Business trends around the world are indeed changing and twisting to reach new heights of efficiency and profitability. Every section of the firm must keep up with these fast-changing trends, whether it be recruitment procedures or sales targets. However, the majority of the ace players are the ones who make the necessary alterations, while others fail to do so. Employer branding is important for firms to preserve the value they place on their personnel.
This rat race has also engulfed the recruitment business. The increased competition for top talent has made it more difficult for recruiting teams to find the right people. How can an HR professional or a recruiter stay on top of the game for the long haul in these current times? This scenario is governed by several things.
Employer branding is an example of a modern notion that has become necessary. It also plays an important function in assisting businesses in remaining competitive and influential in the marketplace. Hiring teams must comprehend the significance of employer branding in both recruiting and sustaining the company’s reputation.
What is Employer Branding and How Does It Work?
Employer branding refers to an organization’s capacity to demonstrate its value to potential employees. It is a strategy for attracting and retaining top talent in the organization.
It also aids in the recruitment and retention of potential employees. It is critical to keep them and help them flourish for the sake of the team and the organization.
Whatever the case may be, a business strives to maintain and improve its image and reputation in the marketplace for the products and services it provides. They should also be in charge of establishing a good employer brand. It’s also important to keep their reputation as respectable employers. And it is in this context that the concept of employer branding comes into play.
What does it mean to have a strong employer brand?
The significance of effective employer branding is enormous. Here are five reasons why employer branding is so important, and why your company should start implementing an effective employer branding strategy right away.
Employer branding aids in the development of your company’s brand identity.
In today’s technologically advanced world, building and maintaining an internet presence has become a must. Your prospective employees, as well as your clients, are looking at your website and following you on social media. They’re also listening in on what your present employees have to say about your organization. During the job application process, employers’ review websites such as Glassdoor are frequently consulted.
Having a greater online presence allows you to raise brand awareness, which is advantageous to your business. You may illustrate your company culture and show potential employees what it’s like to work for you.
Employer branding aids in the recruitment of top talent.
The basic idea or principle underlying the entire concept of employer branding is to develop your talent brand. Second, the employer brand aids in attracting, engaging, and retaining the best and brightest employees in your company.
The recruitment process has evolved into a massive undertaking that incurs expenditures and necessitates a significant amount of effort on the part of the Human Resource staff. Employer branding not only helps you attract job applicants but also cuts down on the time it takes to fill a position.
Finding and retaining the appropriate personnel has become a costly endeavor as the recruitment market has become more competitive. It costs money to post your job openings on multiple job boards, collaborates with recruiters, trains new hires, and so on.
Companies that have a great employer brand don’t have to put in as much effort to acquire top people. The company’s employer brand speaks for itself. This also means that employer branding reduces the amount of time you spend filling a position and the expenditures associated with it.
Creating a strong employer brand is no longer a one-step procedure. It’s a long-term procedure that necessitates a lot of effort. It all starts with a knowledge of the significance of employer branding and how it affects your hiring processes.
Ways To Improve Employer Branding
It’s a well-known truth that organizations with a strong employer brand are more likely to attract top personnel. Without a strong employer brand, businesses will lose out on excellent applicants, perhaps lose money, and have a negative impact on other aspects of the organization. The advantages of a positive employer brand, on the other hand, include attracting new employees, who are critical to the company’s success and growth.
Using the correct tools to go digital
The technology or tools utilized on the career site, the speed with which selection processes are completed, effective communication, or anything else that businesses do or invest in to make recruiting straightforward and easy for job seekers will all have an impact on the company’s employer brand. This necessitates locating the appropriate tools to aid in the hiring process. Recruiting teams can use the latest tools in candidate experience, such as CRMs, AI-based chatbots, candidate nurture engines, and so on, because candidate experience has a direct impact on employer brand. Investing in cutting-edge CRM technologies like Hyreo, for example, could help bridge the gap between candidates and recruiters throughout the hiring process, resulting in a great candidate experience and thereby strengthening the overall employer brand.
In social media and other platforms, consistency is important.
Most candidates rely on corporate reviews provided on various social media and review sites since they have quick access to information online. Current and past employees of the businesses are very frank about their experiences on such internet forums. Any unpleasant remark can raise red flags in the minds of potential employees and even clients. Each company should devote time to responding to unfavorable comments as part of its employer branding plan.
