employer branding

Seven Simple Employer Branding Techniques to Build a High Performing Team and More Profitable Organisation

Branding isn’t just an external phenomenon aimed at customers. It is an important communication and engagement tool for a wide range of stakeholders. That is why employer branding is so important when it comes to attracting, retaining, and motivating high-performing staff or top talent.

Employer branding doesn’t have to be complicated or vastly expensive. Done right, it’s a surprisingly powerful tool that helps you avoid recruiting the wrong people and saves on recruitment costs. It is a key tool many organisations use to help build their internal branding amongst top-performing teams and avoid high attrition rates. 

Having worked with a lot of brands on building their employer branding it’s given us the opportunity to dig down into what makes for powerful, effective employer branding to attract, retain and engage your people. Here are seven simple employer branding techniques which can be used, no matter how small or large your organisation.

Related: How to Build a Powerful Employer Branding Strategy, so You Attract and Retain Top Talent to Grow Your Business

1. Successful Employer Branding Starts Before Employment

Employer branding is all about how people who work for the organization perceive it, feel about it, and engage with it. However, just as a lot of customers are familiar with a brand, months, years, or even decades before they ever buy it, the same can be true with employees. Employer branding reaches far beyond employment because it impacts your lead generation for future talent acquisition.

Having a consistent, accessible, and relevant brand helps prospective employees become familiar with it over time. The key phase when the brand has most work to do, though, is when potential talent is actively considering career prospects. 

How is your brand described by top talent on the outside? Is this happening?

“I see “X/your company” everywhere in the marketplace with rewarding, exciting career opportunities. I hear it’s a great place to work — top of my list, I love what they stand for.”

For example, is your brand welcoming? Is it known as dependable, credible, and trustworthy? How is your culture perceived and the bigger purpose behind what drives your organisation? Does potential talent have a clear sense of your company as a potential place to work? Are they clear on your bigger purpose and the difference you’re endeavouring to make in the marketplace and what makes your brand different? Could they imagine your company being a source of pride, and failing that, at least not a source of personal embarrassment? Does it offer a strong career growth opportunity? 

branding strategy

© Persona Design

These are the kinds of questions that some prospective employees will have in their minds when assessing possible employer brands. While the brand alone will not be enough to persuade most people, it is part of the employer’s overall offering which could weigh positively or negatively on the decision process of prospective employees.

It’s well evidenced that these factors have become even more important and bigger choice drivers with the increase in remote working since the pandemic. Often the recruiting and onboarding processes are now entirely digital. That means that candidates may not be exposed to some of the traditional employer brand touchpoints like an office or more tangible elements of brand culture when peers are physically together.

employer branding

Image via Fortune © Rolls-Royce

A B2B case study is the engineering group Rolls-Royce. It developed a sophisticated employer branding strategy around the theme of “create”, inspiring candidates to see it as being a place where they could be creative and develop their careers even within the rigidity of a mission-critical engineering environment.

Related: The Age Of Internal Branding and Selling It From The Inside Out

Brand Identity“Lorraine Carter has been the catalyst and an inspiration for MGI Learning to clearly define our brand.

Working with Lorraine has been both enlightening and enjoyable. Her blueprint for defining a brand is extremely comprehensive and challenged us to think very deeply about what we offer to our customers and really understand what underpins our success.

Lorraine is extremely knowledgeable, very focused and supportive and leads you through the process and ensured we got maximum benefits from the investment we made.”

Shona Cooper

CEO

MGI Learning

Shona Cooper

We know that sometimes it’s a struggle to build a brand strategy that really engages your ideal customers effectively, particularly in adversity, so we’ve developed three different ways of working with us to help you build your brand, depending on your preferences, so if you’d like us to:

  1. Build your brand for you – find out more here or get in touch [email protected] or ring +353 1 8322724
  2. Empower you to build your brand – check out the Persona Brand Strategy Leadership Mastermind here. This is a live, interactive programme online where you work on your brand with us codifying and mapping out your brand strategy to differentiate more strongly and achieve higher revenue. Alternatively, join our online half-day Branding Accelerator Masterclass for a fast injection of brand-building essentials. Ask about our Personal and Corporate Leadership Brand Alignment Masterclass
  3. Want a DIY solution? Check out our how to build a brand eprogramme here and our how to audit your brand yourself eprogramme here

2. Powerful Employer Branding is Enabling Not Limiting

Successful employer branding isn’t something that gets hidden under a bushel. Instead of making employees feel a bit embarrassed about where they work, or that they ought not to speak about it, a strong employer brand is often a source of pride. It motivates employees to work harder and can turn them into effective advocates for the brand in many cases. 

