In recent years, Employer Branding has definitely been a hot topic for comms and HR professionals. As the so-called war for talents got fiercer and fiercer, it was obvious that traditional recruitment tools became insufficient to win. Companies realized that besides branding their products and services, they also need to promote themselves as employers.

This sounds easy, right?

As all new sciences, employer branding has also had an evolution: a couple of years ago it was only a “game of HR”, but by now it became a business-critical factor in the life of success-oriented organizations.
Although there are very few people questioning the role of Employer Branding today, there are still some hidden factors, balking this activity.

At most companies, it is HR in charge of employer and employee branding, which, no question, sounds logical as they are the ones aware of what kind of people the company needs to fulfill its business goals.

That’s why the majority of organizations (81% exactly*) implement separate Employer Branding strategy instead of creating a fully integrated brand guideline.
There’s no one to blame for this situation, it’s built on traditions.

What can this result in?

Let us give you an average example:

Anna is a 19-year-old IT student totally enthusiastic about future technologies. On Wednesdays, she works for their family business: developing the website of her father’s accounting company. She is getting a bit bored with this job, so she is planning to find an internship soon.

What kind of relationship can Anna have with, let’s say, a telco company?

• She might be a customer or a potential customer, using mobile and home services.
• Her father’s office might use the business services of the company (mobile fleet or wifi etc.)
• And last, but not least she is a fully ideal candidate to start her career at a telco company always in short of IT talents. 

As you can see, Anna can be linked to the company in 3 ways at least. She can meet with different brand strategies of 3 separate departments.
If you were Anna, would you be able to remember so many different messages or would you be confused instead?
We would bet on the second one.

That’s why we at Person believe that there’s a serious need for an integrated brand strategy aligned with all relevant departments and that’s why we are confident that employer branding strategy, as well as any other department level brand strategy, should not exist in itself.

*Based on Universum Global’s Employer vs Consumer Brand Research

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