For any effective employer branding strategy, it’s imperative that your Marketing and Human Resources are working together and collaborating closely.  The result of any team effort is always greater than the sum of its parts, and going through an employer brand exercise is no exception.

If you want your branding process to be successful, it’s critical that marketing, human resources, communications, and executive leadership are all at the table.

Employer branding is far more than one exercise or one meeting – it’s a journey, and you need all your partners with you to arrive at your destination.  At the core is a meaningful employee value proposition, supported by a well-defined culture and talent strategy that is communicated effectively.

It’s critical that the person who owns talent and culture at your organization lead the employer brand strategy work, have oversight of the process, and its moving parts and engage stakeholders along the way.

While relating your employer brand back to your corporate brand is required, we also remind our clients about the importance of standing out from your corporate brand.

Yes, you have to ensure that your brand’s tone, presence, and philosophy are consistently reflected across all platforms, all communications – and all hires.  The marketing team is great at providing guidance based on their experience with the corporate brand.

But…remember, your business clients are usually very different from the talent you want to attract to your company.

Traditional corporate marketing is based on research on a specific target market.  Once a client persona is identified, a story and accompanying creative is developed around that persona, with the goal of turning the end-consumer into a buyer.  So you can’t use the same messaging and look and feel to apply to a job seeker. You need to develop a specific talent persona.

Having unique visual branding and marketing are critical for your employer brand and ideally, HR, Marketing and your employer brand consultants or agency work together on leading the visual branding initiative.

The most important piece is defining your talent brand personas and who better to help guide that process than HR?

An effective employer brand will increase traffic on your social profiles, increase job applications, convert applications into talent, and transform your employees’ experience.  

While social media is generally housed in the marketing / brand arm of the organization, your social media communications leader should also be at the table, collaborating on what makes sense from scheduling in unique employer brand content that comes from HR into the overall content calendar.

We’ve found there’s nothing better than working with an organization that has collaborative HR and Marketing groups.  The exchange of brilliant ideas, the collaboration and dialogue make it much easier to get a tremendous result, and to push the boundaries of what your organization is capable of.  Get in touch with Blu Ivy Group today to learn how we can help you get your own branding journey started!