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Episode 168 – It’s All About Employer Branding with Brie Mason
We were invited to chat all things employer brand. It was a lot of fun!
We have a laugh, but don’t be fooled… there are some real gold-rolled nuggets in this little poddie. We chat misconceptions, challenges, mistakes, strategy, trends, opportunities and more.
Check it out – https://tapod.buzzsprout.com/462049/11134169
Whether or not you believe the Great Resignation is real, there are a number of things that are for certain. There are currently more job vacancies advertised than ever before, there are very low levels of job applicants, even lower unemployment rates, and limited talent mobility. And this is on top of the previously well-documented skills shortages across most industries.
All of these conditions are making it extremely challenging for organisations to attract and recruit in-demand talent, so it’s important to consider how to gain that competitive edge in the toughest labour market in decades. Organisations need to find a way to stand out from competitors across all industries and capture the attention of talent, in order to even put forward their pitch.
Every successful recruitment strategy should be underpinned by a strong attraction strategy, and be personalised, using technology to target the right candidates, both active and passive, via a range of channels.
If you are to attract and retain the best people in the marketplace with the right values, mindsets and skills, you need to be able to source from more deeply within the labour market. You need to make sure you are selecting from the best in market, not just the best who have applied for your jobs.
We talk a lot about attracting active and passive talent, but in order to do that effectively we need to nurture prospective talent regardless of where they fall in the job-seeking lifecycle. We need to consider what tactics to use at each stage of the talent acquisition funnel and how branding and sourcing play into it.
We need to consider the entire population of potential talent and where they may be in their career cycle, as well as better understand their motivations and perceptions of your organisation as an employer, to guide us as to how to build relationships.
This is the new candidate funnel – marketing first to potential talent to encourage them to start considering your organisation, before converting them into an applicant. This is particularly important in today’s cut-throat recruitment market, as the few active candidates aren’t active for long!
By increasing the level of awareness of your company as an employer of choice, we widen the top of the funnel, allowing a greater flow of talent through the funnel to ultimately increase the number of qualified and suitable candidates at the bottom of the funnel. This will ensure your recruitment teams are filling roles with the best talent in the marketplace, reducing the time it takes to do that, and allowing them to focus on providing the best possible experience to candidates and hiring managers.
To better understand proactive attraction, let’s first put ourselves in the shoes of top talent.
A highly-skilled and in-demand professional begins the year in a good place, in no way considering a career change. But by mid-year they begin to feel an itch: perhaps their role is changing in a way they hadn’t expected, or their company isn’t performing well. By the end of the year that itch has turned into action – they’re casually browsing positions and signing up for job alerts.
In the past, Employer Brand and Talent Acquisition teams may have only been interested in the December version of this professional. But proactive attraction targets the June and even the January iteration; it engages at every stage of the consideration cycle, so when December rolls around (or indeed an earlier month), you’ve positioned yourself as the preferred employer.
From a content perspective, getting a job ad in front of this person in January probably wouldn’t elicit a click. An article about ‘10 awesome things [your company] is doing in AI’ (or another relevant/trending topic to your target audience) however, is far more likely to pique their interest when casually browsing LinkedIn, which will covertly sell your organisation as an attractive workplace.
To be effective, you need to tailor your message to suit the stage of consideration. You need to think about being in the right place, at the right time, with the right message.
For those who are ready for it, I’d be creating segment-based go-to-market plans (ones for each of the critical talent segments) designed to move key audiences along the consideration journey – the funnel.
By understanding the journey, we can also be clear about the goal of each activity. What are you trying to do with that post/activation etc.? What is the best call to action? Where is the best place to direct that click? What does conversion or success look like for each activity?
It sounds tricky, but it doesn’t need to be. It’s about having a clear attraction strategy for each of the key audiences you are trying to recruit; a deliberate plan for each of your marketing activities within them, and clarity on how you’re going to use the channel/content to push talent along the journey. It’s about having a clear measurement plan and knowing what success looks like at each stage, so you can prove your ROI.
This is how you’ll be most effective in attracting talent in what’s shaping up to be the toughest recruitment market in decades.
In my last article, I touched on how the pandemic has brought into sharp focus the need for organisations to re-evaluate the experience they’re providing to employees and candidates.
EVP is just one piece of that puzzle.
To be clear though, I absolutely believe an organisation needs an EVP – a clear and memorable promise of the value you’ll provide to employees in return for their contribution. You can’t market or sell something when you don’t know the benefit it provides your audience. But at the end of the day, it is just a set of marketing messages. It isn’t solving anything.
