Whether you’re new to employer branding or a pro that’s been around the block a few times, it’s still sometimes difficult to describe exactly what an employer brand is to those outside the industry.

There’s no single roadmap or strategy to follow. For each company, an employer brand will embody something entirely different, even while working towards many of the same goals, or when looking to attract similar talent. 

So what if we try to humanise an employer brand, and take a step back to really put ourselves in the shoes of the prospective candidate?

Let’s not think of it as a roadmap or strategy and take it right back to basics. As a candidate, what are the key things you would want to see, hear, think and feel about a company?

In this article, we’re going to explore the key candidate ‘senses’ that brands should look to engage, and all the ways it can be done… 

What candidates want to see… 

Employee satisfaction

There’s no greater cheerleader for your brand than those who already work for you. If your candidates can have access to real-world testimonials and trust factors from employees, they are more likely to form a positive opinion about your company. 

While it’s not the be all and end all, more often than not GlassDoor is one of the first destinations for candidates. If you’re putting some great stuff about culture out to the world, but your reviews on GlassDoor are overwhelmingly negative, you’ll need some damage control. 

Active social media

When a company isn’t very active on social media it can imply three things:

1. There’s nobody there to take care of it
2. The team is too overworked to manage it
3. The company is very traditional and will be reluctant to change

Keeping your channels fresh, engaging and populated will help candidates take your brand seriously. And what better way to tell your brand story?

Likewise, it’s not uncommon to have a friendly stalk of a prospective company’s employees’ LinkedIn profiles, so it’s important to encourage employees to be as active as they can. If not on their personal channels, showcasing them on your brand’s main channels can still work wonders.

Team spirit and culture 

Now this is an important one, but one of the trickiest to do. Company culture has been catapulted to the top of many employers’ priority lists, but when the pandemic struck it became difficult to maintain. Now we’re seeing a slow ascend back to some kind of normality, employer brand teams can really start embracing company culture once more. 

A big part of this is retaining the option to work flexibly or in some kind of hybrid capacity.

Benefits in action 

Think bigger than stocked fridges and massage Wednesdays. What are the perks that are going to really pay off for your employees and keep them happy longer term? 

Perhaps a paid sabbatical after a certain amount of years’ service. Or a free gym membership to keep their health in check. Small recurring gestures such as free fruit are a really nice touch, but there needs to be some bigger acts that can actually help your employees reach their goals – both inside and outside of work.

Detailed job descriptions 

Vague job roles are a red flag for anyone, but they’re guaranteed to make your candidate feel uneasy about applying. A job is a huge life commitment. You wouldn’t enquire about a house if there was a lack of detail – it would be suspicious and off-putting.

Provide as much detail as possible, and if the role is set to evolve, make that clear from the outset. Plus, be careful not to omit the salary as that’s a big red flag for most candidates.

What candidates want to hear…

Support and encouragement

When high-level jobs are advertised, the language used can sometimes be complex and intimidating. 

While it’s important to attract the candidate that matches your desired profile, remember to keep an element of friendliness and warmth or you may deter strong candidates from applying. This is a particular danger when allowing external recruiters to write job ads on your behalf, you should ensure you always get the final sight of any job advert or description that goes out.

Additionally, giving candidates the option to interview via video call or in-person will help to widen your talent pool, particularly if a candidate is interviewing for the role and considering relocation.

It’s advised to weigh up whether a virtual interview will help or hinder the process, and assess what’s available on a case-by-case basis.

Inspirational messaging

While the practical and matter-of-fact information takes primary importance in any campaigns you put out, remember you could be against any number of competitors offering a similar role. Whether it’s a Spotify ad, a radio recruitment drive or virtual careers fair, don’t miss any opportunity to inspire and let the world know just how incredible it is to work for your company.

Voices from inside the business as well as the brand

If you’ve got plenty of branded content going out, that’s great news, but it will only take you so far. Candidates want to see real faces and hear the voices of your employees, whether that’s a general insight into working for the company or department-specific information.

What candidates need to think about your company…

“This is a company I want to work for”

How this is achieved…

• Having a strong employer brand
• Creating engaging and exciting recruitment campaigns
• Boasting positive reviews from existing employees
• Offering competitive salary and additional benefits

“They treat their employees so well”

How this is achieved…

• Putting existing employees at the heart of your recruitment assets
• Encouraging individuals to post about their experience on professional social media networks
• Filming and promoting lots of high-quality video content about working life and culture

“I can’t wait to get started”

How this is achieved…

• Keeping open, honest communication throughout the process, from application to hire
• Providing new starters with an agenda of their first week/month
• Putting together a welcome pack to make them feel welcome
• Incorporating virtual or in-person ‘meet the team’ session prior to start date

“I can see a future here”

How this is achieved…

• Promoting stories about employees who have been around a long time
• Speaking about positive retention rates in collateral
• Informing employees of incentivised loyalty benefits such as paid sabbaticals, increasing holiday or other rewards after ‘X’ years of service

How your employer brand should make your candidates feel…

Confident that what they’re seeing is genuine

Everything needs to add up. If the story you’re telling through your campaigns and social media isn’t supported by positive employee reviews or contradictory information online, candidates could disengage before they’ve applied.

Excited about their prospects and the potential of the company

If the company has ambitious plans for the future, ensure this narrative is woven through the recruitment and hiring process. Candidates need to be aware of when they’re starting at a business that’s going in the right direction. The greater the potential success of the brand, the more career growth opportunities they could be presented with. 

At ease asking questions and with the recruitment team

The interview process can be daunting at the best of times. But when your hiring managers are confident, engaging and welcoming, candidates will feel more at home being themselves and more likely to delve into the questions they really want to ask. 

