Differentiating between your employer and customer brands is central to a truly successful employer brand strategy. Yet when establishing your brand identities, it’s equally important to consider how they complement one another. There are so many great opportunities to leverage a strong brand awareness for your products and services in attracting top talent. Your employees and customers often share the same values and qualities your company offers. When your employer brand accurately reflects your customer brand, your organization develops a more consistent mindset, resulting in increased engagement, as well as development of products or services that better represent your company.
One example is Apple – known for its innovation, high quality products, and cult-like following, it reflects the same values of creativity, perfectionism and commitment within recruiting material, and employee testimonials. [1] This has proven to be an excellent strategy for Apple, achieving record profit levels earlier this year as a result of increased demand for their newest iPhone[2], and consistently receiving top rankings in third party assessments of innovation and workplace attractiveness.
There are a few discussions and tools you can use to align your employer brand and customer brand:
- Outside Looking In
Almost all candidates will research a company before reaching out to a recruiter or submitting their applications, so it is important to see your company through the candidate’s eyes. Getting third party employer branding support in reviewing current promotional materials, and conducting research on external stakeholders’ perceptions can reveal brand enhancement opportunities. Inconsistencies between the employer and customer brand can reduce the credibility of ideas presented, potentially creating a red flag for candidates. Identifying similarities can uncover opportunities to implement messaging that will strengthen both brands.
- Gain Perspective
Understand what your employees identify as key strengths and differences in your product and service offerings, and consider how this information may be able to enhance your employer brand. It can potentially reveal what employees feel needs to be evolved or eliminated to make the company more competitive. This information can easily be gathered through incorporating a question into organization-wide surveys or asking brand ambassadors to talk about their experiences. Engaging your employees can create a culture of collaboration and build a foundation of trust to facilitate growth and innovation.
- Work Together
There are many benefits to be gained from collaboration between Human Resources and Marketing leaders, yet only 30% of companies have teams of two or more departments responsible for managing the employer brand. [3] Marketing and HR have a lot in common – both are committed to influencing and motivating people. With talent as an increasing concern for senior leadership, begin by facilitating discussions on branding priorities within the strategic plan. Aligning the employer and customer brands must be a cross functional effort.
About Blu Ivy Group
Blu Ivy Group is a leading employer branding and employee engagement consultancy that aligns your organization with contemporary workplace paradigms. Blu Ivy Group’s mission is to help client’s build award-winning people practices, inspire extraordinary employee engagement, and cultivate unique and desirable workplaces.
Blu Ivy Group provides integrated solutions in employer brand and engagement research, strategic consulting, employer brand integration, creative and talent communications.
Blu Ivy Group is a trusted partner to many of North America’s most respected employer brands. For more information, go to www.bluivygroup.com
[1] http://www.apple.com/jobs/us/corporate.html
[2] http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b3bb354a-a666-11e4-89e5-00144feab7de.html#axzz3jAjI9S86