62% of companies consider employer branding as a business priority, according to the study 2020 Outlook: The Future Of Employer Branding Universum, in which 2,500 professionals from 18 countries took part.
Making the company a ‘desired’ place for the human capital is essential to attract and retain talent, improving the organisation's competitiveness and performance. Hence, building an employer brand image has moved to the daily agenda of HR departments. In fact, employer branding has become a daily agenda for HR departments, Almost six out of ten organisations say they spent more money on this strategy last year, according to the report.
This term emerged in the 60s in the United States, although only in this century has its importance become established in the business sector.. If companies spare no effort to reach consumers, why not do the same to attract labour talent?
Employer branding is a Marketing technique aimed at communicating, both internally and externally within the organisation, the values and characteristics that define it as an employer. and allows you to differentiate yourself from other companies and gain a competitive advantage in the struggle to hire the best professionals.
In this regard, we must not forget the recruitment problems that organisations are currently experiencing. According to the study Global Skills Index 2016 of Hays, the business sector has serious difficulties in recruiting and retaining skilled workers, despite the high unemployment figures recorded in recent decades. “As the world economy slowly recovers, businesses are still struggling to find the talent they need,” the report underlines.
As Dr John Sullivan points out in “The 8 Elements of a Successful Employment Brand, employer branding is “a long-term strategy aimed at managing the knowledge and perceptions of employees - current and potential - about a particular company.”.
Thus, according to Francisco Blasco, Susana Fernández Lores and Almudena Rodríguez Tarodo in Employer branding: a multinational study on building employer brands, Employer branding is based on the application of marketing concepts to highlight a company's positioning as an employer. Its intention is the same as that of a commercial brand: to attract new customers while retaining existing ones. The difference lies in the “customer,” who here is the “employee, current and/or potential.”.
The primary objective of employer branding is to attract the best talent to the company, but furthermore, if we put this technique into practice, the company will also benefit from the following advantages:
In conclusion, employer branding will result in a notable improving business performance, to the point that, according to the report The secret sauce of top companies: Aligning your consumer brand and your talent brand, from LinkedIn and Lippincott, the value of the shares of the studied companies soared 36% with an adequate strategy.