Get every aspect of your employer brand on track with BAM by Papirfly™ 

By now we hope we’ve helped you understand the candidate’s experience from their perspective. Everything we have covered also needs foundations in a powerful employer brand.

With BAM (Brand Activation Management), you can create, access, manage and share every aspect of your campaigns and brand in one place.

• Create infinite digital, print, social, email and video assets without professional support – all delivered on time and on-brand
• Store, share and edit pre-existing assets and files – all perfectly organised with no need to waste time on searching or duplication of effort 
• Manage campaign timelines, the sign off process and more effortlessly in our centralised portal 
• Educate teams with a dedicated selection of assets that help them understand your brand and how to showcase your employer brand

If you would like to see the power of BAM for yourself, a demo is a great place to start. Find out more about our software or book your demo today.

For better or worse, social media networks are an integral part of our lives – and channels that modern marketers must master.

Why? Because over 5 billion people worldwide use social media channels at least once per month – a figure that is expected to touch 6 billion by 2027. As a result, it’s one of the main avenues for brands to communicate directly with their consumers, tell stories and build trust with their audience.

That makes a strong, consistent social media brand incredibly valuable. Not only does it ensure your audiences can recognise your brand’s identity – they can also get to know your values. Any break in uniformity risks eroding these delicate relationships.

In this essential guide, we’ll outline how you can sustain a consistent brand voice across your social profiles, and share our top tips to enhance your long-term social media marketing strategy.

What is social media branding?

Social media branding is how you utilise your social networks to grow, promote and evolve your brand’s identity. Put simply, it’s how you choose to portray your brand on social media.

With how prevalent these platforms are in modern society, this is very likely where someone first encounters your brand. So, the content on your profiles must be crafted and curated to clearly share your values and personality, in the same way you would approach your website or general advertising.

What are the key elements of social media branding?

An effective social media brand must get several key aspects correct to successfully resonate with audiences.

Consistency: You must maintain a consistent tone, style, and visual identity across your social media posts to reinforce brand recognition and trust.

Content creation: You must develop and share relevant and compelling types of content, including imagery and video content, that connects with people and aligns with your branding.

Engagement: You must actively interact with followers, responding to comments, messages, and mentions to foster relationships and build long-term loyalty.

Brand voice: You must establish a distinct, authentic brand voice that reflects your organisation’s personality and values.

Community building: You must cultivate a community through user-generated content (UGC) and create opportunities for your followers to participate and support your brand.

While each element is important, brand consistency is the most essential piece of the puzzle – and often the most challenging to enforce.

The importance of social media brand consistency

Consistency is the base for any stable, trustworthy relationship. The relationship between you and your social media followers is no different. 

Today’s consumers want to trust the brands they buy from. They want to feel they share the same values, speak the same language, and have comparable priorities. Especially on social media, which has always been a more “personal” environment, many people use these platforms to understand brands rather than buy from them.

This is why brand consistency is so vital on these channels. If your followers get mixed messages from your content, or markedly different experiences when they communicate with your brand through social media, they start to question what your brand stands for.

Questioning breeds mistrust, and mistrust is a slippery slope to losing followers and brand recognition.

Beyond damaging the trust of your followers, an inconsistent social media presence can also make your organisation appear unprofessional. If your posts deviate from your primary brand colours, mix up typographies or constantly change formats, it reflects a lack of internal organisation. And nobody wants to buy from a brand that appears disjointed.

Further problems caused by inconsistency on your social media platforms include:

• Followers failing to recall your brand when in the market for your products and services
• Reduced engagement and interaction with your posts from your followers
• Less effective paid social campaigns alongside your organic content
• Weakening your overall brand equity

How often should I post on social media to maintain brand consistency?

Brand consistency doesn’t simply apply to the quality of your content or how you communicate with your audiences. You should also be consistent in how frequently you post on social media.

People are creatures of habit – if they enjoy your content, they will carve out the time to seek it out. But, if you take a scattergun approach to scheduling content, users won’t be able to track it accordingly. Think of it like your favourite TV show – if new episodes came out at a random date and time each week, would you be following it as closely?

With so many social media channels, each with different audiences and algorithms, how often you post must be adjusted accordingly. Here’s a quick guide based on best practices:

Of course, your understanding of your audience will dictate whether you post more or less frequently. Nevertheless, a set calendar for when and where your posts are published will help ensure a consistent experience for your followers.

8 tips for building a consistent social media branding strategy

1. Lock down your brand identity and goals

First, the key to consistency on social media is having your purpose, mission, values and identity nailed down before sharing your first post. Every relevant person on your team, from your dedicated social media brand manager, to marketers in your local outlets, should fully understand what your brand stands for.

Now, your social media brand may vary slightly from your other marketing channels depending on your goals for these platforms. Do you want to raise brand awareness? Do you intend to generate leads? Is it simply a means for your customers to message your brand?

Whatever your social media brand represents, centralise it in one all-encompassing brand hub. From here, your teams worldwide can access digital brand guidelines, style guides and more to ensure any marketing materials they produce align with your core branding and overarching goals.

2. Establish your target audience

Next, consider your target audience – who are your posts communicating with?

• How old are they?
• Where do they spend their time online and offline?
• Which platforms are they likely to use?
• What are their pain points?

This may not be straightforward to answer as different social channels attract different audiences. For instance, younger consumers lean towards platforms such as TikTok and Instagram, while Facebook has now cultivated an older user base.

Establishing personas for every social network you intend to use will help keep your messaging aligned with their specific wants and preferences, while remaining within your brand guidelines.

3. Define your social media channels

Based on what you know about your audiences, this should help you define what channels to devote your efforts to. It’s unlikely your ideal customers will be active on every social channel, so this will help you streamline your content and focus your attention on the areas where you stand to make the greatest gains.

For example, LinkedIn is a go-to platform for B2B businesses, but may hold less value for B2C organisations.

