As we start to regain equilibrium, recruiters, business leaders and employer brand leaders must continue to step up and be seen and heard by their current and future talent, as well as their customers. Here are valuable tips about how to build your employer brand through recovery.
Lately, employer branding may have dropped off your radar. It’s understandable, especially if you’ve been struggling with hundreds of competing priorities (maintaining operations, serving clients and stakeholders and retaining people). Things have also shifted to a candidate-rich market, so you may be struggling with more applications than you can handle. But candidates are looking at employer brands more closely now, more so than before, and if you’re receiving huge volumes of applications, it’s important to continue to build a valuable employer brand for sustainable long-term recovery.
One of the ultimate goals of employer branding is to attract the right candidates and allow the wrong candidates to opt-out early in your recruitment process. While we’ve experienced plenty of change in 2020, this will remain fundamentally the same; especially in a candidate-rich market when you’re being overwhelmed with applications.
How organisations treat their people during the Covid-19 crisis will be the acid test for candidates considering whether to join and will be a major factor in overall employer branding strategy.
In considering the principles of how to build valuable brands in uncertain times, let’s first consider what’s valuable. Many people have been re-evaluating what is valuable in their lives and what’s not. With talk about recessions, employers need to consider how they’re going to remain valuable to those who are most important in their future (both their people and customers).
The past offers brands important and timely insights that can help take the edge off of the uncertainty. During the last recession, brands adopted a variety of tactics to respond to changing consumer attitudes and behaviours. A JWT study from 2009 found that most approaches fit into six buckets: optimism, humour, nationalism, nostalgia, empowerment and value/price. Here’s how these approaches can be tailored to apply to employer branding now.
Empower people
Making your current team members feel like they have greater control will help strengthen your employer brand in challenging times and throughout recovery. Look to be the leading provider of choice in new initiatives will give them back control and increase your value to them.
Sharpen up your recruitment advertisements
Traditionally, you may have written your job ads to attract as many candidates as possible. Now, you can afford to get more specific to attract people with the skills, experience and behavioural attributes you’re after. Sharpen and focus your recruitment advertisement to attract top talent, and allow unsuitable applicants to opt-out early.
3. Add value
While you can strategically roll out price promotions, savings and discounts for customers, what about candidates? While more great talent is available in a candidate-rich market, A-players can still be hard to find. If you can still provide a great candidate experience and good communications (Candidate Management Systems, branded email templates will most certainly come in handy), you will distinguish yourself and bolster your long-term strategy.
4. Communicate with optimism
During times of uncertainty and recovery, people learn to live with losses, making them more sensitive to what really matters. Inspire your current and future talent with optimism. Being a beacon for optimism in a world of dim circumstances can prove a powerful differentiator.
When used appropriately, a touch of humour in your social media posts and employer brand messaging can create a memorable experience for your people and brand.
Reference the bigger picture
If you are recruiting now, make a point of emphasising the positive impact that joining your organisation will have on Australia’s road to economic and social recovery. Address the new economy in people’s world, and share how people’s work will stimulate it.
On a similar note, reflecting on the past can help in referencing the bigger picture. Anxiety and nostalgia go hand in hand—when times are tough, it’s only natural to seek comfort in memories of what seems like a simpler era. Think about how you can remind your current talent (as well as customers) that you’ve been with them in good times and bad. For future candidates too, give them a lens to the better world you shared together and the bigger future you will create with them.
So what makes your employer brand valuable? Now is a unique opportunity to adjust and bolster your employer brand and reach a wider audience. Empower people, recruit efficiently with the right processes and tools to continue to add value to candidates. Tailor your communication strategy to include optimism, and reference the bigger picture.