Who Owns Employer Branding?

What was your answer to “what do you want to be when you grow up?”

I know what mine was. When I was 6, I wanted to be a cat. So, yeah, that didn’t quite work out.

I did eventually identify where I wanted to work, and so did many of my classmates. We all had a dream workplace that we just knew would be a wonderful place to work. Even though not all of us could fulfill those dreams, many kept a favourable perception of those workplaces.

But where did we get this idea? How do new entrants to the workforce decide which employers are the ones they’d love to work for?

It’s an interesting concept. Your brand isn’t just the traditional advertisements or social media profiles you put out to the public. It’s also how you’re perceived as an employer.

For example, I can tell you that I don’t know much about Costco’s brand messaging on a consumer level, but I do know that they’re consistently rated one of the best places to work. I’ve heard first-hand accounts from friends and internet strangers of their generosity toward employees. The reputation of being a top-notch employer follows them around everywhere like a helpful shadow.

Conversely, there are companies who have a reputation of being not-so-great to work for. Glassdoor reports that 69% of applicants will not take a job with a company that has a bad reputation – even if they’re currently unemployed. Additionally, 94% of applicants are likely to apply for a job if the employer actively manages their employer brand.

Yep, employer brand is a pretty big deal. But lately, the question of who owns employer branding is being discussed in our office. HR, Marketing, the C-Suite – they all have a stake in developing a strong employer brand. There’s a strong need for collaboration across departments to build a great employer reputation, but how do you get it off the ground?

The Current State of Employer Branding

There’s a common perception that anything to do with talent attraction is strictly an HR function. At least, that’s what I previously thought to be true.

But it turns out that opinions within enterprise organizations vary widely about who’s responsible for crafting an employer brand. Universum has done some fantastic research in this area. They surveyed over 2000 senior executives to find out where employer branding is headed.

Universum concluded that 60% of CEO’s surveyed believe that CEO’s have primary accountability for employer branding, while heads of Marketing were torn between HR (38.8%) and CEO’s (40%). Over half of all HR, Talent Management, and Recruiting respondents believe HR is accountable for employer branding activities.

No wonder 70% of all respondents are hoping for closer collaboration between departments in the next 5 years!

There’s no clear answer as to who currently owns employer branding activities, but the need for these types of programs is growing steadily. According to PwC,  72% of CEO’s cite a concern over lack of key skills  and 75% emphasize a need for a skilled, educated, and adaptable workforce. It seems to me that there’s a huge opportunity for organizations who make a detailed employer branding strategy a high priority.

Marketing’s Role in Employer Branding

Question: is your employer brand the same as your consumer/customer brand? If not, should it be?

While many marketers reported that they don’t “own” employer branding, I certainly believe they still have a stake in it. They can help guide recruitment efforts in the appropriate voice and tone of the brand.

Let’s say, for example, that your voice on social media is cheeky, fun, and youthful. You have an opening for a social media manager. The job ad reads something like this:

Must have:

  • 4 years of relevant experience
  • Proficiency in social media management software (Hootsuite, Buffer, etc.)
  • Post-secondary degree in Communications, Marketing, Business, or equivalent.

Please send your resume and cover letter to jobs@enterprisecompany.com by March 25, 2016. While we appreciate all interest, we will contact all selected candidates. No phone calls, please.

Hm. Would this attract the right candidate for a fun, exciting role? Potentially. But they’d likely feel that this particular role doesn’t reflect the public brand of the company – all because the recruitment effort was dry and impersonal.

The brand itself is likely what attracted this candidate in the first place, but this bland job posting might make them reconsider if this company is somewhere they’d really like to work.

Check out this job ad from Netflix:

Netflix Employer Brand

Or how about this one from clothing retailer Everlane:

Screen Shot 2016-03-09 at 1.57.14 PM

Marketing can help target the right talent by aligning recruitment efforts with the brand voice. While 37% of executives say that they have a somewhat combined strategy between their consumer brand and employer brand, 52% would like to strengthen that connection in the next 5 years.

In Practice

We have some customers who, in a joint effort between HR and Marketing, use our platform to strengthen their employer brand.

But recently the tables have turned. We’ve been the ones using PostBeyond to attract talent through content sharing, and as a result, we’ve made some awesome new additions to our team.

What does this mean? We use our platform to distribute content among employees – including open job postings. All of the content in our hub is suggested by the PostBeyond team, but moderated and approved by the marketing team. When we have a job posting, it’s actually written by the department that’s hiring and approved by our marketing team. That way, it’s completely in line with how we’d like our employer brand to be perceived.

We then create the job posting in PostBeyond for our employees to share on their personal networks. Sometimes we’ll even have a simple team photo and ask our employees to add a caption of their own. Mine was something like “Want to join an awesome team of really, really, ridiculously cool people? We’ve got openings. Message me :)” 

Why? Well, we know that employee referrals just plain work for talent acquisition. Here are some quick stats from Jobvite (via Undercover Recruiter) on that:

  • Employee referrals have the highest applicant to hire conversion rate – only 7% apply but this accounts for 40% of all hires.
  • Applicants hired from a referral begin their position quicker than applicants found via job boards and career sites (after 29 days compared with 39 days via job boards and 55 via career sites).
  • Referral hires have greater job satisfaction and stay longer at companies – 46% stay over 1 year, 45% over 2 years and 47% over 3 years.

And we want our applicants to know that what you see is what you get. Our job ads are relaxed because we’re relaxed. All of this helps to attract the right people for the right role, and helps to position us as a place where people want to work.

Looking Forward

Try this as an experiment in employer branding:

  1. Pick a brand you’re familiar with (clothing retailer, grocery store, etc.)
  2. Check out their social media pages and their website. Familiarize yourself with their tone and messaging.
  3. Look at their careers page to see which positions are open. How’s the language there?
  4. Go to Glassdoor.com and search them. What are their employees saying?
  5. Does this now seem like a great place to work? How do you perceive them as an employer?

Repeat the above exercise for your organization, and critically ask yourself how candidates see you as an employer. You might be surprised with the results.

The content you share publicly to attract talent should be completely in sync with your customer brand, and collaboration between HR, Marketing, and the C-Suite is the way to make that happen. The risk of having a disconnect between the two will undoubtedly cause some talent attraction issues, so it’s in your best interest to make sure that the content you’re sharing around recruitment is seamless.

Does your reputation as an employer line up with how you want to be perceived? How big is the gap between your consumer brand and your employer brand?

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