How to meet the challenges of the employer brand?

The human resources function has evolved over the past thirty years in a context of successive crises, characterized by a need for companies to adapt to increasingly competitive markets.

The economic crisis has thus forced HRDs to question their HR policies in order to accompany the increasingly frequent restructurings and reorganizations.

Innovate how? Innovate why?

New challenges have emerged: supporting change, growing talent, strengthening corporate culture and giving meaning to employees' mission, managing the company's reputation, etc.

Today, it is no longer enough to proclaim oneself a good employer, to display good values such as environmental protection or respect for employees to convince candidates.

The latter -like employees- want proof, concrete and now have the means to obtain it.

Companies are thus gradually discovering that they need to invest more and differently, especially in their visibility as a valuable recruiter through, in particular, their employer brand.

It is therefore necessary to develop a long-term strategy from the implementation of a talent pipeline to the integration and retention of employees through a new logic of institutional communication.

It is about the positioning of a generally commercial brand, as a work organization, whether for recruitment, or more broadly, in the human resources field.

You will be able to draw on human resource values and issues in their most authentic form to achieve, in particular, five objectives :

• Recruit more efficiently, less expensively, and better targeted (and thereby overcome shortages on certain so-called " rare " skills) 
• Increase employee retention and sense of belonging
.
• Reduce and integrate Generation Y (if that phrase even makes sense !)
• Develop the brand's reputation as " employer of choice "
• Foster understanding of the HR strategy by all internal stakeholders.

In addition, to successfully build and develop your employer brand in a sustainable way, you need to ensure consistent internal/external messaging with all your stakeholders and, over time. Your Talent Brand will only be enhanced. 

A structured and collaborative project approach

The implementation of an employer brand revolves around 4 projects :

These projects are themselves part of three key themes :

1. The role and unique missions, a source of meaning for new generations. Your company's positioning gives it a reputation and a prestigious image. Its intrinsic characteristics are real assets and differentiators from other recruiters.
2. The policy of developing skills and supporting your employees as the heart of the HR offer. The quality and the number of devices put in place are easily demonstrated if a coherent reading grid is proposed.
3. The attention paid to quality of life at work (QWL), today an important issue of employer image of the company.

Once the employer branding challenges are clearly identified, what tools can be put in place to address them?

Becoming your own media to demonstrate your value

The approach known as Inbound  aims to transform its online communication space (career-site, social networks, etc. ) into a magnet for passive candidates.

This space is also the vehicle for all the internal and external messaging defined above.

By enhancing your employer brand through the promotion of quality content and the implementation of passive candidate conversion tools, you give yourself four particularly effective weapons

Differentiation

Few companies have yet made this choice even though it consists precisely in considerably increasing the visibility of the employer brand in the very places where candidates can be reached by your message (search engines, social networks).

The candidate experience

Relevant content isn't just about being well-referenced by Google, it's primarily about accurately and authentically informing your future candidates. 

Demonstrating expertise

By working in depth on your Candidate Personas, you're spreading a positive message of expertise, conducive to attracting candidates, including passive ones, but also offering reassurance to your own employees.

The persistence of the investment

Unlike all other approaches, the money invested in content continues to benefit your employer brand long after the campaign is over.