A question you might ask yourself if you’re not getting unsolicited top talent inquiries or referrals through existing members of your team is where are you falling short? What’s not working? What are you missing?

These principles are true across all industries and verticals. Even if you think your company will never have the glamour of a luxury goods brand or tech giant like Apple, there need to be attractive elements to it that will motivate staff to come to work each day and feel fulfilled representing your brand. It is possible to have highly motivating employer brands no matter what sort of work you do. 

Employer brand, culture, and external brand perceptions are intentionally cultivated, nurtured, and driven by the leadership of an organsiation so if things are falling short it’s time to ask why? 

Related: How Apple Does It, Five Tips for Getting Your $1Tn Brand Personality Right

3. Brand Purpose, Brand Mission and Brand Values Are Critical to Strong Employer Branding

As many as 9 out of 10 employees are actually willing to work for less money if they feel the work they are doing has purpose [1]. It is no exaggeration to say that what brings people to work is a critical part of what motivates staff and helps drive success.

Such purpose doesn’t just evolve by accident. Brand purpose, brand vision, brand mission, and brand values are critical elements of a brand strategy. They don’t need to be complicated, but they do need to be considered. These things may evolve organically to some extent, but they need to be recognised and often also need to be stewarded. For example, if employees feel something doesn’t match with the brand values, how are they able to act on their concerns?

Related: How a Strong Value Proposition Drives Your Sales & Profits Growth

A lot of people think about brand purpose and brand values in relation to ethical brands which sell to customers. But in fact, they are much more important when it comes to employer branding. Even a devoted customer will typically only interact with most brands for a few hours a week at most. But an employee may spend the majority of their waking hours working to push forward their employer’s brand vision and objectives. So brand purpose, brand mission, and brand values are a key motivator for them in their work. 

employer branding

Image via Beauty and Hairdressing © FFOR

A B2C case study is FFOR, which stands for “Free From, Original, Real”. The brand offers vegan hair products and organic hair care. The company’s consistent branding includes simple, actionable, clearly articulated brand values which can motivate employees as well as customers.

Related: Top 5 Reasons Why Brand Purpose is The Essential Growth Driver in a Fast-Changing World

4. Employer Branding Recognises the Role of Individual Contributions

Organisations often talk a lot about teamwork. Teamwork and collaboration are indeed critical to the success of high-performing organisations. However, it is also important to be able to unleash the potential of individual contributions.

An effective employer brand can perform a delicate balancing act: encouraging teamwork by helping employees feel they are part of a purpose-led tribe, but also helping employees feel they have permission and perhaps even encouragement to bring their own unique contributions to the organisation — have the autonomy to get on with their job knowing their people leader is there to support and enable them.

employer branding

Image via © PwC

A B2B service case study is professional service firm PwC, which has 220,000 people in over 150 countries. Through focussing on five key brand values, it enables staff to deliver the brand consistently as individuals.

Related: 6 Brand Culture Do’s and Don’ts for Attracting and Retaining Your Ideal Customers and Top Talent

brand strategy“We participated in the Persona Brand Strategy Leadership Mastermind Programme online. The 12-week program suited us as the weekly accountability spurred us on to get work done between sessions.

We found the flow of the course appropriate for the development of the brand through the various areas of the business. Already, we have developed our Customers Personas and our Brand Persona adding value to the business.

The course has helped us make more astute decisions in the business such as restructuring our product offerings, so we grow more profitable lines and remove those with lower margins.

Lorraine is very helpful and accessible as a tutor with follow up after each live working session and the half-day masterclass. Most of all the clarity achieved has been most invaluable.

In the first two weeks of March 2020, before Covid-19 required us to close, we were 300% up in our online sales compared to the whole of March 2019. By the end of May 2020 [after being completely closed for 6 weeks with our 150 staff furloughed] we were back to 69% and by end of June 2020 back at 108%, January 2021 we’re up four-fold on January 2019 

— results achieved from applying our brand strategy.”

Sinead Heffernan

Managing Director

Thunders Bakery

Sinead Heffernan

Persona Brand Strategy Leadership Programme

“An excellent programme that provides an informative guide on how to structure your brand’s development whether you are launching a new brand, refreshing an existing one and/or conducting a review of your brand to ascertain possible weaknesses.”

