Unlocking high performance with a compelling employer brand

Employees are the root of all value creation for every organisation. This makes culture and people processes the keys to unlocking competitive advantage. And that means for your organisation to thrive, your human capital must be managed as carefully as your financial capital.

This is where employer branding can help. LinkedIn found that companies with strong employer brands see up to 50% lower cost per hire and up to 28% higher retention. This is a clear sign that a strong employer brand is not just a nice-to-have, but a pre-condition for organisational success.

94% of Glassdoor users are job seekers actively looking for new jobs or are open to new opportunities. So, you have a massive opportunity to attract high-quality talent! Good employer branding is all about turning business plans into viable, effective, efficient talent plans, and bringing them to life where they can have the most impact.

And so, where to start? Build from the brand out with data to guide your decisions, and employees and candidates at the centre of your focus. Do that, and you will not only attract and engage high-quality talent. You can expect to see greater efficiency in your hiring processes and increase the value-add of HR to your business, too.

The three elements of employer branding

1.  Shared interest: Identifying and defining a value proposition that unifies business priorities with employee motivations.

2.  Focused attraction: Using that value proposition to develop creative communications that attract and inspire the right people.

3.  Meaningful experiences: Embedding the themes and ideas expressed in your value proposition into the workplace, enabling teams and individual employees to experience them in their day-to-day.

The benefits of employer branding
Effective employer branding not only attracts top talent, reduces turnover, and enhances employee commitment but also contributes to a 12% increase in profitability. Using it in your organisational or HR processes can benefit you in multiple ways.

Here are three broad ways that employer branding can benefit your organisation.

1.  See clearer

A good employer brand defines who you are and presents you in the best light to the right people. This is especially helpful to the 84% of job seekers who say that an employer’s reputation influences their decision when applying for jobs.

Moreover, it will also make you more visible to the 80% of the workforce not actively looking for work. So that when they do, they think of you.

Where to start: Initiate thorough research— Quantifying surveys, data analytics, and qualitative interviews to benchmark data. Gain insights into your current standing as an employer, understand perceptions, and identify employee motivations which best support your business goals and priorities.

2.  Build better
A well-defined employer brand is a foundational component of efficient talent attraction and employee engagement. Telling the right stories in the right way can help you attract up to three times more candidates and reduce cost per hire by as much as half because you are attracting the right people. And once those people are there, they become up to 28% less likely to leave, because they feel like they joined for the right reasons.

“A well-defined employer brand is a foundational component of efficient talent attraction and employee engagement.” – Dan Fish, Chief Creative Officer, Maximum.

Where to start: With your EVP at the core, build out a comprehensive employer brand system that equips your teams with the tools and resources they need to tell your story anywhere. Think component libraries, authentic photography and video, and compelling stories that express what working at your company really means.

3.  Perform higher

With the right narrative in place, and high-quality tools at your team’s disposal, you can expect to start seeing incremental improvements. Lower cost-per-hire, lower time-to-fill, and increased quality of hire. This in turn can lead to gradual upstream improvements in culture: increased engagement, lower turnover, and higher employee satisfaction.

Where to start: Build an authentic employer brand story. Tell the kind of stories you would want to hear. Produce assets to the highest possible standards you can achieve. Establish realistic, measurable KPIs. And stick with your strategy once you have it in place. Effective recruitment marketing can show immediate results but brand building takes time.

Foster trust
In a competitive job market, where 75% of job seekers prioritise the employer’s brand, having a strong online reputation is paramount. Failing to invest in employer branding may result in losing valuable candidates to competitors.

Emphasising the importance of cultivating an excellent online presence builds trust and credibility among employees, particularly on platforms like Glassdoor or Indeed.

Summary
Employees form the foundation of organisational value creation, making effective human capital management crucial.

Employer branding is the key, with LinkedIn revealing a 50% lower cost per hire and 28% higher retention for companies with strong employer brands. This is not just a luxury but a prerequisite for organisational success.

By focusing on shared interests, focused attraction, and meaningful engagement, employer branding attracts top talent, reduces turnover, and enhances profitability.

By initiating research, building better with purpose-led propositions, and performing better strategically, you can foster trust and thrive in the competitive job market.

This strategic approach may even elevate employee commitment and reduce turnover, increasing the value add of HR communications, raising internal profiles, and showcasing ROI as a strategic partner in brand management.

About the author: Dan Fish is Chief Creative Officer at Maximum.

Maximum x Glassdoor + Indeed: Closing the gap between what you want to do and what you can do. At Maximum, they recognise that for many Employer Brand teams, best practices and working reality are often at odds. Budget constraints, resource limitations, and the many complexities of life within a large organisation means that much of the time, it is a question of balancing competing needs, prioritising, and making trade-offs. This is exactly why they have partnered with Glassdoor and Indeed, two of the world’s leading job portals, to maximise the ROI of your investment. Focused insights. Targeted solutions. All delivered where it can make the most impact.