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HOW EMPLOYEES ARE THE GREATEST ASSET FORBUILDING YOUR TALENT BRAND
The role of a human resources specialist has evolved. Inaddition to recruiting and retaining top talent, you are alsoresponsible for growing your organization’s brand equityto support market perception.
This means collaborating with marketing to create contentfor inbound recruiting as well as providing guidance onhow employees can share the brand message and in turngrow their own personal brand. Many organizations arecatching on and have already gotten on board.
According to global law firm Proskauer’s "SocialMedia in the Workplace: Around the World 3.0"survey, 90% of companies now use social media forbusiness purposes—up 30% from a year ago.Employees are stewards of the brands they work for.
This is true whether or not companies choose torecognize it. The question is do you work for one ofthe organizations that leverages employees as brandstewards or one that ignores this fact?
A recent Fast Company blog shared that “employees are talking aboutyour brand on social media—in fact, 50% of employees share about theircompany without any prompting. In addition, according to the Bureau ofLabor Statistics, “there are nearly 120 million full-time employees in theU.S. alone, meaning 60 million full-time employees choose to talk abouttheir employer online.” Thankfully, employees have mostly positive thingsto say about their employers. However, businesses are not doing a greatjob of harnessing positive conversation to help bolster the strength ofthe brand.
The challenge is that business executives are often uncomfortable aboutasking employees to collaborate to attract talent and new customers onsocial media. They are still apprehensive about what employees mightshare with the world. This is a missed opportunity. Employee-generatedstories can have a massive impact on your organization brand ANDsupport your organization’s ability to attract the top talent in the market.It’s your job to empower your colleagues to step into brand stewardshipand support them in their investment in their own personal brands byextension. This is a win win opportunity for companies.
How to Empower Employees to
Share Content
Employees can’t be ignored when developing aninbound recruiting strategy. Relying on marketingand sales alone to represent the brand to externalcandidates without leveraging employees is arookie mistake. However, employees requireguidance and training to represent a brand well.
It’s important that human resources specialistspartner with other stakeholders to designguidelines on the dos and don’ts of representingyour organization’s brand externally.
Guidance plus education will be key to shapinghow your brand is perceived in the market topotential candidates. Here are some tips totransform regular employees to brand advocates:
Having a cross functional team connection ensuresthat you’ll have support and partnership to design andimplement compelling talent branding content. It alsoensures that the content will be communicated andshared with employees with appropriate guidance. Asa human resources connector, you can provide inputto to ensure that marketing and branding campaignplanning are in alignment with recruiting strategy.
1. Human Resources, Marketing and Learning andDevelopment Working Together
Social media is a part of life and that includeswork. Many employees now identify thecompany they work for on their social profile.This can be a great thing or a bad thingdepending on whether your organization hasclear social media guidelines. No one wants tofeel like big brother company is looking at theirtweets and posts. Having policies in placeprovides guardrails while allowing youremployees space to be free and engage with onsocial media. Don’t make the guidelines a list ofNOs. Design a policy based on employeediscretion, openness and trust. Give examples ofwhat can be shared on social what should stayoffline.
2. Have a Clear Social Media Policy
Companies can invest in employee growth by havingclasses to train their “brand ambassadors” on socialmedia. You might consider holding online courses andmaking this a part of standard employee onboarding.In addition, social media experts within the businesscan informally or formally mentor less socially savvyemployees.
This guidance, new hire orientations and blog postscan be an easier alternative than creating a full blownonboarding course. This can make a real differencewith employees stepping into brand advocacy.
3. Offer Social Media Training
Why not provide your colleagues with branded content toshare on social media. You can offer them a list of contentfrom the brand’s own editorial schedule and have themshare at their own discretion.
With ready to go, pre-approved ideas you’re likely to gaintraction and adoption with your internal brand advocates.Don’t forget to share the social media hashtag they shouldbe using.
