Employer branding. It’s one of the biggest buzzwords out there. No longer is it relegated to certain groups or companies. What was once a “nice to have”, is something that you “need to have”.
For those of us in the employer branding space, we’ve had the unique chance to navigate every imaginable scenario that the space has given us. Throughout our journeys, we’ve either worked at a startup with full control, a team of one at a mid-sized corporation with a lack of control and budget or had the fun experience of working on a team with a good mix of everything together.
One of the biggest questions that people always ask is “Do you believe Employer Branding is a Solo Act?”. Although it’s a question that has come up from time to time, I’ve never shared my views about it publicly, until last week. Last week, I had the opportunity to speak about it at #RecFest2022 in the UK. During my chat, I shared that Employer Branding is indeed not a solo act, and requires a team. To justify my stance, I’ve created a concept called TEAM.
Whether you’re in-house or a consultant, you need help. The Employer Brand is bigger than you. You are part of the Employer Brand, not the brand itself.
The four core pieces of TEAM are Time, Empathy, Advocacy, and Magnetize. Now I know what you’re thinking. This guy just put together a bunch of stuff and called it a concept, but trust me, read below and it’ll all make sense.
Time is the one thing that we try to buy, but never have enough of. In a lot of cases, practitioners are expected to come in and make something happen in a matter of weeks. To me, that is simply unrealistic. You need time to establish relationships, get the lay of the land, and then come up with a strategy.
*** Time is also an issue with consultants, as you build things out, but have to do so with a limited amount of time. You might come up with something great, but never see it to fruition.
Being empathetic with all of your stakeholders is essential to being successful. You may go into the company as “the expert”, but you’re not the Employer Brand itself. If you want any sort of buy-in from your teammates, you need to be willing to:
- Listen – Go go in with an open mind, open ears and an open heart.
- Learn – Don’t assume that you know everything. Learn from what your stakeholders are sharing with you. You’ll learn quite a bit about previous successes, failures, or local challenges that a Google search is not going to provide you.
- Understand – You have to understand that it’s going to take time and that it won’t be perfect. It won’t all be solved in a day.
One of the key foundations of TEAM is Advocacy. Once you’re given time to do your work, reach out and listen to your peers, you need to find your advocates. Finding your advocates doesn’t take much work, but is pretty crucial to your success. You can find your advocates by doing a simple search on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok. Chances are that your natural advocates are already sharing jobs, links to the career page, blogs, videos, etc… Once you locate your advocates, the sky is the limit to what you can do.
The final piece of the concept that makes the TEAM concept work is Magnetize. At this point, you’ve put in the time to meet your stakeholders, partnered together on strategy, and have identified advocates. The next step is activating and magnetizing your audience. You’re taking everything that you’ve created together, and then sharing it with everyone that you want to have join your company.
Now, when you put everything together here’s what you get:
How Do You Get There?
Yes, I get it. You’ve seen everything above and are questioning, how the heck do I put the TEAM concept to work? It’s actually a lot easier than you think:
- Employee Advocacy – You have natural advocates, so teach and empower them!
- Be Proactive and Reach out and Meet with Teammates – Be quick to listen, slow to speak, be open to change
- Consider Your Growth and New Markets – Look into untapped teams/depts (not just TA)
- Content Marketing – Do you have an existing blog, graphics, and videos? If yes, leverage them. If not, create them!
- Utilize Your New Joiners – They’re already excited about joining the company and make for great advocates.
In closing, managing your Employer Brand, with time, can be done quite easily. Taking more of a “We” versus “Me” approach makes all the difference in the world in your success.