branding - CareerBuilder

AWAR
D-W
INNIN
G!
BECOME A FAN!
OUR BEST
SELLER!
NOW!
COMPANY
X
SUPERIOR
QUALITY
OVED
E-APPRO
EMPLOYEO
THER!
VER ANY
PREFERRED
TRY US!
COMPANY
A
START
BRANDING
Creating an Employment Brand
that Increases Engagement,
Retention – and the Bottom Line
AWA
RD-W
INNIN
G!
BECOME A FAN!
OUR BEST
SELLER!
NOW!
COMPANY
X
SUPERIOR
QUALITY
EMPLOYEE-APPROVED
PREFERRED OVER ANY OTHER!
TRY US!
COMPANY
A
START
BRANDING
Creating an Employment Bran
that Increases Engagement, d
Retention – and the Bottom
Line
Using This e-Book
Whether you’re a mom-and-pop resale shop or a Fortune 500
corporation…
Whether you’re part of the service industry or professional services…
Whether you’re a little bit country or a little bit rock ‘n’ roll…
This e-book is for you, the employer.
Because regardless of size or industry, if you have employees, you have an employment brand.
And whether you realize it or not, your employment brand is affecting your ability to recruit
and retain employees – for better or for worse.
What you need is a strategy for understanding how others perceive your brand, so you can
create a brand that truly reflects you as an employer. This strategy will ultimately help you
better attract and retain employees.
Let this e-book be your guide to understanding how your employment brand is your greatest
resource when it comes to recruiting and retaining your greatest asset – your people.
1
Table of contents
3 Introduction: What is an Employment Brand?
4-5 If You Build It, They Will Come:
7 Reasons to Invest in Your Brand
5 Branding 101: 4 Key Steps to Building Your Brand
6 Assessing Your Employment Brand
7 Defining Your Message: The Details Are in the Data
8 Key Questions for Defining Your Message
9 Communicating Your Brand: 6 Resources You’re Not
Using (But Need To)
10 Communicating Your Brand Through Social Media:
A 7-Point Checklist
11 Evaluating Your Brand’s Effectiveness
12 Why Does Any of this Matter? And Other FAQs
13 7 Habits of Highly Effective Employment Brands
14 Conclusion
START
BRANDING
2
?
What is an Employment Brand?
It’s no coincidence that many of today’s most successful and
admired businesses – Google, Whole Foods, IBM, USAA
and UPS, to name just a few – are as widely recognized for
their forward-thinking business practices as they are for their
reputations as employers of choice. These companies all
share one characteristic: A strong employment brand.
An employment brand is the way your
organization’s prospective applicants,
candidates, and employees perceive
you as an employer.
A strong employment brand is one that clearly communicates
the culture of your company, its mission and its values, giving
people a compelling reason to want to work for – and stay
with – the organization.
Not only have the companies above built corporate cultures
that recognize their employees as their most important asset,
but they successfully communicate this culture to those outside
the company as well, creating reputations for themselves as
great places to work and attracting top talent to their jobs.
All companies have an employment brand. Not every company,
however, realizes just how critical a role their employment
brand plays in both attracting and retaining talent. This e-book
explores how to build your company’s employment brand
to better recruit and retain top talent – and maximize your
company’s bottom line.
3
If You Build It, They Will Come:
7 Reasons to Invest in Your Brand
Research shows that companies that maintain a compelling employment brand have a critical head start when it
comes to attracting talent. A recent CareerBuilder study found that companies with a strong employment brand
attract at least 3.5 times more applications per job posting than do other companies in the same industry. A
2009 Employer Branding Institute study showed that nearly half (49 percent) of employees cited an employer’s
reputation as a major influencer in deciding where to work.
Companies with strong employment brands also enjoy a number of perks that give them a competitive
edge, including the following:
1. Improved Quality of Candidates: Companies with strong employment brands have an easier
time recruiting qualified candidates, because candidates come in already understanding what the company
stands for as an employer. They recognize something in a company’s culture that appeals to them and
makes them feel as if they would be a good fit for the company. A well-communicated brand also helps
job seekers understand when they would NOT be a good fit for a company, saving them the trouble
of applying – and you the time of sorting through another irrelevant resume.