Being selective with your social media channels also empowers your teams to fully understand these platforms – their nuances, their best-performing types of content, their ideal posting times. This knowledge will allow you to optimise your content accordingly, so it reaches the right audiences at the right times, all while telling a compelling, consistent story.

4. Create a social content calendar

As we noted earlier, consistency applies just as much to the frequency of your posts as it does to the quality of your visual content. With this in mind, creating a social calendar helps ensure that your channels maintain the regularity your audiences expect.

Here are a few best practices when setting up your schedule:

• Develop a variety of content themes and pillars (educational, entertainment, promotional, etc.) and spread these out to keep your feeds engaging
• Research each platform you use to determine their most optimal posting times
• Follow the 80/20 rule when producing content, with 80% of your content providing value and 20% promoting your goods or services
• Leave capacity for user-generated content, special announcements and more
• Highlight noteworthy holidays, relevant events and awareness dates to tailor content for these occasions

5. Build social post templates

Creating consistent brand assets demands dependable templates. While easily accessible brand guidelines help keep everyone on the same page, intelligent templates make this second nature for your social media teams, ensuring they cannot deviate from your visual identity.

As well as locking down the position of your logo, brand colours, design elements and more, branded design templates enable you to create real-time marketing materials for your various channels and locations. Your templates can match the optimal size and layout of each platform, and enable users to switch up the language or imagery for different countries and cultures.

Fundamentally, templates empower your social media marketers to work faster, confidently and cost-effectively, all while preventing inconsistencies.

6. Produce communication guidelines

Consistency on social media goes beyond your day-to-day feeds – it’s how you communicate with followers one-to-one. Any difference in tone or experience when answering a user’s comment or replying to a private message can be just as damaging to their overall impression of your brand.

By developing communication guidelines for those responsible for engaging with your followers, you can keep these messages consistent with your values and tone of voice. This may include set responses for particular scenarios, such as how to respond to a complaint or negative comment, or what user posts it’s okay for your platform to share and comment on.

Responsive engagement is integral to the performance of your social media strategy – and an approach that will keep your tone aligned with your overarching goals and identity.

7. Set up a home for your digital assets

If your company has teams spread worldwide, consistency is a real challenge. It only takes one rogue post to disrupt your communications and damage your reputation with your followers. That’s why it’s useful to have everyone in your organisation working from the same bank of digital assets.

Intelligent templates and a central brand hub can help achieve this, but Digital Asset Management (DAM) provides an added layer of protection. These solutions provide a repository where users can store and access all approved social assets, and from here adapt them for local audiences.

With this “single source of truth” for your social media brand, you can publish on-brand collateral across any platform, and maintain a birds-eye view over the consistency of your assets. Plus, these digital libraries enable you to tag and categorise assets, so your teams can find what they need faster and easier:

By managing your digital assets effectively, you can lock down consistency across every social media channel and campaign, without proofing-related bottlenecks.

8. Monitor your social media channels

Finally, you should monitor and track your social media channels multiple times a day. Whenever a post is scheduled for release, you should check that it’s been published correctly and give it one final sense-check for consistent tone and appearance.

If you’ve taken all the previous steps, this should be a mere formality. However, inconsistencies can still slip through the cracks, and frequent monitoring allows you to react to any problems swiftly before they cause any harm to your brand reputation.

Plus, if your posts receive any negative comments or feedback, regular monitoring enables you to respond quickly with a well-crafted reply. This engagement shows your audience that you listen to feedback and don’t attempt to sweep negative reviews under the rug.

The future of social media branding

Even as the world becomes more critical of the role social media plays in shaping our minds and behaviours, its evolution is one that marketers will be keen to keep up with. 

While there’s no way of knowing exactly where social media marketing will be in as little as 10 months – as the number of users continues to grow and these platforms mature, the power of social media is only going to become more prolific. 

Of course, the number of brands entering the social media landscape will rise too. To stand out amidst an expanding sea of content, it’s going to take a remarkable strategy and team – one where intelligent, on-brand templating is at the centre.

Maintain a consistent social media presence on all platforms with Papirfly

Brand consistency is a core mark of trust and quality for consumers across the globe. Maintaining a coordinated presence on your social platforms keeps your reputation with followers strong, and ensures your organisation’s values, personality and visual identity are delivered to your audiences exactly as intended.

The challenges of multichannel marketing and the content demands of social networks can make consistency an ongoing problem. The techniques outlined in this guide will help you stay on top of your day-to-day posts, so nothing on your feeds drifts away from your core brand identity – even campaigns focused on local markets.

When supported by a reliable brand management platform, you’ll never need to question the consistency of your social media channels again – and empower your teams to produce assets cost-efficiently to satisfy your content-hungry followers.

Up until recently, employer branding has been seen by many as a ‘nice-to-have’. Something that gives employees a few extra perks and helps improve morale.

Better late than never, senior-level CEOs have come to realise its true potential for their business’s profitability. Here’s why you should too.

What can employer branding do for your company?

Higher employee engagement. Better recruitment campaigns. Lower staff turnover. The direct benefits of a successful Employer Value Proposition (EVP) are pretty clear.

• Companies that actively invest in their employer brand reduce turnover by as much as 28% (Source: Officevibe)
• 50% of candidates will not work for a company with a bad reputation, even if they were paid more (Source: HR Daily Advisor)
• A strong employer brand attracts 2.5x the applicants of a weaker equivalent (Source: Startup Bonsai)

Less obvious are some of the indirect ways these and other factors can have a big impact on profitability. Employer branding is still a hugely underestimated way of increasing revenue. Businesses are missing out on the enormous potential it can have when you give it the time and resources it needs.

