Employer Branding – A New HR Arena

This is a market oriented era. If you have a good brand value in market, you will get good response if not; it’s very difficult to convince people.

From an HR point of view branding is very important. If your organization has a good brand image in the market, it will help you in getting right workforce at right time and at the same time you will have a control over the employee cost. An organization with no brand name has to shell out lots of money to attract and retain the right candidate.

Branding Strategy

A) Nature of Business – Branding should be based on the nature of business. Like if an IT company goes for a fashion show, it may not yield the same results as it would have got by going to IT Fair or something similar. A real estate company may go for some road show on property market.

B) Nature of Market – It is always recommended to gauge the market before going for any project which involves market risk Like if you are targeting to explore a Financial market or banking and at the same time it is marred by some other factors like Inflation, you need to design your strategy which could help you in overcoming the negative trend.

C) Reception Target – It’s always good to define the reception target or the audiences. If you are planning to sell Villas and targeting the middle class, probability is very high that you will end up spending your time and resources in wrong direction.

D) Budget Flexibility – Budget always plays an important role in deciding the strategies. If your budget doesn’t allow you to spend a lot, its always recommended to partner in any event where other participants are not of your field and it has got at least one participant who has got a good market value so that you can attract the crowd.

E) Long Term Mission of Organization – Also the long term as well as short term goals of the organization should be kept in mind. If the organization does not have any long term goals in the target market or location, it’s always recommendable not to go for branding or it is very much required go for a small, low budgeted branding event.

F) Organizational Structure – Organizational structure is also very vital part for deciding any strategy. Organizational structure is the strength of any organization and any event or branding can be done based on that. Like if your organization does not have lots of hierarchy steps, you can boast of Flatness and claim of equal behavior. And if you have different layers, you can market the clear definition of roles etc.

External Branding –

External branding refers to branding which is done by using external sources and which may (or may not) require some investment in monetary or other forms. Let’s see the different means of doing external branding.

(c) Road Shows – Road shows are also an important mean for creating brand awareness. You can organize talks, presentations, seminars etc. for attracting people towards your organization.

(d) Corporate Social Responsibility – Corporate social responsibility refers to corporate getting associated with society for some noble cause. The association can be in any mode either getting associated with a Charitable Trust or a NGO or some other public venture. Corporate can align and attach with any of these and share the stage. Always keep in mind that choose as per you organization status meaning if you are a small firm, do associate with a medium sized organization and if medium you can align with either of these- large or medium. Idea should be you get a nice coverage in the popularity cake.

(e) Public Events – Public events are one of the major ways of creating a brand image. An organization can participate in any of the public event and assuring that it does not get disappeared in the crowd of many brands or big names.

(f) Newspapers – Branding can be done through newspapers as well. If you target the local public, you can go for advertisements considering the individual day circulation, target readers, rapport of newspaper, type of newspaper etc. If you target only to employ people for your workforce requirement, you can place job Ads which may seem expensive at the first glance but in terms of attracting the correct workforce, it can do magic.

(g) Email – For mail ids related to job portals, you can create an auto reply which can contain brief description of the key aspects of candidate’s and public interest and at the same time introducing your company to the public. It should be informative as well as crispy so that the audience reads it and just doesn’t do Shift Delete.

(h) Tagline – Create a nice, attractive tagline or a punch line for your brand and give it a significant visibility in all your branding efforts. The tag line should be in accordance with your organization values, goals, work etc. so that it reflects an overall image of the brand everywhere.

(i) Align with celebrity – Aligning with a celebrity is also a good way of creating a brand image. But this may cost you big bucks and ultimately increasing your cost dramatically. This is an expensive method of branding.

Internal Branding –

Internal Branding is comparatively a cheaper way of branding. You can use your internal organizational staff for this purpose.

(a) Front Office – Always pay attention to your front office because first impression is last impression. It should be kept neat and clean with a pleasant receptionist who always maintains freshness and welcomes the guests with courtesy.

(b) Stays Interview - HR can always conduct stay interviews in which they can interact with the employee and ask them regarding their career prospects, there alignment with the company, there feedback regarding their concerned departments, etc. These feedbacks can be analyzed and used for different purposes by which you can create an internal brand image of the country.

(c) Exit Interview – An exit always carries a fair chance of initiating the chain reaction among the employees so always be very careful in analyzing the exiting reasons so that you can overcome the justified ones in the future.

(d) Employee Satisfaction – Employee satisfaction is always very important for any organization to grow. A satisfied employee is a productive employee. If your employee is satisfied, you can relax because they will create a good and positive rapport for the company in the market outside.

(e) Policy Information – Always design your policies very strategically. A policy should be designed in such a way that it holds good even after a long period of time. A frequent internal policy change sends a message to the outer world that the company is not consistent and knowledgeable and reliable.

(f) Customer Orientation – Customers are always the most important factors. Always keep your workforce motivated towards delivery of customer oriented services. Customers can be of either type, internal or external.

(g) Employee Participation – Always try to ensure the maximum participation from the employee side, either in terms of internal events participation or external events.

(h) Trained Employees – Always ensure proper training of employees before they are engaged in work. The training should be in all the aspects like policies, vision, mission, organization. This will project a good picture of organization on the new employee.

These are few to count with but based on the requirement and strategy, the list may increase or shorten. 

Contributing Writer:  Rohit Minton is working as Assistant HR in the Group HR department of the Amicorp group. He has done his bachelors in Spanish Language and is now pursuing his MBA in HRD.  minton.rohit@gmail.com  +91 9845676315