Whilst execs are wanting (and needing) a provocative EVP to help build a strong employer brand, there are some serious limitations. Your EVP can only be as good as your employee experience and offering.
Although the timing may not be right, if you find yourself in the position where you need to do something right now – how should you respond?
Find a hook that catches your audience’s attention or your point of salience in the market. Run a campaign to make some noise and attract attention, with the aim of it resulting in an increase in job applications to fill role vacancies.
Note though, this is not an EVP but rather a creative marketing campaign. Brief your creative partners/agency accordingly.
If your current employee experience doesn’t stack up to your claims, focus on an EVP that celebrates the future state with the value offer focusing on the journey. Position your organisation in the way you wish to be, and be seen, to begin to build this image. This approach is particularly useful when you’re going through a cultural transformation and wish to attract a different type of employee.
Firstly, this approach brings a risk of an EVP becoming too organisational-focused. I often see the desire for strong strategy alignment overtaking the focus on employee needs and desires. When current and potential talent don’t see value in the offer, they’ll look for an organisation that is perceived to provide them greater personal benefit.
Secondly, there’s a risk of dialling up the level of aspiration too far. By selling a dream that’s far from reality, you’ll create dissatisfaction amongst current employees, resulting in a loss of trust and credibility.
And with employee advocacy being one of the most effective tools in employer marketing, your people must believe in and rally behind your EVP.
Position this project as a marathon, not a sprint. Make it clear that a new EVP won’t solve your people problems overnight – or even this quarter. Warn execs that they likely won’t be excited about what you uncover today in your employee research. You are giving employees an opportunity to tell you how satisfied they are, and let’s face it, life isn’t full of unicorns and rainbows right now.
This first round of research will uncover the new needs of your employees and how well you are delivering on them in comparison to your competitors. You will identify strengths as well as weaknesses.
At this point, as a leadership group, you can collectively make a decision about whether these current strengths are what you want to be known for as an employer. If they are, that is AMAZING! But if this proposition isn’t compelling or differentiated enough, then you need to be clear on what you want to be known for, then make a decision on what commitments you’re willing to make to close the gap on the aspired state.
You also need to craft an EVP that provides an authentic and credible view of your organisation today. By leaning into your (sometimes harsh) realities, you will appeal to those who are excited by where you’re at and what you’re doing, and repel those who are looking for something different (which is important, as you’ll quickly lose them anyway).
Now you can also build a degree of aspiration into your EVP as you know with confidence (and can evidence) that’s the direction and focus of the business, which will soon become a reality.
As other business stakeholders work on improving the employee offering (delivering on the commitments made above), focus on communicating your EVP – find creative ways to stand out from all the noise and get noticed in this cluttered market.
Talent are motivated by something more than a good hybrid-working policy. After facing so many challenges in all facets of life, they couldn’t be bothered with pointless projects, useless meetings, and corporate politics that hold no real value. They want to devote their time and brainpower to things that are actually meaningful and perceived to provide a positive return to them. Your focus in this next phase should be on marketing your organisation to create greater awareness and consideration of your organisation as an employer. Show talent that you are worth their time.
And now we are onto the last leg of the marathon. Once you have improved your employee experience and offering in the areas that matter most to your critical talent segments, re-do your EVP research. Only when you have built out a more compelling and differentiated product (your employee offering) can you truly achieve the EVP that your organisation is hoping for.
A solid foundation of research is so important in crafting an authentic EVP to communicate why your organisation is a great place to work. When embarking on an EVP development project, it is important to understand the views of your leadership team, but to also ensure that they can distinguish between aspiration and reality.
There will likely be challenges and speed bumps along your journey, but being armed with this knowledge, you can set more realistic expectations about what your EVP project is (and isn’t), and how and when it’ll solve your employee attraction and retention issues.
We are passionate about creating greater awareness and understanding of the value employer branding can bring to organisations, so we will regularly create content, publish articles and case studies, present webinars and participate in virtual fireside chats.
We hope to push the collective thinking of the global employer brand community, empowering them to build on what they’re doing today, and arming them with confidence and evidence for what they can do tomorrow.
We focus on the trending topics within employer branding but provide more nuanced, deeper perspectives than what exists today. Our aim is to provide practical insight and tools that everyone can use.
If we can help accelerate the transmission of good ideas even a little bit, that could be a big deal across this small but powerful industry.