2.
More Passive Candidates: A clearly articulated employment brand also helps attract candidates
who are not actively looking to change jobs but would consider a good opportunity if it came their way.
A global study conducted by CLC (Corporate Leadership Council) found that effective employment
branding enables organizations to reach into a deeper pool of talent. The study of more than 58,000 new
hires and tenured employees from 90 organizations found that organizations with managed employment
brands are able to source from more than 60 percent of the labor market, while those with unmanaged
brands can source from only 40 percent.
3. Fewer Costs Associated with Turnover: Companies do damage to their employment
brand when they fail to deliver on the expectations they set for their employees during the interview and
hiring process – leading, in turn, to higher turnover. In fact, a recent CareerBuilder survey found that 35 percent of workers cited the company as the main reason they decided to voluntarily leave a previous
position, while only 28 percent cited the job itself.
4.
Fewer Costs Associated with Recruitment: If you have a compelling and
well-communicated employment brand message, candidates are more likely to seek you out to inquire
about open positions. You save yourself the time and trouble of sourcing candidates from scratch because
there’s less of a need to advertise open positions and wait for applications to come in.
(Continued on page 5)
4
If You Build It, They Will Come: 7 Reasons to Invest in Your Brand
(Continued from page 4)
5. Happy Employees (A.K.A. Productive Employees): When your company
creates an environment where employees feel challenged, feel that their contributions hold value
and are recognized for their efforts, employees become more engaged in their work. This
increased level of engagement leads to a higher quality of service or product, and, ultimately, a
better bottom line.
6.
Brand Advocates: Speaking of engaged employees… When people love their jobs, they
tend to be vocal about it. For this reason, employees can be your greatest asset not only in driving
your business forward, but also in filling your talent pool. Because they know what it takes to
fit in and work for your company, employees are the utmost authority on who else will make a
good employee. They also know how to sell your company to their peers because they know
first-hand what job seekers want in their ideal employer.
7.
A Better Bottom Line: Research has shown a definitive link between a company’s
employment brand and its financial performance. A recent study of publicly traded companies
on FORTUNE’s “100 Best Companies to Work For In America” list by professors at Michigan
State University and University of Wisconsin-Madison showed a connection between the strategy
of developing an attractive workplace and performing financially well. “Being an attractive
employer may create an important intangible asset, positive employee relations, that differentiates
firms in a value-producing way,” the authors wrote.
Branding 101:
4 Key Steps to Building Your Brand
Employers can’t afford to fade into the background if they want to attract quality talent; they have
to stand out in a way that gets job seekers’ attention and makes them an attractive place to work.
“Companies are realizing how important it is to differentiate themselves from their competitors with an
employer brand,” says business marketing expert Jim Lanzalotto, Principal at Scanlon.Louis.
Your employment brand strategy is a long-term effort that permeates every aspect of the employee
lifecycle, including recruitment, onboarding, retention and engagement. The most important guiding
principle is that companies must deliver what they promise.
Consistency between words and actions goes a long way toward building a positive perception among
both job seekers and employees. Just as companies invest in their consumer or business-to-business
brands, they should also invest in a rigorous, ongoing process to build their employment brand.
The following pages will discuss in greater detail the four main components of this process, which are
listed below:
1. Assessing Your Employment Brand
2. Defining Your Message
3. Communicating Your Brand
4. Evaluating Your Message’s Effectiveness
5
Assessing Your Employment Brand
Until companies know what their target talent values in an
“employer,
who their competitors for talent are and what differentiates
them from those competitors, it is premature to create a brand
strategy, brand messages or advertising, says Mary Delaney, President
”
of CareerBuilder’s Human Capital Consulting Division, Personified. Does your company have a
reputation as collegial or cutthroat? Is the atmosphere casual or formal? Do employees and target
talent see it as a place where one can grow and advance, or as a place to get some experience and
quickly move on? Before you can work to strengthen your employment brand, it is critical that you first
understand how your organization is perceived as a place to work.
