Understanding Employer Branding

A “good company tag” is critical to a company’s ability to attract, motivate and retain the best and the brightest, thus gaining competitive advantage in the marketplace. Internationally, those companies that are voted as Best Companies to Work For also yield higher returns for shareholders. In fact, employee attitudes are directly linked with company performance, according to Watson Wyatt’s Human Capital Index. Additionally companies that are considered good employers have a strong identity and image in the marketplace. . Employer branding is the

process of creating an identity and managing the company’s image in its role as an employer.

As organizations are complex, open systems, single interventions are not enough. The employer brand has to be aligned and congruent with what the company delivers to the employee, customer, public and shareholder. The factors that impact the employer brand are:

1.Reputation/ integrity
2.Culture
3.Recruitment / orientation
4.Pay and benefits
5.Work /Life balance
6.Leadership and management
7.Performance management, growth and development


Of these seven factors in the employer branding model, four have proven to be crucial for a large majority of high performing employees. These are:

• Culture

• Pay and benefits

• Leadership and management

• Performance management, growth and development.

Only two of these four factors form a crucial part of the employer brands of majority companies:

• A highly developed culture and outstanding leadership

• Management qualities.



Brand Misalignments

Most employer brands fail to recognize the importance of “performance management, growth and development” and “pay and benefits,” respectively. Delving more deeply into these factors shows where highest misalignments occur. High performers expect:

• Multiple career paths to be open to them

• Supervisors to ask them for feedback

• Regular feedback on their own performance

• A transparent system for determining variable pay.

Most of the employers do not regard these as crucial elements of their employer brand. However, high performers show considerable expectation for their compensation. High performers consider base pay to be the most important part of their compensation package. Interestingly, employees who have high expectations of growth and development opportunities consider variable components of compensation almost as important as base pay, whereas other employees have far greater interest in base pay. High performers believe that their efforts and contributions to the company should be remunerated far above average compensation levels.



Is There a Pattern in Employee Expectations?

As “quality of leadership and management,” “culture,” “pay and benefits” and “growth and development opportunities” are considered to be the most important factors within the employment deal for a vast majority of high-performing employees, is there any pattern in these? Research shows that “Culture” and “leadership and management” are factors that prove to be significantly correlated to each other. Employees who have great interest in culture tend to have high expectations in the quality of leadership and management. A culture that is neither well developed nor aligned with the company’s leadership and management practices is unlikely to appeal to a high performer.
Priorities of Employers of Choice

Employers of choice have built much of their standing on their reputation as “exciting places to work.” They regard their reputation as an essential part of their employer brand and tout

this image among graduating classes and in the job market. Biut there is more to their success than mere smart publicity campaign. The brands of the employers of choice have much higher

congruence with the employment deal expectations of their high performers. This holds especially true for the high quality of their “culture” and the good quality of their “leadership and management.” Most companies only partially meet the expectations of their most valuable employees. Answers to the following questions can avoid such a mismatch. They build a basis on which an employer brand can be built successfully:

• What types of employees are fundamental to the success of the business?

• What do the high-performing employees expect from the company?

Answering the above questions enables the employer to build a brand that reflects its business and culture and is attractive to targeted employees. Besides the company needs to share and live the brand. The employer brand may not remain a secret for HR professionals, but should be widely disseminated and shared within and outside the company. The employers of choice have proven that well-developed employer brands help attract and retain talent. A strong employer brand shows what a powerful means of differentiation an employer branding can be. It can be thus be concluded that a remarkable reputation, perception and image in the job market builds on both the attractiveness in factors that are of fundamental importance to high performers as well as elaborate efforts, which make this attractiveness visible in the job market.
-Anshumali Saxena www.soilindia.net