Dear all,
I am currently working in one of the pharmaceutical company based at mumbai.
we are planning to start branding our company as Best employer. In this i need your suggestion and recommendation.
Can you please suggest me the various activities that we can do to brand our company? The simplest idea is also welcomed.
Please do reply and give your inputs.
Regards,
Pranali :icon1:
From India, Mumbai
I am currently working in one of the pharmaceutical company based at mumbai.
we are planning to start branding our company as Best employer. In this i need your suggestion and recommendation.
Can you please suggest me the various activities that we can do to brand our company? The simplest idea is also welcomed.
Please do reply and give your inputs.
Regards,
Pranali :icon1:
From India, Mumbai
hei i too m doing a summer project on employer branding one suggestion that we have put is to start an online learning site for employees but even i m falling short of ideas here
From India, Mumbai
From India, Mumbai
PRANALI,
HERE IS SOME USEFUL MATERIALS.
IT INCLUDES IDEAS/CONCEPTS/ STRATEGIES/TIPS/ TACTICS.
REGARDS
LEO LINGHAM
================================================== ==========
1.Pre-requisites for Successful Employer Branding
1. Core Brand Definition – it starts with a clear statement of the brand essence for a company which reflects the corporate vision and values. At the same time, a careful evaluation of what matters most to employees, their perception of what the core brand stands for, the values associated with it, and their expectations will help create an employer brand description that is relevant and inspirational.
2. Senior Management Involvement – employer branding simply won’t work without the genuine, visible support of the CEO. They should "live the brand" as well, and become credible role models for the same values.
3. Alignment with Corporate Strategy – loyalty based relationships formed with employees should be shaped to deliver on brand promises that are consistent with overall corporate goals, and are uniform across all departments and subsidiaries.
4. Empowerment of the Workers – a detailed employer branding blueprint for new HR and communications initiatives, including recruitment and retention programs, should specify responsibilities and accountabilities of key employees.
5. Ongoing Measurement and Recognition – clear milestones, performance standards, incentives, and channels for feedback are essential for success.
================================================== ==================
2. Put Together a Team That Understands, Influences, and Experiences All Facets of Employer Branding and Your Employer Brand
Developing a powerful employer brand requires that you involve all constituencies who influence your employer brand in the branding process.
Creating an Employer Brand requires rigorously examining all facets of the work experience your organization delivers and making sure you create an experience that leads to an employer of choice reputation. To address all the various facets and factors that impact your employer brand, you need to involve people who represent these varied perspectives. You want to include one or more individuals representing human resources, management from all levels, public relations, sales and marketing, customer service, human resource and frontline workers. Effective employer branding also involves expertise from a wide range of disciplines and perspectives.
================================================== =============================
3. Become an Expert on Your Target Market
Most successful brands are built upon an intimate knowledge of their customers. The stronger the brand, the more the brand manager understands the hearts and minds of their ideal customer. In employer branding, this means understanding what:
· today’s employees want
· the most talented employees want
· employees in your particular industry want
· employees from the demographics you hire want
· employees from the various fields and job positions you hire want
Knowing what employees value most highly not only allows you to build an employer brand that is relevant and compelling, it also provides a framework for ongoing monitoring of whether you are delivering the kind of work experience you think you are.
================================================== =============
STEP BY STEP FOR EMPLOYER BRANDING
*Explore the brand challenges and opportunities presented by today’s
highly competitive labour market
*Develop an employer brand roadmap
--------------------------------------------------------------------
*Identifying the potential business value of your employer brand strategy
*Conducting a talent and engagement audit
* Defining your external target market
*Exploring the competitive context
*Determining the current ‘health’ of your employer brand
*Identifying engagement and retention drivers
*Clarifying the distinctive values and behaviours that define your current
corporate culture
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Identifying your optimum market positioning
*Finding the right positioning within the corporate brand hierarchy
(the role of parent brands in multi-brand environments)
*Defining what makes you special (your employer brand attributes)
*Clarifying what you want to be famous for (your headline proposition)
*Determining your most powerful ‘reasons to believe’
*Balancing credibility with stretch aspirations
*Developing value propositions for specific target groups
-------------------------------------------------------------
*Exploring the critical employer brand ‘touch-points’ and ‘moments of truth’
*Identifying the appropriate ‘brand of leadership’
*Putting the employer brand into the context of the HR strategic plan
*Identifying key stakeholders and audiences
*Determining your key performance indicators
*Developing a one, three and five year brand plan
*Winning approval and active commitment
-----------------------------------------------------------------
*Engaging the wider management team
*Effective employee communication and consultation
*Launching the employer brand to all employees (the pros and cons of an
organisation-wide roll-out)
*Applying the employer brand to your intranet and career site
*Developing employer brand led recruitment and PR campaigns
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Embedding the employer brand in business as usual process and practice
*Developing an employer brand toolkit
*Establishing a balanced brand vitality scorecard
*Maintaining momentum through ‘episodic’ internal communication
*Creating an employer brand framework (roles, responsibilities and reporting lines)
=================================================
USEFUL Startups trying to build an employer brand.
Unique benefits / policies. These are a great way to generate buzz around your workplace. Examples include offering discounts to fitness clubs, and providing sabbaticals for long-time employees. Your policies should reinforce the brand that you are trying to establish. If providing a good work/life balance is an important part of your company, then you should be able to point to several policies that allow your employees to achieve that balance.
Employee referral programs. Employee referral programs can play a valuable part in communicating your employer brand--both inside and outside your company. Referral programs build morale and help retain and attract people by reminding employees why your company is a great place to work. Be sure to emphasize the positives of working for your company along with the financial rewards of providing a referral.
Awards programs. Publicly recognizing employees is a great way to reinforce your brand with existing employees. Create a regular reward program that relates directly to the core values that are central to your company's success. The rewards do not have to be limited to cash bonuses. Give gifts that show a personal touch.
Parties. Even if you can't afford to have a famous musician play at it, a party is a great way to generate buzz about your company--provided it is well promoted, both inside and outside your company. Reward employees who take the time to plan your company parties. Emphasize that the event is both a celebration and a recruiting vehicle.
Sponsoring events. Sponsorship of events, while somewhat costly, can be an effective brand-building tool--if the event reaches your target audience. If your goal is to recruit more programmers, make sure the event you're sponsoring is both interesting to and attended by savvy programmers.
Recruitment website. The career section of your company's website should play an integral part of any branding effort. For many job seekers, it will be the first interaction they have with your company. Post your company's core values on your website. Profile individual employees and provide quotes about why they enjoy working at your company.
With all of these tactics, it's important to work with both your PR and marketing departments to make sure the press gets wind of the things you are doing. The end goal of all these efforts is to make your company widely known as a great place to work.
================================================== ===============
SIMPLE TIPS FOR EMPLOYER BRANDING
Good employer branding does not have to be expensive. It requires:
Finding your point of difference from competitors; in marketing language, your employee value proposition.
Communicating the difference.
Evaluating the results.
