What does the future hold for employer branding?
Our friends at Universum recently gathered its resources to survey over 2,000 HR professionals and CEOs around the globe to get their take on talent recruitment and employer branding.
In this study on the employer perspective of talent acquisition, Universum delves into the world of employer preferences on talent attributes, the state of employer branding to the development of brand activation… and looks at the trends five years ahead.
Who is in charge?
Who owns employer branding? CEOs seem to think they are accountable, whereas HR say they are in charge. There is clearly more collaboration needed within organisations, ranging from HR to employer branding managers to marketing and ultimately the CEO. Unsurprisingly, everyone apart from the CEO thinks there is a need for closer cooperation.
What will change over five years?
The biggest changes for the next five years appear to be a greater focus on long-term thinking and a greater interest in building an employer brand on a global level. There is however, no clear consensus on what matters the most, although employee retention seems to be less interesting for the respondents.
EVPS are still not pervasive
Most (61%) companies have an Employer Value Proposition (EVP) but it doesn’t seem to be well circulated within organisations and CEOs barely even know it exists.
What gets measured?
The top three KPIs in use today are all inward-facing and include average retention rate, new hire quality and employee engagement level. External indicators such as rankings and brand perceptions were not prominent in this survey results.
Social media is the #1 digital channel
Social media appears to be the most important employer branding channel, tightly followed by career websites and then job boards, employer ads, career guidance websites and targeted messaging.
If we look into the next five years, social media is poised to grow even further with 70% of respondents indicating a bigger focus on it. This is in spite of the fact that only half of the respondents are actually measuring the success of social activity.
RELATED: How Employers Use Social Media for Talent Attraction in 2015
Will consumer and employer brands merge?
It appears that most respondents see their employer and consumer brands being more tightly connected over the next five years. This will require much closer cooperation among stakeholders – in particular, inviting marketing to be more influential player in brand strategy.