After all, how you understand your organization’s employment brand and how others view your
organization’s employment brand may differ. A recent CareerBuilder survey found that a surprisingly
low number of employees believe their employers deliver on their employment promises – prompting
34 percent of employees to rate their company a poor place to work. Sixty-seven percent of survey
participants indicated that they either would not or were unsure if they would recommend their
employer to others. In order to know truly know what your employment brand is, you need to listen to
what job seekers and current employees are saying about you.
The following methods provide a quick and easy way to gain some insight into what others are
saying about your current employment brand:
• Conduct an organic search for mentions of your company on a search engine such as Google,
Yahoo! or Bing
• Go one step further and set up a Google alert to be e-mailed when your company name shows
up in news stories, blogs or other online media
• Search for mentions of your company on social media sites including blogs, Facebook,
Twitter, Ning, Bebo, Indeed, Digg or LinkedIn
• Go straight to the source: Conduct employee surveys on a quarterly or annual basis to gain
feedback as to identify your strengths as an employer as well as areas for improvement
• Utilize third-party reputation monitoring: The most useful, objective answers to your
questions about how others perceive your brand will come through the help of an objective third
party that specializes in aggregating and analyzing social media to find out what is being said
about your brand online.
You will also want to determine how your employment brand compares to that of your competitors –
both competitors in your industry and your competitors for talent. Relying on data analysis reports and
talent surveys can help you determine which companies you are losing employees and candidates to,
helping you assess what these companies are offering that you are not. In other words, how does your
competition differentiate itself?
Only when you’ve determined your true brand - and how your company stacks up against that
of your competitors – can you identify where your employment brand falls short of others’
expectations and work to change those perceptions. This information will also help inform the
decisions you make when it comes to defining your message.
6
Defining Your Message:
The Details Are in the Data
In order to attract and retain top talent, your company must make a concerted
effort to ensure you stand for something meaningful as an employer, that
potential job seekers and employees know what that “something” is, and
that you communicate it through your employment branding message.
The foundation of any successful branding campaign is reliable data. It is
easy to create an attractive brand message, but without an understanding
of who your target audience is and what they value in an employer, who
are you really attracting? Your message, after all, is a promise to current
and future employees about what it means to work for your company.
Failing to deliver on that promise can cost you big by leading to low
morale, lost productivity, high turnover and significant costs associated
with time-to-hire.
“To attract the top players, you need to understand what factors are most
important to your specific audience,” says Mary Delaney, President of
CareerBuilder’s Human Capital Consulting Division, Personified. To
create a brand message that truly speaks to who you are as an employer, it
is important that you first have a true understanding of your employment
brand. Smart companies understand that reliable, objective data is the key
to determining those factors that will inform their best branding efforts.
7
Key Questions for
inge
Defr in
Messag
You
Data offers a wealth of intelligence to help
employers define their message, including
answers to the following vital questions:
• What are your strengths as an employer? Your weaknesses?
• How does top talent rate you against your competitors?
• What do your competitors offer that you do not?
• What do you offer that your competitors do not?
• What do employees like about coming to work for you?
• What do employees dislike about coming to work for you?
• What drives job seekers to apply to your jobs?
• What prevents job seekers from applying to your jobs?
• Are you offering competitive pay?
• How could you better position yourself as an employer of choice?
• Where should you be advertising your jobs?
8
The next step to building your brand is disseminating your employment
brand message – both internally and externally. Utilize the following
resources to communicate your employment brand.
COMMUNICATING
YOUR BRAND:
6 RESOURCES
YOU'RE NOT USING
(BUT NEED TO)
1.
Your Company’s Intranet: Employees who give high ratings to
internal communications also tend to rate the company as a good place to
work and are likely to recommend it to others, according to CareerBuilder
research. An Intranet system or internal social network (such as a blog or
wiki) lets you easily disseminate important company information and
address company-related questions or concerns.
2. Job Advertisements: Job ads are often the first introduction job
seekers have to your company, so make them count. In addition to
offering a clear description of the job roles and responsibilities, take the
opportunity to discuss the company, its mission, values and goals – as well
as benefits you offer and any recognition your company has received for
its employment practices.
