Your employer brand is the way people feel about working for your company. People’s experience with your company from the job application through to retirement can affect your employer brand, and your hiring process is a major part of that. And while your employer brand might not seem related to your customers and sales on the surface, bad employee or potential employee experiences can hurt your business.
One of the most common reasons you might have a poor employer brand is because your application process is upsetting people. After investing their time and effort, people expect to be informed about the status of their application. However, some employers don’t keep applicants up to date or leave them waiting for weeks. With today’s technology, there’s no excuse not to send an email confirmation quickly.
National research conducted by CareerBuilder revealed a shocking 82% of employers expected little to no negative business impact when a candidate had a poor experience in the hiring process. However, 58% of applicants are less likely to buy from a company after getting no response to their application, and 69% are less likely to buy after having a bad experience during their job interview.
How Can You Improve Your Employer Brand?
Employers of any size can and should work on developing their employer brand. Here is a list of places to start:
- Develop your Employee Value Proposition based on your strengths and values.
- Improve your applicant communications.
- Improve your hiring process.
- Start treating applicants more like customers — value them.
- Get your employees engaged.
- Use social media. Acknowledge your employees’ accomplishments on social media and give them a platform to share their expertise and stories as the human faces of your company. When you share the spotlight with your employees, you display confidence in them, boost their engagement, and generate additional interest in your company.
If you focus on improving your employer brand and the job application process, you will not only attract and retain the right employees but also the right business. If you don’t, you can hurt your business and lose customs, and that’s before factoring in the people in their social circles who they will share their bad experience with.
Remember These Key Points:
- Your employer brand is influencing your ability to attract candidates, particularly higher quality candidates with lower salaries.
- Your employer brand may be hurting your sales if it’s not good.
- Most employers grossly underestimate the impact of an employer brand on their bottom line.
- Given competitive hiring conditions and its potential impact on revenue, employer branding should be on your list of “must address” strategic initiatives.
Choose one or two of the tips above for improving your employer brand, and try to incorporate them into your hiring process or your current employees’ experiences. Then let us know in the comments which of these tips was most helpful for you and how it improved your business.
SW HR Consulting has been helping companies to build their teams and values for over 10 years. Contact us to find out more about our unique hr outsourcing services and see how our expertise can benefit you.
