In a climate where attracting, engaging, and retaining talent is constantly top of mind, many companies are looking to revamp and refresh their employer brand and employee value proposition as a means of communicating and advocating their preference and desirability in the talent market.
But a great employer brand does not stop at recruitment and onboarding. Looking at company culture across the employee and candidate lifecycle is crucial to reinforce the EVP through the employee experience and build a highly engaged and loyal workforce.
Many employers are feeling increased pressures to incentivize, reward and recognize their employees for their contributions to corporate culture and business success. For many executives and HR leaders aligning recognition and rewards programs to the employer brand strategy is essential as they face unprecedented challenges in the talent market.
Recognition programs, when integrated into the employer brand solution, tend to drive demonstrable ROI on employee net promoter score, referrals, reviews, brand share of voice and retention.
Employee recognition is typically found in two major formats – peer-to-peer and top-down. Historically, companies default to top-down recognition, which might include leadership or a manager recognizing a specific individual or group for outstanding performance, achieving product or service milestones, or maybe even going above and beyond. With the use of digital employee recognition platforms, companies can now enable both peer-to-peer recognition as well top-down recognition to employees. Recognition can go a long way when companies empower individuals to recognize one another and can create engaging, modern cultures that live the company’s mission, vision, values, and desirable behaviours.
Many companies already embrace the power of recognition through in-house or software supported programs to drive engagement, retention, and business results, but how often are these programs reviewed as a tool to discover positive employee experience stories or encourage employee participation in your external talent attraction strategy?
Employee storytelling and ambassadorship are key components to effectively communicate your employee value proposition and showcase “a day in the life” across various roles at your organization externally. Unfortunately, not every highly engaged employee is top-of-mind to leadership. By reviewing moments of appreciation within your recognition program, you can come to discover hidden customer champions, impactful wallflowers, and interdepartmental relationships of highly engaged, cultural energizers across your business. These individuals can play an integral part of your employee advocacy programs and provide a valuable contribution to better understanding life at your organization.
By limiting your recognition success impact to recognition activity, budget utilization, and company-wide impact to employee engagement, you may be missing out on a big opportunity to better understand the success stories within your business and which employees are living your brand day in and day out. These may be your best advocates for interviewing candidates, ambassadorship, and even video storytellers for your recruitment marketing efforts. Even more, you can enrich your talent community emailers with moments of recognition to specific talent segments you’re looking to attract.
With so many companies looking to advocate their EVP and Employer Brand across their social media channels, you can also look to encourage employees to improve your marketing reach and tell your brand story through sharing your social activity, job postings, employee-driven storytelling campaigns, and showcasing company events. These opportunities to elevate the reach of your external employer brand can be rewarded with a moment of appreciation or even a small reward through your recognition program.
If you’d like to learn more about how you can better utilize your recognition program to highlight your employer brand and employee journey to external talent, reach out to Blu Ivy.
Blog Author
Jenni Lamb
Director Business Development
About Us
Blu Ivy Group is a global leader in employer branding, organizational culture, and recruitment marketing. We help organizations across the private, public, and not-for-profit sectors build extraordinary employee experiences, magnetic employer brands, and high-performance cultures.
From C-Suite to Employer Brand and Talent Acquisition leadership, we partner with our clients to transform their organizations and design the most compelling workplaces of the future.
For inquiries, please contact sparker@bluivygroup.com.
