The secret to successful employer branding is making it true

The war for talent has reached a global level as companies around the world are tapping into different talent pools. Without the pressures of a physical office space, employers today are competing for the “best of the best” to join their borderless organizations.

When top talent is on the hunt for new work, these candidates often assess companies based on their outward presentation and attitude toward employees. While businesses focus on their customer-facing brand development, successful employers will build an attractive employee brand, too.

The biggest employee branding challenge for employers

The most significant challenge to having a strong employee brand in today’s hyper-connected, peer-review-driven world is ensuring your culture, technologies, and policies actually deliver the experiences you’re advertising. Achieving that is the key to longer-term retention and turning your employees into ambassadors.  

The challenges many organizations face in achieving this include:

• How to create consistent, equitable experiences company-wide – including globally.
• How to keep talent united, productive, and fully engaged.
• How to maintain culture – especially diversity and inclusion in the workplace – so people connect to and embrace their values every day.

Reinvent your culture for an empowered, agile, and tech-savvy talent pool

Attracting talent will require a new strategy for employee branding – and the right technologies to help deliver great experiences. Today’s workforce seeks a great deal more than a good compensation package, employee benefits administration, and lots of vacation days.

They want transparency, so they fully understand an organization’s culture, values, leadership team, and strategy for employee and personal development.

They want to share likeminded values – and get excited about the vision.

Most importantly, they are seeking greater control over their work lives, and flexibility (in terms of hybrid work hours and working arrangements) from their employees. 

According to our 2022 Pulse of Talent report, flexibility and reskilling top the list of priorities for Canadian employees. In fact, 82% of employee respondents in Canada say employers should have all or some responsibility in their skill development. This desire for upskilling and reskilling coupled with the reality that 60% of Canadian workers are at flight risk makes for an equally strong warning and opportunity.

Essentially, prioritize your employer branding and prove there is substance behind your promises, and you’ll find yourself surrounded by high-quality talent. Or fail to support your employees well, and you could struggle with employee retention.

Four strategies to transform your employer branding – and attract top talent today and tomorrow

Successful employer branding is about delivering a people-centric culture and making it visible to outside talent. To succeed in our competitive recruitment market, organizations will have to build a better employee experience with HR technology today. Here are some tips to ensure success:

1. Give control

Embrace a self-service model for fast information sharing and employee empowerment.

Successful organizations will have streamlined processes and technologies that give employees easy access to information. Equip your people with tools to handle their work life from anywhere, at any time, on the device of their choice.

Top benefits:

• Personalizing content and training to individual employees.
• Simplifying task self-management that empowers your people to view and change. information like making shift changes, holiday bookings, sick day reports, and payroll adjustments.
• Keeping employees connected, informed, and engaged, with minimal navigation.

2. Empower communication

Increase visibility and access to information.

A key aspect of building a great employee experience – and employer brand, by extension – is improving transparency, communication, and access to information. Technology can help teams collaborate better, even when they’re in different locations, and it can give leaders direct access to the voice of their employees.

Top benefits:

• Enhancing teamwork and collaboration channels. Enable seamless team collaboration and relationship-building with purpose.
• Continuous pulse on team dynamics. Get real-time data to stay apprised of employment performance and engagement levels.
• Providing real-time personalized coaching tips. Strengthen your communication with employees to motivate them, build relationships, and boost employee brand loyalty.

3. Pay flexibly

Pay your people when and how they want through on-demand pay.

Many employees experience financial stress that derails productivity. Offering flexibility through on-demand pay can help alleviate this stress by giving employees more control over when and how they get paid, which can improve attrition rates. Flexible pay can help give your employee brand an edge over the competition and differentiate your business in the job market.

4. Educate continually

Develop a widespread culture of continuous learning and professional skill development for all employees.

Employees have goals they want to achieve in their careers. Establish your business as one where growth happens for all employee all the time. Mitigate flight risk and attract ambitious talent by making development a year-round practice with continuous feedback, training opportunities, and access to a learning management system.

Performance management helps align the goals of individual employees with the larger operational strategy. When talent sees clear crossover between individual growth opportunities and organizational direction, a positive synergy results.

With the right HR tech, your employee brand will resonate widely in a remote, hybrid work world.

Giving workers more control and flexibility over how they work, collaborate, and get paid is the way forward for organizations creating an appealing and enduring culture. With the right human capital management software in place, you’ll stay ahead of the curve, compete for talent, increase engagement, and deploy that strong employee brand every organization needs. 

The thoughtful use of technology allows you to do more than just accelerate processes and deepen knowledge. It can serve to make the most of your people’s distinctly human capabilities and drive the transformation of your culture into an irresistibly human one.