To grow you need people, to attract people, you need an employer brand
Employing new staff is one of the five top strategies for growth in 2017, according to thinkBig 2016. The challenge is attracting employees right for your business, retaining and engaging them to deliver the experience that customers expect.
An employer brand that is relevant and compelling to your current and prospective employees and distinguishes your business from your competitors, other industries and markets, enables your business to attract the people you want.
Whilst your business may have different employee value propositions for current versus prospective employees, different employee groups or markets, your employer brand will provide coherence across audiences so your business holds one image in the market.
What many businesses don’t realise is the impact of aligning your employer brand to your corporate and customer brands. Research indicates that aligning employer and consumer brands delivers 36 per cent growth in shareholder value in over 5 years. Yet employer brand strategy is only aligned with corporate brand in 41.3 per cent of companies and consumer brand in 10.9 per cent, according to the Employer Branding & the new world @ work survey.
Why does aligning employer to customer and corporate brands deliver growth?
- Customers can be your employees; employees can be your customers. People gravitate towards other people, brands and businesses that align with their purpose, values and beliefs, whether seeking a place to work, buy or invest.
- Consistently delivering against your brand promise. Employees who are engaged with and aligned to your brand deliver more authentic and ‘on-brand’ experiences to customers.
- The market sees one social image. Current employees are promoters or detractors for your brand to customers and prospective employees, as much as, if not more so than planned marketing activity.
- Leveraging marketing communications investment. Recruitment advertising links with customer facing advertising, and in some cases, they can do both. Here’s a great example: Childlike Imagination – What My Mom Does at GE.
Whether your brand architecture is a House of Brands, like Unilever, P&G and Mars or a Branded House such as Google and Virgin Australia, aligning your employer brand to customer and corporate brands drives business results and raises brand value.
For more on One Brand thinking, you can download the whitepaper here.
Blogs in this series:
Is your brand ready to enable business growth in 2017? – Rachel Bevans
To grow your business in 2017, build your brand before communicating – Rachel Bevans
Rachel Bevans is strategist, researcher and business director, with over 28 years’ experience helping organisations become brand-driven, customer-centric and employee-engaged. Rachel founded The Healthy Brand Company in 2012 to unite her brand experience, passion for health and wellbeing and curiosity about what motivates people.