Employer branding is a marketing concept that is essential for any company that wants to support its attractiveness and promote loyalty among its talent. While the reasons to build a solid and positive employer brand are clear, you cannot simply wave a magic wand for it to be successful. It requires a series of actions.

Discover the 7 steps to follow to implement your employer brand strategy.

#1- Assessing the current state of play is the first step in the employer brand strategy

As with any strategy, assessing the current company culture is a necessary step towards building an appropriate and effective employer branding plan of action. In concrete terms, this advance work should allow you to identify the practices, rules and operations that add value for your employees and are desirable to candidates. To structure your audit, you can split your questions into three categories: identity, internal image and external reputation.

Over the course of the audit, remember to adopt both a macro and a micro approach by analysing your HR KPIs (turnover, recruitment time, eNPS, ratings for your company, comments on your socials, etc.) AND by carrying out surveys and studies/interviews with employees on employer brand topics: recruitment, onboarding, management, working environment, QWL...).

In principle, the person in charge of this overview is the HR manager. However, for more objectivity and precision, we encourage you to create a working group composed of employees and managers. Another, more optimal option consists of outsourcing the audit to a HR marketing company.

#2- For an outstanding employer brand strategy, identify your key messages

Your employer brand messages are the backbone of your future communication actions. Therefore, defining them is key. How do you go about it? Base them on the findings from your audit. What are your values? What is your purpose, your ambitions? What are your social benefits, your strengths and your points to improve? What goals did you define further to the audit? Do you want to develop your employer brand to improve your recruitment processes? To attract more qualified candidates? To engage your employees?

Your messages need to serve your objectives. For example, if your goal is to attract more candidates and your target is particularly open to working remotely and/or CSR themes, highlight messages that promote these things.

#3- A positive employer brand involves improving the employee experience

Did your audit reveal some areas for improvement in terms of employee engagement and loyalty? Is management failing? Are employees dissatisfied and the quality of work life sub-par? If so, you are going to have to work on your employee experience to improve your internal image before you can communicate about your employer brand.

As a reminder, the employee experience is focussed on how employees feel about their daily professional life and the key moments in their career path.

For example, if disengagement and the rate of turnover are up because your employees complain about overbearing management and a lack of flexibility in how their organise their time, it might be a good idea to change your managerial practices to move to a hybrid organisation?

#4- Get employees onboard with the employer brand

Once your employer brand is clear, you are ready to start communicating. To kick things off, we recommend holding a seminar to mark the occasion. The idea behind this is to introduce and (re)affirm your identity, your DNA, your purpose, your ambitions, your values and the company culture to employees to get them on board. This way, your teams will be clear about what makes you stand out from your competitors and the reasons that incentivise them to commit to your company.

To maintain this momentum, remember to bring your internal communication to life! For example, carry out HR communication campaigns through newsletters, a monthly gazette in which you talk about the latest news. Facilitate your internal social network, hold coffee mornings or fun activities related to your purpose to unify teams around your employer brand.

#5- Attending to your external e-reputation is a pillar of the employer brand strategy

Having an optimised and well-kept online and social media presence is essential to attract talent, especially when you are operating in a business sector that is taut. Proof of this:

• 95% of candidates carry out their search online (Pôle Emploi study);
• 94% say that they visit the careers site to find out about the company (RégionJob study);
• and 32% of candidates aged between 18 and 25 have abandoned an ongoing application process because the careers site was not optimised (JobTeaser and Maki people study 2023).

So it is in your best interest to have a fully-fledged careers site that is up to date and easy to navigate. The talent should be able to find information about your company such as your purpose, your careers, your company culture, benefits, job offers and advice.

When it comes to your presence on social media, you can count on inbound marketing to improve your notoriety and make your employer brand shine. To do this, start with content that your target candidates are interested in: daily life, purpose, setting, workplace organisation, etc.

To be even more effective, remember to mobilise your employees using the employee advocacy method! This method consists of turning your employees into your employer brand ambassadors by sharing about their professional life on social media. It is used by many companies, big and small, such as Shine, Starbucks or Décathlon.

#6- Work on the candidate experience, an essential step in the employer brand strategy

Did you know that 60% of job candidates have already had a poor candidate experience (source: la superagence)? This is not without its consequences on the company brand image. 1 in 2 candidates will share their bad experience (YAGGO/CAASK X IFOP study), which can represent a significant financial cost.

The example of Virgin Media is frequently given to illustrate this. Graeme Johnson, the head of recruitment, wanted to know what image of the Virgin Media brand unsuccessful candidates retained. By looking at the post-interview questionnaires, he came across one from Louise, a hairdresser from Manchester, who had cancelled her Virgin subscription after a poor recruitment experience. So Johnson wanted to find out “How many Louises are out there”?

The answer was: 18% of unsuccessful candidates were customers. He went on to look at their NPS (Net Promoter Score), which measures whether the person is prepared to recommend the company. Around ⅔ of unsuccessful candidates were brand “detractors”; in other words, they were not inclined to recommend Virgin Media to the people around them. Johnson took his analysis further by identifying the number of candidates who cancelled their subscription. Then he worked out the loss of revenue further to a poor candidate experience: 5 million dollars per year!

The conclusion is that it is crucial to pay attention to the candidate experience.

#7- Measure the performance of your employer brand strategy

Finally, remember to include a performance analysis step in your plan of action for your employer brand strategy. If your goal is to strengthen your external notoriety, remember to monitor indicators like how often your company is mentioned on social media, the quality of the comments, evaluations from candidates and former employees how many unsolicited applications you receive.

If you want to strengthen employee loyalty and engagement, pay special attention to your eNPS (employee Net Promoter Score), to the turnover rate or to length of time spent with the company.

To summarise, your employer branding should follow these 7 steps if you want it to be effective:

• Perform an audit of the current “state of play”
• Identify the key messages
• Improve the employee experience
• Get employees on board
• Work on your external e-reputation
• Work on the candidate experience
• Measure the performance of your employer branding strategy..