1. Identify your strengths
Original employer branding is important.
Although employer of choice awards rely on a company fulfilling a wide range of criteria including salary and benefits, employees (particularly younger employees) are increasingly choosing employers based on other factors such as work-life balance, interesting work and career development.
Tip: Create a forum where staff are comfortable talking about the company’s strengths and weaknesses – an external mediator may be required.
================================================== ======================
2. Be socially responsible
A company that can demonstrate good corporate and social responsibility is attractive to younger employees.
Tip: Advertise steps the company has taken to become more environmentally sustainable or how the company is involved in the community.
================================================== ==========
3. Offering career progression through growth
Fast growth is a pull factor for many recruits who want international travel and accelerated promotion through an evolving company structure.
Tip: Give examples of how the fast growth of the company benefits individuals, for example, travel, share options, opportunities for fast promotion.
================================================== ============================
4. Using the web wisely
Company websites are widely acknowledged as the first port of call for any potential employee, so your website should be the first channel of communication tackled by an employer branding strategy.
A basic website should contain a short description about what the company offers employees, current job vacancies and instructions on how to apply – preferably online. More recently, companies list the areas where there are ongoing skills shortages and ask people with those skills to lodge expressions of interest.
Tip: Create a YouTube video featuring a day in the life of an advertised role, a personal chat from the hiring manager or chief executive or a depiction of the company’s culture.
================================================== =========
5. Market yourself to the young
Gen-Y employees may be hard to reach in a fragmented media market but one place you are sure to find them is in schools, vocational training and universities.
Tip: Contact industry career advisers to get involved with careers days and school-based training.
================================================== ===================================
6. Use employees to spread the word
The most powerful tool is word-of-mouth by using employees as ambassadors of the company.
The catch is employees must be truly passionate about the work environment to recommend it to others. Word-of-mouth works both ways – bad news travels fast. If employees’ expectations are not met by an employer then they are going to complain to their friends.
Tip: Do not oversell. Be honest because employees will find out the reality of an employer’s claims very quickly.
================================================== ===================
7. What gets measured gets managed
Employer brand is about targeting recruits, but the most helpful feedback tends to come from people walking out the door.
Regular staff and industry surveys help track changes in the way the company is perceived over time, but exit interviews conducted with departing employees and recruits who decline job offers (a common occurrence in the current market) are a faster way to keep tabs on the brand.
Tip: Declined job offers are a great source of the reasons why a potential employee chooses a competitor
================================================== ================
Here are a variety of low- cost things you can do to begin building your employment brand.
Benchmark and learn all you can internally from successful product and employment brands. Do the same externally .
Assess your organization's current management practices, benefits, culture, etc., to identify what you "have to sell" and what you need to improve.
Do a quick survey or assessment of your current employment "image" among employees, applicants and general public using surveys and focus groups.
Calculate the potential ROI for branding and sell the idea to management.
Develop a catchy slogan that highlights your very best "great place to work" feature(s).
Develop a people-program inventory that lists each of your organization's unique human resource or people programs. This list should be used as ammunition to highlight your best practices in marketing pieces and in media articles.
Identify company products and programs that involve innovation, help save lives or protect the environment. Use these stories and examples in recruiting materials.
Rename some of your successful people programs with "catchy" names that grab people's attention.
Do a side-by-side comparison of your benefits and people pro-grams against those of your talent competitors. Identify areas where you are clearly superior.
Identify and assess your competitors' employment "brand" against which you'll be competing. Develop a branding strategy that high-lights the differences between you and your competitor.
Compose one or two-paragraph profiles of individual employee "success stories" for use in articles and on the Web site.
Work with the CEO's office to get top executives to mention your organization's great people practices both in their internal and external communications. When necessary, write that section of the speech for the CEO.
Apply for listing in the Fortune 100 Best Places to Work list.
Work with the PR department to identify public events that the company is sponsoring. Send managers and recruiters to talk about the company's great people practices. The recruiting department should also add a few of the marketing staff to its advisory team to offer suggestions and to coach recruiters on the latest marketing tools and strategies.
Work with the sales department to identify public sales events and trade shows where materials highlighting your great people practices can be displayed.
Quantify the participation and usage of your work-life balance and other similar high-profile people programs. Quantifying the usage sends a more powerful message than merely saying "we have a program."
Rank potential media and tools to convey branding efforts (based on what your target audience reads or attends), and then select the initial media and methods to convey the branding message.
Review articles that mention different companies' people pro-grams. Then develop a list of the criteria used by local publications when they select a company or people program to feature. Utilize these criteria for selecting which program stories you should high-light in your branding effort. In addition, build relationships with local publications and their reporters. Volunteer to act as sources, and encourage them to write stories on your great people and management practices.
Identify the target market (the type of candidate you are trying to attract) for your branding efforts. Develop a target profile for them (who they are; where to find them; what they read; events they go to; etc.).
Get key managers to write articles and give talks at industry association meetings. Be sure they include great people practices in their materials.
Get managers to give talks at community meetings and at the local Chamber of Commerce that highlight your people practices.
Invite family and friends of employees on site to see "what it is like to work here" and the importance of employees' work so that they will help spread the word on what a great place your organization is to work.
Offer benchmarking sessions on your great "people practices" to teach your customers and suppliers how you do great people man-agement in an attempt to get the attendees to spread the word.
Profile key employee success stories and best management practices on your corporate career web site. Periodically highlight your great people practices in internal publications to remind employees of the great things you do.
Co-sponsor "career workshops" in schools to build your im-age early.
Ask the union, if you have one, to help spread the word about what a great place to work you are.
Encourage local college professors to visit and write "case studies" and articles about the company's people practices.
Participate in industry-wide benchmarking studies to help build your visibility.
Have human resource leaders speak at public human resource seminars and write articles for human resource trade publications about your people practices. Have them join the boards of local nonprofit groups and associations to help spread the word.
Include marketing and branding experience in the criteria you use to hire additional recruiters.
Create a process to measure and evaluate the program's effective-ness, monitor its progress, and improve it.
Re-energize your existing employee referral program and set "targets" for referrals from each department. Include participation as part of the normal performance appraisal process. Provide employees with cards listing the top ten reasons why it's great to work for your company.
Encourage employees to put decals, license plate holders, etc., on their vehicles to broadcast their loyalty. Sell or distribute employment-branded items (hats, T-shirts, pens, etc.) that depict work at your organization.
Participate in community clean-up programs; get your organization named on "clean-up" highway signs.
Develop an alumni club for ex-employees and retirees. Involve these former employees in the process of spreading the word.
Distribute logo book bags, T-shirts, and other similar items to children; sponsor school events.
Work with the advertising department to place ads that occasion-ally highlight your great people and management practices as well as your products.
Train and reward managers for excellent people-management performance.
Conduct surveys of college students, business writers, academics, executive recruiters, and influential business leaders as well as your employees to assess your perceived strengths, weaknesses, corporate culture and image.
Revise recruiting practices to include "wow" elements to make a lasting impression. Continually review your recruitment strategy and team capabilities.
