Digital employer branding on a new level. How?
The term “employer branding” has existed for years and even decades. Despite its age, the employer brand remains dominant in the market and is an unquestionable strategic element of employers’ competition in hiring the best talent.
The processes and tasks that can be interpreted under the employer brand are aimed at the impression we make in the employees within the company and in the applicants for the advertised jobs, what we communicate and how consistent the word and the deed are. This can also be traced back to what employees think about the company where they work. Make your business attractive with digitizing your employer branding programme!
The rabbit and the turtle
You need to get into a Formula 1 car while racing. The concept of an “employer brand” (should) needs to evolve faster to embed the rapid and continuous change that digitalisation is bringing to business, including caring for people, managing existing employees and future applicants, the messages behind all of this – presumably – deeds can also be found. Not impossible, yet a strong test.
COVID-19
This challenge is exacerbated during the COVID-19 epidemic by the need to simultaneously respond to how an organization responds to events inside and outside the company that are stalling the economy and how to deal with the now highly vulnerable and stagnant processes of employer brand maintenance and evolution.
This situation is both an opportunity and a threat, as in an underperforming economy, firms tend to forget that the employee is their greatest asset!
In this case, a company that communicates well with the outside world and effectively builds its employer brand can become much more attractive than an existing employer.
Digitization and employer branding
In fact, digitization has become a very important decision factor when choosing a prospective employer company. According to a 2019 survey, 70C% of workers aged 22-60 would like to work for digitally mature companies.
In this sense, we can say that digitally mature companies will be more attractive to talented employees, and will be able to more effectively coordinate and meet the needs of multi-generational employees, forge employees and retain them in the long run.
How can we integrate digital solutions into our employer brand?
It’s not about using digital resources to build and promote an employer brand – which many companies are already doing -,it’s about how we communicate our “digital offer” or “digital employee value proposition”.
Digital employer brand
The first step is to adopt a company-wide digital transformation, preferably in a highly supported way. Most companies tend to forget that changes and processes are implemented by people and leave the “human side” as the last step on the road. Fault. Big one.
People’s digital transformation needs to be supported with the right tools and processes, a company-wide digital transformation concept. At the same time, appropriate tools need to be made available and communicable to departments and their leaders to retain, transform, and engage the workforce to implement the transformation and embrace the new culture on a scheduled basis.
In the second step, the employee experience must be transformed into a comprehensive experience of digitization, and all processes must be adapted to its feasibility. This should not only be practiced as part of a talent recruitment strategy, but should also appear throughout the lifecycle of existing employees.
There is a significant difference in this process according to corporate maturity:
- There is no modernized recruitment process, rather the candidate experience is incomplete and fragmented.
- The company has already digitized its workflows with real-time, mobile-based information, but continues to distribute pay slips on paper and manually schedule shifts.
- It does not nurture or promote a culture of innovation and collaboration.
The third step is to strengthen the employer brand with the digital components of the employee value proposition and pass them on to prospective employees accordingly.
It is no longer just the employee who sells himself
Candidates need to be made clear about how digitized the internal corporate processes are, what digital tools are available, what are the work environment and culture, how digital the existing employees there are, and what are the future plans for digitization.
All of this needs to be able to be “sold” to applicants by delivering the right messages – outlining an image appropriate to the company’s digital maturity – that needs to be communicated through digital employer branding tools.
And it doesn’t start with a recording interview, but long before that.
Last but not least, the company’s brand needs to be constantly monitored, shaped and aligned. The employer brand (and branding) is not static; is constantly changing to meet changing future expectations.
Companies need to put in place processes to monitor whether the digital employer brand is being delivered – along promises, on schedule-, and also to ensure that the brand is moving in the right direction and at the right pace.
What tools do we use to support you in digitizing your employer brands?
With a unique development, the Digital Content Framework, which you ca use either for your own internal communications or for continuous and GDPR-compliant, location-based or location-independent access to external (customers, guests, visitors, customers,partners), with unique services such as customer satisfaction measurement, backtesting the consumption of published digital content, or gamification and even indoo and outdoor navigation. Not only does our system help you take a step forward in employer brand building, we also support your business efficiency. Last but not least, we support you to stand out from your competitors.