Sharing information on the company’s work culture
Companies can use some of the following activities into their marketing campaigns to improve their employer brand and recruit fresh talent:
Corporate events, work culture, company hiring procedure, benefits, and other topics are frequently blogged about.
Photos and videos of events, work culture, employee highlights, and other topics are shared on social media.
Employee video testimonials conveying their positive experience with the organization and incorporating them into the branding exercise
Conclusion
To summarize, employer branding is critical to a company’s capacity to attract and retain excellent personnel, which leads to overall success and growth. If you get it right, your employer brand will not only recruit top talent, but it will also provide current employees a reason to feel personally linked to the company. Developing a great employer brand takes a team effort, and it’s best accomplished through a top-down strategy that starts in the boardroom. An improved employer brand could be your most powerful weapon in separating yourself from the competition.
Pragna Solutions is a reputed recruitment & technology consultant company that has successfully helped numerous organization to build employer brand that attracts the top tier talents in the market. With our strategic approach, your business can fetch the best results through employer branding. Gain competitive edge through employer branding with our assistance.
With the onset of the pandemic, every business has been struggling to keep their back straight. As most companies have stepped into a remote working system, productivity has significantly risen. However, it is no surprise some employees have been taking undue advantage of it and using the circumstances as an excuse for repeatedly missing deadlines and even skipping meetings.
The annual evaluation is just knocking at the door, and it is the responsibility of managers to hand these employees poor performance reviews. Providing a negative performance review may become a challenging task if you are not prepared for it. However, it is a necessary step if you want the employees to be a part of your valued team.
Due to the growing importance of mental health, managers need to make a correct approach to conveying poor performance reviews. As employee behavior has changed over the last year, the manager must be empathetic in his approach to deliver the bad news to the employee.
Here are a few quick tips that a manager can definitely utilize to provide a poor performance review without burning out the employee.
Review and compare self-assessments
Most companies create self-assessment forms to be filled by their employees. If you are going to announce a negative performance review to an employee, you can go through the latest self-assessment and previous year’s self-assessment.
The comparison of these two may offer you evidences to back up your points. Moreover, you can also learn about the emotional state and the impact of the pandemic on the employee. Referring to the self-assessment provides a common ground between the employee and the manager to start a conversation before breaking the bad news.
Empathetic Approach
There is no end to the importance of an empathetic approach when delivering negative news. The best way to start is by saying that you understand how the transformation in the last few months has been unsettling, and the employee is not the only one whose performance has been affected adversely.
The manager poses the role of a leader in the eyes of his teammates. Therefore, striking a conversation with transparency along with compassion, provides the employee with the comfort to understand the leader and perform as a team player.
Negative Reviews does not imply a bad experience
As a manager, breaking the bad news with an aggressive approach is the worst mistake you can make. Instead, present yourself calmly, describing every parameter where the employee lagged and how that can be mended in the next quarter. You must make the employee feel valued by the organization even though you are highlighting some unfavorable reviews.
Reflect on the importance of the review
Unlike other years, there are certain differences in the purpose of the performance review this year. During this chaos, most employees could not deliver expected performance due to the lack of direction, accountability gap, or adaptation to the new changes. Therefore, the performance review is essential to identify the barriers and help employees adapt to the ‘new normal’ transformations.
Instead of rushing with a decision of rooting out bad performers, the purpose of this year’s performance review is to enhance the employees’ performance through their engagement. You must realize that the performance review is a way to communicate with your employee to keep them performing better in the long term.
Be Prepared for Reaction
It is no surprise; some employees may react aggressively or defensively to a negative review. You must not be taken aback by the reaction and offer a counter response. In such cases, the manager must provide some space and time so that information can sink in.
You must have a compassionate gesture to help the employee with a plan of action to achieve bigger goals and better results in the next review. You must outline the steps of the action plan and ensure support to achieve it. In this way, you can convey the poor performance review as well as build a bond of trust with your employees.
The Bottom Line
“Employees engage with employers and brands when they’re treated with empathyand respect.” As a manager and leader, you must ensure the well-being of the company as well as your employees.
Breaking a poor performance review to your employee is not an easy job, but it can be the starting point as a leader to your employees.
Always remember, employees, are assets only when you value them. Discouraging or mentally harassing them would worsen the situation. Avoid confrontations while delivering a negative review. Instead, motivate them to perform better with effective guidance and mentorship.
