Good employee engagement needs strong employer branding

IN TOUCH / MEET THE EXPERTS

Good employee
engagement needs
strong employer branding

Erica

 

- Erica Twigt / Content strategist at Keephub

Erica

Erica Twigt / Content strategist at Keephub

What is employee engagement?

Employee engagement describes employees who are positively engaged with the brand/business they work for and act as brand advocates. Engagement is usually a result of a good employer branding strategy (including the employee value proposition), communication processes and styles, and the overall culture.

Venn diagram

 

What is employer branding?

Definition: Employer branding describes an employer's reputation as a place to work, and their employee value proposition, as opposed to the more general corporate brand reputation and value proposition to customers.

As part of our focus on employee engagement, here we share tips on how best to approach employer branding - to either review current practices or to get you started.

Benefits of employer branding

Checklist-2

The key to successful employer branding and employee engagement

It may not be top-of-mind at every company, but your reputation as an employer has a huge impact on both your employees and job seekers. Good employer branding ensures employees become brand ambassadors that are more likely to be loyal to your organisation. Since job seekers mainly rely on 'hearsay', it is important that brands adequately resource their reputation management as an employer with their own employees.

Reputation

It is good to remember:

  • Having a 'good name' as an employer is not something you can control yourself. Whether you actively try to manage it or not, people will form an opinion based on the impression you have made. Perception really is reality.

  • According to LinkedIn, a company with a good reputation as an employer will see an average of 43% reduction in hiring costs. Often this is the direct result of less spending on advertising and recruitment campaigns.

  • A large majority of Millennials and Generation Z believe it is very important to be part of the right company culture. Read more in our Gen Z at work white paper.

HR 2.1

Give HR a tool

Whilst it is reasonably straight forward for HR to design an ideal vision of the organisation, both operationally and culturally, it can be more difficult to make this a reality. Hurdles are often credibility and ‘leading by example’ - both key to managing your employer branding. How credible is it if candidates are looking for flexibility, but you do not allow working from home and/or varying working hours? When an employer branding strategy has been created, we recommend you start by involving your employees. Involve them in the decision making from day one! Knowing where to start with work communication transformation can be overwhelming, read more in our ABC transformation guide.

Strategy delivery

It's no longer enough for HR to provide a ‘shared drive' with all HR documents, the manuals about working conditions and facilities, etc. Today, it is necessary to actually have a conversation with your employees, and make the information relevant, highly accessible and engaging. Keephub has been designed to enable powerful employee engagement and activate your employer branding strategy.

Content that the employee really cares about

Converting HR communication into relevant content that really benefits the employee will immediately have a positive effect on your employer branding. Some ideas to get your employees excited about you, as an employer are:

Sustainability: Start a suggestion box or competition to collect ideas and suggestions they have for doing their job in a more sustainable way.

Vitality: Awaken the enthusiasm with messages about the healthy & nice company culture (free fresh fruit, weekly yoga, etc.). And ask them to share photos/videos to show how excited they are about it.

Feedback: Use polls or surveys on important, current topics such as hybrid working, flexible working hours, etc.

Career opportunities: Attractive content (videos, animations) to encourage employees to participate in events, workshops or training on this topic. Further read: Ten ‘zero cost’ ways to boost employee engagement.

And if you have made a start with this, it is time for step three: employee advocacy. What could be better than, when your employees are enthusiastic about you as an employer, they tell this to their own network? Afterall we all recognise that peer-to-peer communication is many times more valuable.

But let's start with employer branding for your own employees first!

 

Three steps to create brand advocates

Employer branding 2

 

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