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Craig McConnell is Managing Director of Advertising Energy, an employer brand and advertising agency based in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne.
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With 2011 off to a rough start many organisations are finding themselves entering a tight recruitment market. Quality talent is hard to attract and companies are focusing more and more on refining their Employee Brand Proposition (EVP) in order to be more competitive.
But what are the traps to avoid? For many, Employer Branding is a new area, a sort of HR/Marketing hybrid. There are few agencies with this hybrid skill-set so make sure you avoid the usual mistakes with these two nuggets of wisdom:
1. Avoid an Employer Brand Workshop Bubble
I have been quoted as saying to my clients ‘50% of employer branding is to make sure everyone is on board’.
It takes a mature and confident client and agency to recognise the truth in feedback and to re-set accordingly.
Things can come apart when deadlines are looming, months of hard work have been spent and your EVP is finally approved. In a flurry of agency activity, collateral is generated, recruitment advertising gets a makeover and Bang! There you have a sparkly-new Employer Brand.
Only, not everyone has bought in, all of a sudden staff have a new look and sometimes it just doesn’t resonate.
Employer Branding is more internally collaborative than pure brand work and you have to be prepared to be agile in your approach.
Advertising Energy's Creative Director, Simon Druery
listens to staff feedback on an EVP photo and film shoot.
For Bankwest, we are in the process of introducing a new Employer Brand. The team loved the process of taking it organisationally wide from the outset uncovering real experiences and observing the business from a macro and micro perspective. But more importantly, we uncovered additional feedback that had we not done this important buy-in work, we could have missed.
2. Harness your Marketing Colleagues' Expertise
Recruitment branding should be viewed as an extension of marketing and have clear strategies to market the brand to employees.
To succeed the three marketing pillars: Consumer Marketing, Corporate Communications and Employer Branding need to work together in synergy in order to get more powerful results.
In order to achieve this, don’t be afraid to engage your marketing team. They have skills that can bring your work to life. You will be speaking their language when you develop your employer brand and find a champion for your work internally.
Don’t forget you will have your own brand prejudices that you will have brought to the table. Your marketing team can help you see where the brand is positioned now in the market and where they are working on taking it. This is a vital ingredient to your Employer Brand strategy.
Coke's employer advertising echoed consumer brand style to imbue one voice.
The online recruitment advertising we did for Coke was an example of this kind of team work. The result was a campaign that leveraged recent print work, the brand is in tact and the integrity of the EVP kept in place. Moreover, it received high click through rates and achieved its recruitment objectives.
When you harness the skills around you, you will get great results.
Email: Craig@advertisingenergy.com.au
Libby Malcolm is a Senior Digital Producer
