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Employer Branding: Build an Image that Attracts Top Talent
Companies need to build a compelling employer brand image to overcome scepticism and attract top talent amid these factors.
“How can employers connect with the minds and hearts of talent?” asks Prof Trevor Yu, Associate Professor in the Division of Leadership, Management & Organisation at the Nanyang Business School. “That is the key question that underlies all employer branding efforts.”
What is employer branding?
Prof Trevor has built a solid corpus of research from his long-time interest in employer-employee relationship dynamics – and shares his findings in the modules he teaches at the Nanyang Executive MBA (EMBA) programme.
“It all begins in the hiring process,” he explains. “A lot of factors lead up to that key decision of employers making the job offer, or whether the talent accepts it.”
Branding is one of those factors. Prof Trevor defines employer branding as “how the employer wants to be known to the public and potential talent”.
This simple definition belies its complexity in practice. For one thing, social media has democratised the flow of information: “It’s no longer just one-way communication from the employer to the audience,” Prof Trevor tells us. “Therefore, differing messages can come from different sources.”
These “differing messages” might come from the employer itself, as separate insiders independently send vastly different impressions of the employer brand.
Building your brand as an employer
In this complicated communications environment, with multiple message gatekeepers and multiple channels, a distinct employer brand can help enforce consistency over extended periods.
“Effort, coordination, and leadership are needed to ensure that a consistent message is being put out there,” Prof Trevor explains. “The candidate, no matter who they are interacting with, gets the same message – and receives it consistently over time. As it gets reinforced, they become more convinced about the employer.”
A consistent employer brand can also help attract the most compatible talent for the job – improving “person-organisation fit” (P-O fit) or aligning a candidate’s beliefs and principles with the employer’s mission, ethics and values.
“Employer branding gives employers a better chance of hiring people who can support and even champion their company’s unique qualities or characteristics,” Prof Trevor says.
Every employer branding journey is different – but Prof Trevor offers a few suggestions for companies starting their brand-building journey.
1. Define your employer brand: start from first principles
“Employer branding requires you first to determine who you are and what you want to be known to potential talent,” advises Prof Trevor.
To determine this, Prof Trevor suggests starting at the core of the company’s values and processes. “Ask essential questions like: ‘What are you now? Does it correspond with what you want to be? What is our current standing among other people or other companies in the same line of business?’”
Boil the answers down to a simple, compelling positioning statement: a brief explanation of your benefit to the talent as an employer and how this sets you apart from other employers.
“When we think about successful branding efforts, it’s just about two or three concepts at the most,” Prof Trevor explains. You might take your cues from Nanyang Business School, which boils down to “Innovate. Lead. Transform”.
2. C-suite should lead, then “co-create” brand with all stakeholders
Prof Trevor places the burden of leading the branding process on the company’s top leader – the founder or CEO should take the initiative in defining the employer brand. “The CEO sees things strategically,” Prof Trevor explains. “The company culture also flows down from the leader – they set the tone.”
The CEO, however, cannot monopolise the branding process: they need to “co-create” the brand, aligning their ideas with talent’s or employees’ perception and lived experience.
For example, employers can actively engage on social media platforms, “to find out what people have been experiencing in terms of their interactions with the employer,” Prof Trevor explains. “You must have both sides – employer and talent – communicating in good faith.”
3. Align employer branding roles throughout the organisation
Beyond the C-suite, leaders should formalise internal roles and responsibilities for engaging with stakeholders and maintaining the employer brand. Write the brand management role into formal job descriptions or set a specific team to monitor and respond to these comments on social media.
“The leadership sets the tone for employer branding, strategically thinking about the company’s image and culture,” Prof Trevor tells us. “Other team members can ensure consistent messaging across all channels and touchpoints.”
What gets measured, gets managed
The outside world’s perception of your employer brand is a moving target. Branding should also be an ongoing process: leaders should adjust the brand based on regular measurements and respond to new developments or perceptions.
1. Measure the effectiveness of employer branding afterward
Don’t just rely on gut feel alone to manage your employer branding. “Use survey-based and interview-based metrics to evaluate employer branding effectiveness,” Prof Trevor tells us. “Some companies engage in regular brand audits, unlike from consumer products. It’s a similar process.”
Businesses with a budget to spare can deploy social listening tools. These apps “involve machine learning, AI, and natural language processing that do a sophisticated analysis of key themes that people are saying about us on these platforms,” Prof Trevor says.
Not that you need to pay to get the job done – “Technology nowadays makes it pretty much costless to get online to begin with,” Prof Trevor says. “You can start with monitoring LinkedIn and Facebook, which are free!”
2. Align your values with your ideal talent – and show those values in action
To maximise P-O fit among potential talent, define your brand in line with their values. “They want to be part of companies that show their values are really important to them,” Prof Trevor says.
This means constantly reviewing your practices against your values and publicising your successes. “Look at how you are managing your people, evaluate their progress, and the type of people that you have already hired,” Prof Trevor explains. “If there are certain things that we are doing well, how can we bring that up to light more? How can we spread that throughout the organisation? And how do we communicate our successes to potential talent?”
Conclusion: priceless authenticity
Over time, Prof Trevor explains, the employer brand will evolve beyond simply a guide to messaging. “It will be a core guide to managing your talent,” he tells us. “How you hire, how you onboard, how you train, how you motivate and engage, how you manage the performance, how you evaluate.”
In the face of an ongoing talent crunch, employer branding can be a competitive advantage for hiring – not merely by enforcing a consistent, relevant message, but also by enabling you to present your company at its most authentic.
“Once it becomes part of your culture, it becomes easier for you to talk and communicate sincerely and authentically,” concludes Prof Trevor, “because that’s who you are.”
Assoc Prof Trevor Yu
Division of Leadership, Management, and Organisation
Co-Director, CRADLE (Centre for Research and Development in Learning)
Nanyang Business School
Trevor Yu is a faculty member at the Nanyang Business School and a co-director at NTU Centre for Research and Development in Learning (CRADLE). He teaches undergraduates to PhD levels involving strategic human resource management, talent management, total rewards management, change management, consulting research methodology, and organisational behaviour and design. He has consulted with several US and Singapore-based organisations on employer branding, talent and career management, adult learning and development, and employee engagement.
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