Employer branding: a partnership between marketing and HR
Employer branding is no longer a nice to have. In a competitive, connected world, an effective employer brand that consistently does the hard work and pulls in the right talent is essential. But who are the best people to shape, and share, your employer brand?
Employer branding is your internal company culture and how you shape your reputation among former, current, and future employees. It includes everything you do to market and position your company as a credible, highly thought-of organisation, and is your shop window for top talent.
The role of HR in employer branding
The responsibility of the HR department is broad and complex, covering everything from the recruitment process to creating company policies to employee development, salaries, and benefits. HR departments are well-placed to drive employer branding because they understand company values and have an insight into what employees want. Their role is to nurture employees and protect their interests, which are central to a successful employer brand.
Given that so much of what HR departments do underpins a company’s internal, and external brand image, employer branding has naturally fallen into the remit of HR departments. But it is not a perfect fit because no department should be working on company-wide projects in a silo—building a successful employer brand requires cross-department collaboration from the start.
Employer branding meets marketing
The art of marketing is to effectively communicate a consistent message to the right people, at the right time, using the right channels. Apply this to employer branding: the message is your carefully formed employer brand; the target audience is the ideal talent for your company and the right channels are where those people are looking.
HR specialists have been instrumental in shaping a company’s strategy and goals and know how important it is to create an employee and candidate experience that markets the business to prospective and existing employees. However, it is marketing’s expertise that’s best placed to bring an employer brand to life and catapult it into the hearts and minds of the people who matter.
Marketers who specialise in recruitment marketing can bring even more expertise to the table. They know how to authentically tell a company’s employer brand story, shape its reputation as an attractive place to work and keep existing employees connected to the company culture, making them ideal partners in an employer branding team.
Collaboration is key: build your employer brand together
When HR and marketing professionals work together on employer branding from the very beginning, their shared expertise results in a highly effective, strategic, and creative approach.
In carving out company values from the start, the multi-skilled employer branding team is unified in their North Star. Together, they ensure that the employer brand is an accurate reflection of the corporate brand and that the brand vision, mission, and values align with the needs of both the people you are trying to recruit and the valued employees you want to retain — the best marketing is in employees who become advocates of your employer brand.
The benefits of effective employer branding are numerous, and forming the right team to build your employer brand is a key element of your investment: from its earliest foundations to enriching the lives of your ideal employees, employer branding is a process that requires the expertise not of HR or marketing professionals alone, but of both.
Our approach is underpinned by both strategy and creativity. We specialise in crafting and executing employer branding that reflects your firm’s organisational performance objectives and drives attraction, engagement, and retention of talent. To start shaping your reputation, get in touch.
