It is important to have a strong Employer Brand because that is how all employees, present or past, view you.
According to Glassdoor, this guide will walk you through everything you need to know to build the best brand.
What Is an Employer Brand?
There is the brand reputation that you create through clever marketing and ad campaigns, and through your products and services—and then there’s the brand that is created by the perception people have of you as an employer, and your public promise to employees. The latter is what’s called an employer brand—and it’s vital to your company’s overall success.
Put another way, an employer brand is how you market your company to job seekers. It’s how you present yourself—and how you respond to those who leave reviews about you.
An effective employer brand shares what makes your organization a great place to work, and will communicate that you care about your employees—their success, and happiness.
Why Is Employer Branding Important?
An authentic, well-defined employer brand is essential to recruiting and retaining quality talent in today’s market. Why? Because employer branding attracts informed candidates.
When candidates view jobs alongside branded content that helps them qualify themselves, your company reaps the benefits of higher quality applicants and lower recruiting costs.
Your employer brand also impacts whether potential investors, as well as customers, want to invest with you and do business with you. While a positive employer brand will attract investors and customers, a negative employer brand could cost your investments and sales.
How to Build an Employer Brand
To build a positive employer brand, there are several steps you should take. First, you must understand that employer brand is something you can actively cultivate and a good initial step is claiming your profile on Glassdoor, where you can add critical company details that savvy job seekers consider before applying for work at any company, such as the number of your employees, industry details, company mission, benefits, and perks—plus add photos.
You’ll also want to build similar profiles on other external sites, and create robust internal documents and webpages that describe your company mission and perks of working there.
Lastly, a big part of building a positive employer brand is managing employee reviews. But we’ll share more on that below.
How Much Does Employer Branding Cost?
Smart businesses designate an individual whose job it is to build your employer brand. This will ensure that all levels of your organization—from CEO to HR—will be on the same page regarding brand messaging and strategy. But how much will that person (and the expenses of their job) really cost? In a 2016 Harris survey commissioned by Glassdoor, company cost averaged $129,000. Companies with up to 499 employees spent $6,300; those with up to 3,499 employees spent $81,400; and those with 3,500 or more employees spent $335,900.
How Glassdoor Shapes Employer Brand
Glassdoor is very important for talent acquisition and employee engagement. After all, 83 percent of job seekers are likely to research company reviews and ratings when deciding where to apply for a job, and more than 64 million unique users visit Glassdoor’s mobile applications and website monthly. If you don’t have a Glassdoor profile, you’re missing out.
How to Respond to Employee Reviews
Part of your employer brand—and using Glassdoor to shape it—is employee reviews. Of course, it’s easy to “deal” with positive reviews. You should always thank employees for leaving positive reviews, and express what a pleasure it is (or was) to work with them.
Negative reviews can be initially biting. But effectively responding to company reviews—even negative ones—is part of any solid employee engagement and employer branding strategy. (In fact, 62 percent of job seekers say their perception of a company improves after seeing an employer respond to a review, according to a Glassdoor U.S. Site Survey.)
With a negative review, you should respond promptly, welcoming the employee’s feedback, then addressing specific comments—explaining, when possible, how you will correct any issues for the future—and amplifying the positive aspects of working for your company.
Responding to reviews can be a full-time job in-and-of-itself, which is why it’s smart to designate someone whose job it is to do so. Choose someone with the bandwidth to get involved, and determine with him or her what their cadence will be for monitoring new reviews and curating templated responses that you can tweak in order to save time.
Now that you have all of the tools to build your brand, put them to the test. A strong employer brand will assist in attracting candidates and leave a positive view on your company.
Original article here.
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