Does employer branding fall under HR, marketing, or both?

I was one of the lucky few to attend the first day of the first ever Employer Branding Masterclass, held at the Aquarium of all places last week. I was the only attendee with a marketing mindset as the others all came from an HR background. Sirin found slightly upsetting as employer branding is by no means just an HR function and wants to highlight its importance to the marketing industry. This feedback is intended to do so, as Sirin spent the day explaining the fundamentals you need to consider and developing an employer branding strategy, so that I could share the information with you.

From the rest of the globe to your work desk...

While the concept of employer branding may be new locally, there's already lots of global intelligence out there. But, while other markets may already be streets ahead of us and face different challenges, we can still benefit from their learnings. In Sirin's masterclass icebreaker session, attendees sang the same song: that any form of internal communication tends to be seen as more about HR than marketing, and this branding disconnect needs to change. For example, there's a disconnect in global companies that have an office in South Africa - while here, an annual salary increase is expected, as is regular striking - so much so that we readily prepare ourselves for 'strike season' - both incidence are taken as a surprise overseas. Sirin summed up by stating whether it's a new division, new company or new employment destination you're marketing, you'll benefit from focusing on employer branding. Through the global rise of social media and HR practice such as online applicant tracking, there are a host of new challenges to face. They're all good tools for employer branding at face value, but can be a minefield.

But what is employee branding?

With no clear recipe for the employer brand or even guidance on where the responsibility lies, it can seem a daunting task. At its heart, marketers need to see the people behind the product, and not see just the product. It's all about the consumer experience, but not in the way marketers expect - now you need to take it internal to your employees. From an HR perspective, it's vital that your company meets the expectations you sold to your employees about the company in the recruitment process in order to get staff to buy in to all you stand for. You can have a great website, advertising, gamification and more, but that's all just the pretty packaging used to attract the employees in the first place. There's global focus on authenticity at the moment, and having the outside match the inside of your brand isn't about what you say it is, but rather about what people think of your company. You need to manage the brand in order to manage the customer expectations - whether they are internal or external customers. This is crucial as there's a correlation between employees and delivery, so your people must live the brand or things will fast go downhill if there's a culture mismatch.

The difference between consumer brands and employer brands; the role of social media

But don't feel despondent about the mountain-size task ahead of you. It's not about reinventing the wheel, as there is lots of similarity in managing the employer brand with many internal communication processes your company's likely to have already undertaken. While an external and internal audience are both captive, you need to go on more of an educational process in getting the internal one on track. Sirin adds that so much money goes to a company's marketing budget to promote the product, but remember that the recruitment process is also a form of marketing. The difference is that the ROI for HR is an engaged workforce that stays with you for longer. That's why metrics are crucial and should by no means be seen as fuzzy, even though there is no one specific metric to use, as different organisations find different things important, such as a more motivated workforce or one that stays loyally working for the company for longer.

Note that there's a damaging disconnect in trying to sell the softer fuzzy side to the hard money-focused managers. Instead, sell the true ROI of a workforce with clear understanding and connection to your values - less time and money wasted on recruitment down the line as you're likely to keep your current workforce for longer. It's about the synergy of being an employee, the customer's experience of you, and this translating into your company being seen externally as an employer of choice.

With employer branding, your employees are effectively cheerleaders, spurring you on... © Andriy Popov – 123RF.com

Sirin said this links to how a customer views the role of social media specialist in the company. Social media management might be a service or responsibility, but this is set to change soon as the social media specialist position is on the rise globally. This means it won't take long before it really lifts off here too, with a key role being not just about promoting the company's product or service offering online but instead enhancing customer experience and showcasing the company spirit behind the scenes.

A unified brand is holistic, looks after the vision, mission and product of the employer as well as the product brand. In the online space, there are lots of statistics available on audience segmentation, the migration towards social media and how this will impact on the company's talent selection strategy. But it's not as simple as that - it's also about getting the right fit from a cultural perspective and attracting the right talent to develop within your company. So if your company takes the strategic decision as a brand house supplying a product, your marketing division needs to develop it to reach specific audience group. Then, once you have that new consumer base, people slowly but surely decide they want to be affiliated with the trend and you'll attract new candidates, sending their CVs in and saying how much they'd like to work for you. Sirin suggests you need to see the opportunity in this, as it will impress on your bottom line profits by attracting a new base you may not have otherwise had access to. Another side effect is that effective social media strategy and branding from within means you'll see increased levels of employee engagement, and recognition of your company as an employer of choice.

