Assess Your Employer Brand

“Do You”

Not Them...

“Coffee break on three!”

Not You

The following is an adapted excerpt from

“Small Business Guide to Employer Brand Management”by ExactHire

Download Complete

Guide.

Consumer Brand Vs.

Employer Brand

Your consumer brand represents who you are as a business to your customers and prospective customers.

This includes...

Consumer Brand

CONSUMER BRAND

1. How You Stand Apart From Similar Businesses

2. Your Goals In Delivering Your Product Or Service

But what about your employer brand?

What is this? And how does it affect the health of your business?

Employer Brand

Your employer brand is essentially the same as your consumer brand; however, an employer brand represents who you are as a business to your employees and prospective employees.

In other words...

EMPLOYER BRAND

Your consumer brand makes and fulfills a promise to individuals with the goal of gaining their continued business...

CONSUMER BRAND

...an employer brand makes and fulfills a promise to individuals with the goal of gaining and keeping their talent through employment.

EMPLOYER BRAND

A bad brand is bad business; where one goes, the other will quickly follow.

BRAND

“Minesweeper high score!”

Not You

Assessing Your Unique

Employer Brand

Building a brand is a universal practice for any small business--even if it’s not necessarily intentional by the business itself.

Negative connotations associated with brand likely come to mind when we confuse it with the marketing strategies and tactics used to promote the brand.

“Glad I washed my hair today.”

Not You

So putting aside marketing strategies and tactics, consider these three questions as a quick and dirty (and inexpensive) way to assess your employer brand:

How is working at our business different than working at others?

How do people feel about our business before, during, and after working here?

What is the purpose of our business? 1

2

3

By answering those three questions, you will have the building blocks of your employer brand. But...

...you’ll need to ensure that your answers reflect the varied perspectives of everyone in your organization.

4 Steps To Assess

Your Employer Brand

1. Develop a Brief Survey for All Employees

• Determine timeline for distribution, collection, and reporting back.• Use online survey tools to support an efficient survey process.*• Ask the three basic assessment questions listed on slide 18.• Use open-ended questions in order to gain varied perspectives.

*Tip: Using a service like SurveyMonkey automates distribution andsimplifies data compilation, analysis, and reporting.

2. Distribute Survey

• Communicate how everyone will benefit from the responses.*

• Ensure anonymity.

• Provide a deadline for completion.

*Example: “In an effort to continuously improve your experience at ACME, we invite you to complete this brief, anonymous survey by Friday, May 29.”

3. Collect and Compile the Responses

• Remind of upcoming deadline and importance of responding.

• After collecting, thank everyone for responding and provide timeline for reporting the results back to respondents.

• Group similar responses to reflect a common perspective*

*Example: “Our business is different because we have flexible work hours” and “because we can work from home as needed” might be counted as one.

4. Include Insights In Continual Improvement Plan

• Positive perspectives can point to processes or policies to be maintained.

• Negative perspectives can reveal opportunities for growth and improvement.

• An improvement plan that is, in part, based on survey responses will

strengthen employee confidence and loyalty.*

*Example: “In response to your input, ACME will invest in an Applicant

Tracking System to optimize our recruiting and application processes. Thank

you for your time and energy in making ACME the best that it can be.”

Assess your employer brand before creating any strategy to market it. If your brand (what you are) is not in alignment with your brand marketing (what you are promising to be), then you will be misleading job applicants and laying the groundwork for a bad brand image--that means bad business and low morale/high turnover for your employees.

Know Thyself, Then Do You

Want To Learn More?

Download ExactHire’s “Small Business Guide to Employer Brand Management”

Download The Guide.