4. Team With Marketing to Design Content forEmployees to Share
Developing a Talent Brand Plan
Now that we’ve covered the positive impact ofunlocking your colleague’s potential to becomebrand advocates for your organization, we turn to anequally important topic: how to make sure that youare delivering a measurable talent branding planthat will truly empower your colleagues to be inaction on talent branding. This won’t happen byitself! You’ll need to provide leadership.
Before setting out on your journey, it is important toknow where you are before you chart your courseforward. First, ensure that your talent brand isconnected to the overall objectives of the business -with company growth goals and strategy. Next, investin getting a clear picture of where your brand sits. Arepotential candidates indifferent, in like or in love withyour talent brand?
This relationship with your brand is the enginerequired to build equity and deliver an edge over thecompetition in the market for top talent. Knowingwhere you are with your candidates and beinginsightfully truthful about it is the first step to figuringout how to grow your brand into one that candidatescan’t stop talking about. Use these questions to getconnected with your talent brand plan, the answerswill help you start to frame everything you need!
The 10 questions to ask yourself are:
Who are the key stakeholders that can help you approveand implement your plan?What are our business objectives and growth objectives? What are the strategy and tactics to achieve this?Where are we now with talent brand perception? Why do our candidates currently perceive us this way? Where do we want to be in the minds of potentialcandidates? How can we get there? What do we need to do to get ready? By when do we want to achieve our talent branding goal? What does success look like and how will we measuretalent branding success?
Once you’re clear on the foundation for your talent brand - whereyou are and where you want to go, the process for setting up atalent brand on a professional social network is a simplemarketing model, as outlined in a LinkedIn report:
A Simple Marketing Model for Building YourTalent Brand Within Your Organization
Segment: Determine the target personas that fit theavailable jobs.
Target: Prioritize and pursue high-priority candidates.This is where you can develop a system to scorecandidates based on criteria that helps you focus on thecharacteristics of top performers.
Position: Develop a narrative that amplifies yourcompany’s talent brand. Encourage employees to writeabout the topics that make you unique. Use storytellingto showcase how your values are reflected in companyculture. Also, celebrate stellar employees that aremaking a difference in your business and in theindustry. This writing enables potential candidates tosee what it might be like to go through the hiringprocess. It also allows them determine whether theywould be a good fit within your organization.
Placement: How do you reach high potentialcandidates? Go where they are. Publish in online andoffline publications, forums and platforms your idealemployee reads and respects. This is about buildingcredibility against other companies they may beapplying to. In addition, it builds brand awareness withother potential candidates who happen to find thearticle organically.
Product and price: Tell the story of what it’slike to work for your company. Outline thesalary and benefits. Here are some ideas fortypes of content that can help prospectiveemployees learn more about your company:
Include a mission statement reflecting on howyour company matters in the lives of itscustomers. Communicate your purpose. Describe the different departments, how theycollaborate, and how they make an impact.Don’t forget your current talent. Involve them inshowing off their team so that potentialcandidates see the environment they will bejoining.Highlight your onboarding practices andprocesses.
Promotion: Build relationships with talent communities,social and digital content marketing. Empoweremployees to share blog posts, articles and othercontent pieces about company culture with theirnetworks. It helps to have them share content aboutyour company from a third-party site, rather than thecareer page of the site.
Collaborate with marketing to create videos whereemployees and executives discuss issues important to thecompany and industry, and showcase how employeesmake the difference. It comes down to growing into athought leader. Write, post, and share articles about yourindustry as a whole, highlighting the issues your potentialcandidates care about.
A strong talent brand plan will help you get yourorganization in sync on the strategy and tacticsrequired for you to achieve your recruiting goals.
This is how you will get more candidates to applyover time. The plan is a unifying document in thatit connects functions across the business such asyour executive team, learning and development,marketing and sales.
The next step is on you! With this thinking as afoundation, you can evangelize your plan andrequest support from business stakeholders tosupport your recruiting initiatives.
You and colleagues can always refer back to thedocument to get grounded in the approach andremain on track while pursuing a whole new realmin your talent brand strategy.
