Why do brand purpose and employer branding go together?
What your employees want is good for your business
Align the company’s values with your employees’ values
Inspire your employees to have meaningful careers
Run culture campaigns for the behavior you want to implement
At RBD, I was looking to develop employee engagement across all stages of the journey. Employer branding is about the entire employee experience. From recruitment, hiring, onboarding, the employees working journey, back to the exit interview.
Industries understand the value of purpose in order to stand out in a crowded consumer-driven marketplace, that people need to buy into something more than just a job, money or a certain business.
Purposeful employer branding implies creating and showing human experiences in an authentic way. Companies must therefore rethink their employer branding strategy and focus on aligning their employer branding with their employees’ purpose.
Employer branding is not about fluffy talk. Research shows that a 10% improvement in employees’ connection with your organization’s purpose results in a 12.7% reduction in safety incidents, an 8.1% decrease in turnover, and a 4.4% increase in profitability.
Millennials are the generation that will soon represent the majority of the global workforce, therefore it makes sense to pay attention to their needs. However, attracting millennial talent and retaining them can be a difficult task. It’s important to keep in mind that replacing an employee could cost around 150% of each employee’s annual salary. The main reason for Millennials to quit a job is because they are looking for a career growth opportunity and they couldn’t find it with their previous employer.
Successful businesses are always the result of people and their engagement. Employees thrive when they feel comfortable engaging in something which is meaningful to them and connecting their values to the bigger purpose. That’s where adding purpose to your employer branding finds its indispensable necessity.
As Head of Culture at RDB, I joined forces with the Managing Directors, account managers and copywriters. As every position has different things to say and show, adding purpose to your employer branding means listening and working together from different perspectives.
At RDB, the objective was to let purpose evolve through the entire organization to the customer. Hence, to kick the purposeful employer branding strategy off with the people who execute our daily business and to align their purpose with the employers’. If you are looking to retain, nurture and recruit millennials (but also customers), you want to show authentic purpose in everything you do.
Here is how you can do the same, by adding small and larger actionable elements to add purpose to your employer brand identity:
It is all about communication and conversation. We all want recognition and appreciation and we all rely on honest feedback and immediate reaction, especially at the workplace.
Implement feedback meetings. Have regular 1:1 with HR or team leads. We at RDB even implemented a “gratitude and improvement box” system, where employees can share their thoughts anonymously or directly with each other, give constructive feedback or praise for a job well done. It is all about understanding what your employees are thinking and improving overall employee morale.
What I learned during my work is that in order to add purpose to your employer branding, the internal behavior and culture must be authentic before starting the communication to the outside world.
Truly help your employees find meaning in what they do. Embed purpose in your employees’ job description and ask them to define their mission and vision in life.
Think about how their role and responsibilities are connected to their purpose and the higher purpose of the organization. This is important for every employer to know about their employees.
Once you are aware of this, help them to connect their daily work to the organization’s meaning and show the impact they have on your business. Individuals will connect as soon as there is alignment with their values and the company’s values.
Provide your employees with unique career paths and talent cultivation opportunities.
I am working with continuing professional career development plans, where together with our employees, we are analyzing where they are now, where they want to be and what we can do at RDB to support this path.
Talent identification and development is crucial for purposeful employer branding. Adding purpose to your employer brand means looking for your people’s talents to develop (no matter if they ultimately stay with us or don’t) and to connect their skills to the benefits and purpose of your business.
We decided to implement a “Culture of Gratitude” campaign. The objective was to develop our daily behavior to include more recognition, appreciation and honesty.
Employee motivation has improved as they feel happier and more engaged at the workplace when they feel valued for who they are (and not only what they do). Above all, employees want to sense that they truly matter for higher success.
The story is not your company and it’s not the stories of what people do at your company, it’s why they do it!
We made “A day in a life of …” stories on our Instagram channel, to truly reflect our work culture to the outside world. This can serve multiple purposes at the same time: future talents want to be able to imagine what a daily business day looks like and if it matches their values and working style. Therefore, providing them with authentic insights is a good tactic. On the other hand, it allows your own employees to become the brand ambassador for your company and feel appreciated.
Here the golden rule still applies – keep it simple and real.
I hope that by know you realized that ignoring the importance of adding purpose to your employer branding is no way of moving forward.
People’s engagement is related to purpose so involve different parties in your planning and not only HR. Involve employees within the process and don’t focus too much on external employer branding positioning in the first place.
Nurture your culture, identify the purpose of your people and bring it in alignment with the employer’s purpose. The rest will happen. People trust people, who are telling others about your employer branding. It is an organic process and will require regular necessary adjustments.
Employer branding is crucial for the long-term success of meaningful growth. Moreover, purposeful employer branding is the future and requires to be cultivated. Read our tips on how to combine your company’s purpose with the way you try to attract talent.
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