Are you a company people want to work for?
It’s always about finding the right employee, but what makes you the right employer ?
In a largely candidate-driven market where they are unhesitatingly rejecting jobs, what can the companies do to position themselves in a better light?
Does your company set careers back and even jeopardize the candidates’ future success?
Gone are the days when employees started and retired at the same company. People who understand their worth are not afraid to jump anymore. With the added perk of the lovely 30% raise at the next company, you will have to try a lot harder to retain and attract fresh talent.
Do you neglect PR from your overall recruitment marketing strategy? Working with a PR expert for media placements and impressions can bolster your company awareness.
Identifying and packaging employee experience stories, company achievements, and social proofs are essential to your branding.
If a potential candidate were to google your company, what are they likely to find? Even before they get to the good stuff about your company culture and values, the reviews on Glassdoor & Google are instantaneously available after a cursory recon.
In fact, anyone these days can get their hands on company financials if they dig deep enough. The point is, anything can be found online.
So, how is your media presence? What perception of your company have you allowed to propagate that is reaching & influencing your future candidates? Impressions are being formed; how are you intercepting them to serve you best?
We’ve prepared a little checklist to take you through some factors that are non-negotiable to people in the current work climate.
Let’s keep reading.
How's your employer branding?
Here are some fast facts —
- 62% of candidates research companies on social media before applying.
- 92% of employees consider leaving their current job for a company that has a better reputation.
- 88% of millennials believe that being in the right culture is essential.
- Employee voice is 3X more credible than the CEO’s when it comes to talking about the company’s working conditions.
- Up to 28% less attrition if companies actively invest in employer branding.
- 75% of active job seekers are likely to apply to a job if the employer actively manages its employer brand.
- A negative reputation can cost a company 10% more per hire.
There’s ample evidence that a great employer brand makes it easier to recruit and impacts the business’ bottom line. Those numbers can equate to millions of dollars in savings and reduced time to recruit for most companies.
You must monitor popular channels that current and ex-employees use to vent. If there are any negative reviews about your company, carry out damage control on your brand and use that as a means to identify what you could be doing better.
For all intents & purposes, your best brand ambassadors are your employees. Arm them with great content — images, stories, videos, tweets, GIFs, articles — encourage them to share, and amplify on their social networks. Applicants trust the employees more than the company to provide credible information on what it’s like to work there.
The golden ticket to employer branding is when the storytelling comes from the top. The difference between mediocre and excellent company branding often is executive involvement. When the C-suite publishes or shares on social media, it sets the tone for the entire organisation.
A well-defined employer brand is an essential part of building high-performing teams.
Going hand-in-hand with your branding are certain other nuanced areas employees care deeply about.
Let’s take a look.
Do you offer career progression?
When your employees feel they don’t have the opportunity to grow in their careers, that’s a recipe for a frustrated workforce. Candidates want a company that will help advance their goals — not a dead-end job.
A company can grow only when its workforce is empowered to grow. If your management puts little to no emphasis on fostering personal & professional growth, creating learning opportunities, or offering mentorship, you are definitely losing your top players to your competition. Employees will head out the door rather than head nowhere in a stagnant company.
Your goal should be to be an organization that adds value to employees, rather than merely extract from them; to be an organization that stands for something meaningful and offers fulfilling and rewarding work.
Do you encourage authenticity?
Employees who feel welcome to express their authentic selves at work exhibit higher levels of organisational commitment, individual performance, and propensity to help others.
Build a company where you accommodate differences in perspectives, magnify people’s strengths, where information is not suppressed or spun; a company that adds value to employees, a culture that encourages meaningful dialogue; where they feel heard and understood without dismissal.
How's your company culture?
A winning corporate culture has been shown to improve employee engagement, productivity, and performance. This culture encompasses a variety of elements, including work environment, company mission, leadership style, values, ethics, expectations, perks, and goals.
A big part of creating a positive work culture is making sure every employee is represented and that unifies and propels them toward a shared goal. A healthy culture can significantly impact your organization, from establishing a brand identity to uniting coworkers and increasing employee engagement.
And if you’re still not sold — people consider a company’s culture more important than salary when it comes to job satisfaction. Healthy culture leads to a happy workforce, which means a reduced churn rate. You will save heaps in recruitment if you invest in cultivating a great work environment.
Do you prioritise employee well-being?
Showing care not only about their career advancements but also their overall well-being. As remote working blurs the line between work and life, focusing on nurturing employee well-being is critical to developing workplace resilience.
Mental well-being takes into consideration stress, burnout, or any other feeling of unease. De-stigmatize conversations around mental health and create programs to care for your employees’ psychological soundness. Benefits like free counselling sessions, subscriptions to meditation apps, and fitness classes make applicants consider your firm favourably.
The pandemic has clearly shown that work-life balance is paramount, and Millenials are less likely to compromise on their personal time. A workplace that honours its workforce’s well-being records heightened motivation, morale, cognition, learning, and emotional stability.
How's your leadership?
Poor leadership can seep into every fibre of an organisation and negatively contribute to your turnover. A micro-managing boss who constantly corrects and undermines your staff ultimately leads to underperformance. Or a boss that disrespects the team and their time. Or a boss that lacks the skills to lead, provides no guidance and displays poor decision-making abilities.
Leadership conduct is fundamental, and it sets the tone for how others behave at work. Organising training seminars for your leaders on how to operate better as managers, lead with empathy and bring the best out of your employees can be incredibly beneficial in the long run.
Final thoughts
Employees are not hesitant in switching to better working conditions that suit their aspirations. Finding ways to create and maintain a working environment that is inviting, benefit-rich, and filled with individuals who take pride in working for your organisation is a crucial way to attract other talented workers.
As we found out from this article, any place of work that shows poor leadership, dysfunctional management, unstable work environment reflects negatively on the whole company image. And companies that uphold a good reputation, promote growth opportunities, and the chance to work with a top-notch team is regarded as favourable and attracts top talent.
A positive company culture that promotes healthy interactions between coworkers, respects the need for adequate work-life balance, and compensates fairly is a highlight for talented individuals who are deliberating their options about where to work.
To successfully recruit top talent in 2022, you will need to understand their needs and desires — candidates are looking to have flexible working options, an inclusive environment, strong company branding, and the potential to get upskilled by their organisation.
An employer branding strategy is only effective if you acquire and retain talent. And to keep talent, you have to walk the talk — be consistent in what you promised candidates when they joined your organisation. Because when you under-deliver, they will cut & run, leaving you to count your losses. After all, people are what makes companies sink or survive.
Our experts at Anzy Global have spoken to hundreds of companies of varying sizes & operations for over 12 years and deeply understood the challenges organisations face. Reach out to us for an expert opinion to understand how to acquire the highly elusive top-tier candidates and accelerate your business success.