3.Your Company’s Career Center: One of the most important
outlets for disseminating your brand message, your career site should be
easily navigable and clearly communicate what it’s like to work at the
company. Be creative in how you illustrate your company by utilizing
employee testimonials, “day in the life” videos or highlighted “job of the
month” opportunities, for example.
4.Your Employees: Employee referral programs are another effective
way to communicate your company’s employment brand, while at the
same time identifying job candidates. Often, the best way to recruit
qualified employees is through word of mouth, and satisfied employees
are the best messengers. Research demonstrates that word of mouth is
perceived as at least twice as credible as advertisements.
5.Local or National Media: Sending out press releases or
applying for “best place to work” competitions can help your company
gain recognition and publicity from credible third-party organizations,
further spreading your company’s brand message and broadening
your exposure.
6.Social Media: One of the newest – and most successful – avenues
for communicating your brand, social media has become a critical
component to today’s recruitment strategy.
9
Communicating Your Brand Through Social Media:
A 7-Point Checklist
Social media provides a great platform for companies to communicate with employees and candidates about
everything from announcing new opportunities to discussing the benefits of working at their company. If your
company has a profile on a social networking site, make sure you’re utilizing it in the most effective way. Below are
seven best practices for engaging both current and potential employees using social media.
1. Create An Exclusive User Experience – Use your social networking profile page (such as a
Facebook page) to post compelling content (such as videos, photos, article links or status updates) that
provides insight into what it’s like to work at your organization – information users wouldn’t find anywhere
else. By providing them an inside look at your organization, you’re creating an exclusive user experience,
engaging them and compelling them to want to work for you.
2. Listen, Learn and Engage – This step denotes an ongoing process. Once you have a profile and are
active on the site, you can start to listen to the conversations about your brand. Allow employees and job
seekers to post questions about the company. You may find that they’re concerned about issues you never
would have considered addressing before. Don’t be afraid of criticism, either. This is an opportunity for you to
respond and clarify misconceptions about your brand. (Because the truth is that people are going to talk
about your brand – regardless of whether you’re there or not. At least now you have the opportunity to steer the
conversation in your favor.)
3. Highlight Specific Jobs – Use the medium as a platform to give information beyond just a job
description. You can post employee testimonials, for example, of others who hold that position and want
to be advocates for the company and the job.
4. Visually Stimulate - Sharing videos and photos of company events is a great way to give candidates
snapshots into your organization – in ways they’ve never seen. “Day in the life” videos, for example, give
would-be employees an idea of what it’s like to work for your company, and they resonate stronger than
anything job seekers might read.
5. Boost Your Rankings – If you can manage it, explore other social networking sites where you can
create a company profile and disseminate information. A presence on multiple social networks will improve
your rankings in Google and Bing search results, making it easier for job seekers to find you when they
perform organic searches for either your company or your industry.
6.
Promote – Tapping into those passive talent streams and connecting with your ideal talent requires
promotion – both internal and external. Use your social networks to market your open positions, company
news, or other messages you want to get across to job seekers. Make sure to communicate internally as
well, so your employees can further their efforts as brand advocates and push that information out, too.
7. Dedicate Time and Effort – Whatever you do, keep at it. It takes time to build a following and
generate engagement (and even longer to see a return on your business), but in the long run, you will reap the
rewards for your efforts.
Remember, above all, to be authentic in your communications efforts. Don’t just push out information: Open a dialogue
with users who post messages on your wall, comment on posts or inquire about opportunities through these avenues.
Comment back to further engage users, cultivate employee and candidate loyalty and build your pool of potential talent.
10
What gets measured gets done.
