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Employer branding: why practice it during tough times?

ningcontent Avatarningcontent
January 28, 2011


When you market your company — not to customers, but to employees — to attract and retain best-in-class talent, you are practicing employer branding. The concept was hot during recent boom times: companies worked on everything from their benefits packages to the language on their careers page to strike the right note with talent.
But in this poor economy, good talent is easier to access, and retention rates are up without undue effort. What’s more, there is pressure to cut costs, and some insist that it makes little sense to focus on the brand when there may not even be any open jobs on the career page.
So why practice employer branding during a recession?
“The fact is that the talent marketplace has a long memory and, long after this recession ends, potential candidates will remember how you keep your employer brand alive during this period,” writes Mark Schumann, HR blogger and co-author of “Brand for Talent.” In his post, “Why an Employer Brand is Essential During a Recession,” Schumann definitely takes the long view, advising companies to work on their online presence through sites such as Facebook and YouTube, to help build a “fan base” for the talent pipeline. He also suggested pitching news media stories to help keep the company in the public eye.

External vs. Internal Branding
The discussion over at Brand For Talent got even more interesting when a reader commented that all of the tips were external facing and that most companies turn inwards in a recession. The reader argued that employees are the brand ambassadors and that some focus should be on them so they contribute to promoting the brand. It seems that a blend of external-facing PR efforts, combined with an evangelical team of employees, is the best formula.
This leads us into another recent post on the topic. In her post “Employer brand vs. internal brand,” Sharon Habib of Outsidein Consulting compares these two terms, which many use interchangeably (not her!), and talks about they fare during a down season.
During the hiring crunch and “employees’ market” of just 12 months ago, companies were pulling out the stops to brand themselves as a great place to work. At the time many were under the false illusion that the employer brand was all about your recruiting strategy. Suffice to say, a lot of marketing of the company as an employer was happening both externally to potential new hires, and less so, but also internally to the valuable employees they wanted to keep.
Habib explains that in her consulting practice, the internal brand is the employer brand plus an aspirational aspect, where the employees themselves collectively decide the qualities of the culture and community. She notes that many companies have slowed down on promoting their brand, but that it is not something to be abandoned lightly.
Takeaways:

  • Employer branding is important, even in down times, because the talent marketplace has a long memory
  • Your “employer brand” and your “internal brand” are similar, but not the same thing
  • The best campaigns combine outward-facing efforts (social media, PR) with internal efforts (with the staff that already exists)

Article by, Sarah and courtesy of RiseSmart.com – RiseSmart: Search Smarter. Rise Faster.

Originally posted by Candice A

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