Have the CEO or human resource vice president write articles about the organization's people-management practices.
================================================== ============================
From India, Mumbai
HERE IS SOME USEFUL MATERIALS.
IT INCLUDES IDEAS/CONCEPTS/ STRATEGIES/TIPS/ TACTICS.
REGARDS
LEO LINGHAM
================================================== ==========
1.Pre-requisites for Successful Employer Branding
1. Core Brand Definition – it starts with a clear statement of the brand essence for a company which reflects the corporate vision and values. At the same time, a careful evaluation of what matters most to employees, their perception of what the core brand stands for, the values associated with it, and their expectations will help create an employer brand description that is relevant and inspirational.
2. Senior Management Involvement – employer branding simply won’t work without the genuine, visible support of the CEO. They should "live the brand" as well, and become credible role models for the same values.
3. Alignment with Corporate Strategy – loyalty based relationships formed with employees should be shaped to deliver on brand promises that are consistent with overall corporate goals, and are uniform across all departments and subsidiaries.
4. Empowerment of the Workers – a detailed employer branding blueprint for new HR and communications initiatives, including recruitment and retention programs, should specify responsibilities and accountabilities of key employees.
5. Ongoing Measurement and Recognition – clear milestones, performance standards, incentives, and channels for feedback are essential for success.
================================================== ==================
2. Put Together a Team That Understands, Influences, and Experiences All Facets of Employer Branding and Your Employer Brand
Developing a powerful employer brand requires that you involve all constituencies who influence your employer brand in the branding process.
Creating an Employer Brand requires rigorously examining all facets of the work experience your organization delivers and making sure you create an experience that leads to an employer of choice reputation. To address all the various facets and factors that impact your employer brand, you need to involve people who represent these varied perspectives. You want to include one or more individuals representing human resources, management from all levels, public relations, sales and marketing, customer service, human resource and frontline workers. Effective employer branding also involves expertise from a wide range of disciplines and perspectives.
================================================== =============================
3. Become an Expert on Your Target Market
Most successful brands are built upon an intimate knowledge of their customers. The stronger the brand, the more the brand manager understands the hearts and minds of their ideal customer. In employer branding, this means understanding what:
· today’s employees want
· the most talented employees want
· employees in your particular industry want
· employees from the demographics you hire want
· employees from the various fields and job positions you hire want
Knowing what employees value most highly not only allows you to build an employer brand that is relevant and compelling, it also provides a framework for ongoing monitoring of whether you are delivering the kind of work experience you think you are.
================================================== =============
STEP BY STEP FOR EMPLOYER BRANDING
*Explore the brand challenges and opportunities presented by today’s
highly competitive labour market
*Develop an employer brand roadmap
--------------------------------------------------------------------
*Identifying the potential business value of your employer brand strategy
*Conducting a talent and engagement audit
* Defining your external target market
*Exploring the competitive context
*Determining the current ‘health’ of your employer brand
*Identifying engagement and retention drivers
*Clarifying the distinctive values and behaviours that define your current
corporate culture
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Identifying your optimum market positioning
*Finding the right positioning within the corporate brand hierarchy
(the role of parent brands in multi-brand environments)
*Defining what makes you special (your employer brand attributes)
*Clarifying what you want to be famous for (your headline proposition)
*Determining your most powerful ‘reasons to believe’
*Balancing credibility with stretch aspirations
*Developing value propositions for specific target groups
-------------------------------------------------------------
*Exploring the critical employer brand ‘touch-points’ and ‘moments of truth’
*Identifying the appropriate ‘brand of leadership’
*Putting the employer brand into the context of the HR strategic plan
*Identifying key stakeholders and audiences
*Determining your key performance indicators
*Developing a one, three and five year brand plan
*Winning approval and active commitment
-----------------------------------------------------------------
*Engaging the wider management team
*Effective employee communication and consultation
*Launching the employer brand to all employees (the pros and cons of an
organisation-wide roll-out)
*Applying the employer brand to your intranet and career site
*Developing employer brand led recruitment and PR campaigns
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Embedding the employer brand in business as usual process and practice
*Developing an employer brand toolkit
*Establishing a balanced brand vitality scorecard
*Maintaining momentum through ‘episodic’ internal communication
*Creating an employer brand framework (roles, responsibilities and reporting lines)
=================================================
USEFUL Startups trying to build an employer brand.
Unique benefits / policies. These are a great way to generate buzz around your workplace. Examples include offering discounts to fitness clubs, and providing sabbaticals for long-time employees. Your policies should reinforce the brand that you are trying to establish. If providing a good work/life balance is an important part of your company, then you should be able to point to several policies that allow your employees to achieve that balance.
Employee referral programs. Employee referral programs can play a valuable part in communicating your employer brand--both inside and outside your company. Referral programs build morale and help retain and attract people by reminding employees why your company is a great place to work. Be sure to emphasize the positives of working for your company along with the financial rewards of providing a referral.
Awards programs. Publicly recognizing employees is a great way to reinforce your brand with existing employees. Create a regular reward program that relates directly to the core values that are central to your company's success. The rewards do not have to be limited to cash bonuses. Give gifts that show a personal touch.
Parties. Even if you can't afford to have a famous musician play at it, a party is a great way to generate buzz about your company--provided it is well promoted, both inside and outside your company. Reward employees who take the time to plan your company parties. Emphasize that the event is both a celebration and a recruiting vehicle.
Sponsoring events. Sponsorship of events, while somewhat costly, can be an effective brand-building tool--if the event reaches your target audience. If your goal is to recruit more programmers, make sure the event you're sponsoring is both interesting to and attended by savvy programmers.
Recruitment website. The career section of your company's website should play an integral part of any branding effort. For many job seekers, it will be the first interaction they have with your company. Post your company's core values on your website. Profile individual employees and provide quotes about why they enjoy working at your company.
With all of these tactics, it's important to work with both your PR and marketing departments to make sure the press gets wind of the things you are doing. The end goal of all these efforts is to make your company widely known as a great place to work.
================================================== ===============
SIMPLE TIPS FOR EMPLOYER BRANDING
Good employer branding does not have to be expensive. It requires:
Finding your point of difference from competitors; in marketing language, your employee value proposition.
Communicating the difference.
Evaluating the results.
1. Identify your strengths
Original employer branding is important.
Although employer of choice awards rely on a company fulfilling a wide range of criteria including salary and benefits, employees (particularly younger employees) are increasingly choosing employers based on other factors such as work-life balance, interesting work and career development.
Tip: Create a forum where staff are comfortable talking about the company’s strengths and weaknesses – an external mediator may be required.
================================================== ======================
2. Be socially responsible
A company that can demonstrate good corporate and social responsibility is attractive to younger employees.
Tip: Advertise steps the company has taken to become more environmentally sustainable or how the company is involved in the community.
================================================== ==========
3. Offering career progression through growth
Fast growth is a pull factor for many recruits who want international travel and accelerated promotion through an evolving company structure.
