A strong job market and growing competition for talented workers have forced HR departments to become marketers and branding specialists to help their company stand out in the eyes of potential hires.
Think about your friendly (most of the time) human resources people at your office; I'm sure they throw a fabulous holiday party. They can explain every rule of the party in excruciating detail, but even the best people are probably not equipped to be marketers.
It's ok that HR people are not marketers and if you think about your marketing department, is there one person you'd put in charge of human resources?
Ok, I'm sure there are people we'd like to have in HR, but the legal repercussions wouldn't be tremendous.
As marketers, let's take a moment to help our HR brothers, sisters, and siblings by reviewing how they develop the company's employer brand. It's an HR process, but much of it will be familiar to you and, with that familiarity, allow you to share your expertise in the process.
An easy way to think of an Employer Brand is the company's reputation in the eyes of prospective employees. HR improves that reputation through employer branding exercises. Value is attached to the employer describing the tangible and emotional benefits people receive by associating with the employer brand.
That sounds familiar. Replace 'employer' with 'product,' and it's almost identical to what your branding people do in your marketing agency.
The similarities run deeper. Let's look at the steps involved in employing an employer branding strategy.
You'll need to define your goals when developing an employer branding strategy, like your product branding strategies.
What is the purpose of the exercise?
Do you want more job applicants (sales leads), increased brand awareness, more applicants from referrals (refer a friend), social media, or employment websites (Affiliate Marketing), or increased employee retention (Customer Retention)?
There are plenty of potential reasons your HR needs to run an employer branding campaign, and they align well with many of your marketing campaigns.
Your hiring managers will have an ideal candidate in mind, and perhaps it's someone exactly like you or not.
Identifying the ideal candidate is very similar to identifying your ideal customers in that it creates a profile that aims to identify people based on
• Bio (Age, Education, Title, Salary)
• What is their personality? (Outgoing, relaxed, trustworthy, introverted)
• What are their Skills? (Adobe Suite, Sales, branding, C++, hard and soft skills.)
• Goals (what are their life goals and career aspirations
• Why are they changing jobs? (A poor company culture at their current employer, more opportunities, better salary)
• How do they search for jobs? (Actively look for opportunities, wait for referrals)
• Where do they look for jobs? (Friends, job boards, company websites, career websites, recruiting companies)
• What is their motivation for taking a job? (Job status, company reputation, company culture, salary and benefits, growth potential)
• Who influences their career decisions? (Friends or family, spouse, current colleagues, potential colleagues, management)
• What information sources will they trust? (Corporate website, Glassdoor reviews, current employees, ex-employees)
There are many similarities to the countless customer profiles you've created over the years.
Again, replace the word employee with the word product; the exercise is the same. Your HR department has its own "what's in it for me" list that lays out all the benefits of working for your company.
These fall into five categories.
#Compensation - The company needs to ensure that the money they offer is the right amount, there are opportunities for raises and advancement, and a fair evaluation system.
#Benefits - This encompasses all the other perks beyond salary, like vacation days, health insurance, education, retirement plans, and, more recently, flexible working hours.
#CareerPath - This defines the employee journey, including the ability to progress and develop, training and education, job stability, evaluations, and feedback.
#WorkEnvironment - This includes job challenges, understanding their roles and chains of command, their level of job autonomy, and job recognition. Work-like balance also lives here.
#Culture - This is the company culture. Is it work until you drop, or is it like Merchant North, where you can comfortably enjoy your vacations and weekends without nagging guilt?
Other things make up culture, but we'll cover those in other articles.
It doesn't need much explanation for a marketer, so I'll keep it simple. Where and at what frequency will the company place career advertisements?
Measure the results and adjust accordingly
Another HR-Marketing crossover! When executing an employer branding strategy, there needs to be an analysis of the goals from step one. Which worked, which didn't, and how can we tweak it for the next campaign?
With the holiday season already here, now, at the next staff event, you can lead the marketing department in conversations with your company's HR department.
But if you're still unsure about approaching your human resources and hiring people, I encourage you to talk to us at Merchant North.
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