Ciarán Barry

Director

Broadview Ventures

Ciarán Barry

Are you a business leader, manager, or entrepreneur who wants to re-evaluate or build your brand strategy, so you can use employer branding to build a high-performing team suited to the changing market to increase your sales? Are you curious about how to build or scale a highly successful standout brand? Join one of our branding masterclasses because they empower you to build your brand, enhance customer experience, expand your market impact and create higher perceived value, so you can command a premium and achieve higher revenue. 

In fact, the Persona Brand Strategy Leadership Programme is all about fast-tracking you, your brand, and your business through the brand building, agile branding strategy process using professional big-brand know-how with proven systems that get results, so you can grow your business faster and more effectively. 

The programme enables you to make your brand highly differentiated, visible, credible, trustworthy, memorable, and much loved amongst your ideal customers, so you can become more profitable and leave your competitors way behind. Be The One — your ideal customers’ favourite brand of preferred choice commanding a premium.

If you want a tailor-made solution specifically for your brand then we also provide in-house bespoke Persona Brand Strategy Leadership Intensives™. Working specifically on your brand and organisational needs,  the Persona Brand Building Blueprint™ framework is used working collaboratively with you and your team, so you can grow your business faster and more profitably. 

Contact us to discover more [email protected] or +353 1 8322724

5. Celebrate Positive Affirmations of Your Employer Branding

A lot of organisations seem somewhat sceptical about their own brands, and this can affect the way that their employees feel about them. If a company’s leadership doesn’t believe in its employer branding and fully integrate it into their ways of working then staff won’t either.

A good employer brand doesn’t have to be loud or in your face, but it should still be something that people feel positive about. Effective employer branding helps guide people across the organisation in key decision-making.

A simple technique to use employer branding to build a high-performing team is to celebrate positive affirmations of the brand. This could be as simple as being a small recognition of employee actions that demonstrate the brand values in action. It’s worth noting that small genuine demonstrations of appreciation go a long way because one of the biggest reasons employees leave organisations is for lack of employer appreciation.

Related: 6 Ways to Develop and Nurture a Successful Brand Culture With a Limited Budget

6. There’s No Reason to Hide Effective Employer Branding 

Sometimes there can be a sense that a brand strategy is a proprietary information that needs to be kept confidential. That may be true of some elements. But there are aspects of any brand which are meant to be shared and appreciated by audiences, including employees.

Instead of a brand being something rarely talked about or considered, a high-performing organisation will typically embody its brand in its day-to-day operations. This can be everything from using it as a basis for employee decision-making to aligning performance evaluation criteria with brand values, vision, and commercial objectives.

There are 14 key areas we map out when building a client’s brand strategy. Eight of these should be shared in the public domain in terms of communications along with the employer brand experience and customer experience — internal and external elements that need to be fully aligned and acculturated.

employer branding

Image via © Social Chain

A B2B case study is provided by social media agency Social Chain. It emphasises its brand values and regularly celebrates employees bringing them to life. The brand oozes through the company’s office design.

Related: The Impact of Company Brand Culture On Driving Performance and Increasing Sales

brand strategy“For anyone who has a well-established business, I would totally recommend working with Persona Design because it will provide them with a new perspective on how to think of their brand. You see in different markets and industries that are overly competitive what makes the difference is knowing what exactly your business is all about and why people would choose you instead of any other competitor.

What makes you different from all the other service or product providers in the market because that’s what’s going to make your business be the No.1 choice in the range of those specific products or services that you’re providing. Also, that’s what’s going to make your brand stand out and have a long-lasting life, and thrive in the context of where you’re operating and delivering value. So totally go for it!

This framework provides you with a lot of insight and more than that, with a systematic process that’s easy for you to understand, easy for you to grasp, easy for you to work with, so you finally nail what makes you different in your business, and what you are about and what those key points are that resonate with your audience.”

Camelia Păduraru

Founder

Crafting Minds 

Camelia Păduraru

If you’d like to discover more about building and maintaining a thriving, high-performing, highly profitable standout brand, then get in touch because we’d love to help you make your brand into a profit powerhouse.

  1. Schedule a chat — we can meet in person online
  2. Let’s consider a customised plan for you
  3. And perhaps implement the plan together  
  4. Contact us [email protected] or ring +353 1 8322724 (GMT Dublin/London time 9:00 – 17:30 weekdays)

Lorraine Carter is a branding expert and international speaker delivering talks that inspire and motivate along with masterclasses and workshops online and offline that inform and support transformational outcomes fast, and consultancy expertise that solves problems — using agile branding strategy underpinned by professional big-brand know-how — so you can outshine, outperform and leave your competitors way behind. 