“Negativity is an addiction to the bleak shadow that lingers around every human form–you can transfigure negativity by turning it toward the light of your soul.” — John O’Donohue
You must be wondering what I mean by negative energy. Well, do you remember the day when your superior took the credit for the presentation that you had spent your whole night to prepare? Or, a public scolding from your superior embarrassing you in front of your colleagues?
There are more than a thousand similar circumstances you may have to face in your work life. These instances generate some anger, frustration, and a roadblock for your career. These are the negative energies we are talking about.
You may feel at times that you have been working hard that no one actually values. Know that you are not the only one who is feeling this way. But does that mean you cannot overcome this negative energy? You can. You must believe that you can do and ultimately leads towards success with Positive mindset .
Here are the simple ways how you can use these negative energies to pave the path for your success.
Give a comeback blow
Negative energies like anger and frustration can become your motivation to push yourself to blow a comeback. Put your heart and soul into the next project that comes on your way next.
“Be cautious with what you feed your mind and soul. Fuel yourself with positivity and let that fuel propel you into positive action.” — Steve Maraboli
Channeling your negative energy into the energy to become a better version of yourself is a wiser decision than just wasting your time drooling over the incident. Do not let emotions control your performance.
Modify your strategy
If you are stuck with some negative energies for some time, it is time to calm yourself down and rethink your ways. Every employee has their own strategy, and so do you. Channel your anger and frustration to rethink the strategy of success.
Instead of just shaming yourself for a wrong step, give yourself some time to figure out the right way to fix things or make them better. Remember, negativity is creativity if you choose the right attitude to deal with it.
Analyze and Persevere
Nothing comes in a silver spoon to you. You need to inculcate the virtue of perseverance if you want to achieve your ambitious goals. If you are frustrated about not getting a promotion, you may as well channelize your frustration to analyze what is it actually stopping you from receiving the promotion.
The reason can be a specific flaw that you have unintentionally repeated or a specific quality that one who got the promotion has, but you lack. Even though office politics is a real thing, you cannot always blame it for your frustration, anger, or any other negative energy.
“Make no mistake about it. Bad habits are called ‘bad’ for a reason. They kill our productivity and creativity. They slow us down. They hold us back from achieving our goals. And they’re detrimental to our health.” — John Rampton
It is essential to analyze yourself, the circumstances, and persevere with the best strategy to achieve your goals.
Final Thoughts
According to researches, almost 80% of employees feel stressed and frustrated in their jobs. But the other 20% know how to channel their negative energies to pave a path to their success.
Frustration, anger, stress, and embarrassment are common workplace negative energies that everyone has to deal with every day. Therefore, instead of just being stuck with the negative energies, go ahead, and motivate yourself to bring out the best version of yourself.
Strong morale is not a luxury item; it’s always been an essential for life. And that’s even more true today considering present situation. Uncertainty of the future can damage both motivation and productivity and can also create a lot of fear among employees. Companies that can sustain workforce and boost their employee’s morale while coronavirus disrupts businesses will be better compared to those who are just watching and waiting for it to vanish.
Keeping in view what’s important, here are few virtual and virtuous tips for maintaining morale at your company:
Stay Positive
If you’re in a leadership position or the boss of a company, keep in mind that the other employees are going to take indications from how you react to situations. If you keep complaining about unsteady market, economy downturn and bad productivity, employees will loose hope and the feeling of despair will spread as fast as a piece of office gossip. You need to be positive and upbeat. Try to look for solutions and be enthusiastic in your daily interactions with employees. By no means try to paint a false picture. Don’t restructure your personality just because you’re going through a hard time.
Be open
It’s one of the biggest mistake employers do, attempting to hide things going on with the company from your employees. Not realizing that they probably know, hearing rumours within the industry and talking amongst themselves, so it not okay to pretend like there is no problem. Being positive doesn’t mean in any way that you have to hide the truth from your employees thinking they would panic. Being honest and open about the current situation and the issues you are facing can strengthen your relationship and bring you all closer as a team and work towards finding a common solution. Discuss the problem and also the improvements and keep the forum open for suggestions. Being involved and valuing your employee’s thoughts in improving the company will automatically boost up their morale and loyalty.
