During interviews, town halls, and more “formal” corporate settings, job seekers and employees have a lot to say about your organization: the wins, innovations, and other positive perceptions your business is known for. But what do they say behind closed doors?

That behind-closed-doors commentary powers your “employer brand” – the public perception of your company as an employer. Both your employer value proposition (EVP) – the promise you make to talent who join your organization – and the authentic employee experience you deliver come together to power your employer brand.

The power of employer branding 

Your employer brand is how potential employees and the general public perceive your company’s work culture, and it’s critical to maintaining current talent and attracting and retaining talent. Despite this – and despite 96% of companies acknowledging employer brand and reputation can impact revenue – just 44% monitor impact

 A strong employer brand can reduce the cost per hire by as much as 50%, but a negative reputation can cost you as much as 10% more per hire. 

Integrating marketing and HR into the conversation

Because employer branding sits at the intersection of HR and marketing, it’s essential to bring both sides into the conversation as you’re evaluating and evolving yours – and, equally importantly, to ensure you have these voices on your ongoing employer branding team.

Marketing and HR often have distinctly different goals for employer branding campaign. What’s more, given their backgrounds and ongoing experience positioning and repositioning the organization, they’ll bring fresh perspectives to best develop and messaging your new employer brand. 

HR’s goals and responsibilities

Your human resource department oversees a part of the employer brand, promoting the culture and employee experience to job seekers. They also align company and candidate expectations based on authentic and current employee expectations, and they should strive to become an employer of choice. 

Marketing department’s goals and responsibilities

Externally, the marketing department should expand its reach to job seekers and promote a positive, worker-first employer brand to consumers. Consumers want to do business with people who treat employees well. Millennials and Gen Z care about impact beyond the products and services; companies who historically treat their workers poorly can suffer the consequences of a bad reputation. 

Another role of your marketing department: promote the worker-first brand to potential investors and business partners. These critical partners are more likely to engage companies that value their employees. 

Steps to building a strong employer brand 

With these stakeholders in place, the next step is to dig into your existing employee brand. To ensure you’ve moving participants forward and walking away with tangible, actionable results, be sure to:

1. Clearly evaluate your Employee Value Proposition (EVP) 

An employee value proposition is the set of benefits you offer employees in return for the skills, experience, and qualities they bring to the position. Strong EVPs have good benefits, great culture, and flexibility.

2. Understand your talent acquisition team’s needs, and define candidate profiles.

Present your findings to your HR teams with insights from your discovery, employee intel, and online ratings and reviews. This will help your organization define the goals and hire the right talent for you while allowing you to refine and define your mission, vision, and values. 

 3. Check for bias 

Unconscious bias can creep into employer branding exercises and, ultimately, employer brand messages. This can be detrimental to your hiring processes, and in today’s competitive market, employers don’t have the luxury of failing here. 

Are you sourcing from diverse talent pools? Are you using “blind” screening practices? (i.e. removing names and identifying markers) Are screening questions consistent from candidate to candidate? Do you have diversity in your interview/hiring team? Do you allow for flexible interviewing? (i.e. timing and location)

4. Engage leaders and employees

If your employer brand messaging isn’t authentic to your employee experience and EVP, employees and new hires will recognize it — and turnover is likely to increase significantly. Nearly 30% of job seekers have left a job within the first 90 days of starting, indicating misalignment between the candidate and the employer brand.

A marker of engagement between leaders and employees is top-down alignment on vision and values. 

5. Foster a candidate experience that aligns with your employer brand

The first taste of your employer brand happens during the recruitment process. Make sure yours is anchored in clear communication, efficiency, and feedback. When the hiring process is misaligned with your brand, new hires will quickly sense the shift when the culture they assumed was there is not, and vice versa.

Promoting and iterating your employer brand

With a new employer brand in the place, the final steps are to message it out to talent and job seekers. Keep in mind, though, employer branding isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it process. You’ll need to revisit, refine, and iterate on your employer brand, tapping the right experts and insiders to keep your employer brand moving forward. That team should include: 

  • Leadership 
  • HR and recruiters 
  • Marketing and brand teams 
  • Indeed experts, who can fill gaps and provide expert insights and next steps, including ways to promote your employer brand via existing and premium tools. 

For enterprises and larger organizations, these resources may be in-house. If not, consider the base skills needed for effective employer branding, including: 

HR and talent acquisition expertise

In-house, contract, and staffing agencies managing your “core” staffing and HR.

Marketing knowledge

Tap into the insiders responsible for your consumer brand – in-house, agencies, and freelancers, for example.

Social media expertise

In-house, freelance, or agency teams managing your brand’s social media presence.

In-depth knowledge of your company’s culture

Leadership, employee groups, hiring managers, and other established insiders. 

Successful employer branding = successful recruitment and retention

No matter the structure, though, your employer branding team and resources should focus on continuously revisiting your employer brand to ensure it’s aligned with marketplace and employee expectations and authentic to your current business and organizational culture. 

Great employer branding goes hand-in-hand with successful recruitment and retention. Your brand is more than what you look like from the outside; it’s about how people feel when they experience your work environment. While logos and websites can be compelling, they aren’t the entire picture, and cultivating an employer brand experience that is authentic, open, and inclusive will lead to better attraction and retention results.