Tip: Give examples of how the fast growth of the company benefits individuals, for example, travel, share options, opportunities for fast promotion.
================================================== ============================
4. Using the web wisely
Company websites are widely acknowledged as the first port of call for any potential employee, so your website should be the first channel of communication tackled by an employer branding strategy.
A basic website should contain a short description about what the company offers employees, current job vacancies and instructions on how to apply – preferably online. More recently, companies list the areas where there are ongoing skills shortages and ask people with those skills to lodge expressions of interest.
Tip: Create a YouTube video featuring a day in the life of an advertised role, a personal chat from the hiring manager or chief executive or a depiction of the company’s culture.
================================================== =========
5. Market yourself to the young
Gen-Y employees may be hard to reach in a fragmented media market but one place you are sure to find them is in schools, vocational training and universities.
Tip: Contact industry career advisers to get involved with careers days and school-based training.
================================================== ===================================
6. Use employees to spread the word
The most powerful tool is word-of-mouth by using employees as ambassadors of the company.
The catch is employees must be truly passionate about the work environment to recommend it to others. Word-of-mouth works both ways – bad news travels fast. If employees’ expectations are not met by an employer then they are going to complain to their friends.
Tip: Do not oversell. Be honest because employees will find out the reality of an employer’s claims very quickly.
================================================== ===================
7. What gets measured gets managed
Employer brand is about targeting recruits, but the most helpful feedback tends to come from people walking out the door.
Regular staff and industry surveys help track changes in the way the company is perceived over time, but exit interviews conducted with departing employees and recruits who decline job offers (a common occurrence in the current market) are a faster way to keep tabs on the brand.
Tip: Declined job offers are a great source of the reasons why a potential employee chooses a competitor
================================================== ================
Here are a variety of low- cost things you can do to begin building your employment brand.
Benchmark and learn all you can internally from successful product and employment brands. Do the same externally .
Assess your organization's current management practices, benefits, culture, etc., to identify what you "have to sell" and what you need to improve.
Do a quick survey or assessment of your current employment "image" among employees, applicants and general public using surveys and focus groups.
Calculate the potential ROI for branding and sell the idea to management.
Develop a catchy slogan that highlights your very best "great place to work" feature(s).
Develop a people-program inventory that lists each of your organization's unique human resource or people programs. This list should be used as ammunition to highlight your best practices in marketing pieces and in media articles.
Identify company products and programs that involve innovation, help save lives or protect the environment. Use these stories and examples in recruiting materials.
Rename some of your successful people programs with "catchy" names that grab people's attention.
Do a side-by-side comparison of your benefits and people pro-grams against those of your talent competitors. Identify areas where you are clearly superior.
Identify and assess your competitors' employment "brand" against which you'll be competing. Develop a branding strategy that high-lights the differences between you and your competitor.
Compose one or two-paragraph profiles of individual employee "success stories" for use in articles and on the Web site.
Work with the CEO's office to get top executives to mention your organization's great people practices both in their internal and external communications. When necessary, write that section of the speech for the CEO.
Apply for listing in the Fortune 100 Best Places to Work list.
Work with the PR department to identify public events that the company is sponsoring. Send managers and recruiters to talk about the company's great people practices. The recruiting department should also add a few of the marketing staff to its advisory team to offer suggestions and to coach recruiters on the latest marketing tools and strategies.
Work with the sales department to identify public sales events and trade shows where materials highlighting your great people practices can be displayed.
Quantify the participation and usage of your work-life balance and other similar high-profile people programs. Quantifying the usage sends a more powerful message than merely saying "we have a program."
Rank potential media and tools to convey branding efforts (based on what your target audience reads or attends), and then select the initial media and methods to convey the branding message.
Review articles that mention different companies' people pro-grams. Then develop a list of the criteria used by local publications when they select a company or people program to feature. Utilize these criteria for selecting which program stories you should high-light in your branding effort. In addition, build relationships with local publications and their reporters. Volunteer to act as sources, and encourage them to write stories on your great people and management practices.
Identify the target market (the type of candidate you are trying to attract) for your branding efforts. Develop a target profile for them (who they are; where to find them; what they read; events they go to; etc.).
Get key managers to write articles and give talks at industry association meetings. Be sure they include great people practices in their materials.
Get managers to give talks at community meetings and at the local Chamber of Commerce that highlight your people practices.
Invite family and friends of employees on site to see "what it is like to work here" and the importance of employees' work so that they will help spread the word on what a great place your organization is to work.
Offer benchmarking sessions on your great "people practices" to teach your customers and suppliers how you do great people man-agement in an attempt to get the attendees to spread the word.
Profile key employee success stories and best management practices on your corporate career web site. Periodically highlight your great people practices in internal publications to remind employees of the great things you do.
Co-sponsor "career workshops" in schools to build your im-age early.
Ask the union, if you have one, to help spread the word about what a great place to work you are.
Encourage local college professors to visit and write "case studies" and articles about the company's people practices.
Participate in industry-wide benchmarking studies to help build your visibility.
Have human resource leaders speak at public human resource seminars and write articles for human resource trade publications about your people practices. Have them join the boards of local nonprofit groups and associations to help spread the word.
Include marketing and branding experience in the criteria you use to hire additional recruiters.
Create a process to measure and evaluate the program's effective-ness, monitor its progress, and improve it.
Re-energize your existing employee referral program and set "targets" for referrals from each department. Include participation as part of the normal performance appraisal process. Provide employees with cards listing the top ten reasons why it's great to work for your company.
Encourage employees to put decals, license plate holders, etc., on their vehicles to broadcast their loyalty. Sell or distribute employment-branded items (hats, T-shirts, pens, etc.) that depict work at your organization.
Participate in community clean-up programs; get your organization named on "clean-up" highway signs.
Develop an alumni club for ex-employees and retirees. Involve these former employees in the process of spreading the word.
Distribute logo book bags, T-shirts, and other similar items to children; sponsor school events.
Work with the advertising department to place ads that occasion-ally highlight your great people and management practices as well as your products.
Train and reward managers for excellent people-management performance.
Conduct surveys of college students, business writers, academics, executive recruiters, and influential business leaders as well as your employees to assess your perceived strengths, weaknesses, corporate culture and image.
Revise recruiting practices to include "wow" elements to make a lasting impression. Continually review your recruitment strategy and team capabilities.
Have the CEO or human resource vice president write articles about the organization's people-management practices.
================================================== ============================
From India, Mumbai
PRANATI,
HERE IS SOME USEFUL MATERIALS.
IT INCLUDES IDEAS/CONCEPTS/ STRATEGIES/TIPS/ TACTICS.
REGARDS
LEO LINGHAM
================================================== ==========
1.Pre-requisites for Successful Employer Branding
1. Core Brand Definition – it starts with a clear statement of the brand essence for a company which reflects the corporate vision and values. At the same time, a careful evaluation of what matters most to employees, their perception of what the core brand stands for, the values associated with it, and their expectations will help create an employer brand description that is relevant and inspirational.