If allowed to realise its full potential, a strong employer brand should reach every employee and enable them to do their best work – as well as empower your company’s ability to capture consumers’ attention in an increasingly competitive landscape.

Building your reputation

In a packed field of competitors all fighting for the attention of the same group of customers, the strength of a brand’s reputation directly influences how positively they stand out from the crowd. A good reputation could be the difference in who they choose to buy from, and your employer brand plays an active role in establishing this perception.

Whether it is highlighting your company’s culture through videos or on your website, or harnessing your employees’ experience on social media, your employer branding is a big influence on how incentivised customers and the wider world are to buy from your company.

Why this boosts profitability

Your employer brand helps you build a positive reputation by reflecting the purpose and values that come through in your advertising. As well as being hyper-aware of modern marketing tactics, consumers are now more in tune with the inner workings of well-known organisations. Research shows that the way a company treats its employees will have a significant effect on buying decisions.

Consequently, creating campaigns around your employees’ happiness and development will build customers’ trust in your brand. Plus, what they say and share about your products and services on their own personal channels often holds more weight than your conventional adverts or messages from the CEO.

If you commit to creating an authentic, positive environment for your employees, this will resonate with both them and your customer base. Don’t underestimate the power your employees yield in your overall reputation – when former employees at Brewdog accused the company of having a “toxic attitude” and creating a “culture of fear”, their positive reputation plummeted, as did overall buzz surrounding the brand.

Earning positive reviews

You should also never underestimate a positive (or negative) employee review. When we buy something online or pick out a restaurant to visit, many of us instinctively turn to review sites to gauge others’ opinions. The same goes for candidates planning their next career move.

Even with a suite of benefits and a recruitment campaign that ticks all the boxes, looking at what past and present employees are saying about a company is the logical way to find out what it’s like working there. 

As well as being one of the most cost-effective recruiting tools, employee reviews are the best way to attract the sharpest minds to your business. In the same way that many companies encourage product reviews to win over customers, your hiring managers have an interest in using positive employee feedback to attract in-demand candidates.

Why this boosts profitability

A strong employer brand means engaged employees who will put the word out that your company is a great place to work. Research from The Harvard Business Review has shown that 80% of employee turnover is due to bad hiring decisions. 

When you combine this with the fact that the average cost of employee turnover is estimated at over £30,000, bad hiring decisions – made as a result of a limited pool of talent due to negative reviews – stand to cost your company significantly.

Having a wider choice of better talent, attracted to your organisation by a strong, inspiring employer brand with numerous positive reviews, makes it more likely that you’ll make a successful hire, limiting your turnover rate… 

Improving employee performance

When your teams are engaged, they are more driven to achieve. This may sound obvious, but many companies fail to see the link between a strong EVP and high performing staff.

Getting your staff engaged with your business goals takes more than offering face-value perks. To build on your employees’ drive to succeed and make the most of their talents, it’s important to set clear goals, provide regular praise and feedback, and give them opportunities to grow through courses and learning opportunities.

Why this boosts profitability

Engaged employees have a knock-on effect throughout a company. It’s often the case that if one team achieves well, it will help another perform better too. Companies with higher employee wellbeing have long been associated with higher business performance. Recent research has proved this to be more true than many may have thought.

Make your employer brand shine with BAM

We hope this has illustrated the direct and indirect influence that strong, effective employer branding can have on your organisation’s financial performance. Getting the maximum ROI from your employer brand efforts can be a major difference-maker in how motivated customers are to buy from you, how long employees stick around, and how productive they are day-to-day.

While employer branding represents a sensible investment in your company’s future, BAM by Papirfly™ empowers it to reach peak performance. Offering the freedom to create consistent print, digital and email marketing without agency support, free your teams up for initiatives that drive employer brand excellence.

Enjoy cost and time savings, eliminate duplicated effort and gain a birds-eye view of your global recruitment activity – discover the full benefits of BAM today by booking a demo.

In the fierce battle to recruit and retain the best talent available, a company’s reputation means more than ever. With the latest generations of candidates becoming increasingly selective about the employers they work for, it’s imperative that today’s organisations pay close attention to the strength of their employer brand.

Without positive employer branding, hiring and retaining talent becomes a real challenge – and very costly. To put yourself at the front of the queue for top prospects and establish yourself as a great place to work, a solid employer brand is no longer an option – it’s a necessity.

With decades of experience helping global organisations maximise the potential of their employer brand, we know its value and the huge benefits it can unlock. After reading this complete guide, you will as well.

• Learn what employer branding is and what it includes
• Discover the advantages of a strong employer brand
• Explore the steps to building better employer branding
• See what the top employer brands are doing to attract recruits

Want to identify, engage and secure the right talent for your organisation? Then let’s get started…

What is employer branding?

Employer branding is how you shape and promote your company’s reputation as an employer. It’s the assets, processes and values designed to attract top potential candidates, retain high-performing employees, and create an inclusive, productive work environment.

Fundamentally, a strong employer brand encourages job seekers to explore your openings and makes your existing employees feel like part of a united entity. Conversely, a weak employer brand damages your ability to attract top talent and keep employees around long-term.

What does employer branding include?

Employer branding is more than your career site or your Glassdoor profile. It’s a multi-layered approach across numerous channels:

Essentially, your employer branding covers anywhere a potential candidate or current employee would engage with your organisation. So this must all be carefully considered and interconnected under one strategy to reap the best possible results (more on this later).

What is your Employer Value Proposition (EVP)?

One of the most important aspects of any employer brand is the Employer Value Proposition (EVP). Your EVP is the core document outlining the benefits, values and reasons why a prospective recruit should join your company. It’s the shining beacon of your talent acquisition efforts.