If you can’t demonstrate the return on investment of your
employment branding efforts, they will fall to the bottom of
the company’s priority list. Below are metrics you need to
track to test the effectiveness of your employment brand:
Attraction:
• Number of job applicants per dollar spent advertising
the job
• Quality of job applicants per dollar spent
• Candidate acceptance rate per dollar spent
• Aided and unaided awareness response rate
• Cost per hire
• Length of time to fill job openings
Retention:
• Turnover of new hires
• Turnover of veteran employees
• Employee satisfaction and engagement
CareerBuilder has developed metrics based on our vast
database of job seekers to measure the effectiveness of online
job advertising. The analysis quantifies the number of people
who are exposed to the job posting; the percentage who
convert to view the job description; the percentage who
begin the job application process of those who viewed
the description; and the total number of applications. This
data helps companies determine the effectiveness of the job
posting content and the employment brand.
11
Why Does Any of this Matter? And Other FAQs
“I’m a small business, and don’t have nearly the consumer following or name recognition that bigger
businesses have. Why even bother investing in my employment brand?”
You just answered your own question. Having a strong employment brand helps small- and medium-sized
businesses stay competitive by increasing their exposure among both consumers and top talent that can
easily be swayed by larger company brands. Smaller companies can leverage the increased exposure to
communicate the unique qualities that make them an employer of choice.
“I’m a larger company with plenty of name recognition and exposure from job seekers. If anything,
we’re overwhelmed with applicants as it is. Why waste time on something that I don’t even need?”
Employment branding isn’t just about gaining exposure to increase applications. It’s also about making sure
that what you stand for as a company and what you actually deliver are aligned in order to ensure you’re
attracting the right talent to your open positions – and retaining your current employees. Bigger companies
tend to have a harder time holding everyone accountable for upholding their employment value proposition,
which can lead to higher turnover and lost production.
“I’ve already invested a lot in my employment brand, even going so far as to have an agency help our
communications and marketing efforts. Still, we can’t seem to attract the talent we want. What gives?”
It’s most likely that you overlooked the most important part of the employment branding strategy: research.
It is crucial that you understand the current position of your employment brand – that is, how both current
and potential employees perceive your brand – in order to inform the decisions you make throughout
your branding process. Otherwise, you’re basing your decisions on gut feelings or guesswork that can be
wholly inaccurate. A 2008 Universum study found that what the majority of employers surveyed thought
job seekers looked for most in an employer differed significantly from what job seekers actually said they
looked for. The differences between what the employers thought mattered to job seekers and what actually
mattered speak to the importance of conducting research on your ideal talent. Not only does the data you
gather on employee and talent perceptions give you a foundation for creating your brand message and
marketing strategy, but it also provides a benchmark by which to measure the success of your efforts
later on.
“Our business has yet to bounce back from this recession, and we’re still cutting back. How can we
possibly afford to invest in branding efforts right now?”
How can you possibly afford not to? It is well-documented that brands that increase advertising during a
recession, when competitors are cutting back, can improve market share and return on investment at lower
cost than during good times. The same applies to recruiting. As other employers cut back their recruiting
and branding efforts, you will stand out, gaining a competitive edge among top talent when you are ready
to start hiring again. Meanwhile, you should also think about your current employee base and ensure that
you continue to fulfill your brand promise to them. Historically, employees tend to leave their current
employers following recessions as new opportunities open up. With that in mind, the time to step up your
retention efforts is now, so that top talent will remain loyal to you as the job market improves.
“We’re not hiring right now and don’t have immediate plans to do so. How is employment branding
relevant to me?”
Even if you’re not hiring, it will save you time and money in the long run to plan ahead by building your
employment brand. The effort will increase your exposure and help you build a pipeline of enthusiastic,
engaged talent from which you can draw when you find yourself with an open position later on. Additionally,
you’ll be creating something your current employees can rally behind.
12
7 Habits of
Highly Effective Employment Brands
The following habits have helped some of today’s leading companies attract, engage and retain leading talent:
1. They’re not afraid to relinquish a little control by enabling their employees to use social media. Online retailer
Zappos gives its employees the freedom to use Twitter, where they freely discuss various aspects of company
life with would-be candidates. They’ve effectively made their employees into brand advocates, which has
helped them create buzz about being a great place to work
2.
