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• Is your organisation going through a major transformation?
• Are you hoping to launch a fresh brand promise?
• Do you struggle to explain the usp of your business to employees and candidates?
• Have you had enough of survival mode and crave higher ground?

If you answered “Yes” to any of the questions above, you may want to consider re-evaluating your employer brand.

Why?

For some. the employer brand defines the promises made and expectations generated between employee and employer. But as highlighted in Brand Engagement, it should more accurately be known as "employment" brand given this is both a more accurate reflection of both sides of the equation and factors in experience (promise minus reality). And in the current, cynical environment where customers are liberated by choice and empowered by social media, it's more important than ever that organisations deliver on the promises they make to markets.

The employer brand informs the customer experience, it potentially engages employees and candidates with your purpose and business aspirations, and it can transform your employment offering into simple, actionable, and easily understood language so everyone, including suppliers and business partners, can contribute. It has the potential to be inspiring, empowering, and unifying.

If you are going through a major transformation or change  a shift in attitude, behaviour, culture, and direction is most likely required. Focusing on the employer brand can help to shape the new employee expectations and synchronise them with the fresh  business focus and objectives. It also has the potential to build a cadre of brand champions and underpin an appropriate culture that will engage rather than antagonise customers as many organisations are at the moment while their pressurised leaders pursue short-term gain.

If you're re-defining or launching a new consumer brand promise it isn't good enough simply to "show your employees the films". The so-called consumer brand requires translation for your employees so they understand how to deliver on the customer experience. And you need to be clear about how it adds to the organisation's existing narrative and is communicated via the information superhighway of your workplace and in the behaviour of your people.

For those in recruitment and HR communications who are frustrated with their current careers website, social media platforms, internal recruitment procedures, third-party interpretation by agencies, student recruitment communications, and more given it is disjointed, fragmented and just doesn’t tell any clear story about “why candidates should work here,” you may want to re-evaluate your current employer brand. A clear narrative placing the existing organisation in the context of both its legacy and future,  should be at the top of the pyramid informing the channels, experiences, and programs you implement. By proactively managing your employer brand story and letting it drive the conversations and experiences you have online (and off), you’ll stand a better chance of attracting the candidates you need. The story must resonate with their values, aspirations, backgrounds, and desire to make a contribution.

Right now, enlightened senior executives will know that the bottom of the slump is a time rich with opportunities. But to take advantage of these opportunities requires changing gears in order to re-focus and re-motivate a jaded workforce. Under these conditions, taking a fresh, appreciative but critical look at the employer brand can provide a focal point for culture development and behaviour change especially if employees are enlisted, involved and empowered. Involvement, after all, is key to employee engagement, a powerful way of tapping into the discretionary effort that is going to be required to stand out from the crowd.