A brand determines the perception of your company, not just your customers and business partners, but also your potential employees. Most businesses, and their owners, recognise the importance of their brand and how it is vital for building relationships with customers.

However, an employer brand is equally crucial, helping SMEs retain dedicated current employees and build a positive reputation as an employer, attracting the crème de la crème of talent.

What Is Employer Branding?

Employer branding is how potential future employees and current employees perceive your business. Employer brands are created on the back of leadership, company culture, mission, values, priorities, internal policies, and public communication.

Small businesses and larger companies can leverage the same strategies in their branding efforts. Your company can focus on social media engagement, awareness campaigns, events, community partnerships, and internal employer branding to encourage current employee word-of-mouth.

Read How To Advertise A Job On Social Media.

Four Reasons To Build A Positive Employer Brand

Your employer brand will strongly influence your business opportunities and potential growth through four key facets:

1. Attracting Talent

When job seekers, including top talent, search for a new job, they are drawn to companies with a good employer brand. The best talent will visit company review sites to discover if your employees have positive experiences. Employer review websites are a powerful tool that gives candidates data on benefits, the work-life balance, company culture, and leadership strategy.

2. Talent Retention

Building your strong employer brand will begin to create positive relationships with your employees. Each employee begins to relate to your brand identity and will encourage employees to remain committed.

3. Customer Acquisition

Today’s generation of customers want to do business with SMEs whose values align with their personal values. Your company’s values will need to demonstrate that your small business is socially-conscious, serious about the local community, genuine, respectful, and provides a great workplace environment for employees.

4. Company’s Reputation

Whether you are a large limited company or SME, a strong employer brand will have a direct impact on your reputation. You can show the community and prospective employees that you are different to your competitors and possess industry expertise. The benefits for small businesses and medium-sized enterprises are organic opportunities to attract local business partnerships with companies that have shared values and goals.

Eight Ways To Grow Your Employer Branding

You can charge your employer branding efforts with the following strategies.

1. Understand Your Company Values

To understand your company’s values, you need to identify the company behaviours you value and are most crucial to your mission. List your most important employer behaviours, incorporating those most meaningful for you and your employees.

2. Research Your Employer Brand Status

Learn how most people feel about your employer actions. You can use internal surveys to understand this perception, talk to a co-founder or department head, read employer review sites, and search social media.

3. Align Policies With Your Values

Align your company’s policies and actions with your values to increase employee satisfaction. A happy and engaged employee will share their positive experience across their professional networks.

4. Encourage Employees To Write Company Reviews

Incentivise your team to share honest feedback and their opinions on a company review website, such as Glassdoor, and on job sites in the UK.

5. Communicate Your Culture During Onboarding

Ensure your company’s culture and value proposition are interwoven into your hiring process, from job descriptions to job offer and employee onboarding. You will strengthen your employer brand, help new team members become situated, and ensure candidates turn into long-term talent. Grow you employer brand today using one of our job description templates.

6. Update Your Website

Create employer branding initiatives that highlight the benefits for your company and its workers. A consistent message is crucial for employer branding, so you must ensure your company pages deliver culture and brand insights. You need to create content that makes it straightforward for the public, your staff, and potential candidates to learn about your culture, mission and values.

7. Embrace Company Criticism

When you embrace criticism and feedback, your employer branding will improve. Take the time to digest the information, address the cause, and be transparent to help employees connect and build trust with you.

8. Tell Your Company Story

Your history, actions, and goals can be impactful when told through blogs, podcasts, and videos. Share stories on topics such as how you are handling the global pandemic or a unique quality that an employee brings to your organisation.

Your Employee Value Proposition

Companies that build positive attributes for their workforce will attract the best candidates, customers, and beneficial business partnerships. We have shown here that your employee value proposition is far less about the money you pay your team. You need to embrace and ingrain your positive behaviours and values into every touchpoint to attract success.

Small Businesses Guide For Cost Effective Recruitment

Why Should SMEs Build An Employer Brand is a chapter from our Small Business Guide For Cost Effective Recruitment. In this recruitment guide, we explore:

• Why Should SMEs Build An Employer Brand?
• Preparing Job Descriptions 
• Introducing An Employee Referral Scheme
• Social Media Hiring Strategies For SMEs
• Posting On Job Boards And Leveraging Fixed Cost Recruitment
• Centralising Recruitment With ATS
• Creating A Talent Pool
• Defining Your Interview Process
• Presenting A Job Offer

Download the Small Business Guide for Cost Effective Recruitment