Think like a job candidate

This emphasises the need to have strong message carried across aspects such as new employee on-boarding, their first-day training, and ensuring that the bottom of the talent pool doesn't fall out the funnel. This means you can't simply toss the employer branding ball aside and hope either HR or marketing will catch it. You need to make sure everyone's on the same page, including the IT department, which needs to help you enhancing career opportunities on your company website. From the CEO down, realise that all your employees are actually brand ambassadors. So, whether you deal with recruiters or marketers alike, you need to do your research and understand the opportunities catered to and that you need to stand head and shoulders above the others in your industry to be seen as the best. This means you need to put a demand on your service providers as well, from assessors and the media agencies you use to your recruiters who source your original candidates. Employer branding tends to be seen as something "out there", especially as we're at the bottom tip of Africa, but Sirin says we just need to get our minds around the thought process.

Change your thinking and see social media as a passive marketplace for recruitment, as you can actually select your next employees from it. In the interview process, ask why the candidates want to work for you to find out how much of your brand story they actually know. Also make sure that all managers have the right training needed to interview candidates and promote the employer brand within the company. This way, you can answer the question of what perception is of your brand out there, as well as the level of visibility out there.

Then because you've promoted the brand a certain way in the interview process, you need to follow through in your on-boarding process. It's not about recruitment but the attraction of candidates, as in-house talent acquisition is the next evolution from simple 'recruitment', which is often outsourced. This means it's essential for your interviewers to understand what makes you an employer of choice and for them to live the brand. This involves a shift from asking 'can you do the job' to rather 'do you fit in with our culture and employer brand' - both in the recruitment and retention of employees. This means you need to tell the external candidate the values, the company's corporate social investment (CSI) mindset they are likely to identify with, and check they have done research on your website. But it's more than that, as it also includes follow-ups with existing employees and making sure all the information they need is readily available.

That's because advertising no longer has the impact that it used to have, we're now in an age of customer expectations and experience, and how the employee promotes your value propositions. These relate to economic trends and the environment we live in, the move towards renewable energy and understanding the challenges and opportunities, even petrol price and investor interest are important - anything that essentially affects your employees' lives. Sirin says it can take up to three years to get the employee branding right, so you start focusing on it now. Key to this is the proliferation of mobile phones - you need to make sure your company is mobi-friendly, in that applicants can apply online and access the information they need. Also think about whether your vision and mission statement is from ten years ago. If so, does it perhaps need a revamp to make it relevant? Employer branding is about constantly stocktaking, defining and rethinking your employer brand vision, as it's probably not promoted enough. All often seems fine on the surface, but are you doing enough to retain your employees? Take a good, long look at your staff longevity and their actual happiness levels - to do so, you'll need to run internal climate surveys, where employees are guaranteed their anonymity or you simply won't get the truth out of them.

Speaking of recruitment, Sirin showed the below Twitter 'join the flock' video, saying while some see as it slapstick, others think it is authentic and it's proven very popular online because of this. While it may not cater to each company's needs, because "if Twitter can get away with something like this, you wonder how far you can push your own boundaries".

Think like a salesperson

We then split into smaller groups to discuss the employer branding roadmap. In closing, Sirin said you need to understand why people are working for your company and how they perceive it, then define the core proposition in that space. To do so, run an internal climate survey and look to market intelligence surveys. Understand the existing company information based on exit interviews and first-year assessments as you're not starting from a blank slate, there is always existing corporate intelligence. Remember that you can't assess the external impression of your brand without knowing how your internal brand ambassadors feel, as they're the ones living, eating and drinking your so-called authentic brand each day. Then, make sure you have metrics in place to measure employee satisfaction. If you have unhappy employees, you need to monitor the situation as they will either leave or become a bad egg that infects the workforce and fragments the brand. There's often a herd mentality in place - people, enter the organisation and stay for a reason. Use social media to sell these points. Lastly, Sirin recommends building an online brand bible that's authentic to your internal values - it's not a thumb suck and it's not spray and pray, it's based on what your employees truly feel about your brand.

View the masterclass-related tweets on Twitter, click here for more on how Sirin 'planted the employer branding seed' in Kenya late last year, and find out more about Employer Branding SA by visiting their website.