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Developing your employer brand is a crucial step to take when looking to spearhead your direct sourcing and candidate attraction efforts.
However, developing your image as an employer can be a lengthy and frustrating process.
Some common frustrations that businesses experience are:
- Being unsure of their brand values
- Feeling as though they’ve lost their identity
- Struggling to embed their company values within their organisation
As such, it’s important to make sure that your efforts are worthwhile and the hard work that you’re putting in is paying off.
However, more and more businesses are becoming victims of some key mistakes that could damage your plans.
Here, Cygnus Resourcing takes a look at some of the most common errors that you should avoid making in your quest to develop a great employer brand.
Pitfall #1: Not listening to your employees when building your strategy
If you’re struggling to pinpoint your company’s key values when developing your employer brand, try talking to your existing employees.
Ask them what attracted them to your business? What do they like about you as an employer?
When talking to them, do you notice any trends? Is there one particular thing about your business that appeals to your employees? If so, you should consider using this as a basis for structuring your image as an employer.
Don’t forget: your existing employees are the blood running through the veins of your business and it’s important to listen to them.
Pitfall #2: Not giving yourself enough time
Planning is crucial. Whether you’re enhancing your existing strategy or building your employer brand from the ground up, it’s going to take time.
Set yourself a realistic timescale for your plans and don’t rush the implementation of your strategy – your employees might be a bit taken aback if you’re trying to introduce too many changes at once and it could pile too much extra pressure on your HR and Marketing Teams.
We suggest speaking to other organisations that have successfully developed a strong employer brand to understand any obstacles they’ve overcome and gain an understanding of timescales. It’s always useful to have a benchmark.
Giving yourself extra time will also allow you a bit of breathing space – all plans need revision and tweaking at some stage and a slower process will allow you to make these changes without impacting your business.
Pitfall #3: Setting overly ambitious goals
While you might be itching to make several changes within your business that you can envisage doing amazing things for your employer brand, don’t underestimate how long this will take.
Making plans that are too ambitious may leave you feeling overwhelmed by the challenge ahead of you. It’s important to take things one step at a time and make small changes that will stick.
For example, if you’ve decided to focus on your reputation as a green employer, try easing your employees into things by popping a few recycling bins or plants in your office, rather than planning a full-blown environmental initiative straight away.
If you make too many large changes at once which impact your business, you may get resistance from your employees – keep them informed of any changes you’re making within your office, no matter how big or small. After all, you’re developing your value and reputation as an employer – and if your employees are unhappy, this defeats the whole purpose of your efforts.
Pitfall #4: Using your employer brand purely as a recruiting tool
Your brand should be used to attract candidates to your business but you should also use it to empower your existing employees and inject your values throughout your business.
Providing a stellar experience to candidates during the recruitment process is great; however, you need to maintain this positive image when they start working for your business.
Consistency is key. If a candidate’s experience during the attraction process doesn’t match up to their experience during their first few weeks of working for your company, chances are that they’ll leave. This could also work out to be expensive, with the impact on your business and the cost of re-advertising your vacancy.
Article by Cygnus Resourcing – empowering through partnership