She enables you to differentiate, achieve higher revenue, expand your market share, build IP brand asset value — make the complex easy as ABC, so you can Transform Your Brand & Increase Your Sales — Be The One, the brand that’s most credible, trusted and commanding a premium, so you’re highly profitable and leaving your competitors way behind.

Ask about the Persona Brand Strategy Leadership Programme™ — live, interactively, face-to-face online.

7. Keeping Employer Branding Relevant Requires Honesty and Integrity

Like everything else, brands age. What makes a good brand today doesn’t necessarily mean it will stay that way or even relevant. Brands are like living human entities which need to be open to adaptation to thrive and sometimes even to survive.

Employees can be in an awkward position when it comes to keeping the brand relevant. They typically engage with the brand more than anyone else. This means they often have a highly developed perspective on the brand and a passion for it. But they can also feel inhibited when it comes to offering constructive critical feedback compared to, for example, customers giving feedback on their experience.

Maintaining an open organisational culture in which employees feel enabled and indeed empowered to give honest feedback and input on the brand without fear of consequences is an important way to get input to help keep the brand relevant from the people who are best positioned to give it.

employer branding

Image via Wikipedia © SAP

A B2B case study is software company SAP’s focus on honesty in its employer branding. That extends to addressing openly common challenges for tech employer brands such as workforce diversity.

Related: How to Use Brand Building and Culture Integration to Unlock More Value from Mergers, Acquisitions and Divestitures

“An exceptionally talented individual. Lorraine Carter, Persona Branding and Design has a wonderful ability to ‘horizon scan’ for any business and then bring them on a journey that delivers value to their Balance Sheet.”

Dave Feenan

Founder

Technology Ireland & ICT Skillnet

Dave Feenan

Final Thoughts

Employer branding is a simple but increasingly important and powerful tool to help you build your thriving, high-performing team, so you can grow your business’s sales and profits.

Employer branding starts long before someone joins your organisation and lasts long after they leave. That is why it is so important, especially as employees are the people who engage most with your brand, even more than loyal customers.

Key elements of brand strategy such as brand purpose, brand values, and brand mission are also critical to successful employer branding. In addition, high-performing organisations consider how to enroll employees as ambassadors and guardians of their employer brand.

How could your employer branding support you more effectively in building a high-performing team and profitable organisation?

“If you’re interested in the brand strategy that will take you to the next level, that will put you on the market in a premium position, Lorraine Carter is the person to assist you in getting there with specific elements and with specific tools that simply work. All you have to do is focus and know what you want — she provides the tool kit you need to accomplish your goals.”

Adina Iacob

Founder, PR, Communications & Media Relations Consultant

Adina Iacob

Questions to Consider

  1. How does your employer brand present itself to prospective employees?
  2. What are your brand purpose, brand mission, and brand values?
  3. How well understood are your brand values by people inside your organisation?
  4. What do you do to celebrate positive affirmations of your brand values?
  5. How do you enable and encourage staff to keep your employer brand relevant and inspiring?
  6. Could you use a brand audit to help you re-evaluate your employer brand, so you can fix the vulnerabilities, leverage the strengths more effectively, and identify opportunities to have a bigger impact?

Brand Audit Consultation

Your Persona Client Satisfaction Guarantee

  1. When you work with us, we’ll create a customised brand-building plan and strategy with clear investment for you tailored to your specific requirements and preferences
  2. You’ll know each step of your brand building journey before we start because we’ll discuss it, document it, and agree on it with you before work commences
  3. You’ll have timelines, key milestones, and deliverables to evaluate and approve for each stage and part of your brand building process
  4. Because we know the unexpected sometimes happens we can make adjustments along the way if you need it and if something extra is requested we’ll ensure you’re fully appraised about what that entails before committing
  5. As we achieve pre-agreed objectives you’ll be able to evaluate your brand building work and strategy in progress, coupled with the outcomes to ensure return on investment

Get in touch today because we’d love to enable you to re-evaluate and build your standout, powerhouse brand, so you can Be The One — increase your profits and leave your competitors way behind. 

Email us [email protected] or ring us +35318322724 (GMT 9:00-17:30) and ask about our VIP Brand Strategy Re-Evaluation.

“If you’re interested in the brand strategy that will take you to the next level, that will put you on the market in a premium position, Lorraine Carter is the person to assist you in getting there with specific elements and with specific tools that simply work. All you have to do is focus and know what you want — she provides the tool kit you need to accomplish your goals.”

Adina Iacob

Founder, PR, Communications & Media Relations Consultant

Adina Iacob