Touch Points for Your Employer Brand

Ours is a knowledge-based economy. Competition in the business world actually takes place around one key aspect – the talent of those who have built and are running a business successfully.

Previously, many factors were considered when it came to measuring the competitive edge of one company over the others. Not that these factors, such as financial assets, technologies, machinery, raw materials, and licenses and patents, aren’t important. But over the last few years, they have become secondary and talent has become the primary driver for competition.

Since talent is of prime importance, companies are increasingly realizing that their employer branding strategy must aim to deliver a total, an absolute experience to their workforce. Recruiting the right talent is not going to take them any further.

Moreover, employees needs and aspirations keep changing with time. The branding strategy must draw the complete picture, carefully crafting the ways to impact employee experience across all touch points, on an ongoing basis. An abrupt or short-sighted strategy will fail to optimize the output.

How to Deliver an Absolute Employment Experience?

Effectively auditing and managing employee lifecycle can help organizations create a total employment experience for their workforce. However, this exercise must be conducted for everyone, including trainees, pre-hires, just-hires, active candidates, passive candidates, re-hires and the rejected candidates.

Most organizations will need to modify their hiring process and bring a change in their culture to make this happen. They are in habit of not maintaining contacts with candidates who got rejected in the hiring process and treating resources with due respect once they are onboard.

It must be noted that the new breed of professionals place ‘respect’ much higher than other motivators.

Delivering Branded Experience through Various Touch Points

Attracting Talent

There are two types of candidates – one, who are actively seeking new opportunities; two, who aren’t active job searchers but if something interesting comes their way, they’ll grab it.

The former are active candidates and the latter are passive candidates. While your approach towards active and passive candidates will be different but you are expected to deliver an absolute experience to both of them.

• Active Candidates: They may reach out to you on their own. As this would be their first experience with you, make sure it’s a pleasant one. However, you don’t necessarily need to offer them the job, but you are expected to converse with them in a nice way. Their experience with you can sustain or break their interest in working for your organization.

• Passive Candidates: As said earlier, these are those who aren’t looking actively looking for job opportunities. But if you’re a distinctive employer and are known for great work culture, they certainly have a wish to work for you.

  Send out communications to passive candidates through relationship marketing or social media in a way that they associate you some trait, which they find meaningful.

Recruitment and Selection

When you invite applications, you must carefully design job description. How you structure it sends a message to potential employees about how serious or casual employer you are.

Once applications start pouring in, analyze them and put them in the right stack. Decide which ones to send further. This is a stage where most employers behave typical. They don’t understand the importance of communication at this stage. Here we are talking about:

• Pre-Hire (Pre-Interview, more precisely): Don’t leave applicants wondering what happened to their applications. Both communication and speed are critical here.

  If there applications are rejected, inform them why they couldn’t make it to the interview list and that you would consider their candidature for a more suitable opening in future. Inform the ones whose applications are sent further.

• Interview: During the interview, you must stress on your EVP (Employee Value Proposition). This is when the interviewee gets face-to-face with the organization.

  What you say, how you say, what you focus on has a great impact on potential candidates. Be clear in your communication and make them understand how valuable your employees are and how you help them grow on both personal and professional levels.

• Hire: Connect with all the hires as soon as possible. Help them know more about your brand. You may get microsites developed for this purpose or send emails welcoming them onboard. Ensure that the format and tone of your content is up to the mark.

• Rejection: As a result of any hiring process, there will be rejected candidates. You may not want to damage your employer brand image by not or poorly handling the rejection process.

  Each candidate at least deserves a letter from you appreciating their interest in working for the organization. It’s important to inform them why they weren’t selected.

On boarding

When people join your company, they are either too excited or too nervous. Both are extreme conditions, which you need to handle well. Let’s see what all touch points you need to handle at this stage.

• Induction: This is perhaps one of the most important touch points for your employer brand.

  What you communicate and how you communicate is going to lay a stronger impact on the new hires or disappoint them. It’s when they have a real and firsthand experience. It’s when they discover if they have joined the right organization. The gap between what was promised and what is delivered can divert their attention.

• Working: When they actually gear up to show their skills in their job, they must be offered help. An organization with a good workplace culture will focus on building relationships and fostering friendships.

  New employees shouldn’t be overloaded with too much information and responsibilities. Let them settle in.

• Manager Relationship: This is the most common problems that new employees face when they join the organization. Most of the times, they find themselves in frequent disputes or cold war with their managers. Here managers must focus on the bigger picture instead of making it a matter of their ego. How conflicts are handled say a lot about your employer brand.

Talent Retention

• Career Development: If we go back to previous articles on employer branding, we will find that the great places to work for are committed to learning and career development of their employees. These companies take competency development seriously, which helps employees move upward in their career graphs.

• Performance Management: Both employer and employee have expectations from each other and both are expected to meet them. An employer of choice has all the mechanisms and processes in place to manage these expectations. Such an organization makes review and performance appraisal process really insightful for both manager and employee in question.

• Promotion: Leading places to work do not abide by traditions and conventions. Rather they have self-regulatory processes to measure authenticity, performance and behavior of employees. Those who have met their targets and outstood from the rest are guaranteed to be promoted. A reputable employer offers equal opportunity to everyone and ensures that the promotion process is as transparent as possible.

Exit and Re-Entry

• Exit: No matter what you do, but it’s almost impossible to retain the talent forever with your organization. Yes, you can increase the duration of their stay by offering them superior experience at each touch point.

  Some employees exit on their own while some are asked to. The focus here is to make it as decent and pleasant as possible. Maintain your dignity and respect the outgoing to ensure they leave as brand advocates.

• Re-Hire: There have been many incidences in the past when ex-employees rejoin the organizations. However, you shouldn’t rush with it. In fact, you need to re-assess their cultural and skill fit. Analyze whether they fit at all or not. If yes, where and how. If no, be kind enough to offer them alternative options.

Optimizing experience at all these touch points will help you strengthen your employer brand. You may make mistakes. You may suffer from pitfalls. But this shouldn’t discourage you.