While the contents of your EVP will be unique to your organisation, these often contain:

• Company mission, vision and core values
• Compensation, benefits and perks
• Work-life balance initiatives and details
• Flexible or remote work opportunities
• Training and career development prospects
• Social responsibility and charity initiatives
• Company social events and activities
• Employer recognition efforts

Simply put, anything you believe would entice candidates and encourage your team members to stick around should be featured in your EVP. If it doesn’t include these key elements or is failing to connect with recruits, then maybe it’s time to consider an EVP refresh?

What is company culture?

Your company culture is the “personality” and identity of your organisation. It encapsulates the various values, activities, communications and more that shape how your employees engage with their work and each other – ranging from internal newsletters, training and career development, to company outings and social events.

Typically, a good, diverse and inclusive company culture improves productivity, wellbeing and talent retention. On the other hand, a poor company culture can negatively impact your team’s performance and encourage high turnover.

What are employee ambassadors?

Employee ambassadors are employees who actively promote the advantages of working for your organisation, whether that’s on social media, review websites or simply word of mouth. They are your biggest advocates in appealing to the competitive talent pool.

Ideally, you want every member of your team to be an employee ambassador, but this is often unrealistic, especially in large, global organisations. So, it’s a good strategy to introduce perks and benefits for employees to actively showcase your company’s brand in a positive light, giving them an incentive to organically share their experience with others.

How does employer branding differ from consumer branding?

Your employer brand focuses on attracting and retaining talent in the same way your consumer brand is designed to connect with your customers and generate sales.

However, while they appeal to distinct audiences, they can often influence each other. For instance, a brand that presents a welcoming and inclusive company culture will often reflect well on today’s more socially aware consumers, who want to feel good about the brands they buy from.

Why is employer branding important?

As noted earlier, your employer brand is essentially your employer reputation. A great reputation puts you in an advantageous position to attract and retain top talent. A poor reputation means you face an uphill battle in the intensifying battle for the best candidates. 

With 9 out of 10 employers struggling to fill jobs in the current landscape, the importance of a fleshed-out, compelling employer brand is greater than ever. But its benefits extend beyond your recruitment strategy.

What are the benefits of a strong employer brand?

Improves your attractiveness to potential recruits

First and foremost, a solid employer brand helps you stand out to job hunters. The more you can say, share and promote the benefits of working for your organisation, the more likely you will appeal to the job market ahead of your competitors. When nearly 85% of candidates consider a company’s reputation before applying, this is an area you cannot afford to ignore.

It’s not only active job seekers that check out your employer brand. Approximately 82% of employees say they would switch jobs for a company with an excellent reputation. So, it not only raises your attractiveness to available talent, but also catches the eye of high performers already working in your industry.

Reduces your recruitment costs

You likely know how costly the recruitment process can be. Research by CIPD has found that the average cost of filling a vacancy is around €7,000 (£6,100). For managerial roles, this grows closer to €22,000 (£19,000).

Good employer branding can trim these costs in a big way, as you may be able to avoid employing hefty advertising campaigns or hiring recruitment agencies. Candidates who consider your brand attractive are more likely to apply of their own accord when opportunities become available.

Furthermore, if they have a better understanding of your brand’s culture, perks and values, those who don’t align with these will deselect themselves faster. This means you don’t waste time pursuing ill-fitting recruits, further benefiting your bottom line.

Increases your employee retention rates

Of course, the best way to minimise your recruitment costs is to keep your top-performing employees on board. Strong employer branding supports this by fostering a sense of belonging among your workforce, aligning people around shared values and business goals.

Research shows that better employer branding can reduce staff turnover by as much as 28% – resulting in a more experienced, stable work environment and less stress on recruiting and training new arrivals. So, by building an employer brand that addresses the reasons why people leave jobs, you can set your company up for a solid future.

Want to know more? Find out how you can build an employer brand that maximises employee retention.

Enhances employee engagement and productivity

Fostering a sense of belonging and pride naturally inspires employees to work harder because they believe in the values their company stands for. In fact, it’s estimated that employees connected to their organisation’s mission and values are 67% more engaged.

This greater engagement inspires greater productivity. If your employees feel part of a rewarding, comfortable and inclusive culture, they will likely feel motivated to do their best day in and day out.

Creates a more positive company culture

Have you heard of quiet quitting? It’s a growing trend in companies worldwide where employees focus on doing the bare minimum at work, with no ambition to evolve or pursue further opportunities. This often develops from a negative company culture, something a good employer brand helps address.

Better employer brand management can help reinforce the benefits and opportunities for progression within your organisation. This in turn can inspire reductions in stress and burnout, and positively impact employee health and wellbeing.

Encourages better company reviews on third-party sites

Did you know that 86% of job seekers look at company reviews and ratings to decide where to apply? Sites like Glassdoor, The Job Crowd and Work Advisor hold a lot of sway over your company’s appeal to recruits – too many negative reviews can cause real damage.

A strong employer brand can help counteract this threat by encouraging employees to become advocates and ambassadors. With clearly defined values and a more appealing culture, your team will be more likely to leave positive reviews, which then grows your reputation among candidates.

How can you measure the strength of your employer brand?

So now you understand the value of a strong employer brand, it might be time to assess how yours is performing. 

While there is no all-encompassing “employer branding” metric you can track, in our experience there are several areas you can use to judge how your brand is performing, including:

• Job application rate
• Job acceptance rate
• Time to hire
• Cost-per-hire
• Employee retention rate
• Source of hires
• Third-party reviews

8 steps to building your employer brand strategy

Your employer brand strategy is the foundation for how you will set your company apart in the battle to attract, recruit and retain talent. 

Establishing and documenting a set strategy is vital to ensure your employer branding efforts are aligned, consistent and effective at every touchpoint. Based on our close relationships with employer brand teams worldwide, here are our 8 key steps to a successful strategy.

