• Employer branding is critical if you want to attract, retain and inspire the employees who will make your business and brand successful
• The best employer brands take branding and messaging just as seriously as their other marketing. They clearly define what they stand for, offer tangible “reasons to believe” and activate their employer brand through all channels
• Internal messaging matters if you want your employees to carry your employer brand out into the marketplace via employee advocacy, social reviews and the recruitment process itself

What are the stakes of your company’s employer brand? Oh, nothing much – just the quality of the employees who will determine your business’s success. No big deal or anything, huh?

With a historically tight labor market, your company’s ability to attract and retain workers is critical. And given that the best master brands are built by employees, strategically defining your employer brand becomes even more important – it ensures that you are hiring, inspiring and engaging the right people who will bring your brand to life, every single day.

What Is an Employer Brand?

It’s your company’s brand. For employees. (Thanks, Captain Obvious.)

Okay, okay, it’s a bit more complicated than that. An employer brand is a positioning and messaging framework with the objective of attracting prospective hires, engaging and motivating existing employees and even engendering advocacy among employees (Glassdoor, people. It’s sort of a thing). Because of its importance to your organization, an employer brand requires careful and thoughtful planning, design and implementation.

Here are four critical considerations (and examples!) when it comes to employer branding.

Rule 1: The Employer Brand Must Be Linked to the Core Brand

Your overarching “core brand” is your differentiator. It’s the single thing that makes you, you. It’s motivating, inspiring, and gives a common framework from which every single one of your business activities unfolds.

When you craft an employer brand, it has to link up to your core brand. If you don’t do this, your employer brand will lack a point of differentiation, will feel untethered from the broader company, and you’ll be missing a critical opportunity to start inculcating prospective employees with your brand and culture.

As an example, look no further than Disney. Compare its core mission statement with its intro narrative to its careers page.

Disney Core Mission Statement:

The mission of The Walt Disney Company is to entertain, inform and inspire people around the globe through the power of unparalleled storytelling, reflecting the iconic brands, creative minds and innovative technologies that make ours the world’s premier entertainment company.

Disney Careers Page Intro Copy:

The Walt Disney Company entertains, informs and inspires people around the globe through the power of unparalleled storytelling, reflecting the iconic brands, creative minds and innovative technologies families have come to love for over 90 years. Whether you’re looking to create magic in our Parks and Resorts, support business growth and development, work behind-the-scenes on your favorite TV shows or upcoming movies, or anything in-between, this is your opportunity to start the next chapter of your career story and help create the exhilarating experiences Disney is known for worldwide.

It’s immediately evident that Disney used its core brand to inform its employer brand. They translate their mission statement into a clear value proposition for employees, using their “magic” as a storyteller to directly appeal to prospective employees and their own career stories. What’s more, their brand enables them to speak to employees in a way that’s differentiating and authentic. Disney’s employer brand isn’t just anybody’s – it’s theirs – and they use their core brand to make sure you know it.

(Side note: Vanguard also does this quite well on their careers hub, but we write about Vanguard too often, so … darn it, we just wrote about Vanguard again.)

Rule 2: No Empty Words Allowed

Just because you’ve got an employer brand doesn’t mean that your competition doesn’t have one as well. And guess what, they’re also touting “training and development,” “profit sharing,” and “wellness programs”. As a result, these types of words become empty, ambiguous promises.

Your employer brand will be more effective with a value proposition that is concrete and tangible. Instead of mentioning “training and development”, Southwest Airlines talks on their careers page about “Southwest Airlines University.” Instead of talking about profit-sharing, they share the fact that “every eligible Employee received a ProfitSharing award equal to 10.8% of their eligible compensation.” HubSpot doesn’t just talk about culture – they share their “Culture Code”. And BlackRock lets prospective recruits dive deep on the company’s benefits, learning about things like free mental health counseling, gym discounts and company-supported fitness challenges.

Rule 3: Make It Honest

Never forget a certain site called Glassdoor. Any prospective employee doing research on your company can go there and read anonymous (hurray) reviews of your company and how it treats its people. Think again about pitching employees on “workplace flexibility” when you’ve got multiple Glassdoor reviews that basically say, “I’m chained to my desk until 9 PM every single night.”

The best employer brands know prospective employees are going to do their research. They a) make sure they have employee advocates who celebrate their company via reviews and b) point prospective employees to Glassdoor to do their research. Look at Hubspot’s careers portal, where they direct people to read their Glassdoor reviews and note that 97% of employees on Glassdoor recommend HubSpot. Southwest does the same.

Rule 4: Speak to a Higher Cause

That up and coming generation? They’re less concerned with profits and more concerned with purpose. So when it comes to corporate social responsibility, you’d better be buttoned up and speak proudly about what you’re doing for the world.

BlackRock does this expertly on the social impact section of their careers portal. They show that support for a higher purpose comes right from the top, with a quote from CEO Larry Fink. They then bring social impact to life by showcasing a case study – complete with statistics – about their relationship with Kiva, a key nonprofit partner, to further financial inclusion. They feature non-profit partners, and talk about explicit “branded” social impact programs at the company. If you had any doubt that this financial behemoth really wanted to give back, that doubt should be gone.

Where to Start

Okay, okay, we get the point – employer brand is important. But where do we start?

• Start with your core brand. If you already know your core brand –who you are and what you stand for – that’s the place to start. Now, you need to take that positioning and point of differentiation, and translate it into a clear, understandable, motivating and inspiring value proposition for employees.
• Create a proof-based messaging framework. Facts matter. Make sure that you’ve taken the time to craft tangible, factual messaging points that prove what you’re pitching. You should be able to look at your employer brand and feel strongly that you’re showing, not telling.
• Weave your messaging everywhere. It’s not just about your careers portal. You need to weave your employer brand into every channel at your fingertips. That means job listings, social properties, training for hiring managers and even new employee onboarding. Oh, and video goes a long way towards bringing your employer brand to life.
• Think inside-out. You have to engage your existing employees if you want to create employer brand advocates. Involve employees in the process of designing your employer brand. Have a carefully planned internal rollout that gets everyone engaged and inspired. Regularly hit on your messaging in internal communications, reinforcing your employer brand again and again.

If you’ve done all these things well, watch happily as your employee engagement improves, your Glassdoor reviews go up, your attrition goes down, and your overall recruitment efforts get a boost.