How to create an employer brand strategy: An intro guide
If you’re creating an employer branding strategy for your company, it can feel intimidating and you may be wondering “where do I start?” or “what’s important to have in place before launching publicly?”
We put together some must-haves on your checklist for your employer branding strategy so you’re set up for success not just for your launch, but so it’s sustainable long-term.
Uncover your employee value proposition (EVP)
If you’re thinking, an EV-what? This is the place to start. It’s one of the most important areas when you’re building your employer brand. An EVP answers the following types of questions for candidates:
Why do people decide to come work at your organization?
What makes them stick around long term?
What sets your organization apart from hiring competitors?
Your EVP will act as your guiding star to inform your candidate communications on an ongoing basis and you can build content pillars based on your EVP. For example, if work-life balance is uncovered as one of your EVP pillars, you can consider creating content with employees taking paid time off or tell stories about how your employees take advantage of the company’s flexible work arrangements.
And if you already have an EVP, now is a good time to revisit to see if it needs a refresh, particularly as organizations have changed a lot over the past year!
Read more on our blog about how to uncover your EVP in seven steps.
Activate your EVP internally and externally
After developing an EVP, you need to create a strategy for launching and executing on this EVP on an ongoing basis. It's important to activate your EVP both internally (with your employee base) and externally (with candidates) for it to work effectively.
What’s included in an internal EVP activation plan?
Launch campaign to share and socialize your new EVP with your employee base
Ongoing internal communications plan to ensure EVP is being infused throughout the employee experience all year long (more on this later!)
Audit and update HR policies and programs to ensure they align with your EVP
What’s included in an external EVP activation plan?
Launch campaign to share your new EVP with external audiences (e.g. candidates)
Audit and update candidate touchpoints to ensure EVP is woven throughout
Social media content strategy
Employee advocacy plan (more on this later!)
Develop a style guide
Create your employer brand style guide to determine how you’ll communicate (written and visually) along with your tone and other guidelines. This is especially important if you have multiple people and teams working on employer branding across the organization (i.e. talent acquisition, HR, marketing) which is often the case. Here’s what to include:
Tone of voice (e.g. friendly and approachable or professional and serious? Emoji use or no emojis?)
Spelling, grammar, and punctuation (e.g. American vs. Canadian spelling, oxford comma or no oxford comma, etc.)
Visual guidelines with design templates for social media graphics (if you don’t have a designer, Canva is a great place to start!)
Create a candidate journey map and persona templates
Mapping out your candidate journey is a great way to enhance your employer brand strategy. By creating a visual representation of your candidate’s journey, you can better understand their needs, wants, motivations, and behaviours. You’ll also gather important information that you can use to guide your recruitment marketing strategy and identify where you should be sharing your employer brand content. For example, according to a study from CareerArc, 62 percent of job seekers have used social media as a way to evaluate the employer brand of a company.
Beyond social media, there are many touchpoints a candidate interacts with before they click the “apply” button for a job at your company. That’s why it’s so crucial your EVP and employer brand and incorporating throughout all your channels and candidate experience.
For example, a candidate may see your job advertisement on Indeed, which prompts them to go check out your company reviews on Glassdoor. From there, they may go visit your career site to learn more, then check out your “Life at Company” Instagram page. They may then go back to your career site to apply for the job they initially saw. That’s why it is crucial you are populating all these touchpoints with your employer brand content and EVP messages.
Create candidate persona templates so that you can continue to build these as you develop your employer brand and it changes over time. This is especially important for creating targeted recruitment marketing ads and creating a positive, consistent candidate experience. Knowing your audience is crucial as you develop your employer brand strategy. What candidates are you trying to reach? Where do they hang out already online? You can answer these questions by developing a candidate persona
For help with this, check out our recruitment marketing campaign workbook with candidates personas templates.
Establish an internal communications plan
As mentioned earlier, while many organizations leverage their employer brands to attract external talent, it’s also critical for engaging and retaining your current employee base too. Not only that, but your employees can help by being your best advocates and ambassadors for your employer brand.
One way to get started here is to lead an EVP workshop that includes what an EVP is, your organization’s EVP messaging, and tips on how employees can share your employer brand content with their personal networks. This is also a great opportunity to ask your employees for stories about their work to highlight their authentic experiences working at your company (which will make great employer brand content down the line!).
And to ensure your EVP is being communicated on a regular basis with your employee base, comb through your company’s internal communications channels and identify spots where you can share EVP and company culture messages. To get you started, here is a list of common channels:
Email
Intranet site
Slack or Microsoft Teams
In-office employee spaces (e.g. break rooms)
Company events
Employee newsletter
All-hands meetings
Identify clear KPIs and metrics
What does success look like? You need a clear answer to this question so you’re able to measure what’s working. As talent acquisition pros, we’ve witnessed firsthand the impact a solid employer brand strategy can have on a company’s ability to attract and retain talent. But how do you showcase this to leadership and justify the investment — especially when there are so many competing areas that may get priority over your budget requests?
That’s where KPIs and metrics come in. Create an employer brand KPI dashboard that you can review with your team on a regular basis — we recommend weekly with your team, and share quarterly with your leadership. This can include measurements like reduced turnover rates, decreased cost per hire and improved employee engagement. Need more details? We wrote a whole blog about it! Check out 16 employer brand stats to get executive buy-in.
All this being said, the saying “done is better than perfect” also rings true! Your employer brand and EVP will never be a static perfect thing, and needs to evolve and adapt over time with your company and your employees.
We hope this intro guide is helpful as you build your employer brand strategy — trust us, we know it’s a big task! We also know how much of an impact having a strong employer brand can make on your talent acquisition efforts, your workplace culture, and your ability to tell compelling employee stories to attract the right candidates.
If this resonated with you and you want to know more, we can help! Get in touch with our team today.
About The Employer Brand Shop
The Employer Brand Shop is a boutique recruitment marketing and employer brand agency located in Kitchener, Canada. Our team helps organizations around the world attract and engage talent using creative marketing strategies.