05. Employer Branding through SHRM for Recruitment and Selection

Employer Branding (Hochgatterer et al, 2021)

    A defined, global strategy for communicating your organization's principles, methods, and personality to your audience is the essence of an employer brand strategy. It's a thorough giving of everything the workplace has to offer to benefit their most valuable resource—the employees. To accomplish the following crucial objectives, an employer branding plan must constantly and openly promote the above elements to both organization's current staff and those you hope to hire (Papirfly, 2019) ;

• Positively distinguish the offering from competitors.
• Demonstrate the benefits of working at the organization.
• Illustrating the brand development and strength over time.

    As per the research made by Papirfly (2019) published that 84% of job seekers consider the reputation of a company as an essential factor in their decision to join while 52% of candidates spend time researching the organization's website and social channels to learn more about their culture before applying. It is also observed that there is a 28% of chance of reduction of employee turnover when investing in employer branding strategies.

    Creating a brand that interacts with and appeals to today's more web-savvy job seeker is essential and can have a number of advantages, such as:

• Increased employer appeal to talented people looking to work in the industry.
• Greater employee motivation as they experience a stronger sense of connection to and alignment with the brand values.
• Realistic reductions in the expenses of recruiting and long-term retaining fresh talent.
• A workforce acting as a team of brand ambassadors who actively spread the word about your company to potential consumers and candidates.
• A vision for your organization's future that is unambiguous and shared by all those connected to it, driving it in that direction.

"An employer branding strategy allows you to control and positively change the dialogue surrounding your company to ensure higher talent acquisition and retention. At its most basic, employer branding is how you market your company to job seekers and what employees say about your company as a workplace" Forcey (2020)

Steps to planning an Employer Branding Strategy

Step 01 Align the strategy with organizational needs

    The organization's short- and long-term demands, as well as the goals it intends to achieve and the skill set it will need to do so, will define an effective strategy. Fortunately, it's not too difficult to match the employer branding approach with organizational requirements. Start by responding to a few fundamental questions such as the objectives of the organization in the next 1-3 years, new products and services in the pipeline, and talent gaps avoiding the obligations (Reiners, 2022).

    The below example describes the strategic imperatives of the operations of Commercial Bank of Ceylon PLC and indicates the investment of employees as an operational need.

Strategic Imperatives (CBC, 2021)

Step 02 Set actionable objectives

    Setting measurable goals is the greatest approach to make sure that an employer branding plan aids the firm in achieving its goals. While each company must establish its recruitment objectives, well-crafted goals always have several things in common such as; Targets (specific and reasonable goals), Measure (establish metrics), Plans (establish resources, content calendar, and a timeline), Assign (conquer and meet deadlines) (Reiners, 2022).

    Accordingly, the recruitment team of the HR department of the Commercial Bank has the sole responsibility for hiring employees with adequate knowledge and skills to perform their stipulated tasks. And Staff Development Team of the HR department has the sole responsibility of maintaining the training calendars and providing necessary training when requested.

Step 03 Define relevant Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

    This evaluates the success of an objective (Reiners, 2022). For example - Top-Level management provides KPIs for the HR department such as recruiting a specific number of employees within the year, the number of training to provide, arranging transfers within the organization, handling promotions on a timely basis, organizing employee surveys, and submitting overall reports.

Step 04 Develop a measurement plan

    A measurement plan will guarantee that you have the tools necessary to gather and analyze the data you need to make wise decisions. Creating a plan is a simple process that involves tracking KPIs, collecting data, frequency of measures, analyzing the data for opportunities, and reporting the findings to stakeholders (Reiners, 2022). For example -  employee engagement surveys can measure the correct analytical data.

Step 05 Allocate resources upfront

    For example - creating an internal employer branding team within the organization is the most economical solution to minimize obstacles when branding the employer to attract possible candidates.

Step 06 Create target candidate personas

    A candidate persona is created to help recruiters better understand the candidates they are chasing. It is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal candidate. It offers a perception of the driving forces behind job seekers' decisions to seek out, accept, or reject a new position (Reiners, 2022).

Candidate Persona for Banking Trainees (CBC, 2022)

Step 07 Develop a compelling employee value proposition (EVP)

    When new hiring is made, the employee value proposition (EVP) makes clear what is expected of both the candidate and the firm. It will act as the cornerstone for your marketing materials, guiding everything the company says and does when hiring new employees (Reiners, 2022).

Step 08 Examine Application Process

    The employer brand is embodied in the application procedure, so be sure that understand what it's like from the perspective of the candidate. Ask prospective employees and recent hires how it was to apply for a job at the company. In order to identify areas for development, the team will benefit from having an outsider's perspective on the procedure (Reiners, 2022). 

    For example - Questionnaires such as; job finding, learning about the company, and sources obtained for identification of the job posting from recruits can be obtained to evaluate the hiring process.

Step 09 Retention

    According to seniority level, each lost employee can cost a company anywhere between 30% and 400% of their annual income. Given this, it is surprising that just 30% of companies are utilizing their employer brand to increase retention. When developing an employer branding strategy, taking the time to consider employee retention can yield some very noticeable benefits (Reiners, 2022). 

• Engagement - Seeking feedback from existing employees.
• Profitability - An engaged workforce is a profitable workforce.
• Advocacy - Your employees will be more equipped to spread this information among their personal networks once they are aware of your employer brand and the elements that make your company a desirable place to work.

Step 10 Determine the distribution mix    

    Before creating employer branding materials, it's crucial to decide which channels that organization should use to contact candidates. An organization should find out where the potential candidates spend around to reach them there because not every channel is suitable for every business. HR should undoubtedly assist the marketing team in this effort (Reiners, 2022).

Examples of executed employer branding strategies

Starbucks (Forcey, 2020)

    Starbucks does a magnificent job of fostering a strong sense of community among its workers. For instance, they refer to present workers as partners, making each worker feel proud. Starbucks also established @StarbucksJobs profiles on Instagram and Twitter, which they use to communicate with job searchers and market their employer brand.

HubSpot (Forcey, 2020)

    The Culture Code is the first document that appears on HubSpot's Culture Page. It publicly declares every goal and value that HubSpot wishes to advance and instill in its staff members, applicants, and clients.

References

CBC (2021) Management Discussion and Analysis (online) Available from https://combank2021.annualreports.lk/integrated_report/strategic_imparetives.html [Accessed on 26th November 2022]

CBC (2022) Open positions (online) Available from https://www.combank.lk/careers [Accessed on 26th November 2022]

Forcey, C. (2020) Everything You need to Know about Employer Branding (blog entry) Hubspot. Available from https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/employer-branding [Accessed on 26th November 2022]

Hochgatter, J., Ehrensorfer, B. (2021) Employer Branding (blog entry) Research Leap. Available from https://researchleap.com/employer-branding-a-human-resource-strategy-for-companies-in-a-turbulent-environment-based-on-the-example-of-northern-austria/ [Accessed on 26th November 2022]

Papirfly (2019) 13 steps to develop your employer branding strategy (online) Available from https://www.papirfly.com/blog/employer-branding/13-steps-to-developing-your-employer-branding-strategy/#:~:text=At%20its%20core%2C%20the%20definition,most%20important%20asset%20%E2%80%93%20your%20employees [Accessed on 26th November 2022]

Reiners, B. (2022) Creating and employer Branding Strategy (blog entry) Built In. Available from https://builtin.com/employer-branding/employer-branding-strategy [Accessed on 26th November 2022]