Management complaints about employer branding are most often due to lack of understanding employer branding as a value delivering function instead of random campaigns.
In business, every investment needs to justify itself. Employer branding is no exception.
Management often finds themselves questioning the value of employer branding, especially when they’re unable to clearly trace its impact on their primary business goals.
And it’s no wonder: with so many mistaken beliefs about employer branding on the market, finding an approach that aligns with financial priorities and strategic goals is tough. But what if there were ways to turn these complaints into opportunities for stronger outcomes and measurable ROI?
Let’s dig into management’s main frustrations and explore how to tackle each one effectively.
4 Key Management Complaints about Employer Branding
1. “How Does Employer Branding Actually Impact Our Business Goals?”
Employer branding is about more than just attracting talent and calling for applications to an ongoing recruitment process. It’s about attracting the right talent, who will help propel your business forward in the long term.
Studies show that strong employer brands can reduce turnover by 28% and lower recruitment costs by as much as 50%. These benefits alone lead to operational savings, productivity gains, and a positive impact on overall business performance.
Not to mention the potential of using employer branding to humanize your company in the eyes of your other stakeholders, too. According to a Forbes article, prior to the advance in technology, communication between companies and consumers was one way. Businesses spoke to customers through advertising, but there was limited opportunity for customers to respond.
My friend, have the times changed or what! Today, we consumers make decisions based on our experiences and recommendations from trusted sources, not price and practicality. You can have two of the same products or very similar employers to the external eye. One product is cheaper than the other, or one employer offers better pay and benefits than the other. However, because the consumer has a better experience and higher trust in the other company, they will pay more for the product or accept a job offer for lower pay and lesser benefits.
Modern employer branding humanizes your brand, stems from the authentic core (your company’s culture, mission, purpose and employee experiences) and aims to match your relevant and ideal talents with your organization.
The results?
Lower talent acquisition costs, higher commitment to the company, better matching hires, stronger willingness to take the extra mile to deliver customer promise and happiness, and what we often ignore: it is much easier and way less time consuming to lead people who have their soul in executing your business strategy.
Solution:
Tie employer branding metrics to key performance indicators (KPIs) that matter to your business. Go for KPIs beyond recruitment success into talent retention from time to reach full productivity, to employee satisfaction, engagement to specific strategic topics, lead generation, reputation, customer satisfaction, lower long time cost per hire and time required to get all staff on board with new strategy, company culture or other significant business change.
These will help you illustrate a direct correlation between a positive employer brand and long-term savings, proving that it’s an investment in sustainable growth.
2. “The Costs Seem High, and the ROI is Unclear”
Budgeting for employer branding can feel risky without a clear path to ROI. Management often hesitates when costs appear high without an obvious financial return. Make sure you understand what is possible with employer branding and select strategic goals and objectives that convert business worthy return on the employer branding investment.
The ROI is always unclear when we haven’t clearly defined what success looks like. This happens 99% of the time when companies want to action employer branding without time spent on the strategic planning first. The cost of random acts of marketing and ad hoc employer branding campaigns will without a fail be always high and produce an unclear ROI.
Mind you, everytime this happes, it was a decision that was made at the beginning: we will not spend time or budget on planning and clarifying what success looks like and what is the best way to get there.
Solution:
Never start employer branding out of a whim as a result of someone’s ‘fun idea’. You can do videos and you can opt for employer advocacy, but never before you have a strategic plan on what needs to happen, within what time frame and how much can we invest in it.
If you are already employer branding and feel like you have many actions and activities ongoing without clarity of their worth, pause it. Collect data from all of your employer branding activities and compare cost against returns. If you have trouble to do this important exercise you already know you are employer branding eyes closed and you need to reverse engineer your employer branding actions.
You want to spend a little bit of time on a gap analysis what you have done, what the costs have been and what value each action or activity has resulted in. This will help you identify your gaps in clear goals, objectives and expected ROI and open the space for discussing and deciding goals and expectations going forward.
Luckily, with all the digital and social marketing options, it is easy to implement more cost-efficient employer branding actions once you know where you need more efficiency.
3. “It Takes Too Much Time and Involves Too Many People”
The idea of implementing a new branding initiative can feel overwhelming, especially for management who oversee various teams and responsibilities.
Employer branding doesn’t need to be a time-consuming ordeal, but it does require streamlined processes to make it efficient. In fact, employer branding campaigns are usually much more time and people heavy activities in comparison to turning employer branding into an ongoing communication process and extending it also to better candidate experiences.
When you have one person who owns employer branding, oversees the implementation of the employer branding strategy and the use of the employer branding budget, and coordinates the employer brand communication and marketing you can squeeze out the participation of too many people doing the same things or even arguing over punctuation and choice of words.
Solution:
To simplify overall employer branding, my advice is to stop thinking employer branding as a campaign. Campaigns tend to require lot of effort as each time you have to ideate, create, allocate various resources and spend an unnecessary amount of time and other resources on actions you may use only for a short period of time.
Instead, consider approaching employer branding as an ongoing communication and marketing process for which a solid plan and regular but smaller actions can create much bigger and also sustainable impact.
Dedicate one person the ownership of your employer brand and make sure they have the interest, motivation and desire to carry such an important responsibility. Instruct them to start with a plan that consists of a clear outline of strategic focus areas, goals, objectives and expected areas of ROI and key talking points building your desired employer brand perceptions. With these at hand, you can turn your employer branding into a less time-consuming process that creates consistent value, ROI and a systematic process with much less effort and involvement.
4. “Cross-Functional Buy-In is a Struggle”
Convincing multiple teams to rally behind employer branding can be an uphill battle. Management often finds resistance, especially when different departments fail to see the personal benefit. The thing is, employer branding should deliver company benefit not personal benefit. It shouldn’t be a cross-functional exercise if each function has a different agenda and cannot invest equal priority to employer branding. While marketing and communication can be of great help, employer branding touches HR and talent acquisition the most.
Solution:
Break down the direct benefits of employer branding by function and set the most important expectations based on the breakdown. Then, position employer branding closes to where it should have the biggest impact and remove reasons for cross-functional struggles away. By showing each team how branding directly benefits their goals, buy-in becomes more straightforward.
- For HR, it reduces turnover, helps streamline leadership culture, strengthens employee engagement and helps clarify employees’ roles in the company’s mission, vision and purpose influencing employee commitment and loyalty.
- For talent acquisition, it helps attract the right kind of talent, engage and commit relevant candidates into recruitment processes and in corporate
- For marketing, it contributes to over all company brand loyalty.
- For communication, it helps deliver important messages, supports change communication and contributes to overall company reputation and perceptions.
- For sales, it enhances the company’s reputation, making it easier to attract clients.
Does your management team need help, advice or support in understanding the business benefits and potential sources of ROI from employer branding. Contact me, susanna@emine.fi to talk more. I regularly work with management teams to help find most ROI from strategic employer branding.
