Although many women have successfully integrated into positions of power in the business world in recent decades, they’re still sorely underrepresented in management in certain industries. This lack of diversity is particularly noticeable in male-dominated fields like engineering, manufacturing, and skilled trades.
The good news is that we’re seeing a growing trend in trade publications looking to feature female leaders and professionals. The story angle is often about what it’s like to be a woman in a predominantly male profession and how they make it work.
We recently earned media coverage for two clients on this topic. Check out their stories!
Cheryl Marcum, VP of Marketing at Nidec Motor Corporation, reflects on her career and management philosophies in this feature story in Pumps and Systems
Three women from Harris Products Group – Nancy Jo Loebker, Christen Foltz and Ira Copeland – talked to The ACHR News about how you can’t be timid in the HVAC field!
This type of PR effort not only promotes the client and their products but can also be leveraged in recruitment and hiring to show female prospects that women can and do succeed at their organization.
You may or may not have heard the term employer branding. Some explanations can be somewhat convoluted, but it doesn’t have to be. It all boils down to the way an organization portrays its reputation as an employer and the value proposition it offers both team members and prospective employees.
An employer branding strategy should focus on communicating the company’s mission, culture, values and brand personality. And it would be a huge mistake to make this an afterthought or to simply copy and paste existing content. A compelling brand story is absolutely essential to attract top talent.
A recent Randstad survey showed that 86% of workers would not apply for or continue to work for a company with a bad reputation with former employees or the general public. Looking internally, a Glassdoor survey showed that 69% of employees put great importance on whether they take pride in their employer’s brand.
Need more proof? TalentNow found that 84% of job seekers say a company’s reputation is an important factor in deciding whether to apply, while 59% of employees say that employer branding is a key component to the organization’s overall HR strategy.
Employer Branding for Recruitment Campaigns
As a marketer, you must influence how your brand is being represented in recruiting efforts. After all, you have a brand positioning and value proposition developed for your target audiences (at least you should!), so it is important to implement your brand messaging in any communications to employees and prospective employees.
And while employee recruitment efforts may be driven by human resources, marketers should be included in the marketing and communications. The messaging, graphics, and tone should be on the brand. While most of the job seekers might take help from experts (such as Career Climb), as an employer, you have the opportunity to educate, inform and motivate these prospective new employees. In addition, you need to provide them insight on what your brand stands for, what makes the brand compelling, and their role as ambassadors of the brand’s value proposition.
Employer Branding for Your Workforce
In terms of employee retention, employees are critical to building a strong brand. They are on the front line of delivering the brand experience and fulfilling the brand promise both for customers and prospective employees. It’s imperative to train and motivate employees to embrace and live the brand values, not to mention finding prospective employees whose values reflect those of your brand. In our brand development work for clients, we always stress the importance of communicating to employees about the role they play in the brand experience.
How to Implement Employer Branding
For Your Employees:
Provide ongoing training for employees on all aspects of your brand
Clearly define each employee’s role in delivering your brand promise
Develop an ongoing employee communications plan, including newsletters, social media posts, events, internal PR, internal and external signage, etc.
For Your Employee Recruitment:
Develop an ongoing series of employee testimonials to use in print, digital, website, etc. Hearing from employees at the organization about what the culture is like, the advancement opportunities available, and their work experiences are all important messages to deliver.
Roll out a recruitment campaign theme that is in alignment with the current brand positioning, brand graphic standard and messaging. This is accomplished by marketing and HR working together!
Create brand messaging that internal HR can use in their recruitment advertising and for doing introductory meetings with candidates.
Check out Employer Branding in Action
We developed a recruitment campaign for our client, Harris Products Group, built around a look that is consistent with the customer-facing branding creative while using the theme, “We Make the World Run Better.” The campaign provided Harris with a uniform, bold look that connected to their brand promise and conveyed energy and excitement about the important role employees play in keeping the world running. Creative included brochures, images to be used within job postings on LinkedIn, recruitment booth signage for job fairs/tradeshows, and a corporate overview video to introduce new employees to Harris Products Group.
Of course, each brand is unique, requiring its own unique solutions. That’s where we come in. We have over three decades of branding and marketing communications experience, so we are well suited to creating an employer branding plan and executing it. Get in touch to see how we can ensure that brand consistency and brand experience are woven into your employer branding efforts.
