Employer Branding: 3 Common Errors and how to avoid them
Today, the company brand is not only projected outward, but also increasingly strongly inward. That’s why investing in your Employer Branding is now as important as investing in the company’s global brand.
Many companies know that, and they are making huge economic efforts to develop an effective Employer Branding strategy. However, they don’t always achieve the expected result. Developing effective Employer Branding strategies is about optimizing available resources and capacities. Today we will therefore highlight the most common errors that may occur while developing your strategy, and most importantly: How to avoid them.
1. The Copy-Paste Strategy
It would be useless to allocate a huge amount of resources copying strategies that worked out well in other companies. Simply because each company is different. Those differences can come from its business sector, its organizational culture, mission, the idiosyncrasy of the country in which it is located, its employees and many more factors.
Therefore, you can be sure that strategies which worked for technology giants such as Google or Microsoft will not have the same impact in a small industrial company on the outskirts of Mönchengladbach, Germany.
This is like in school. Ctrl + C / Ctrl + V is never the solution.
2. The Antaeus Strategy
In Greek mythology, Antaeus was a giant, son of the sea god Poseidon and the earth goddess, Gea. He was almost invincible because whenever he touched the Earth (his mother), his strength was renewed. However, Heracles, in combat with him, discovered the source of his strength and, lifting him up from Earth he defeated him very easily.
As Nassim Taleb pointed in his book Skin in the Game, you cannot separate actions from contact with the ground. And this means it is mandatory to make a good diagnosis of your situation: Know your business, or your strategy will be as weak as Antaeus.
What do your employees think of your company? Or even more interesting: What image does your company portray to potential candidates?
3. The Sailor Strategy
Having a good Employer Branding Strategy doesn’t mean spending like a sailor on shore.
Maybe it is not necessary to spend a fortune in an end-of-year party or in a company event. Many employees value other things like horizontal leadership or co-developed business strategies more than pompous parties with expensive gifts.
Most likely, this is the most common and tragic mistake regarding an EB strategy. The idea is not to spend a lot of money on things that have no real impact, but exactly the opposite.
How to avoid mistakes?
The first and most important factor is to know your current position as a brand.
At VISUS Advisory we have developed a tool that allows us to measure Employer Branding. Operationalizing Employer Branding and making it measurable is the first step to develop an efficient EB strategy. Working with a series of indicators we can quickly identify areas of improvement helping to avoid unnecessary expenses that also damage your internal image.
In addition, our team of professionals consists of experts able to develop customized strategies that adapt to the reality of each company.
Invest wisely. Invest in Employer Branding.
