7 Reasons Why Employer Branding is Important

Employer branding is an effective tool that can attract the best talent, support your company culture, and engage stakeholders in your business.

A strong employer brand sets your company apart on the market and makes you more attractive to qualified candidates not even on the job market. It can also attract customers and boost business. And it bolsters your company culture and core values.

Scroll below and learn more about the importance of employer branding, and how you can launch initiatives with your team.

Difference between company branding and employer branding

Put simply: company branding is your organization’s reputation with customers, and employer branding shows your work culture and overall employee satisfaction or even as a place to work.

Your company’s brand speaks to its product and customer promise. This messaging seeks to attract prospects and encourage the public use your goods or services. This can show up in everything from your brand’s approach in website copy, where you see your company’s ads, and who your target consumer is.

Now, employer branding speaks to your company culture and employee satisfaction. This can look like your employees’ social media posts, employee events and activities, company swag, and employee job referrals.

Your employer brand is part of your marketing strategies. A marketing team or communications team might lead the company's brand strategy to impact sales and your bottom line. And your employer branding might fall to human resources and marketing to launch employee experience initiatives, get press releases or social media posts out, and share more about the inner working of your organization.

Employer branding activates current employees to share their experience in your organization and with your company culture. Whatever that looks like for your organization, you should know that your employer brand is an important aspect of your company’s overall public perception, which can impact sales, collaborations, and even your employee experience.

Here are seven ways that show the importance of employer branding and a few ways to harness it along the way!

1. Attract potential candidates

A positive employer brand can attract the best talent who want to join your mission or the culture.

Brands that offer unique perks, have great workspaces, host flexible work from home options, or even show great candidate experiences are all aspects of employer branding and can impact your team culture. Many of us know about Google and Facebook's big work campuses or Airbnb's remote work policy. That's employer branding.

Happy employees are more likely to share posts on social media and recommend their place of work to friends, family, and previous coworkers. Plus, teams investing in employer branding are usually trying to share good news of their company: such as corporate social responsibility programs (CSR) or benchmarks for DEI goals.

In order to resonate with the public, your employer branding should come from a place of authenticity. You should share good news or initiatives you’re doing to take care of your people. You’re supporting all parties involved: your team gets a stronger company culture and your customers see what matters to your brand beyond product.

2. Decrease time and cost per hire

Investing in your employer brand over time can cut down on your recruitment marketing, and ensure you have a full pipeline of potential hires when a role opens up.

The right employer brand strategy increases the chances of those potential candidates knowing more about your product, mission, and company overall. It will attract active job seekers and your industry’s top talent not even actively looking.

Established employer brands tend to have stronger work cultures too, so existing employees are more likely to refer friends, colleagues, or even past coworkers who would be fits for key roles. This can help cut down recruitment marketing and the interview process, because who better to know what your team needs than someone already in the trenches?

Employer branding is part of many companies recruitment strategies. It can help your team save time and recruitment costs, turning your people into your greatest advocates.

3. Increase Employee Retention

It’s not so much as what your employees are saying on social media platforms or Glassdoor (though that matters too). Employer branding is most effective when it comes from an authentic place.

Companies invest in employer branding because they’re also investing in their employees’ work environment, nurturing their employee wellbeing and satisfaction, and sharing these wins with potential employees and customers.

This can decrease turnover rates as more employees will stay longer where they feel supported and part of the discussion. Finding that great role is hard for anyone, but finding a team that understands you as a person, who helps you feel a sense of purpose? That's much harder.

4. Build employee engagement

Employer branding goes hand in hand with employee engagement.

Employer branding strategies naturally tie into initiatives that support employee engagement: volunteering during the holidays or launching an employee resource group (ERG) initiative to make work more inclusive. Your company might post photos from the volunteer event or send out a press lease about your latest ERG-run program. Your people might also share their experience on Linkedin.

Best place to work awards, like those from Inc., Gallup, and Fortune are examples that reward companies with solid culture and are big news for any business leader. Existing employees will respond honestly on surveys where they share their feelings about their roles and experience in the organization. Teams can’t fix those results.

5. Align employees to company values

Your employer branding strategies are an opportunity to reinforce company values. Publicly sharing stories or recognizing hard work either in social media platforms or at company events gives concrete examples to your people. It shows how they can embody core values in their work, tasks, and in how they show up in their work experience.

As an example, consider the recruitment process, where candidates learn more about your company’s procedures, culture, and your people. How you communicate your core values, from your questions to your cadence with prospects can help candidates understand how you measure success, overcome challenges, or embody your values already.

6. Influence customers

According to a survey from Google Cloud, 82% of consumers want to support companies that have values aligned with theirs. And your employees are your best brand ambassadors. They understand the ins and outs of your company and product, and when they share about their experience at work, it’s coming from a more genuine place.

We also see this on the team side. When employees feel supported, that trickles down to customer experience, creating a positive or memorable interaction. That customer is more likely to return and recommend the brand to friends!

7. Attract a younger talent pool

Gen Z and Millenial job seekers are more attracted to meaningful work and strong company culture that promotes work-life balance. Strong employer branding like employee advocacy or employee interviews gives a more authentic perspective of what working at your organization would feel like.

Employer branding does a lot for your recruitment. When people see that employees are supported or that your brand invests in its people, whether that's in events, activities, CSR, or DEI, you're likely to pique interest from younger job seekers who want strong work-life-balance.

Examples of employer branding content

Are you looking for ways to engage your stakeholders and build your employer branding strategy? Here are a few ways companies use employer branding today:

• Job descriptions
• Career site content
• Recruitment and onboarding communication
• Employee advocacy on social media
• Employee interviews
• Company news and blog posts
• Behind-the-scenes Video content
• Companies events

HR and marketing can work together to host employee experience initiatives and promote them through any of of these ways. You can incorporate core values into your emails and hiring communication or even incentivize sharing photos from the latest workplace event.

Ready to start with employer branding?

Employer branding is a great way to engage your team and promote your company’s reputation.

The right employer branding approach can result in higher employee retention rates, attract potential candidates, and support your current employees.