1. Conduct an audit on your existing employer brand

First, determine where you are right now:

• How is your brand perceived by candidates?
• What do your employees think about your company?
• Do you communicate your values and objectives well?

These and further reflective questions will help you understand where your existing employer brand succeeds and where it struggles. It will also help you settle on the main identity, values and USPs you want to communicate to your teams and potential recruits.

2. Establish your preferred candidate persona

Who is your ideal candidate? What traits, skills and characteristics do they possess?

Much like you build your marketing around your target customer, you must mould your employer branding around the talent you seek, ranging from experienced industry specialists to graduates and Gen Z candidates.

This helps you tailor your messages to your prospects, focusing on the benefits, values and goals that speak to them.

3. Define your unique EVP

As the centrepiece of your employer brand, your employer value proposition should be drafted with careful consideration. Earlier we noted what your EVP might include, from pay, perks and benefits, to describing your company culture and mission statements.

On top of this, it can be beneficial to enlist the support of your marketing, communications and HR teams to help you draft this. Modern-day recruitment is closer to marketing than ever before, so their expertise can help you strike the right tone and translate your EVP across every channel it appears on.

4. Select your employer brand communication channels

Speaking of channels, next it’s important to decide where you will communicate your employer brand. It can take up to 18 interactions between a candidate and a company before an application is sent. So your employer brand strategy should cover all potential touchpoints, including:

• Career site or page
• Social media channels
• Job and review sites
• Current employee profiles
• Networking events and career fairs
• Email marketing
• Job adverts
• Interview processes
• Internal newsletters

By outlining all channels and how you intend to communicate on each, you put yourself in a strong position to achieve greater employer brand governance.

5. Develop your employer brand assets

It takes more than a career page and job descriptions to activate your employer brand. There’s a myriad of ways you can showcase your unique corporate culture:

• Video interviews with employees about their experiences
• Company newsletters sharing your team’s achievements and milestones
• A dedicated career portal promoting your values and brand identity
• Day-in-the-life videos or blog posts presenting your culture
• Slideshows expressing the advantages of joining your team

This is only scratching the surface. The possibilities to promote your employer brand are practically endless, but it’s critical you stay brand-consistent across every channel. Inconsistent presentation is a quick way to lose the buy-in of a top prospect.

Don’t have the time or resources to give your employer brand the attention it needs? Find out how you can create infinite on-brand assets faster with our Produce product.

Social media and employer branding

Social media is an especially valuable tool in your employer branding arsenal. With a majority of candidates using these channels to research potential employers, you should harness social media to highlight your employee stories, company events, charity initiatives and more to resonate with your ideal recruits.

And don’t restrict this to your company’s LinkedIn page. If your team members are active on social media, provide them with marketing materials to share on their own channels. After all, modern candidates trust a company’s employees three times more than the company itself to understand what it’s like to work there.

6. Cultivate your onboarding process

You only have one chance to make a good first impression; this is just as true for an employer as it is for a candidate. A structured, well-organised onboarding process can make a meaningful difference to a recruit’s initial experience in your company, and lay the groundwork for a long-term career.

Remember, 77% of new hires satisfied with their onboarding process say they could envision a long career at their organisation, compared to just 29% who didn’t enjoy this process. So from how you handle interviews to developing introductory guides, training packages and other resources, mapping out your full employee experience can be a huge advantage. 

7. Create an employee advocacy program

Your employees are among your best assets to promote and reinforce the benefits of your organisation. Setting up an employee advocacy program helps you formalise the ways you encourage your team to share materials in their social circles, with incentives including:

• Unique training and career progression opportunities
• Public recognition
• Tangible gifts and rewards
• Exclusive content and information

8. Be authentic

Finally, for your employer brand to achieve lasting success, you must practise what you preach. It’s no good making promises on your EVP that you cannot deliver on, or presenting a rose-tinted vision of your company culture. In a landscape where employees feel more empowered to share their thoughts than ever, this is a recipe for disaster.

Therefore, before you rubber stamp your employer brand strategy, reflect on everything you’ve highlighted and question whether it’s attainable. Authenticity is essential.

6 organisations nailing their employer branding

As we’ve outlined above, employer branding is more than a fancy career site. Here are 6 brands who follow this mindset and are masters at employer brand storytelling.

1. Hilton

Why not start with the brand ranked the best company to work for in 2024 by Fortune? In 2023 Hilton launched their first major employer branding campaign, “Every Job Makes the Stay”.

This innovative series of videos, ads and other materials promotes the various roles contributing to Hilton’s high-quality hospitality. This has worked to both inspire potential candidates of the opportunities available, and showcase the skills of their existing employees.

2. Starbucks

As the world’s most recognisable coffeehouse, Starbucks employs close to 400,000 people globally. With this scale of operations, they firmly focus on employer branding, largely by harnessing social media to showcase employee experiences and success stories.

From a jobs playlist on their YouTube channel, to its celebrated College Achievement Plan, Starbucks is very effective at attracting younger generations of job seekers.

3. L’Oreal

L’Oreal is consistently rated one of the best places to work worldwide, and a large part of that is their commitment to refining and evolving their employer branding over time.

In recent years, they have adapted their EVP to raise awareness of L’Oreal as a tech-driven company as much as a beauty company. This, combined with their promise of delivering a thrilling experience and culture of excellence, helps set them apart as the thought leaders in their industry, and an attractive place to work.

4. Netflix

Netflix’s employer brand is well-known for its emphasis on creative freedom, responsibility and innovation. It promotes a company culture centred on autonomy and creativity, where employees are empowered to pursue bold ideas.

This vision and identity are coupled with tangible compensation and benefits packages, and a strong focus on diversity and inclusion. That is highlighted in Netflix’s detailed and engaging career site, making it easy for potential candidates to understand their culture.

