If we say the words employer branding, it may not be very clear to you. However, what if we say corporate reputation or brand ambassadors? Now you do, of course. That is precisely what we want to talk about in this article: the importance of knowing the effect good employer branding can have on the progress of a company and how ifeel can help your company in creating an effective corporate brand through its emotional well-being program for companies.
What is employer branding?
As its name suggests, employer branding refers to the action and influence that employees have in shaping their company’s brand. In the same way, a company’s brand has an impact on the psychological world of its employees, through their sense of identity, sense of belonging, and satisfaction with the company they work for.
To understand the importance of good employer branding, it is necessary to ask ourselves some questions beforehand: What makes a candidate feel attracted to a particular company? How can we ensure that a company’s employees are so happy to work there that they do not want to leave for a competitor and, moreover, recommend it?
The brand’s energy
Whether we like it or not, just by the mere fact of existing, the image of any company already gives off particular energy: it arouses something in those who observe it, it inspires in them some kind of idea or sensation. Those responsible for creating and defending it are the ones who have the greatest influence on whether that energy turns into sulfur and poisons or becomes a pleasant perfume that attracts and that everyone wants to wear.
Thus, when the energy given off by a company’s external and internal image is positive, it becomes a good reputation for the company and its employees. However, when the energy is negative, it deters potential candidates from joining the company and makes employees who already work there feel uncomfortable and does not contribute to improving its reputation. On the contrary, they will tend to disown it precisely because the company’s poor image damages their personal reputation.
Employees who learn about companies
When we consider whether we want to work in a particular company or consider the possibility of signing up for an offer made by a company in our field, we use various sources of information that will influence our decision. Therefore, employer branding has a big influence on whether or not prospective employees want to join a company or not.
Whenever we have the opportunity, one of these sources of information will be the analysis of the story that a company’s employees have constructed, individually and collectively, about their experience as employees.
Sometimes this analysis is not possible because the company is not sufficiently well known, or because we do not have direct access to testimonials from current or former employees of that company. However, at other times, a company’s own notoriety, or the power of social media, gives us access to that story, and, consciously or unconsciously, we will take it into account in our particular evaluation of costs and benefits.
This is precisely what inbound recruiting processes are based on. It also gives us an idea of the importance of the corporate image and the company’s responsibility to take care of it. In addition, it allows us to perceive the usefulness of having a good strategy to promote that corporate reputation and, above all, to publicize it through its best spokespersons: the employees it already has or those who have worked for the company and are now in another one but maintain a positive link with it.
Why should a company take care of its employer branding?
As suggested in the previous sections, employer branding is not something that a company may or may not have. In fact, whether it wants to or not, every company has a brand image, a reputation, conveyed deliberately or involuntarily by its employees, regardless of the official communication channels and the advertising or marketing strategies that may be implemented to build it and make it known to the public in the broadest sense.
Whether this employer branding is positive or negative, powerful or weak, constructive or aggressive, does it attract a large and varied group of people, does it deter them from joining the company, staying in the team, or consuming its products? Beyond mere advertising or the reality that nothing appeals to everyone all the time, employer branding is crucial to the success of any organization.
For this reason, all companies must take care of the image they offer both internally and externally because if the employer branding is good, the company saves money and, if it is bad, it loses money unnecessarily. It is not the same to have a good reputation that expands easily by investing resources in it but also for free through employees, than to have a bad employer branding that repels current and potential customers (whether internal or external customers).
In essence, all organizations need to invest resources efficiently in building good, powerful and efficient employer branding in order to simply save resources when thinking about advertising, investor search, recruitment or employee psychological well-being.
What to consider for good employer branding
1. Work environment and emotional pay
Taking care of the work environment and having a social benefits policy suited to the characteristics and needs of the workforce is the first step to building a respectable and prestigious brand, leading to good employer branding. To be able to adjust these decisions, it is essential to keep effective communication channels open within the teams and between different hierarchical levels.
2. Taking care of the corporate image
When considering what is needed for good employer branding, it is important not just to actively build a powerful logo, but also a more elaborate narrative about the company’s mission statement and objectives and how beneficial it is for any employee to be part of its team. Supervising the online reputation of employees, establishing clear and coherent codes about how to speak about the company or on its behalf, promoting an appropriate aesthetic when presenting the company publicly are essential elements to achieve this.
3. Communicate the image properly
It must be done through structured marketing actions, with the disadvantage that sometimes these actions are characterized by impersonal content. It must also be done by actively involving employees so that, formally and informally (in their daily lives in contact with their social media) they act as good brand ambassadors.
That is to say: we can incorporate employee testimonials and videos illustrating what life is like in the company into our corporate channels so that the general public knows the value of our brand.
However, we must also ensure that employees are happy, feel comfortable, well recognized, and well treated. This will ensure that in their daily lives when no one from the company sees or hears them, they will spontaneously speak well of the company, even if they do not need to do so. In this way, they will organically convey their value and recommend potential future talented candidates to join the team.
4. Implement consistent functionality
The different elements we use as a company to improve the employee experience, build a good brand image and transmit it at the lowest possible cost and with the greatest possible reach must be consistent with each other. Otherwise, they will have the opposite effect to the one they are intended to achieve and not promote the end goal of employer branding.
5. Adopt a realistic point of view
For any company, the pretension of always satisfying all its employees with the same strategies is unrealistic. No matter how much we want to, and no matter how great our product or the service we offer, we can’t always please everyone.
Instead, the goal should be to target as many times as possible and for as long as possible the largest number of highly influential stakeholders.
In other words, we must be attractive and recommendable as a company to as many employees as possible and ensure that this image remains with them for as long as possible, rather than being a fleeting flash ends in disappointment.
Learn how to develop the right employer branding
Ifeel has developed an emotional well-being program for companies, designed by its team of leading psychologists with one main objective: to help companies put employee health at the heart of their strategy to boost sustainable productivity leading to good employer branding.
Thanks to this partnership, the people in charge of HR departments can receive personalized, data-driven advice on how to make good decisions in a company to get the most out of the teams they are in charge of and take better care of the psychological well-being of the people in them.
On the other hand, this program offers employees a holistic mental health care service structured at different levels according to their needs. This service includes, if required, online psychological therapy with a psychologist specialized in cases like yours. Try our program today so you can see how it could help you.
We hope you found this post about employer branding interesting. If you would like more information about our emotional well-being program for companies, simply request it and we will contact your team as soon as possible.
