your expectations? Start with the foundations – an employer branding strategy. To build the image of a good employer, you need a document specifying your EB action plan in detail. How to prepare the plan? Read more!

An employer branding strategy is all about achieving specific goals, taking into account the necessary assets that include the budget and factors that promote and hamper achievement of the plan goals. This typically covers an analysis of the market situation and competition, as well as the Employee Value Proposition (EVP), i.e. what you have to offer to the people who consider employment with your company.

Appoint a project team

Your employer branding strategy is a document that is to determine the directions for your employer branding efforts for the months and years to come; therefore the people involved in its creation must come from various areas of the company’s operations. Creation of an interdisciplinary team responsible for completing the project will ensure a holistic approach to the process of communication with the candidates and with the whole organizational setting.

You may also find this interesting: What questions should you ask a candidate during an interview?

Create a communication plan

Once you determine the most important tenets of your employer branding activities, you must design your internal project communication within your organization. It must be divided into stages and take into account, among other things, the industry, working environment and demographic variety of your team. 

Find out more about your current employer brand

Don’t forget to regularly research the effectiveness of your communication with the employees and candidates. Check it regularly using questionnaires and in-depth interviews. Conclusions from such research are very valuable, as they allow to most promptly optimize your employer branding efforts.

Find out what your competitors are up to

In today’s shortage of experts, it is strategically crucial to monitor your competitors’ EB efforts. Gaining a competitive edge in this field means accelerating the recruitment process and frequently bringing down its costs, as well as drawing attention of experts employed by your competitors. Keep your description of your competitors’ employer branding efforts regularly updated and analyzed.

Describe the target groups in detail and create personas

This is the part that deserves the greatest amount of time. Divide the external and internal context of your company into target groups based on their needs and expectations in communication. The way to inform a PHP developer about growth prospects is completely different from how you should approach showing off to the world your charity project that involved everyone at the company. When you collect information on each group, create personas, i.e. detailed descriptions of prototypical representatives of each of the groups. Include information on their professional and private lives. Their personal values, declared career growth directions and even hobbies should become a part of each of the studies – enumerates Natalia Sikora, Social Media Manager at More Bananas.

See also: What software developer traits are recruiters looking for?

EVP, i.e. the core

The Employee Value Proposition is a set of employer brand attributes that make it attractive and stand out in the market. Each HR project should be planned based on these. EVP cannot replace a strategy, but is a crucial part of it. Its inherent part are the image objectives and business objectives of the company. 

Schedule, budget! Go!

Once the previous points are completed, you may build an action schedule and complete the budget table. You probably want to divide the planned actions according to their importance and divide them into those to be completed online and offline. This will allow your strategy to be resilient in the face of volatility and much easier to modify, if necessary.

Reports, mistakes, conclusions and recommendations

Distaste for reporting is as widespread as the knowledge of its usefulness. So spend time once a month to prepare a substantive summary of actions taken, present areas for improvement and propose corrective actions. You’ll pat yourself on the back after not more than a year of consequently pushing the strategy forward.

Your EB strategy deserves more time, as a well-designed strategy allows to efficiently reach the selected target groups, plan resources for the next months and years, as well as optimize the costs of branding efforts.

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