Nurturing your talent

By Sarah Sturgess

Whilst we haven’t been able to help on the frontlines of the pandemic, we were proud to see many of our clients being mentioned for their outstanding services. Yodel, helping the government to support essential supplies. Deloitte, helping to deliver the UK’s first drive-through testing centres. And Hologic, making a major breakthrough in COVID-19 testing.

The recent pandemic has brought a whole range of challenges for a lot of businesses. Especially universities. Whilst making sure your students’ safety and their learning experience are paramount, it’s also important to look at the wellbeing of your staff and the support your HR and recruitment team have. A solid culture and employer brand will nurture your current and future employees.

So how should you keep your staff engaged and feeling secure? There’s two main ways we can do this.

First, understand why your employer brand is so important

An employer brand is quite simply, what people think and feel about somewhere as a place to work. So, the challenge is to recognise this, reveal it and communicate it in such a way that it reflects the business, its values, and what it offers. At the same time, it should also speak with meaning to the people an organisation has and those that it wants.

According to LinkedIn, 80% of talent leaders agree that an employer brand has a significant impact on hiring great talent. It can decrease cost per hire by 43% and the likelihood that people will leave within the first six months by 40%. Companies that invest in their employer brand are 130% more likely to see an increase in employee engagement too.

Second, using measurement tools and brand metrics

We know employer branding matters, because we’ve seen the difference it’s made to so many of our clients. But we also know that it can be a tricky thing to put a finger on.

People can feel the difference an employer brand makes, but a feeling can be a difficult thing to measure.

It’s a puzzle. But not an impossible one. A robust EVP, created with ongoing collaboration between HR and marketing, can strengthen a brand on all fronts. And as more rigorous methods of employer brand impact measurement and insight come into play, it will become clear just how effective it all really is. For now though, word of mouth literally speaks volumes.

We want to use our unique expertise to help key organisations stay close to their people and manage their culture through this crisis. That’s why we’re offering free access to our Employer Brand Metrics tool from now until the end of 2020 for a select number of organisations who have been impacted by the global pandemic.

If you’d like to discover more about employer branding and why it’s important, watch recent webinar series we held on employer branding, or, a recent culture webinar.