EMPLOYER BRANDING IN THE REPUTATION ECONOMY – DIGITAL, LOCAL AND INCREASINGLY VOCAL.
Andy Curlewis, senior vice president of band, digital & communications at Cielo, explores how businesses can digitally empower its employer brand and cement its external position as employer of choice.
In 2021, transformation is at the heart of many organisations’ strategic plans. But how do you use targeted messaging to attract the best talent and drive those transformation programs forward? Once engaged, how do you utilise the power of digital to create a best-in-class consumer experience for those candidates and your people?
With company valuations increasingly weighted towards intangible assets such as reputation, culture and people, a company’s employer brand has a more important role to play than ever in driving sustainable growth. The future of work is accelerating on the back of seismic changes, from global and regional social movements to the hybrid-working revolution accelerated by COVID-19.
In this new reputation economy, it’s vital to leverage your employer brand to bring employees with you on your transformation journey and cement your external position as an employer of choice. Digital reinvention is key to this process – whether we all wanted it or not 18 months ago!
Attracting the best talent with a digitally powered employer brand
Technology is only as valuable as the human experience it improves. Weaving your employer brand through every digital touchpoint is essential – but so is using that brand to deliver authentic storytelling and messaging that resonates with your audience, in every local market.
At Cielo, we combine experience in developing employee value propositions (EVPs) and employer brands, with the knowledge needed to build a best-in-class digital experience for your candidates and ensuring that message resonates across target audiences. So, what does that highly targeted, digital candidate experience look like?
It begins with messaging.
Your employer brand needs to be authentic, relevant, and aspirational to engage your target audience to join you and add value to delivering your company’s shared goals.
To ensure relevance of the global message, the key pillars that your organisation own must be identified and communicated as the global EVP. This creates consistency and ensures organisational alignment.
Dialling up the right global themes to reflect local needs and realities, and tweaking the narrative based on solid insight in each of your target markets or verticals, is then the foundation to ensuring local relevance.
The reality also is that everyone has a view and is increasingly vocal – so, how to strike the balance between corporate narrative and personal views? Control and compliance with freedom and creativity – messaging isn’t just a script. It’s a broader philosophy on culture and brand personality.
Configuring personalised rich content to engage your audience
With messaging on point, rich content needs to be configured to both digital platforms and today’s digital consumer, from story-led advertisements to personalised websites and video job descriptions, on-demand market-specific chatbot support, or one-click apply. Above all, a targeted, digital candidate experience means ensuring that your employer brand is connecting with the right transformational talent you need.
Today’s candidates increasingly expect (and indeed need) their recruitment experience to be primarily a digital one. They are at home with a hiring process that includes the convenience of virtual events and interviews and see social media as a key platform for job seeking.
Cielo’s partnerships with our customers – including Becton Dickinson - have helped digitise and localise employee experience through the deployment of a range of digital tools and a significant communications programme around new ways of working.
To build a sustainable workforce of the future (or is that now?) striking the balance between digital and local, freedom and control is vital to ensuring your business has the talent it needs to stay at the forefront of innovation.