Employer Brand tips for Small Talent Teams

We all know that a strong employer brand is a critical element in attracting strong talent to your organisation.

Many talent functions don’t have the luxury of a dedicated employer brand resource, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t deliver a strong Employee Value Proposition (EVP) that really packs a punch.

We reached out to employer brand strategists and experts from some of Australia’s leading organisations to get some of their best tips. Here’s their advice for smaller Talent Teams looking to drive big impact with their EVP.

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Advocacy, Advocacy, Advocacy.

Alex McVeigh, Senior Manager Employer Brand, CommBank

If I did nothing else it would be advocacy. What your people say about you IRL and on the socials has far more impact than anything we could ever pay for. Start small with a ‘how to’ guide and a couple of training sessions on personal brand. There are lots of great consultants who can help with this as well as loads of free resources online. We also find that it helps to create a bit of healthy competition and incentivise – our #CommBankLife Frank Green drink bottles are coveted at CommBank!

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Consistency and efficiency are key

Meagan Michaels, Head of Employer Brand – APAC, Bupa

Consistency and efficiency are key. Being consistent with your EVP messaging across all your talent touchpoints – from advertising right through to onboarding – has a huge impact on the candidate experience. This also extends to the service delivered by recruiters. If your EVP is all about your open culture, your communications with candidates should reflect that through a transparent recruitment process. As a small team, you’re not going to be able to do it all, so efficiency with your time and budget is vital. You can’t be efficient if you’re not measuring to understand what’s working and what’s not. Once you’ve got that in place, you can prioritise and focus on what’s giving you a good return.

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Start small and simple

Jason Burns, Head of Talent Acquisition & Employer Branding Solutions, Businessary

First let me bust a few myths: Employer brands are not just for large organisations, and they don’t have to be crazy expensive and complicated. I realise corporates get a lot of air time for what they’re doing in this space and smaller Talent Teams can feel excluded, but it’s time to get brave!

Look at your budget and shave 10% off your spend on agencies/job board advertising and any of the other costs you control. Reinvest that money into your discovery work. Bring someone in to lift the lid on your organisation – and yes, this is a case where an external lens can be beneficial for a few reasons (and not just because it’s a service Businessary offers). Namely, external people don’t have the same pre-existing bias or beliefs about your business, and your team will usually be more candid with someone neutral.

Find out from your most talented people why they stay, what makes your business better than their previous ones, what are the real challenges of working for you and why do they choose to overcome them by staying. Use this data to help you put some structure around your employer brand and ask your marketing team how best to bring it to life by creating a content calendar and collateral, refreshing your careers site and optimising it so you can be found – make sure to measure your success!

If budget and time is an issue, consider following these steps for just one of your talent segments, then pilot and scale.

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Understand what your candidates want

Tim Gardner, Employer Branding Manager, RMIT

It’s important to consider that every employer has an EVP, it’s just a matter of how effective it is and how you manage it

To drive a big impact with their Employee Value Proposition (EVP), smaller Talent Teams can follow these strategies:

• Research what your candidates want: Learn about the preferences and expectations of potential and current employees and build your EVP accordingly.
• Develop an authentic EVP: Create an authentic EVP that showcases your organisation’s unique qualities to attract and retain top talent. If your candidates value flexibility and wellbeing over high salaries, focus on those in your advertisements, phone screening and interviews.
• Align initiatives with your EVP: Ensure that your initiatives are in line with your EVP and support your business goals. If you don’t offer what’s most important to candidates, look to change that.
• Plan for the future: Develop a strategy that considers critical capabilities needed for success and hard to fill roles.
• Support career growth: Offer skill development opportunities to help employees grow professionally and contribute to your EVP. You got these people in for a reason, you should try and keep them.

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Pretend you’re a job seeker

Brie Mason, Founder & Director at Employer Brand Mason

An important and often overlooked step is to first identify the effectiveness of your digital channels. Follow the typical journey of a job seeker and review your candidate experience from an unbiased lens. Include touchpoints such as your careers website, job adverts, job board profiles, employee review sites, social media profiles and content, and employee social profiles. Look for inconsistencies across these touchpoints, how your organisation and EVP are being described, and the user journey to uncover issues or missed opportunities. This helps you understand what influences the way potential candidates see you as an employer, and whether you’re set up to convince and convert at each stage of the journey. There’s no point in running campaigns to drive interest and traffic to your website, if it isn’t optimised to convert visitors into leads and applicants.

Use every digital channel to tell your story and amplify your EVP. Consistency in messaging across these platforms will reinforce your employer brand.

Want to share your talent insights, expertise, or case study? Email info@atcevents.com.au.