effort, expertise, and coordination, so you want to make sure that everything you’re doing is having the desired effect on your employer brand. If it’s not, then you know you have to do it better, or do it in a different way. To gauge the impact of your employer branding initiative and activities, analyze both short- and long-term outcomes:
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Short-term outcomes: Metrics for measuring the short-term outcomes of employer branding activities relate to the level of engagement your marketing content is generating, the number and quality of the applicants you’re attracting and hiring, as well as the total cost-per-hire. Use analytics software and any other tools at your disposal to track the success of your overall recruitment marketing strategy, your recruitment marketing campaigns, and specific recruitment marketing activities used in each campaign. Analyze the channels through which you recruit candidates, as well, to determine which are most fruitful for attracting the desired talent. (See Chapter 17 for details.)
❯❯ Long-term outcomes: Metrics for measuring long-term outcomes of your employer branding efforts are related to your brand awareness, overall attractiveness as a potential employer, and employer brand image. Internally, long-term outcomes can be measured in terms of employee pride and advocacy, employee engagement and performance, and the number and quality of referral applicants and new hires. Ideally, you should also seek to evaluate the long-term outcomes and return on investment (ROI) of your brand investment in talent, in terms of business performance measures, including productivity, customer satisfaction, and sales. (See Chapter 18 for details.)
In addition to tracking short- and long-term outcomes of your employer branding efforts, you need to look to and plan for the future. In many ways, employer branding is like trying to hit a moving target. Constant shifts in talent availability, competitive positioning and activity, your organization’s goals and objectives, and evolving talent preferences all play a part in influencing what your organization must do to attract, recruit, engage, and retain the best and the brightest. To keep from falling behind, you must continually look ahead.
Chapter 2
Preparing for the Journey
IN THIS CHAPTER
❯❯ Integrating employer branding with other branding efforts
❯❯ Evaluating talent needs and opportunities
❯❯ Pitching employer branding as a key to business success
❯❯ Getting buy-in from the right people
If employer branding is a new concept for your organization, you have plenty of work to do to lay the groundwork that will make it a success. You need to
❯❯ Find the right fit for employer branding, so it aligns with everything else your organization is doing to achieve its goals.
❯❯ Evaluate what you’re doing well and not so well in terms of attracting, engaging, and retaining employees.
❯❯ Prove the potential value of employer branding to yourself and other key stakeholders.
❯❯ Get buy-in and a commitment to support your efforts from these same stakeholders.
In this chapter, we set you on the path to building a strong employer brand by preparing yourself and other stakeholders in the organization for the difficult but rewarding work ahead.
Finding Your Fit within the Overall Company Strategy
Employer branding success depends on coordinated action throughout the organization. An employer brand should work within the broader strategic hierarchy, as shown in Figure 2-1.
© John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
FIGURE 2-1: The integrated strategy model.
This illustration of corporate brand and business strategy places employer brand strategy at the intersection between human resources (HR) and talent management and marketing, because employer brand strategy is part of all three:
❯❯ Corporate brand: Your employer brand must reflect the corporate and customer brand promises and ambitions of your company.
❯❯ HR and talent: Your employer brand must support the kind of talent capabilities required for the organization to compete effectively, and it must align with the way HR and talent management operate within the organization.
❯❯ Marketing: Marketing efforts must reinforce the corporate, customer, and employer brand while eliminating any confusion or conflict among the three.
In the following sections, we explain how to position employer branding in the organization to optimize success.
The term corporate brand is generally used to describe the overall reputation of the company, as opposed to its more specific reputation as an employer. In addition to finding your fit within the strategic hierarchy, you need to clarify your place within the brand hierarchy, as shown in Figure 2-2.
© John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
FIGURE 2-2: The integrated brand model.
From a management perspective, the most discernible manifestation of the corporate brand is its visual identity – the corporate logo, colors, fonts, and design elements used to present a consistent face to the world. (For more about this aspect of corporate branding, see Chapter 5.) Many companies also try to define some of the more intangible components of identity, including the following:
❯❯ Purpose: The organization’s reason for existence beyond making money – what the organization does. Google provides a great example of purpose: “To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
❯❯ Vision: The organization’s current end goal – what the organization is striving to achieve within a given time frame, “a dream with a deadline.” A powerful historical example of this is Microsoft’s original company vision (when access to computers was still highly limited): “To put a computer on every desk in every home.”
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