Employer branding is valuable in the labor market, too.
“Employees receive organizational messages through the same senses and filters they use to receive commercial messages as consumers, and in both cases they compare the messages, tone, and content to prior knowledge, current experience, and future expectations.” – Richard Spitzer & Michael Swidler, Employment Relations Today, Vol. 30 No. 1
Corporations will spend billions of dollars marketing their products and services. The cost per client acquisition can be as low as $20 to $50. However, there is an audience that may be ignored: employees, with a cost per hire that may range from $20,000 to $50,000. One way many firms are beginning to approach their retention strategy is to view employees as internal clients. In their research article, “Using a Marketing Approach to Improve Internal Communications,” Spitzer and Swidler explain that firms, who communicate messages with clear intent and relevance to performance and organizational goals, have employees who interpret and respond appropriately.
Just as an organization promotes its products’ quality and distinctiveness, its leaders should market the organization to their employees as consumers who are shopping around for the best job, to create employer brand loyalty. Are you aware of how your employer brand is perceived among your workforce? And in the labor market?
Employer Branding and Marketing Techniques Build Employee Loyalty
Incorporating internal marketing is important because like consumers, your employees are predisposed to respond to messages that are relevant to them. Also, due to current events, they are getting flooded from external media about the misdeeds of corporate management. Without input from above, they will come to their own potentially misinformed conclusions.
Gathering information about employees’ attitudes, behaviors, and work styles (i.e., using diagnostics) helps to identify what communications have the greatest impact. The different members of your workforce have different emotions, attitudes, and levels of trust within the organization. Therefore, not only providing communication, but tailoring the message to diverse groups is vital to influence talented employees to engage and accept the organization’s objectives.
Leadership can use many channels to communicate how employees contribute to the firm, via intranet, Internet, announcements, postings, awards, formal, and informal acknowledgments. The key is to broadcast these acknowledgements throughout the company or within a work-team. Cultivating messages and relationships for employees are pivotal steps in encouraging employee loyalty and buy-in of the organization’s goals.
For tips on how to implement an employer branding initiative at your firm, email requests@retensa.com.