Make it Stick – Why Your Employer Brand Should Be about Retention Just as Much as Attraction

Our friends at MVMNT, who are also partnering our upcoming Employer Branding Conference on 19th June 2019, share why your employer branding journey should be part of the entire employee lifecycle.

As employer brand advocates, we’re very firmly in a time where most employers understand the need for focus on employer brand – not simply as part of a singular recruitment campaign but as an ongoing project. It’s recognised that your employer brand exists whether you like it or not and therefore it is absolutely essential that effort, resource and investment is dedicated to taking control of it.

The next stage of employer brand challenges employers to consider the role that it plays in not only attracting candidates but ensuring that these candidates stick around once they walk through your doors on their first day. Your employer brand is a promise to candidates and this promise lasts beyond them signing their contract with you, it lasts until their very last day with you and if at any point that candidate feels like they’ve been misled or that you’ve broken the promises you made to them, then your employer brand has failed.

It’s for this reason that organisations should always err on the side of caution when it comes to the way they approach their employer brand – ensuring that it is a genuinely true reflection of who you are. We’re all aware that it would be a lot easier to attract great candidates if we could claim to have 4pm finishes every day and a fully-serviced bar – however how are your new recruits going to feel when they’re still at their desks every day with nothing for refreshment but tepid water?

When it comes down to it, the features that employers put all their focus on in their employer brands are actually the aspects that don’t mean a whole lot to candidates. Most offices are largely the same, benefits packages can differ slightly but not all that much and salaries generally lean towards industry standard. So, what is going to not only stand out to your prospective candidates but also keep them around once they join you?

The thing that you have that no one else does is your people and your culture – that’s what makes you unique and why time, effort and investment is never wasted if spent on ensuring that your people are happy, safe and involved. With a positive culture and inclusive working environment, you not only have something special to put at the centre of your employer brand but also the most powerful tool you could possibly possess in maximising your staff retention.

Happy people generally stay where they are and not only that, they tell people how happy they are and those people envy them for it. On the flip side, unhappy people never stick around and they tell everyone they ever meet about it.

So next time you’re looking at your employer brand – which should be very regularly – stop yourself from purchasing that stock photo of the smiling, diverse group of workers and think “does that exist in my workplace?” and if not, your very next question should be “how can I make that exist in my workplace?”

Be attractive to those you want and look after those you’ve already got. MVMNT help organisations sell themselves better to a diverse pool of candidates and be more inclusive to their current employees – developing high-performance working cultures and winning employer brands.

thisismvmnt.com

Previous Post
Why it’s Essential to Make Recruitment Accessible to People with Disabilities
Next Post
The Art of Social Recruitment
Category Employer Branding
Tags
Content Type Article
You must be logged in to post a comment.

Related content