2. Senior Management Involvement – employer branding simply won’t work without the genuine, visible support of the CEO. They should "live the brand" as well, and become credible role models for the same values.
3. Alignment with Corporate Strategy – loyalty based relationships formed with employees should be shaped to deliver on brand promises that are consistent with overall corporate goals, and are uniform across all departments and subsidiaries.
4. Empowerment of the Workers – a detailed employer branding blueprint for new HR and communications initiatives, including recruitment and retention programs, should specify responsibilities and accountabilities of key employees.
5. Ongoing Measurement and Recognition – clear milestones, performance standards, incentives, and channels for feedback are essential for success.
================================================== ==================
2. Put Together a Team That Understands, Influences, and Experiences All Facets of Employer Branding and Your Employer Brand
Developing a powerful employer brand requires that you involve all constituencies who influence your employer brand in the branding process.
Creating an Employer Brand requires rigorously examining all facets of the work experience your organization delivers and making sure you create an experience that leads to an employer of choice reputation. To address all the various facets and factors that impact your employer brand, you need to involve people who represent these varied perspectives. You want to include one or more individuals representing human resources, management from all levels, public relations, sales and marketing, customer service, human resource and frontline workers. Effective employer branding also involves expertise from a wide range of disciplines and perspectives.
================================================== =============================
3. Become an Expert on Your Target Market
Most successful brands are built upon an intimate knowledge of their customers. The stronger the brand, the more the brand manager understands the hearts and minds of their ideal customer. In employer branding, this means understanding what:
· today’s employees want
· the most talented employees want
· employees in your particular industry want
· employees from the demographics you hire want
· employees from the various fields and job positions you hire want
Knowing what employees value most highly not only allows you to build an employer brand that is relevant and compelling, it also provides a framework for ongoing monitoring of whether you are delivering the kind of work experience you think you are.
================================================== =============
STEP BY STEP FOR EMPLOYER BRANDING
*Explore the brand challenges and opportunities presented by today’s
highly competitive labour market
*Develop an employer brand roadmap
--------------------------------------------------------------------
*Identifying the potential business value of your employer brand strategy
*Conducting a talent and engagement audit
* Defining your external target market
*Exploring the competitive context
*Determining the current ‘health’ of your employer brand
*Identifying engagement and retention drivers
*Clarifying the distinctive values and behaviours that define your current
corporate culture
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Identifying your optimum market positioning
*Finding the right positioning within the corporate brand hierarchy
(the role of parent brands in multi-brand environments)
*Defining what makes you special (your employer brand attributes)
*Clarifying what you want to be famous for (your headline proposition)
*Determining your most powerful ‘reasons to believe’
*Balancing credibility with stretch aspirations
*Developing value propositions for specific target groups
-------------------------------------------------------------
*Exploring the critical employer brand ‘touch-points’ and ‘moments of truth’
*Identifying the appropriate ‘brand of leadership’
*Putting the employer brand into the context of the HR strategic plan
*Identifying key stakeholders and audiences
*Determining your key performance indicators
*Developing a one, three and five year brand plan
*Winning approval and active commitment
-----------------------------------------------------------------
*Engaging the wider management team
*Effective employee communication and consultation
*Launching the employer brand to all employees (the pros and cons of an
organisation-wide roll-out)
*Applying the employer brand to your intranet and career site
*Developing employer brand led recruitment and PR campaigns
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Embedding the employer brand in business as usual process and practice
*Developing an employer brand toolkit
*Establishing a balanced brand vitality scorecard
*Maintaining momentum through ‘episodic’ internal communication
*Creating an employer brand framework (roles, responsibilities and reporting lines)
=================================================
USEFUL Startups trying to build an employer brand.
Unique benefits / policies. These are a great way to generate buzz around your workplace. Examples include offering discounts to fitness clubs, and providing sabbaticals for long-time employees. Your policies should reinforce the brand that you are trying to establish. If providing a good work/life balance is an important part of your company, then you should be able to point to several policies that allow your employees to achieve that balance.
Employee referral programs. Employee referral programs can play a valuable part in communicating your employer brand--both inside and outside your company. Referral programs build morale and help retain and attract people by reminding employees why your company is a great place to work. Be sure to emphasize the positives of working for your company along with the financial rewards of providing a referral.
Awards programs. Publicly recognizing employees is a great way to reinforce your brand with existing employees. Create a regular reward program that relates directly to the core values that are central to your company's success. The rewards do not have to be limited to cash bonuses. Give gifts that show a personal touch.
Parties. Even if you can't afford to have a famous musician play at it, a party is a great way to generate buzz about your company--provided it is well promoted, both inside and outside your company. Reward employees who take the time to plan your company parties. Emphasize that the event is both a celebration and a recruiting vehicle.
Sponsoring events. Sponsorship of events, while somewhat costly, can be an effective brand-building tool--if the event reaches your target audience. If your goal is to recruit more programmers, make sure the event you're sponsoring is both interesting to and attended by savvy programmers.
Recruitment website. The career section of your company's website should play an integral part of any branding effort. For many job seekers, it will be the first interaction they have with your company. Post your company's core values on your website. Profile individual employees and provide quotes about why they enjoy working at your company.
With all of these tactics, it's important to work with both your PR and marketing departments to make sure the press gets wind of the things you are doing. The end goal of all these efforts is to make your company widely known as a great place to work.
================================================== ===============
SIMPLE TIPS FOR EMPLOYER BRANDING
Good employer branding does not have to be expensive. It requires:
Finding your point of difference from competitors; in marketing language, your employee value proposition.
Communicating the difference.
Evaluating the results.
1. Identify your strengths
Original employer branding is important.
Although employer of choice awards rely on a company fulfilling a wide range of criteria including salary and benefits, employees (particularly younger employees) are increasingly choosing employers based on other factors such as work-life balance, interesting work and career development.
Tip: Create a forum where staff are comfortable talking about the company’s strengths and weaknesses – an external mediator may be required.
================================================== ======================
2. Be socially responsible
A company that can demonstrate good corporate and social responsibility is attractive to younger employees.
Tip: Advertise steps the company has taken to become more environmentally sustainable or how the company is involved in the community.
================================================== ==========
3. Offering career progression through growth
Fast growth is a pull factor for many recruits who want international travel and accelerated promotion through an evolving company structure.
Tip: Give examples of how the fast growth of the company benefits individuals, for example, travel, share options, opportunities for fast promotion.
================================================== ============================
4. Using the web wisely
Company websites are widely acknowledged as the first port of call for any potential employee, so your website should be the first channel of communication tackled by an employer branding strategy.
A basic website should contain a short description about what the company offers employees, current job vacancies and instructions on how to apply – preferably online. More recently, companies list the areas where there are ongoing skills shortages and ask people with those skills to lodge expressions of interest.
Tip: Create a YouTube video featuring a day in the life of an advertised role, a personal chat from the hiring manager or chief executive or a depiction of the company’s culture.
