The need for vision to drive your employer branding

Steve was in an ideal sense a perfect hire. After having gone through multiple rounds of behavioural and leadership assessments and interviews he is finally hired. But in four months, Steve decides to leave the job. Why? No effort was made to see whether Steve had the culture fit with the company.

In recruiting the right talent, most organizations look at the technical and behavioral aspects and end up neglecting the cultural fit.

Employer branding is about creating and delivering a compelling experience to the talent and reflecting upon the vision and values of your organization in every step. If your organization wants to recruit the right talent, you need to make sure that every hire you make has a cultural fit with the company.

As the war for talent intensifies, the best companies are capitalizing on the strength of their brand in attracting best talent. The days of organic growth of applications and what is popularly known in the industry as “post and pray” are over. Its obvious that organizations with a strong brand presence are able to leverage it in attracting top candidates. Smaller firms have to think differently in understanding various aspects of their employer brand.

Smaller companies can compete with bigger firms by having a well-defined career growth, employee perks and benefits, quality work opportunities and most importantly a clearly communicated vision statement. Making sure this is reflected in your sales pitch to your potential employees helps you in finding out whether the right talent is also the right fit.

Is your employer branding initiatives convincing?

“Employer Branding is the package of functional, economic, and psychological benefits provided by employment, and identified with the employing company”, Ambler & Barrow 1996

A convincing Employer Brand is one that communicates

1. Your company culture, mission and values to the current and future employees.

2. Your company’s vision, the policies and risk that the company has put in place to attain them.

3. The recruiting strategy that clearly defines what your company is about and showcases compelling reasons for potential hires to join your organization and thus creating an inbound recruiting pipeline.

The need to communicate the vision

Google’s vision statement is ‘Organize world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful’. Google conveys their vision effectively in their branding efforts and as a result they are able to attract top talent easily.

The vision is about what the organization wants to be and it motivates employees to work towards a common goal. For a smooth functioning of an organization, a vision should be communicated to the employees and potential hires. The problem is that most companies’ vision statements are restricted to the top management and the employees are solving the current problems without knowing in which direction they are going in. A vision brings focus to each and every employee’s efforts.

In the interview, offer the candidate a background of the company such as key milestones, how are things done in your company, connect them to couple of his/her potential teammates and emphasize on the purpose and vision of the company.

What can you do as a part of the HR team?

Here is where HR can play a crucial role. Understand what your company stands for. Consult with your top management and understand your company’s vision, mission and the values it stands for. Once you comprehend this fully, document this and communicate this to your present and future employees. This needs to be a part of the storyline in your employer branding and interview efforts, job postings etc. A pipeline of talented candidates would automatically get built.

Living the company values should not be based on rhetoric. This is supported by the survey findings with 60% of respondents reporting their employer brand strategy is aligned with their values and 59% with their mission and vision. 47% are also aligning their employer brand strategy with their organizational strategy according to a survey by Employerbrandingonline

A cultural fit for a potential hire is one of the most important aspects to be considered and by clearly defining what your company stands for, you get what you want – the culturally right fit hire!

This is one place where HR can drive innovation in their company. By bringing vision to the forefront, you can democratize the organization and make every employee align his/her thought process and efforts with the company’s vision.

Netflix has something called as a culture fit checklist. Are you ready to create a cultural fit checklist for your company? Let me know what can be in your cultural fit checklist in the comments.