Develop self-efficacy
Self-efficacy is a belief within that you are effective and can handle difficulties without getting stressed. Developing self-efficacy is like muscle strength training, you grow stronger and stronger with increased level of challenges. You can help your employees build their self-efficacy stronger though appropriate levels of challenge. Provide them with the right tools and resources. And train them to do their jobs well, so they can feel the thrill when challenged during difficult times.
Cut back unnecessary sources of stress
The fluidity and uncertainty of the current situation requires both companies and employees to be flexible. Priorities are quickly shifting and often unpredictably. So, you need to adapt to the present and not stick on the previous policies. Review your rules and policies as you don’t want your employees to spend all their time and energy struggling to cope up with ridiculous rules and policies. Smart employers, ask their employees about their challenges and try to find solution for those to eliminate all unnecessary sources of stress and frustration.
Be available and accessible
Now is not the time to disappear and lock yourself up and bounce back on surface when things are smooth sailing again. This is the time to be proactive and be out in the thick of it. If you act like you don’t care, your team is going react in the same way and stop caring about work and company too. Employees admire leaders who try to be part of the team and try to do as much as the rest of the team to find solution to the problem. Keep your doors open and be accessible. Encourage your employees to approach you about any problem or apprehension they have.
Celebrate wins and show your appreciation
The positive feelings that come from success are an antidote to anxiety and fear. Nothing boosts spirits and strengthens determination like succeeding at challenging times. During difficult phases when nothing falls at right place employees often develops a loser mentality. Restrain this natural tendency by celebrating victories both small and large. Make it a practice to appreciate hard work sharing this whole company on a regular basis.
Closing thoughts
Several researches conducted on stress and health has proven that strong relationships are more resilient to traumatic events. As a leader you should foster strong relationships by building teamwork, mutual respect, courtesy, and caring.
Even in the worst of times, recognizing and appreciating the hard work of employees even with a simple thank you every now and then can keep their morale up, meanwhile also strengthening the relationship that exists between you and your staff. By including your staff in the efforts to improve the current process and also their work will help them do a better job, making them feel like they have a stronger stake in your company.
Engaged employees are more dynamic, more customer-oriented and more devoted to company’s success and organizations with high levels of employee engagement are more successful. Employee engagement is one priority always on top-of-mind of HR industry experts.
Considering the present situation retention is equally as important as recruitment. Organizations are focusing on different methods to better engage workers who might otherwise go elsewhere seeking what they perceive to be “greener grass.”
As an employer, you need to find unique and innovative ways to improve employee engagement in the workplace. Along with the traditional benefits like loan assistance, health insurance, there are lot of new perks which can be added to your current employee engagement plan like gym memberships, standing desks, nap rooms and team building activities. These methods can be tailored according to the needs and motivations of each individual organization and employee.
Companies can invest in workplace wellness programs to combat the daily stress and decreased employee productivity. And in return reap the benefits of increased creativity and low employee turnover. Following are few innovative ideas to consider adding to your employee engagement strategy to truly make a difference in the lives of your employees.
Make room for Employee Engagement flexibility
One of the secrets to increase employee engagement in the workplace is by giving flexibility to your employees. This would give them the freedom to adjust their work schedules to starting the day earlier or later or location to suiting their needs. You can also continue working from home one or two days a week even after the current pandemic situation is over. Millennial’s being the largest generation in the workforce always seek for flexibility and implementing these would definitely make them happy and comfortable and eventually more productive.
Try to be authentic
A sincere relationship between employees and the management is based on genuine attempts from both ends and it motivates building teamwork and trust. Employers should try to create a workplace environment that is unique, comfortable. Do not falsify your relationship with employees and develop a trusting work environment. This helps employees realize that their workplace is an open forum to keep their thoughts with no sugar-coating. This would motivate them to be honest and not to hide things from their managers. Creating such workplace environment will make people feel valued, heard and improve sense of comradeship.
Add benefits that satisfy employee engagement lifestyle needs
As employees enter different life stages their lifestyle needs also changes. For example, young families would love paid parental leave programs, recent pass out graduates would prefer education loan assistance. Encourage your employees to maintain a lifestyle balance between work and their personal life.
Take a comprehensive approach to wellness
Earlier employee wellness used to mean arranging an internal health fair. But now companies are widening their approach to address the overall aspect of wellness including physical, mental, emotional, social, occupational, financial, purposeful and environmental wellness. Encourage your employees to take a short break from their desk at regular intervals and stretch.
