Last month, I met with a friend who was interested in applying for a job with Piktochart. One of the first questions he asked was: “What’s working at Piktochart like?”
This single question opened doors to a whole world of anecdotes from my daily life at work and I shared the story of how I got here in the first place (which is a pretty interesting one). It also lead us to an entire discussion about work-life balance and how our lives have changed as a result.
Our conversation was a reflection of Piktochart as a company, from my very personal and subjective point of view. That got me thinking: If he was to speak to someone else in the company, what kind of feedback would he get? What stories would he encounter? Would he be more or less compelled to apply after speaking to another person?
My side of the story and the way I see life at Piktochart contributes to the ultimate employer brand. And while this image is different for every single person across our company, we all become ambassadors of our brand because we’re exposed to it every day.
And if you are the employer, how do you influence what your employees, potential hires, or partners think about you? Most importantly, how do you distinguish yourself from other companies who are all looking for great talent to join their team?
Experience, breadth, depth, meaningful mission, development, and growth opportunities are among the chief demands that modern job seekers have in mind. Whether our company can deliver on some, most, or all of those demands, our messaging should be transparent from the very start.
At Piktochart, we like to think of employer branding as a sort of accountability measure: If we’re honest with people before they walk in the door, they’re more likely to trust us. The employer brand makes a promise to act and react in a certain way.
So who in the company is responsible for the humongous task of building and maintaining the employer brand experience?
Netflix put it in their culture book this way :
“We do not seek to preserve our culture — we seek to improve it. Every person who joins us helps to shape and evolve the culture further.”
For Netflix and many modern companies, everyone is rightfully involved in shaping the culture and environment they work in. But it all starts somewhere, and most likely emerges from a deliberate employer branding strategy.
From an HR perspective, our company’s employer brand is central to recruiting, hiring, and retention. From a marketing perspective, it can be shaped reactively, or you can choose to craft it proactively. Which way do youprefer?
So, if you’re in the HR or Marketing department and you’re the one tasked with “creating the employer brand strategy”, where do you even get started?
To answer this question, we’ve partnered up with the awesome team behind employee recognition tool Bonusly to create an ebook on shaping and communicating your employer brand.
Here are some highlights:
- When your company delivers high caliber experiences to its employees and customers, then its employer brand has staying power.
- Focusing branding efforts solely on talent acquisition has a very little impact on the overall culture. Think further.
- Conducting a brand audit is a good start. Platforms like Glassdoor can give you plenty of insight on who your talent competitors are and how their brand is seen and ranked by its employees.
- During the audit, pay attention to factors such as stability, opportunities for growth, and the ability to attract top-notch talent. Whether it’s by surveying your employees or checking reviews on platforms like Glassdoor, you will be able to gauge your ability to meet employee needs.
- Crafting your employer brand takes place throughout an entire employee lifecycle from talent acquisition, onboarding, growth/retention and offboarding. And in each of those stages, there are plenty of opportunities to get creative with your employer brand.
If you’d like to read the whole ebook, it’s here! Enjoy and let me know what you think! I’d be interested to learn how your company goes about building its employer brand? Is it the responsibility of one department and a deliberate effort or something that just happens?
