Employer Branding is more than a HR project

 7th June 2023 | 2 mi­n. read | Den­iz Sim­sek

What makes for suc­cess­ful em­ploy­er brand­ing? How do you speak to dif­fer­ent tar­get groups? How has em­ploy­er brand­ing changed?
Here are some in­sights from our latest pro­jects.

From the HR de­part­ment to man­age­ment

Em­ploy­er brand­ing is not just a "HR pro­ject", but an at­ti­tude that helps to make a com­pany at­tract­ive and fit for the fu­ture. The mar­ket for teach­ing and spe­cial­ist staff re­quires dif­fer­ent per­spect­ives - from busi­ness, com­mu­nic­a­tion, HR and brand­ing. These dif­fer­ent per­spect­ives need to be bundled and co­or­din­ated in or­der to de­vel­op the full power for the mar­ket. At the same time, it is im­port­ant not to turn em­ploy­er brand­ing in­to an open-ended pro­cess, but to define clear re­spons­ib­il­it­ies. 

From cam­paigns to in­teg­rated solu­tions 

Em­ploy­er brand­ing has changed a lot - and that's a good thing! A few years ago, there was usu­ally a strong fo­cus on a cam­paign with the aim of in­creas­ing the num­ber of ap­plic­a­tions. Of­ten you simply cre­ated a funny video and that was it. But real em­ploy­er brand­ing in­volves much more. The core of em­ploy­er brand­ing is still a strong em­ploy­er brand. Then you should ask your­self what hap­pens be­fore the ap­plic­a­tion. And what hap­pens af­ter­wards. What is a pre-on-board­ing phase? And why is it im­port­ant? And then you must not for­get the ex­ist­ing em­ploy­ees. Last but not least, the tech­no­lo­gic­al pos­sib­il­it­ies must also be taken in­to ac­count. All in all, it's not that simple.

Em­ploy­er brand­ing is not an end in it­self - the ob­ject­ives must be clearly for­mu­lated. 

Was it pos­sible to re­duce the num­ber of va­can­cies? Have the costs for ex­tern­al ser­vice pro­viders - i.e. headhunters - been re­duced? Are my em­ploy­ees more sat­is­fied and is the fluc­tu­ation rate lower than be­fore em­ploy­er brand­ing? These are just some of the ques­tions that need to be answered. It is im­port­ant to define KPIs and track them con­stantly. This provides ori­ent­a­tion and cre­ates trust.

No "one size fits all" meas­ures?

Tar­get group iden­ti­fic­a­tion is an im­port­ant step in the de­vel­op­ment of an em­ploy­er brand­ing concept. Only if the tar­get groups are pre­cisely known can the meas­ures be im­ple­men­ted in a tar­geted and ef­fect­ive man­ner. There is no "one size fits all". Once this work has been done, it is easi­er to de­term­ine the right com­mu­nic­a­tion and the ap­pro­pri­ate chan­nels.

Con­crete changes that can be triggered by em­ploy­er brand­ing 

We of­ten ex­per­i­en­ce that deal­ing with em­ploy­er brand­ing gives a jolt to the com­pany and sets a trans­form­a­tion pro­cess in mo­tion. If you are aware of your at­tract­ive­ness, this makes you want to make fur­ther changes. And if you achieve the de­sired suc­cess with the meas­ures, you feel re­as­sured that you are on the right track. From this per­spect­ive, em­ploy­er brand­ing can be an ac­cel­er­at­or for a long-over­due trans­form­a­tion.

Dir­ec­tly from prac­tice: Here are our top 5 from the last work­shops on the top­ic of "the biggest block­ers in the ap­plic­a­tion pro­cess of po­ten­tial em­ploy­ees": 

• Time-con­sum­ing and la­bor­i­ous ap­plic­a­tion pro­cesses
• Poor work­ing con­di­tions
• Un­qual­i­fied man­agers
• Low ap­pre­ci­ation
• Profit first 

In­cid­ent­ally, "profit first" turns many ap­plic­ants off be­cause they want to work in com­pan­ies that not only fo­cus on profit, but also re­spond to the needs of em­ploy­ees and cus­tom­ers. Com­pan­ies that only fo­cus on profit are per­ceived as less at­tract­ive by ap­plic­ants. It is there­fore cru­cial that the ques­tion of a com­pany's "pur­pose" is ad­dressed as part of the em­ploy­er brand­ing pro­cess.

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