Employer Brand

Step-by-Step Guide: Crafting an Effective Employer Brand Strategy for Start-ups (DIY)

Build an employer brand that showcases the uniqueness of your culture and EVP in a few simple steps

Photo by Karsten Winegeart on Unsplash

As a part of the talent acquisition strategy, we can also work on the business Employer Brand (EB). We can use this as a tool to attract great talent and recruit them, and with very little investment we can achieve great results.

Believe me, you do not need to invest tons of time and money to get something that works. Of course as always the more the merrier but most probably if you work at a startup you do not have the resources to hire an expert consultant or agency to do this for you and you need to do it yourself.

In this article, I am going to share some tips on how to build an acceptable employer brand that makes a positive impact and that you can get done by a team of 1–3 people.

Table of Contents

· What is an Employer Brand (EB)?
· Benefits of Having a Strong EB
· How to build an Employer Brand?
· Defining your EVP
∘ Step 1: Collect information
∘ Step 2: Analyze the results
∘ Step 3: Synthesis
∘ Step 4: Organize the ideas in a nice-looking EVP
· Communicate your EVP Out There (EB)

What is an Employer Brand (EB)?

Easy. The employer brand is the perception of what it is like to work at your business. Basically, this comes from the business showing and creating awareness in people.

And, what do we show? We show our culture and our Employee Value Proposition (EVP). Our EVP is the uniqueness of working at your workplace, the key benefits, and what people value the most.

Let’s clarify these two concepts a bit more as they can get confusing.

An EB is how a business markets itself to the outside world with the aim to be an appealing place to work at. It is basically how you showcase (and amplify) your uniqueness as an employer (culture, how you treat employees, career growth, perks, offices, etc.). EB is thus as well the reputation and how people perceive your organization as a place to work. Usually, the better job you do building your EB the better perception people will have of it.

An EVP is, however, what an organization offers to its employees (benefits) that make them choose this work and stay. It is the “why” those people go to work every day.

We can say thus the EB is how we externally showcase our EVP, yes.

Benefits of Having a Strong EB

• Reducing the cost per hire: relevant candidates who align with your values, principles, and product will come to you, and thus less sourcing (time/money) will be required.
• Reducing the time to hire: with more marketing activities happening, more awareness will be made externally. People know who you are. It would not take that long to recruit as people will have an idea of your business, and they’d trust you better. Most probably they would look forward to an offer and when this happens they will want to immediately accept it.
• Optimize salaries: if people know your business, if they can know previously the benefits of working there, how they will be treated, the awesome team they will work with, and how you work, they’d have an existing interest to come to work with you aside from compensation. In this way, the culture will be a motivator to join and not just the compensation. You won’t have to overpay to compensate for the lack of trust.
• Retention: when you showcase your EVP, you set up expectations. People know where they go. This avoids not meeting expectations and people leaving during the first 6 months. Besides, showcasing your culture helps to reinforce your EVP and remind existing employees of what you offer that is unique.

It is clear that as a talent and HR team, we want to invest some time in building a strong EB.

How to build an Employer Brand?

Photo by Patrick Perkins on Unsplash

Two basic steps:

• Define your EVP
• Communicate your EVP out there (EB)

First and foremost we must say that the employer brand needs to be realistic. Meaning, it needs to portray the real EVP. Later on, when marketing this you can maximize a bit or put some extra focus on certain aspects and minimize others not so strong but you need to stick to what is the real perception by your employees.

You need to ask your employees and build upon their perceptions.

So, how do we get started?

Defining your EVP

First, we need to define our EVP. The process to do this is as follows:

Step 1: Collect information

Ask your employees why they joined the business and why they stay. You need to run a quick survey to understand what is the uniqueness of working at your workplace, what the key benefits are, and what people value the most. Make sure each question is well-thought and relates to a specific area you want to understand better: values, working approaches, motivators, benefits, etc.

When I worked on this project at Anima App the survey we built was made out of 7 questions, assessing: motivators, most meaningful values, employee mindset, uniqueness, differentiators, and reasons to join/stay.

The questions we asked were:
What are some of your biggest motivators at BUSINESS NAME?
What makes our company different from others you’ve worked in?
What do you think are BUSINESS NAME’s most meaningful values?
What qualities do people need to have to be successful here?
If you were considering joining another company for a similar compensation package, what are the factors that would make you want to stay with us?
What values are important to you in an organization?
How do you experience those values here?
List the top 5 reasons why you think people joined BUSINESS NAME’s.

You can use Google Forms or SurveyMonkey or any other software you like to collect this information. Keep this survey short and sweet.

Step 2: Analyze the results

By looking at the information collected we will try to summarize in a table (so it is easy to visualize) what people are saying for each question. We will try to add just words that summarize their thoughts so it is easier for us to synthesize them later on. The idea is to read all the comments and find words that can describe all the people’s comments. Do not worry too much here about formatting or good-looking grammar/words, just drop all the ideas people mentioned as you understand them.

Find below the example of the analysis I did.

Screenshot from the analysis

Step 3: Synthesis

Read each of the words you added to the different categories and summarize them in a few words or sentences. You will see many words you dropped repeat themselves, this is the moment to make the writing beautiful and where you need to think deeper. See below how I did in the project I worked on, notice the big difference between the content above and the content below.

Screenshot from the synthesis

Step 4: Organize the ideas in a nice-looking EVP

By using Gartner’s EVP categories and the information collected, we can put together what the business’s EVP is. This means all the words/sentences you synthesized need to be gathered in categories so they can be beautifully presented and understood by the audience.

Screenshot from Rippl

See here the EVP we built at Anima App.

Screenshot from Anima’s final EVP

And voila! There you have the EVP that you will share with the world!

Communicate your EVP Out There (EB)

Now that we know what is that that we offer to our employees that makes them join and stay, it is time to share with the world.

How? By leading different initiatives:

• Career page that shines: if you have some content management skills you can build yourself an acceptable careers page. Do not stress too much about it, go for something simple and basic to start with. Later on, you could always add up more information. My advice is to start with a home page, jobs section, about us, and design & engineering (if it is a tech business).
• Employee-Generated Content: encourage your employees to share about your business. It could be a Glassdoor review, a mention on Instagram (with your business handle), writing blog posts on Medium, you can do some interviews (testimonials) and asking them to share, or just encouraging people to post on Twitter, LinkedIn, or any other social media.
• Social Media Presence: create a social media planning for HR topics. Make sure once per month you make a LinkedIn post related to an HR topic; someone new joining the team, a celebration or event, a work anniversary, promotions, a conference someone attended, etc.
• Job postings that communicate: make sure your job descriptions convey your EVP. Aside from writing requirements for the job, write what you offer to your people (EVP!). Read more here about JD.
• Starting kit: create a nice Swag pack that you ship to new team members. Use this opportunity to convey your EVP too.
• Employee Advocacy: in bigger organizations (>100 people), it is a good idea to create a group of employees to represent the business in social media, events, etc. These people need to have an interest in being part of this and must be allowed to spend some working time on this. They will help spread the word about your EVP.
• HR Blog posts: you can also write blog posts where you share what it is to work at that business, how you recruit, and how you retain talent. This must be based on employees’ testimonials, perceptions, interviews, etc. Example here.
• Ask for help: Remember sharing your EVP is a shared responsibility. We need support from all across the organization to share our EVP: do not be shy and ask employees to share as much as they can. As we create awareness out there, this would be our Employer Brand!

And that is it!

This blog could be very useful if you work on a start-up (<50 people) and within a small HR team (1–3 people).