Are you concerned that the messaging and design of your careers site doesn’t effectively convey your company’s culture? Do you lack content about your careers and culture on social media? Are you experiencing challenges recruiting the broad mix of employees you need in a timely manner? If the answer is yes, you likely have an issue with employer branding.
Employer branding is one of the most fundamental strategies a company requires for continued growth, but it’s a careful process that needs time and attention.
Read on to learn all about employer branding and what the right agency could do for you!
What Is Employer Branding?
Employer branding is all about your company’s perception in the eyes of current and potential employees. Your employer brand should be able to effectively communicate why talent want to join and stay with your company and should clearly differentiate you from competitors. Today, top talent is in greater demand than ever before. They are now “shopping” for the ideal workplace that best aligns with their values and expectations. To succeed today, employers must be magnetic and authentic in how they convey their career offering.
The most effective employer brand strategies can align candidate, employee and customer experiences to the strategic goals of an organization. It can be confusing to know exactly what to look for in consultants, creative agencies, and technologies. The initial investment to build an employer brand can be significant and ensuring you get the ROI is critical for your success.
Here are the top 6 things we recommend you consider when selecting your employer brand agency partner.
1. Crafting the Employer Value Proposition
A good agency will help you build or refresh your employee value proposition. This is the first step to creating a cohesive employer brand. Take a look at some of the EVP work the agency has done for other clients and determine if the agency has developed EVP’s that push beyond the hygienic reason’s talent join and stay?
The employee value proposition should be a high impact series of the top 3-4 reasons why talent want to join and stay with your organization. It should align to your corporate strategy, be inspirational, and deeply rooted in the employee experience. Beyond salary, employees want to know that your company is a place where they can see themselves working for years to come. Because talent will spend most of their waking hours with your organization, you need to be able to communicate your values with appeal.
Look to an agency that can keep your Employee Value Proposition succinct and memorable over the long term. It can take multiple rough drafts to create a winning EVP. Your agency should have a great copywriting team on staff as it is critical to making a lasting headline that compliments the tone of voice of your company and stands out in the marketplace.
2. A Full- Service Employer Brand Creative Team
Simply placing an EVP on your careers site and social media assets is not enough to make a measurable change to talent attraction, reputation or engagement. The EVP is simply the foundation of your employer brand . A good employer branding agency will have their own in-house creative team that has experience building brands, not just social media content or careers sites.
Explore what work the agency has done with brand concept work. Do they have a team of Creative Directors, Copy writers and Designers?
How long did the employer brands they built last in market and adapt over time? Ask to see case studies and full campaign launch creative. Understand how they have integrated concepts into both internal and external activation.
The creative activation can be a lot of heavy lifting, and tight time frames. Ensuring the agency has an in-house creative and production team will offer you a partner that can deliver in a timely and seamless manner. This removes workload, uncertainty and potentially costly errors at launch
Another factor that is critical to a successful employer brand is having an agency that can help with media planning, potentially buying and management. Knowing where your creative should be placed, and how to garner the most awareness and impact for your branding is critical to success. The beautiful pictures and careers sites are not enough to change the game and become a preferred employer. Find out how much the agency can support you in this space.
3. Employee Experience and Culture Experts
The Employee Value Proposition is about far more than recruitment ads and storytelling. It is also the commitment that your organization is making to employees about the experiences you will deliver consistently better than other employers.
Look for an agency that has experience building best in class cultures, award winning workplaces, and engagement solutions. Because culture is also driven from the top down, understand how much experience your agency has coaching executive level stakeholders on delivering more branded employee experiences.
Understanding how holistic the agencies solutions and capabilities are is critical to ensuring that your EVP and employer brand impact is sustainable. It will also be key in aiding the impact to reputation on sites such as Glassdoor and Indeed.
4. Digital and Social Content Marketing Leaders
Building a highly effective digital employer brand footprint requires a deep understanding of more than great storytelling. If your goal as an employer is to become top of mind to external talent, understand what strategies the agency has used to connect with talent. Is it exclusive to building you new careers sites and sending job postings? Is it developing customized content marketing for multiple platforms? How innovative are they and what results can they talk to?
Understand what experience the agency has with building careers sites, programming and working with corporate talent teams at the testing and implementation phase. Do they have expertise with SEO and SEM? Building editorial calendars, talent personas and branded content marketing campaigns? The digital space is complex for many that are new to the space so knowing that you are in good hands with an agency that doesn’t just make content but has plenty of experience driving results is key when making your decision.
5. The People You Work With Matter
The average Employer Brand project will last anywhere between 6 – 12 months. Working with highly collaborative and experienced leaders is key to success. The work should also be fun and focused on your future state. Not just current project. Understand if the consultants you are working with have been in your shoes, not just as HR business partners, but as Talent Leaders and Executive Advisors. The ability to put oneself in your shoes will be important to you gaining the most from this work. How long term is the agencies relationships with clients? Can you get references from people that have worked with the agency for more than 3 years?
6. Measuring Employer Brand Results
Finally, you’ll need to be able to know that the employer brand is delivering the results you are expecting. Making data centric decisions is key to an award-winning solution and one that drives the greatest efficiencies over time. Uncover how the agency tracks results and impact. How frequently do you get updates?
Ask your employer branding agency what kind of systems they have in place to measure your results. Be it campaigns, awareness, preference, applications, reputation or engagement.
How to Find the Best Employer Branding Agency
The best employer branding agency should walk you through all the steps necessary to take you to a preferred employer and best workplace culture. They will coach and guide you through the process and develop you into an employer brand expert by the end of the project.
Your ideal partner will listen to your needs and develop a solution that delivers not only on today’s priorities but set you up for long term impact.
The work will be memorable for you, and your employees. Select a firm that has the proven expertise, and the passion to make an impact on the employee and candidate experience.
Ready to reveal your company’s true value and build an authentic and engaged workplace? Contact us today to get started!