Many organizations begin working on employer branding by focusing on talent attraction. They put forward an image of their company at its aspirational best. While it is a worthwhile exercise visioning who you could become one day, most aren’t aware that this approach will only provide them with short term, superficial results. At Blu Ivy, we believe an ‘inside out approach’ to employer branding is the most effective and long-lasting strategy.
Taking an ‘inside out approach’ means starting from within your organization. Focusing on the current employee experience, the ties that bind employees together, as well as threats that may be eroding your employer brand, we believe, is central for lasting results. External research on existing perceptions of your company is also important, but is no substitute for understanding your current employees’ experience right now, and finding ways of making it even better.
In a recent Blu Ivy project, we worked with a client using this inside out approach. We worked with them to gain a clear understanding of where their team was at, and then set about creating a few key strategies aimed at building employee satisfaction, all starting from within. This way, we had built a solid foundation for launching their next talent attraction initiative.
Getting started
For this particular client, it was crucial to ensure that employees in each part of their company were engaged. So we held interactive workshops for employees from varying areas of the organization, in which they were asked to help us build the employer brand together. Through the workshops, we sought ways to improve the employee experience that would foster an authentic personal connection to the employer brand, and to help employees feel they were active members of the company.
Brand Ambassadors
We then built on the workshops, choosing key employees to be “Brand Ambassadors”. The role of these ambassadors was to drive a highly engaging and consistent employee experience across the organization at the grassroots level. Incentives, such as tickets to sporting events and company merchandise encouraged employees to participate. Ambassadors were permitted to award fellow employees’ whose behaviour was aligned with the employer brand and company values with gift cards and other incentives. These longer-term efforts were a way of encouraging widespread employee participation in the branding process, and improving morale overall.
Ongoing Maintenance
Though our client has solidified this process and will soon release an Employer Branding Handbook formalizing what they have learned, it is absolutely necessary to stay continuously in close communication with employees and question assumptions you and your management may be making. For example, the CEO of this particular organization formed a Facebook group with ambassadors so he is able to stay connected with the workers’ experience on the ground, and take action when needed. Developing your employer brand from the inside out, then keeping the process going will ultimately help your company attract top talent, and be a better place to work for everyone.
About Blu Ivy Group
Blu Ivy Group is a leading employer branding and employee engagement consultancy that aligns your organization with contemporary workplace paradigms. Our mission is to help client’s build award-winning people practices, inspire extraordinary employee engagement, and cultivate unique and desirable workplaces. We provide 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, visit us online at bluivygroup.com or contact us at info@bluivygroup.com.