5. Zappos

Shoe and clothing retailer Zappos focuses on employee happiness and wellbeing in their employer branding, as they understand that a happy workforce inspires great customer service.

Plus, they employ an unconventional yet strategic onboarding process: every employee hired, no matter the role, undertakes 4 weeks of training followed by 2 weeks as a customer service rep. Then, they are offered full pay for this training and $2k to leave if they wish. This aims to weed out people who are only there for the money, to build a more committed team.

6. Unilever

From its impactful career site, to its aspirational business strategy with sustainability at its heart. Unilever has a well-established global employer brand that instantly expresses its diverse opportunities and culture, with many testimonials from its existing workforce.

Furthermore, by utilising Papirfly’s brand management platform, Unilever has become incredibly adept at communicating its employer brand to its many local audiences. With this platform in place, Unilever tailors its global identity to each location, resulting in more personalised messages for its employees and potential candidates.

Adapting your global employer brand for local recruits

Today’s global businesses face a significant challenge in conveying their brand across diverse cultures and languages, both for employees and potential hires. These nuances and preferences must be considered to avoid alienating individuals and resonating with local audiences.

While maintaining consistent core values across locations is crucial, adapting these messages to emphasise the values most relevant to specific audiences achieves much better feedback. So, it’s worthwhile to invest the time to research and tailor content for specific candidates.

How can you achieve this? 

• Create specific candidate personas for each location you’re based in
• Encourage your local teams to contribute to your employer branding and promote it on their profiles
• Harness employer branding software and solutions to speed up the production of assets and maintain global consistency
• Establish one place for all branded assets that your local teams can easily access, such as a Digital Asset Management system 

Want to know more? Check out our guide to translating your global employer brand to local markets.

AI: The future of employer branding?

As Artificial Intelligence (AI) evolves with each passing year, its influence on employer branding and recruitment strategies is also growing. Here are just some of the ways AI is already making a difference for employer brand specialists:

More personalised candidate experiences

Through intelligent chatbots and virtual assistants, modern candidates can now receive more immediate answers they have about a prospective employer. This leads to more personalised and responsive experiences, making the recruitment process more positive for candidates and simpler for employers.

Streamline the creation of job descriptions and materials

Training AI prompt engineering tools on your EVP and other employer brand materials can greatly speed up the generation of assets, both for your internal teams and for job seekers. In just a matter of clicks, you can generate the copy, imagery and video for a suite of recruitment ads and employee guidelines, all aligned with your values and vision.

Analysing employee and candidate behaviour

The efficiency of AI means it can analyse vast amounts of recruitment-related data in seconds, from employee engagement levels and retention rates, to candidate behaviour across the onboarding process. This can provide powerful insights on where to adapt your employer branding based on the challenges you are experiencing.

Although the use of AI in employer branding is still in its infancy, the rate at which this technology is developing means that these possibilities – and many more – are emerging to streamline and empower your recruitment efforts.

For more on the growing potential of AI and other key trends to keep an eye on, check out our guide to make employer branding work for your business in 2024.

Create and communicate a compelling employer brand with Papirfly

We hope you’ve enjoyed this complete guide to employer branding, and feel ready to use these insights to enhance the way you attract and retain top talent in the future.

One of the biggest challenges facing employer brand professionals is maintaining a consistent and constant stream of assets, while dealing with ever-tightening budgets. At Papirfly, we are making it faster, easier and more cost-effective to become an employer of choice – all from one all-encompassing brand management platform.

• Point: Unite everyone on the values, visuals and voices behind your employer brand
• Place: Store, share and access a complete library of your employer branding materials in our globally renowned DAM system
• Produce: Generate on-brand, studio-quality assets at unrivalled speed and scale with intelligent design templates
• Plan: Simplify campaign execution of all talent acquisition activities with one universal planner
• Prove: Measure and refine your employer brand strategy with enterprise-grade reporting and analytics

Ready to build an on-brand culture that attracts the best talent? Discover our employer branding software and solutions today.

Ensuring your brand’s unique proposition for employees is maintained and communicated effectively can be difficult at the best of times, let alone amid a worldwide pandemic. In this environment, global organisations are having to evolve and adapt to the prospect of recruiting and onboarding remote workers, while simultaneously preserving their employer brand.

While many businesses are sadly struggling, others are still looking to expand their team during these unusual times. However, traditional methods of successfully finding and onboarding candidates have been put on the back-burner for the time being. As brands look to keep the talent rolling in, they need to explore more unorthodox methods to ensure their brand remains prominent.

We’ve broken down some essential tips to consider when recruiting and onboarding remote workers…

Your recruiting checklist for remote employees

Make the most of video interviews

Though some companies utilised video interviews prior to the crisis, it will never quite live up to the experience of a candidate’s physical presence. As remote employment will be here for the foreseeable future, it’s important to try and normalise the experience for candidates as much as humanly possible.

An in-person interview provides many natural opportunities for small talk and rapport to build. That’s why providing a loose agenda for the interview prior to the video call can help put candidates at ease, and, without revealing too much, give them enough confidence to progress certain parts of the conversation more confidently. Ensuring that you and any other representatives from your company arrive early will prevent the candidate from becoming increasingly nervous while waiting for you to appear. 

They might not be able to see the office, feel the buzz and culture or all of the faces that keep the company running, but the impression given by those on the call will be integral for a potential recruit’s first impression. Your hiring manager may want to consider having someone from your branding team on the call, to answer some of the questions the candidate may have and help weave in the narrative that conveys what the company is about.

Finally, remember that tech issues can’t always be avoided, so make sure you don’t penalise any candidates if they struggle to get connected – it could happen to you, too! 

