Employer branding refers to company’s brand image built by an employer through years of persistent efforts that has the power to attract potential candidates with word-of-mouth publicity to seek pride in being a part of the workforce and company vision in the longer run. A strong employer brand speaks about the company culture, and workplace ethos to lure talent by offering employee-friendly benefits and policies to secure ranking as an excellent place to work with great career prospects.

Employer branding extends to every aspect of your organisation – recruitment and employment such as on-boarding process, training and development, support networks, career pathways, benefits and incentives, to the employee’s’ exit process and terminating procedures.

In this fiercely competitive market, a good employer branding strategy can help companies attract talent and command an indisputable space in the competitive industry with rivals closely vying for the top spot.

Attracting wide-pool of talent increases brand visibility, thus presenting opportunities for a company to screen and select the best, most-fit candidates with adequate expertise, experience and skillset to be a part of the brandwagon.

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Also increased employee engagement with the brand value helps build a highly loyal workforce who are not easily lured by competitor companies in the space. This helps companies save on costs incurred on recruiting and training new candidates to be a part of the workforce.

How Employer Branding will Change Over the Next 4 Years

Based on a survey of more than 2,000 senior executives, including CEOs, heads of HR and recruiting, employer branding and marketing executives, Universum reveals the changing paradigm shift in the employer branding to evolve until 2020:

• More than 16.7 percent say building an employer brand on a global level is important
• More than 5.2 percent state differentiating the company from the competitors.
• More than 3.3 percent respondents believe formulating measurable goals and targets for employer branding works.
• More than 9.3 percent employees state employer brand helps secure the long-term recruitment needs.
• More than 0.8% percent say enhancing the appeal as an employer amongst current employees.
• Less than 1.8 percent state retention as the objective.  

Use of social media will grow over the next 4 years

Universum survey showcases that 70 percent respondents will increase the use of social media to boost employer branding capabilities, and more than half will double the usage. Social media will soon become the most-preferred digital channel (35%) compared to others such as employer websites (29%), job boards (12%), career guidance websites (9%), employer ads on social media (9%), targeted messages/email notifications (7%), and blogs (3%).

Unifying the consumer brand and employer brand

When quizzed about the connection between consumer brand and employer brand, 52% respondents think the connection between them is expected to grow over the next 4 years. These findings clearly indicate the importance of marketing department to be involved in building a more effective employer branding strategy for brands to stay and talent to retain.  

Stakeholders and HR Managers (as personnels who are fully responsible for talent management and staffing) should adapt themselves to design the best concepts of employer branding for the next several years.

There is no dearth of skilled talent available for specialised job roles, with thousands of graduates out of school looking for best job opportunities to be a part of a reputed company. However, without great employer branding strategies, companies will not be able to attract and hire the best talent on board, and thus lose out on the talented candidates to competition.

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