================================================== =========
5. Market yourself to the young
Gen-Y employees may be hard to reach in a fragmented media market but one place you are sure to find them is in schools, vocational training and universities.
Tip: Contact industry career advisers to get involved with careers days and school-based training.
================================================== ===================================
6. Use employees to spread the word
The most powerful tool is word-of-mouth by using employees as ambassadors of the company.
The catch is employees must be truly passionate about the work environment to recommend it to others. Word-of-mouth works both ways – bad news travels fast. If employees’ expectations are not met by an employer then they are going to complain to their friends.
Tip: Do not oversell. Be honest because employees will find out the reality of an employer’s claims very quickly.
================================================== ===================
7. What gets measured gets managed
Employer brand is about targeting recruits, but the most helpful feedback tends to come from people walking out the door.
Regular staff and industry surveys help track changes in the way the company is perceived over time, but exit interviews conducted with departing employees and recruits who decline job offers (a common occurrence in the current market) are a faster way to keep tabs on the brand.
Tip: Declined job offers are a great source of the reasons why a potential employee chooses a competitor
================================================== ================
Here are a variety of low- cost things you can do to begin building your employment brand.
Benchmark and learn all you can internally from successful product and employment brands. Do the same externally .
Assess your organization's current management practices, benefits, culture, etc., to identify what you "have to sell" and what you need to improve.
Do a quick survey or assessment of your current employment "image" among employees, applicants and general public using surveys and focus groups.
Calculate the potential ROI for branding and sell the idea to management.
Develop a catchy slogan that highlights your very best "great place to work" feature(s).
Develop a people-program inventory that lists each of your organization's unique human resource or people programs. This list should be used as ammunition to highlight your best practices in marketing pieces and in media articles.
Identify company products and programs that involve innovation, help save lives or protect the environment. Use these stories and examples in recruiting materials.
Rename some of your successful people programs with "catchy" names that grab people's attention.
Do a side-by-side comparison of your benefits and people pro-grams against those of your talent competitors. Identify areas where you are clearly superior.
Identify and assess your competitors' employment "brand" against which you'll be competing. Develop a branding strategy that high-lights the differences between you and your competitor.
Compose one or two-paragraph profiles of individual employee "success stories" for use in articles and on the Web site.
Work with the CEO's office to get top executives to mention your organization's great people practices both in their internal and external communications. When necessary, write that section of the speech for the CEO.
Apply for listing in the Fortune 100 Best Places to Work list.
Work with the PR department to identify public events that the company is sponsoring. Send managers and recruiters to talk about the company's great people practices. The recruiting department should also add a few of the marketing staff to its advisory team to offer suggestions and to coach recruiters on the latest marketing tools and strategies.
Work with the sales department to identify public sales events and trade shows where materials highlighting your great people practices can be displayed.
Quantify the participation and usage of your work-life balance and other similar high-profile people programs. Quantifying the usage sends a more powerful message than merely saying "we have a program."
Rank potential media and tools to convey branding efforts (based on what your target audience reads or attends), and then select the initial media and methods to convey the branding message.
Review articles that mention different companies' people pro-grams. Then develop a list of the criteria used by local publications when they select a company or people program to feature. Utilize these criteria for selecting which program stories you should high-light in your branding effort. In addition, build relationships with local publications and their reporters. Volunteer to act as sources, and encourage them to write stories on your great people and management practices.
Identify the target market (the type of candidate you are trying to attract) for your branding efforts. Develop a target profile for them (who they are; where to find them; what they read; events they go to; etc.).
Get key managers to write articles and give talks at industry association meetings. Be sure they include great people practices in their materials.
Get managers to give talks at community meetings and at the local Chamber of Commerce that highlight your people practices.
Invite family and friends of employees on site to see "what it is like to work here" and the importance of employees' work so that they will help spread the word on what a great place your organization is to work.
Offer benchmarking sessions on your great "people practices" to teach your customers and suppliers how you do great people man-agement in an attempt to get the attendees to spread the word.
Profile key employee success stories and best management practices on your corporate career web site. Periodically highlight your great people practices in internal publications to remind employees of the great things you do.
Co-sponsor "career workshops" in schools to build your im-age early.
Ask the union, if you have one, to help spread the word about what a great place to work you are.
Encourage local college professors to visit and write "case studies" and articles about the company's people practices.
Participate in industry-wide benchmarking studies to help build your visibility.
Have human resource leaders speak at public human resource seminars and write articles for human resource trade publications about your people practices. Have them join the boards of local nonprofit groups and associations to help spread the word.
Include marketing and branding experience in the criteria you use to hire additional recruiters.
Create a process to measure and evaluate the program's effective-ness, monitor its progress, and improve it.
Re-energize your existing employee referral program and set "targets" for referrals from each department. Include participation as part of the normal performance appraisal process. Provide employees with cards listing the top ten reasons why it's great to work for your company.
Encourage employees to put decals, license plate holders, etc., on their vehicles to broadcast their loyalty. Sell or distribute employment-branded items (hats, T-shirts, pens, etc.) that depict work at your organization.
Participate in community clean-up programs; get your organization named on "clean-up" highway signs.
Develop an alumni club for ex-employees and retirees. Involve these former employees in the process of spreading the word.
Distribute logo book bags, T-shirts, and other similar items to children; sponsor school events.
Work with the advertising department to place ads that occasion-ally highlight your great people and management practices as well as your products.
Train and reward managers for excellent people-management performance.
Conduct surveys of college students, business writers, academics, executive recruiters, and influential business leaders as well as your employees to assess your perceived strengths, weaknesses, corporate culture and image.
Revise recruiting practices to include "wow" elements to make a lasting impression. Continually review your recruitment strategy and team capabilities.
Have the CEO or human resource vice president write articles about the organization's people-management practices.
================================================== ============================
From India, Mumbai
HERE IS SOME USEFUL MATERIALS.
IT INCLUDES IDEAS/CONCEPTS/ STRATEGIES/TIPS/ TACTICS.
REGARDS
LEO LINGHAM
================================================== ==========
1.Pre-requisites for Successful Employer Branding
1. Core Brand Definition – it starts with a clear statement of the brand essence for a company which reflects the corporate vision and values. At the same time, a careful evaluation of what matters most to employees, their perception of what the core brand stands for, the values associated with it, and their expectations will help create an employer brand description that is relevant and inspirational.
2. Senior Management Involvement – employer branding simply won’t work without the genuine, visible support of the CEO. They should "live the brand" as well, and become credible role models for the same values.
3. Alignment with Corporate Strategy – loyalty based relationships formed with employees should be shaped to deliver on brand promises that are consistent with overall corporate goals, and are uniform across all departments and subsidiaries.
4. Empowerment of the Workers – a detailed employer branding blueprint for new HR and communications initiatives, including recruitment and retention programs, should specify responsibilities and accountabilities of key employees.
5. Ongoing Measurement and Recognition – clear milestones, performance standards, incentives, and channels for feedback are essential for success.