They embrace new media as a recruiting tool. Staffing firm Kelly Services’ virtual community in Second Life
provides job seekers with an interactive experience to see what it’s like to work for Kelly and has also helped to
differentiate the firm from its competitors. For much the same reason, staffing firm Spherion leveraged the
power of viral video with its highly popular Web series, “The Temp Life.” 3. They embrace new media as an engagement tool. Companies of every size are increasingly utilizing online
social communities for internal purposes – engaging employees and keeping them informed of important
company news, events and projects. Over 50,000 companies worldwide, including Fox and Adobe, use
microblogging site Yammer, while companies like Starbucks and Pepsico have found success with cfactor’s
“enterprise social networking” solution. 4. They think outside the Facebooks. Overwhelmed by the sheer volume of users on Facebook, Twitter and other
social media giants? Think “niche.” That’s what Seattle-based Tableau Software did recently when it needed a
Web developer with extensive knowledge of Drupal: The company’s recruiters began surfing social networking
sites that catered to Drupal enthusiasts, where they were able to connect with people who possessed the skills
they needed and eventually found their new hire.
5. They ask for employee feedback (and actually listen to it). Feedback from Aetna’s employee surveys –
administered regularly to enable employees to voice their thoughts about how the company is doing and where
there is room for improvement – led to the establishment of Aetna’s current recognition program, The
Aetna Way Excellence Awards, according to CEO Ronald Williams in an interview for CareerBuilder. Leadership recognized that employees wanted more company-wide recognition events, so they delivered. “That
whole program came about as a result of employees’ suggestions that came through the survey,” Williams said.
6. They work in partnership with Human Resources. “People decisions are some of the most important decisions
I make, so I make those decisions in collaboration with my HR partners,” Stryker CEO Steve MacMillan
recently told CareerBuilder. “Responsibility for our people may be a human resources function, but we all
manage it together.” It’s no accident that Stryker holds multiple honors as a best place to work. 7. They actively encourage learning and development. Smart companies know the power of providing opportunities
for professional development and personal growth in helping to retain top talent. Spectrum Health does
both: The company’s relationship with University of Michigan provides opportunities for leadership members
to gain experience in project-based work. And its EXCEL Professional Development Model program
recognizes and provides monetary awards for nursing staff for academic and professional accomplishments, as
well as community service.
13
Conclusion
Your company’s employment brand — the perceptions that employees
and potential employees have about what it is like to work there — is
critical to your ability to attract and retain talent, especially in today’s
tough economy. Increasingly, companies are actively managing their image
and reputation as a place to work.
Employers have a long way to go in better aligning expectations with
the reality of what it’s like to work at their company. A surprisingly high
number of employees believe that their companies are not delivering on
their employment promises, CareerBuilder research has found. Only
44 percent of survey respondents say their company matches their
expectations. Asked whether they would recommend their employer to
others, 67 percent of respondents say “no” or “not sure.”
“Effective employment branding requires an ongoing commitment,
but it is well worth the effort,” says Mary Delaney, President of
CareerBuilder’s Human Capital Consulting Division, Personified. By
investing in a rigorous, ongoing process to build their employment brand,
companies can improve their ability to attract and retain the best talent, thus
enhancing their competitiveness in both good and bad economic times.
Today, companies just like yours are relying on CareerBuilder’s
employment branding solutions to maximize the way they target, engage
and attract their employees.
To learn how these solutions can help you, visit
www.careerbuilder.com/brochure or call 1.877.345.5256.
14
ABOUT CAREERBUILDER
CareerBuilder is the global leader in human capital solutions, helping
companies target and attract their most important asset – their people.
Its online career site, CareerBuilder.com, is the largest in the U.S. with
more than 22 million unique visitors, 1 million jobs and 37 million
resumes. CareerBuilder works with the world’s top employers, providing
resources for everything from employment branding and data analysis to
talent acquisition. More then 9,000 Web sites, including 140 newspapers
and broadband portals such as MSN and AOL, feature CareerBuilder’s
proprietary job search technology on their career sites. Owned by
Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE:GCI), Tribune Company, The McClatchy
Company (NYSE:MNI) and Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT),
CareerBuilder and its subsidiaries operate in the U.S., Europe, Canada
and Asia.
15