Choose questions that encompass the essence of your brand

Outside of your regular interviewing process, special emphasis should be placed on ensuring the candidate is a cultural fit for the business during this age of remote employment. Ask them how they would handle certain situations or challenges to determine whether they’re aligned with your company values and ways of thinking.

For example, if part of your EVP is empowering your employees to make decisions, and every answer the candidate gives you doesn’t include them finding a solution for themselves, they may either be unsuitable or require more training. 

While candidates typically ask anything from 2-5 questions at the end of an interview, allow additional time for a video interview. As they have lacked the experience of your brand and company in the physical sense, they may want to probe further on company culture and get a feel for what it’s like to work for you.  

Your onboarding checklist for remote employees

Be flexible but not disorganised

From the moment a job offer is made, the range of steps to getting an employee on board can take up to 6 weeks with notice periods and other considerations. It’s possible that a higher volume of candidates being interviewed may have been let go from their prior jobs as a result of the current climate, or that because of this period of remote employment, onboarding time could be significantly reduced. 

Candidates are going to feel a lot of unease between being offered the job and signing the contract, so ensuring that they’re kept informed at every stage possible is absolutely critical. Particularly when it comes to onboarding remote employees, the challenge of not having face-to-face contact can make the whole experience feel more distant and unwelcoming if not handled correctly.

As a hiring manager or another member of the leadership team, you may be stretched with time and therefore unable to answer every question or support the training of a remote employee. Assigning them a ‘buddy’ could prove beneficial in relieving some of the pressure from your team, and also giving them a chance to virtually socialise with someone they will be working alongside. When teams do return to the office, they will have made a friend, not just have to rely on recognising faces from Zoom calls. 

Whilst new employees work from home, you may want to introduce one-to-ones more regularly than you typically would. This will allow them to ask any questions they have or voice concerns.

Company literature is more important than ever

While many conversations will have taken place during the recruitment phase, it’s important for remote employees during onboarding to have something tangible that really solidifies what it means to be part of your company. 

Digital PDF brochures, toolkits or handbooks are a great way to introduce the company in more detail and, in particular, the departments the individual will be working in or alongside. It may be worth updating documents to include sections such as ‘Meet the team’ or ‘Life at Company’ if these don’t exist already. Anything that can paint an accurate picture of what working life will be like upon the workforce’s return will help new employees feel more embedded. 

An effective way to do this is by setting up your own onboarding portal. With all this critical company literature accessible in one central, online location, the process of welcoming, onboarding and training remote employees can be made significantly simpler, both for recruits and employers.

Likewise, if there are any guidelines, DAM systems, or other resources critical to this person’s role, they should be provided with instructions for these and guided by the hiring manager, department manager or their assigned buddy. 

Training remote employees is a challenge more global companies are waking to in this current environment. Utilise interactive training courses where possible and pre-recorded product demos to engage your new recruits when you can’t work with them face-to-face. And, of course, make sure someone is there to follow up these sessions to answer any questions your new team members may have.

Make sure their technology is set up correctly

For many companies, the process of onboarding remote workers has opened a potential can of worms of ensuring the candidate not only understands your values and culture, but also can access all of the relevant information and tools they need to perform their work. This is a crucial part of your onboarding checklist in the current landscape, as without this in mind your remote workers can be cut adrift from the rest of your organisation.

The last thing you want on their first day is a flurry of back-and-forth messages between them and IT. Not only does this make for an unpleasant experience for a new hire, who may feel the organisation doesn’t care about its staff enough to be prepared for their arrival, but it also hurts the productivity of your IT team as a result of these distractions.

To prevent this, ensure you have delivered all necessary hardware to the person in question well in advance of their start date, and you have arranged any necessary training for the remote employee with your IT department to help them set up their digital workstation. This ensures they feel comfortable with their role and responsibilities early, minimising any awkwardness at the start of their remote employment.

Encourage transparency from leaders

If you’re part of a big firm, it’s easy for news from the top to get filtered down incorrectly if there’s not a watertight communications strategy in place. While decision-makers might not be able to address everyone individually, at the very least you should try to set up bi-monthly calls or email newsletters. 

With regards to onboarding remote employees, they could potentially feel tense about their new environment and the restrictions of not being able to meet their teammates face-to-face or see their workplace first-hand. So, updates and guidance from the top of the organisation will give them reassurance that their company prioritises communication, isn’t interpersonal with employees and will likely be responsive to any ideas and concerns that they may have moving forward.

This is where the value of assigning either a dedicated buddy or mentor again proves effective – they can build on the transparency displayed by the leadership team in order to help them feel welcomed and embedded in company culture, which is especially important at a time where they’re compelled to stay at home.

Teams have their hands full with recruiting and onboarding remote workers

We hope that these tips will be useful in your efforts to overcome the challenges presented by the current landscape and support your recruitment and onboarding of remote workers. These times will prove challenging for many but we’re certain that brands will come out of this stronger and more defined than ever – perhaps even a little different than before. 

In fact, it might be a cloud with a long-term silver lining. As you refine your recruitment and onboarding processes, this not only allows you to be more flexible and contemporary in how you connect with the next generation of employees, but extends your reach in terms of bringing qualified people from around the world into your team and embedding them into your culture.

Whatever circumstances you’re facing – less budget, increased pressure to recruit, team redundancies – we hope this article has helped to shine a light on some remedies to the issues of recruiting and onboarding remote workers.

If you feel like you’re pulling your hair out trying to keep up with demand for branded materials, you might want to consider BAM by Papirfly™. An all-in-one powerful platform for the creation of studio-standard assets without the need for professional help. Pre-defined yet flexible templates ensure your team is always on-brand.

You also get a powerful DAM to store & share assets remotely, an educate section that gives your employees essential guidelines and information, and a whole range of campaign management tools. 

Find out more about BAM by Papirfly™ for employer branding or request a demo today.