You can utilize few applications that can be easily installed in your computers to remind yourself to take breaks and set your eyes off the system. These don’t have to be equally proportionate, but happy, healthy employees are generally engaged employees, so address their wellness needs fitting your organization and employees the best. When employees see that you care for their well-being, they tend to work harder towards achieving the company goals.
Encourage collaboration and Show gratitude
Collaboration is one of the key aspects for any business to focus on improving. Collaboration while working on projects develops better ideas and even improve employee engagement by encouraging teamwork and learning from colleagues and peers. Successful organizations make clever use of employee collaboration to reduce company costs and improve efficiency among the team.
One important aspect to increase employee engagement is by simply saying ‘Thank You’ to your employees. Appreciate all their hard work and efforts they have put into in making your organization more successful.
Finally
The biggest secret to increase employee engagement at workplace is that there is no secret. Great leaders pay close attention to what their employees have to say and then act on the feedback. Focus on creating a work culture that promotes continuous development and help employees to build the skills required to fulfill their job responsibilities. Follow the above discussed tips and you will be surprised by the results.
The process of making an employment offer to a candidate may seem a simple task at first glance. But do you know critical factors based on which applicants are weighing job offers. A recent study proves that salary isn’t the only factor that candidate looks for in a job offer.
The key to a creating a successful job offer extension is to consider it as a process that starts from the very second you start engaging a potential candidate. As employers, we all experienced that annoying feeling that comes along after finding a great candidate and rolling out a job offer and then the candidate reacting to it with unwillingness, taking too long to respond or even accepting a counter offer.
A compelling offer is anything that makes your organization and position stand above all other potential competitors in the market. Here are the tips to keep in mind while creating an offer that candidates just can’t resist:
Gather Information
This might seem simple, but it is one of the most commonly made mistake while making a job offer, lack of details and rolling out offer too early in the process. Most offer rejections happen just because hiring manager doesn’t know the candidate sufficiently. During the interviewing rounds, make a conscious effort to know the candidate well and note the key information points. A couple of must have notes is the candidate’s desired start date, financial outlooks, ability and willingness to commute to the office etc.
Apply the standard 10% rule
Generally, professionals expect a minimum of 10 to 15 percent increase in salary when they switch to new job. You noted down their present salary during the interview, so while making an offer keep this in mind that you will just get a tepid response if the amounts on table is less than 10 to 15 percent. But sometimes less salary can be compensated with additional bonus, healthcare, investment or lifestyle benefits, also highlighting your work culture, flexible work arrangements can act as a sweet topping on your offer which candidates just don’t want to miss.
Act Fast to Make an Offer
If you’ve made a decision and found your right fir then why wait? Time is always ticking on your head if you don’t act fast then you will miss out your found treasure, because in a down economy exceptional talent is rare. Reach out to candidate soon after they are interviewed and turn their interview anxiety into enthusiasm of cracking it successfully. This will ease the candidate’s stress during the post-interview waiting period. While informing the candidate don’t forget to mention how he was best among the whole lot of other candidates, show that you are thrilled to make them a part of your team.
Follow Up in Writing
Most important, many candidates don’t believe an offer to be real until it’s sent in writing. Then put your words in an email or letter. Clearly lay out all the elements in the offer letter including job title, base salary, benefits, vacation, holidays, perks, etc. Once the offer is sent to the candidate, don’t forget to follow up at least once a week until the start date. The risk of candidate backing out last minute is slightly high if the time period between acceptance and start is longer.
Set a deadline
Make sure to you set a deadline for the candidate to accept the offer. A three-day deadline is typical but if the candidate takes too long to respond then its not a good sign. Follow up again and ask the right questions to discover if you still can expect a positive response or candidate has made other plans in mind to do offer shopping.
Finding the right candidate in today’s competitive employment market is tough, you should be prepared to entice top talent at all levels in the recruitment cycle. And when you found the perfect fit for your job opening don’t risk losing out on them. Streamlined job offer process is one of the most important steps which includes designing a well-tailored offer letter that address the candidate’s needs, wants and pain points and is just too irresistible. The above discussed tips will definitely help you make a compelling and effective job offer and results in positive experiences that compel best talent to join your company.