================================================== ==================
2. Put Together a Team That Understands, Influences, and Experiences All Facets of Employer Branding and Your Employer Brand
Developing a powerful employer brand requires that you involve all constituencies who influence your employer brand in the branding process.
Creating an Employer Brand requires rigorously examining all facets of the work experience your organization delivers and making sure you create an experience that leads to an employer of choice reputation. To address all the various facets and factors that impact your employer brand, you need to involve people who represent these varied perspectives. You want to include one or more individuals representing human resources, management from all levels, public relations, sales and marketing, customer service, human resource and frontline workers. Effective employer branding also involves expertise from a wide range of disciplines and perspectives.
================================================== =============================
3. Become an Expert on Your Target Market
Most successful brands are built upon an intimate knowledge of their customers. The stronger the brand, the more the brand manager understands the hearts and minds of their ideal customer. In employer branding, this means understanding what:
· today’s employees want
· the most talented employees want
· employees in your particular industry want
· employees from the demographics you hire want
· employees from the various fields and job positions you hire want
Knowing what employees value most highly not only allows you to build an employer brand that is relevant and compelling, it also provides a framework for ongoing monitoring of whether you are delivering the kind of work experience you think you are.
================================================== =============
STEP BY STEP FOR EMPLOYER BRANDING
*Explore the brand challenges and opportunities presented by today’s
highly competitive labour market
*Develop an employer brand roadmap
--------------------------------------------------------------------
*Identifying the potential business value of your employer brand strategy
*Conducting a talent and engagement audit
* Defining your external target market
*Exploring the competitive context
*Determining the current ‘health’ of your employer brand
*Identifying engagement and retention drivers
*Clarifying the distinctive values and behaviours that define your current
corporate culture
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Identifying your optimum market positioning
*Finding the right positioning within the corporate brand hierarchy
(the role of parent brands in multi-brand environments)
*Defining what makes you special (your employer brand attributes)
*Clarifying what you want to be famous for (your headline proposition)
*Determining your most powerful ‘reasons to believe’
*Balancing credibility with stretch aspirations
*Developing value propositions for specific target groups
-------------------------------------------------------------
*Exploring the critical employer brand ‘touch-points’ and ‘moments of truth’
*Identifying the appropriate ‘brand of leadership’
*Putting the employer brand into the context of the HR strategic plan
*Identifying key stakeholders and audiences
*Determining your key performance indicators
*Developing a one, three and five year brand plan
*Winning approval and active commitment
-----------------------------------------------------------------
*Engaging the wider management team
*Effective employee communication and consultation
*Launching the employer brand to all employees (the pros and cons of an
organisation-wide roll-out)
*Applying the employer brand to your intranet and career site
*Developing employer brand led recruitment and PR campaigns
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Embedding the employer brand in business as usual process and practice
*Developing an employer brand toolkit
*Establishing a balanced brand vitality scorecard
*Maintaining momentum through ‘episodic’ internal communication
*Creating an employer brand framework (roles, responsibilities and reporting lines)
=================================================
USEFUL Startups trying to build an employer brand.
Unique benefits / policies. These are a great way to generate buzz around your workplace. Examples include offering discounts to fitness clubs, and providing sabbaticals for long-time employees. Your policies should reinforce the brand that you are trying to establish. If providing a good work/life balance is an important part of your company, then you should be able to point to several policies that allow your employees to achieve that balance.
Employee referral programs. Employee referral programs can play a valuable part in communicating your employer brand--both inside and outside your company. Referral programs build morale and help retain and attract people by reminding employees why your company is a great place to work. Be sure to emphasize the positives of working for your company along with the financial rewards of providing a referral.
Awards programs. Publicly recognizing employees is a great way to reinforce your brand with existing employees. Create a regular reward program that relates directly to the core values that are central to your company's success. The rewards do not have to be limited to cash bonuses. Give gifts that show a personal touch.
Parties. Even if you can't afford to have a famous musician play at it, a party is a great way to generate buzz about your company--provided it is well promoted, both inside and outside your company. Reward employees who take the time to plan your company parties. Emphasize that the event is both a celebration and a recruiting vehicle.
Sponsoring events. Sponsorship of events, while somewhat costly, can be an effective brand-building tool--if the event reaches your target audience. If your goal is to recruit more programmers, make sure the event you're sponsoring is both interesting to and attended by savvy programmers.
Recruitment website. The career section of your company's website should play an integral part of any branding effort. For many job seekers, it will be the first interaction they have with your company. Post your company's core values on your website. Profile individual employees and provide quotes about why they enjoy working at your company.
With all of these tactics, it's important to work with both your PR and marketing departments to make sure the press gets wind of the things you are doing. The end goal of all these efforts is to make your company widely known as a great place to work.
================================================== ===============
SIMPLE TIPS FOR EMPLOYER BRANDING
Good employer branding does not have to be expensive. It requires:
Finding your point of difference from competitors; in marketing language, your employee value proposition.
Communicating the difference.
Evaluating the results.
1. Identify your strengths
Original employer branding is important.
Although employer of choice awards rely on a company fulfilling a wide range of criteria including salary and benefits, employees (particularly younger employees) are increasingly choosing employers based on other factors such as work-life balance, interesting work and career development.
Tip: Create a forum where staff are comfortable talking about the company’s strengths and weaknesses – an external mediator may be required.
================================================== ======================
2. Be socially responsible
A company that can demonstrate good corporate and social responsibility is attractive to younger employees.
Tip: Advertise steps the company has taken to become more environmentally sustainable or how the company is involved in the community.
================================================== ==========
3. Offering career progression through growth
Fast growth is a pull factor for many recruits who want international travel and accelerated promotion through an evolving company structure.
Tip: Give examples of how the fast growth of the company benefits individuals, for example, travel, share options, opportunities for fast promotion.
================================================== ============================
4. Using the web wisely
Company websites are widely acknowledged as the first port of call for any potential employee, so your website should be the first channel of communication tackled by an employer branding strategy.
A basic website should contain a short description about what the company offers employees, current job vacancies and instructions on how to apply – preferably online. More recently, companies list the areas where there are ongoing skills shortages and ask people with those skills to lodge expressions of interest.
Tip: Create a YouTube video featuring a day in the life of an advertised role, a personal chat from the hiring manager or chief executive or a depiction of the company’s culture.
================================================== =========
5. Market yourself to the young
Gen-Y employees may be hard to reach in a fragmented media market but one place you are sure to find them is in schools, vocational training and universities.
Tip: Contact industry career advisers to get involved with careers days and school-based training.
================================================== ===================================
6. Use employees to spread the word
The most powerful tool is word-of-mouth by using employees as ambassadors of the company.
The catch is employees must be truly passionate about the work environment to recommend it to others. Word-of-mouth works both ways – bad news travels fast. If employees’ expectations are not met by an employer then they are going to complain to their friends.
Tip: Do not oversell. Be honest because employees will find out the reality of an employer’s claims very quickly.
================================================== ===================
7. What gets measured gets managed
Employer brand is about targeting recruits, but the most helpful feedback tends to come from people walking out the door.
