It’s easy to see the value your employer brand creates during the hiring process or onboarding—whether that’s attracting potential talent, streamlining the process or engaging employees. However it’s just as important to keep that brand alive throughout the employee journey.
Consistent messaging in internal branding, recognition and years-of-service programs are a few ways to integrate your brand’s messaging throughout your employees’ tenure. It’s not just a reminder that your organization is a great place to work. It aligns your values with your actions and puts your people first.
But what are employer branding best practices when it comes to successfully engaging employees? Here are four key elements to keep in mind.
1. Create Environments That Reflect Your Brand
Large and small environmental graphics can be utilized in interesting ways to keep your employer branding top of mind. Wall graphics, meeting room names and digital messaging on existing screens can all be used as daily reminders promote examples of your brand and your values. You can even take the concept and make it personal with desk environmentals: mouse pads, calendars, screen savers, coasters and/or any other physical or digital reminder that employees will interact with daily.
2. Connect With Employees Where Their Interests Live
Don’t be afraid to connect with your employees through new communication channels. Think about who your employees are—where do they go to recharge? To learn? To connect with other employees? Maybe there’s a professional organization your employees are members that you can sponsor. Produce a podcast series that can focus on telling the story of your employee brand through examples of the experiences you helped to create for your employees. You can even add a fun personal twist by creating a themed Spotify playlist of songs with lyrics that speak to your brand and employee experience.
These are great efforts to reach existing employees, but they’re also an often overlooked channel for your recruitment efforts. Other ways to connect with employees are through hashtags or social media strategies that give them the freedom to share your brand story in their own words.
Related: Compete for affection, not attention. Discover how every emotional connection you make with another has a ripple effect that extends to almost their entire network.
3. Consider the Tenure of Your Employees
If your company is new to employer branding, take it one step at a time. You don’t want to rush, (this is not a simple, one-size-fits-all approach) but you also don’t want to be left behind. Employer branding is a message you want all of your employees to understand and engage with, but don’t forgot you need the right frequency and timing.
It’s important to engage employees early and often as part of their onboarding. But, consider more personal and focused touchpoints for tenured employees: awards and recognition that allude to your employer brand upon the completion of large project or accomplishment. It’s also important to reach tenured employees in unexpected ways so the implementation of your employer brand doesn’t feel too calculated or impersonal.
4. Keep Your Brand Consistent
Nothing hurts your employer brand or any type of branding more than when it’s used incorrectly. You’ll want to make sure you're armed with the right templates and design assets so you can communicate with a consistent tone, message and visual style. It’s a great idea that you have a style guide developed so you can share throughout your organization how your core values, employee value proposition and employer branding should be applied so everyone gets the right message every time.
Establishing an employer brand is important to create interest from top talent in joining your organization. It allows you to communicate why someone would want to work at your organization in an authentic way. Beyond recruitment it’s equally important to use your employer brand throughout an employee’s career so they don’t lose sight of what drew them to work at your organization in the first place. Find out more about employer brand as well as how to create and sustain a successful employee experience with our ebook, Improve Retention and Engagement by Enhancing the Employee Experience.