As the Christmas decorations come down and the new calendar is pinned up, we return to the office armed with resolutions and a fresh perspective. Somewhere on your ever-growing to-do list sits a note to revisit and refresh your employer brand. Frequently overlooked or postponed, the start of the year is the perfect time to position yourself as an employer of choice for the year ahead.
Partnering with employer branding specialists who are equipped with the tools and knowledge to unearth your Employee Value Proposition is the best way to effectively articulate and promote your talent offer.
To kick start the process, we’ve taken a look at the Top 5 Best Places to Work (with under 100 employees) in Canada for 2017 (according to Great Places To Work). Here we’ve uncovered the three biggest trends in their approach to employer branding:
Celebrate your people
While not surprising, it’s certainly interesting that of the five best organizations to work for within Canada, each enterprise is focused on the very same thing – empowering their employees, celebrating their skills and building an environment that nurtures, supports and grows their people.
Employees meet with their leaders each month to discuss their goals for professional development and establish a plan to reach them. Staff are looked after with communal restaurant-quality dining every lunchtime, flexible hours and an in-house fitness program. By doing this, companies said that their people are happier and therefore more motivated to rise to their challenges.
Externally, these businesses are featuring their people across social media, sharing their employee journeys and promoting their unique communities through great images and content posted on relevant channels. Simply by making an effort to celebrate their people, these businesses have made significant inroads to maintaining a positive, constructive employer brand.
If you’re using Scout Talent:Recruit or Scout Talent:Engage, an easy way to highlight your people and engage candidates is by sharing stories via email. These emails can be easily templated and shared at different stages of the recruitment process. As an idea, consider how you can celebrate your current people to your future people in confirmation emails, recruitment updates and through talent pooling communications.
Find strength in social
Importantly, each of these businesses have made a concerted effort to develop strong content strategies that are implemented across their social channels. Building a strong platform where potential candidates can seek credible information about your organization and culture is really important. It’s also a great platform to offer insight into the sense of community and camaraderie that they’ll find at your workplace.
Authenticity is key
What we have seen across each of these top employers is a commitment to authenticity and transparency. This starts with the recruitment process where ‘Hiring Strategy Documents’ are made available to all candidates as a way to inspire and set expectations before they join the team. As talent quickly see through inauthentic, shallow messaging, it’s important that the new year begins with a thorough, unbiased reflection of your organization’s employer brand.
With Scout Talent:Recruit you can take this a step further and provide candidates with as much information about your brand as you desire, starting with a video featuring your current employees or even real-life testimonials.
With the help of an external Employer Branding Specialist, uncover your Employee Value Proposition, build a framework and promote your talent offer.
If you would like to find out more about how Scout Talent can help you identify and establish your employer brand, reach out to us at hello@scouttalent.ca or click the button below.