Regular staff and industry surveys help track changes in the way the company is perceived over time, but exit interviews conducted with departing employees and recruits who decline job offers (a common occurrence in the current market) are a faster way to keep tabs on the brand.
Tip: Declined job offers are a great source of the reasons why a potential employee chooses a competitor
================================================== ================
Here are a variety of low- cost things you can do to begin building your employment brand.
Benchmark and learn all you can internally from successful product and employment brands. Do the same externally .
Assess your organization's current management practices, benefits, culture, etc., to identify what you "have to sell" and what you need to improve.
Do a quick survey or assessment of your current employment "image" among employees, applicants and general public using surveys and focus groups.
Calculate the potential ROI for branding and sell the idea to management.
Develop a catchy slogan that highlights your very best "great place to work" feature(s).
Develop a people-program inventory that lists each of your organization's unique human resource or people programs. This list should be used as ammunition to highlight your best practices in marketing pieces and in media articles.
Identify company products and programs that involve innovation, help save lives or protect the environment. Use these stories and examples in recruiting materials.
Rename some of your successful people programs with "catchy" names that grab people's attention.
Do a side-by-side comparison of your benefits and people pro-grams against those of your talent competitors. Identify areas where you are clearly superior.
Identify and assess your competitors' employment "brand" against which you'll be competing. Develop a branding strategy that high-lights the differences between you and your competitor.
Compose one or two-paragraph profiles of individual employee "success stories" for use in articles and on the Web site.
Work with the CEO's office to get top executives to mention your organization's great people practices both in their internal and external communications. When necessary, write that section of the speech for the CEO.
Apply for listing in the Fortune 100 Best Places to Work list.
Work with the PR department to identify public events that the company is sponsoring. Send managers and recruiters to talk about the company's great people practices. The recruiting department should also add a few of the marketing staff to its advisory team to offer suggestions and to coach recruiters on the latest marketing tools and strategies.
Work with the sales department to identify public sales events and trade shows where materials highlighting your great people practices can be displayed.
Quantify the participation and usage of your work-life balance and other similar high-profile people programs. Quantifying the usage sends a more powerful message than merely saying "we have a program."
Rank potential media and tools to convey branding efforts (based on what your target audience reads or attends), and then select the initial media and methods to convey the branding message.
Review articles that mention different companies' people pro-grams. Then develop a list of the criteria used by local publications when they select a company or people program to feature. Utilize these criteria for selecting which program stories you should high-light in your branding effort. In addition, build relationships with local publications and their reporters. Volunteer to act as sources, and encourage them to write stories on your great people and management practices.
Identify the target market (the type of candidate you are trying to attract) for your branding efforts. Develop a target profile for them (who they are; where to find them; what they read; events they go to; etc.).
Get key managers to write articles and give talks at industry association meetings. Be sure they include great people practices in their materials.
Get managers to give talks at community meetings and at the local Chamber of Commerce that highlight your people practices.
Invite family and friends of employees on site to see "what it is like to work here" and the importance of employees' work so that they will help spread the word on what a great place your organization is to work.
Offer benchmarking sessions on your great "people practices" to teach your customers and suppliers how you do great people man-agement in an attempt to get the attendees to spread the word.
Profile key employee success stories and best management practices on your corporate career web site. Periodically highlight your great people practices in internal publications to remind employees of the great things you do.
Co-sponsor "career workshops" in schools to build your im-age early.
Ask the union, if you have one, to help spread the word about what a great place to work you are.
Encourage local college professors to visit and write "case studies" and articles about the company's people practices.
Participate in industry-wide benchmarking studies to help build your visibility.
Have human resource leaders speak at public human resource seminars and write articles for human resource trade publications about your people practices. Have them join the boards of local nonprofit groups and associations to help spread the word.
Include marketing and branding experience in the criteria you use to hire additional recruiters.
Create a process to measure and evaluate the program's effective-ness, monitor its progress, and improve it.
Re-energize your existing employee referral program and set "targets" for referrals from each department. Include participation as part of the normal performance appraisal process. Provide employees with cards listing the top ten reasons why it's great to work for your company.
Encourage employees to put decals, license plate holders, etc., on their vehicles to broadcast their loyalty. Sell or distribute employment-branded items (hats, T-shirts, pens, etc.) that depict work at your organization.
Participate in community clean-up programs; get your organization named on "clean-up" highway signs.
Develop an alumni club for ex-employees and retirees. Involve these former employees in the process of spreading the word.
Distribute logo book bags, T-shirts, and other similar items to children; sponsor school events.
Work with the advertising department to place ads that occasion-ally highlight your great people and management practices as well as your products.
Train and reward managers for excellent people-management performance.
Conduct surveys of college students, business writers, academics, executive recruiters, and influential business leaders as well as your employees to assess your perceived strengths, weaknesses, corporate culture and image.
Revise recruiting practices to include "wow" elements to make a lasting impression. Continually review your recruitment strategy and team capabilities.
Have the CEO or human resource vice president write articles about the organization's people-management practices.
================================================== ============================
From India, Mumbai
Hi Leo Thank you very much. the information was really useful but i also need some practical actions that we can start with for e.g. for campus placement, recruitment etc. Regards, pranali
From India, Mumbai
From India, Mumbai
Dear Pranali,
To emerge up as a successful and most effective employer, you need to emphasize upon the HR Practices in your organization.
Don't search for the big options, start with small small initiatives like celebrating birthday of staff members, aniversary celebration of VP's and GM's, announcing employee of the month, like that.
This will help you to have some quick wins in the organization, and later on play as you like, viz. new hr initiatives and practices.
For further assistance you may call me on my cell 098256 50504 any time.
Regards,
Praloy - Intas Pharmaceuticals Limited.
From India, Vadodara
To emerge up as a successful and most effective employer, you need to emphasize upon the HR Practices in your organization.
Don't search for the big options, start with small small initiatives like celebrating birthday of staff members, aniversary celebration of VP's and GM's, announcing employee of the month, like that.
This will help you to have some quick wins in the organization, and later on play as you like, viz. new hr initiatives and practices.
For further assistance you may call me on my cell 098256 50504 any time.
Regards,
Praloy - Intas Pharmaceuticals Limited.
From India, Vadodara
thank you so very much pranali its going to be extremly helpful for me to proceed with my project.hey,we recommended an employee refferal program.you can see if that works in your case.but could you tell me what percent of referral recruits take place in companies these days.
From India, Mumbai
From India, Mumbai
whoho......... i just completed my summer project on employer branding! wish i had gt dis info before hand :icon1:
From India, Pune
From India, Pune
Hi,
You can refer to the below link for some stuff on Employer Branding
Global HR Practices
Regards,
Rohit
From India, Bangalore
You can refer to the below link for some stuff on Employer Branding
Global HR Practices
Regards,
Rohit
From India, Bangalore
Find answers from people who have previously dealt with business and work issues similar to yours - Please Register and Log In to CiteHR and post your query.