If you fail to define and share your employer brand when recruiting, you’ll probably have to fall back on ‘selling your benefits’ to hire qualified candidates. You know, things like: Salary, healthcare plans, transportation, location, holidays, gym subscriptions, and so on… Now don’t get me wrong, it’s definitely important to have an attractive compensation strategy in place, but you have to realize the following.
People mainly committing to benefits are much more likely to leave for slightly better ones and your competitors can easily copy your benefits, but never your brand. This is unique to each company and the culture it stems from. The stronger the connection is between your employees and your brand is, the harder it will be for your competitors to lure and sway them with benefits.
Moreso, people get accustomed to benefits, while brand connection keeps growing in time. That’s why brands generate ambassadors, while benefits can only create short term satisfaction, essentially leasing or renting loyalty.
Keep that in mind next time you hear people saying there is a high attrition rate in (certain segments of) their workforce because of the nature of the work, the benefits they provide, the competition in their local market and all other non brand related reasons (read excuses).
My first manager used to say that excuses are like a**holes, because everyone has them and they all stink. Nothing can be more true about failing invest in your employer brand. That’s like failing to invest into knowing you who are. It will make you end up with the wrong people. People that are with you for all the wrong reasons, people that just want to take.
If you do invest into defining and sharing your core purpose, values and culture you will filter out and attract the people who want to be part of those and contribute to them. The people that you truly want, people that want to give!
And the business case can easily be made. just imagine (or actually calculate) how much money you can save by reducing your attrition rates and hiring costs, or by increasing your hiring speed, productivity and overall quality of work by even a few percent?
Understandably, employer branding is currently one of the fastest growing movements in the talent acquisition industry. For a while you’ll be able to gain a competitive advantage over the employers stay behind. In the near future having a strong employer brand will become as much of a hygiene factor as paying your employees, when trying to attract new ones.
So my advice would be to either become an expert, train an expert, hire an expert, or all of them to stay competitive now and secure a qualified workforce the future as well.
I look forward to reading your comments and feel free to look me up and reach out if you’d like to talk to me about this or any other TA/HR related topics directly.