Dr. Sandeep K.

Krishnan

The Social Employer

Branding
Employer branding is a crucial tool for organizations as it enables them
to extend their image as an employer and a desired place to work

EM P LOYER BR A N D I N G

EVP is clearly
defined in terms of
the opportunities,
innovation,
challenges, and
impact that an
organization can
create

n this era of war for talent, the need

to attract and retain top performers
remains critical to the success of
businesses. It is imperative that
organizations distinguish themselves from their competition by promoting
their strengths, and publishing their
values and promises to the prospective
employees. Employer branding is a crucial
tool for organizations as it enables them to
extend their image as an employer and a
place to work as perceived internally and
externally. An organizations Employer
Value Proposition (EVP) communicates
that image to their target audience and
reinforces why talented people would want
to join and stay with an organization.
The benefits of a strong employer brand
are many with a few critical ones like
improved and impressive employer brand
identity in line with the customer brand,
better attraction and retention of talent,
reduced cost of employee engagement, and
for most organizations, it also helps to have

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| APRIL 2016

concentrated efforts to align HR practices

and leadership/managerial behaviors
to the employment promise or the value
proposition. According to Economist,
an effective EVP management can bring
tangible benefits, including a 20 percent
increase in the pool of potential workers,
a four-fold increase in commitment among
employees and a 10 percent decrease in
payroll costs. While the journey of employer branding starts with defining an EVP
and then providing an experience from
hire to retire in alignment with the EVP,
the communication of the EVP and how
the employees experience the same is also
a critical element of making the organization an attractive employer.
A prospective or a current employee
can experience the employer brand/value
proposition from various sources on the
social media or the Internet. For many
especially the millennials, this is a key
source of information that affects their
decision making. The social media pre-

sence can be articulated through various

touch points that an employee can have.
Today, various avenues on the Internet
and social media become the anchors for
the employer brand in terms of external communication. The obvious one is
the career website. It is important that
prospective candidates are able to navigate
and understand the employment experience with the organization through the
career site. The next critical aspect here
is defining the promise. Many organizations are unable to convey why somebody
should join them. This becomes the crux of
defining the EVP along with determining
how distinct or unique the organization is
from others.
People Business conducted a research
on Employer Brand Perceptions based on
Social Media and covered companies ranging from IT, BPOs, Retail, E-Commerce,
FMCG, Pharmaceuticals, Insurance,
Captive Services and Conglomerates. The
study focused on the Employee Value
Proposition of the target companies and
how effectively they communicated this to
their employees and job seekers along with
examining employer branding practices
of the leading companies in each industry
segment. 320 organizations across the sectors were covered as a part of the study.

Industry-wise Participation

The study conducted by People Business

on Employer Brand Perceptions
examined the employer brand practices
of 320 target companies

16%
13%

5%
6%

11%

9%

11%
10%

10%

Captive Services
Conglomerates
E-Commerce
Insurance
Pharmaceuticals

10%

Medium IT
FMCG
BPO
Top IT
Retail

Measuring Employer Brand Quotient

The 7 essential parameters to judge the companies when measuring

employer brand effectiveness
Career Website
Design

Visual appeal of the career website with the target audience;

Contemporary presentation of information and easy interface

10

EVP: Defined
Brand Promise

The central theme through which the EVP is explicitly stated to

its prospective employees

20

Distinctiveness
of the EVP

Distinctiveness of the EVP from the competitors for its uniqueness and differentiation in terms of the core proposition

15

EVP: Everyday
Experience

EVP is clearly laid out through the stories and visuals of the
everyday experiences of employees at work

15

Glassdoor Rating

Good to great view of the organization by both the existing and

alumni of the organization with the Glassdoor rating

20

EVP on Social
Media

Consistent and active communication of the EVP on various

social media platforms

10

Recruitment
Communication

Recruitment communication through online and offline

mediums communicate the EVP to the target audiences

10

To measure the employer brand effectiveness, the model used in the report
defines 7 essentials parameters to judge the
companies. These parameters are:

Career Website Design

EVP Definition
Distinctiveness of the EVP
Everyday EVP Experience
Social Media Rating
EVP on Social Media
Recruitment Communication

The ratings were done based on

available data on the Internet through
a moderation process with a group of
prospective candidates for each of the
sectors.
From the extensive research performed
on the chosen companies, it was found
out that companies scoring more than
70 points had a differentiating impact
compared to their peer group. Only 12
percent of the participating companies
scored more than 70 out of 100 and a major

section, close to 56 percent, performed

average with scores between 40 and
70. These were the companies which
performed average on at least 4 to 5 of the
7 judging criteria. Around 32 percent of
the studied companies were not able to
make a great impact on their prospective
employees and thus scored less than 40
according to the study. It was also found
from an industry wise segregation of
the companies that Insurance companies
had the lowest average score of 35.55
with almost 83 percent of the companies
scoring below 50. And although most
of these organizations had at least an
average rating on Glassdoor, they lacked
in more than 4 criteria out of 7. The
research revealed that the most striking
concern for all these companies seemed

EM P LOYER BR A N D I N G

The research revealed that the most striking concern for all these companies seemed to be Recruitment Communication and a minimal effort was
seen on recruitment communication to the job seekers

Building a social
employer brand by
leveraging various
media can result in
better brand recall,
quicker conversions,
reduced cost of
hiring, and a more
informed hire
APRIL 2016 |

79

EM P LOYER BR A N D I N G
80

An effective EVP management can bring

tangible benefits, including a 20% increase
in the pool of potential workers, a fourfold increase in commitment among
employees and a 10% decrease in payroll
costs The Economist
to be Recruitment Communication and a
minimal effort was seen on recruitment
communication to the job seekers.
Thus, for communicating EVP in
a better way, organizations need to be
proactive in designing and executing
better recruitment communication plans.
Also, only a handful of them have an
engaging presence on social media sites
like Facebook and LinkedIn. Coming to
Website Design and Interface, more than
half of the organizations need to create a
career website or revamp the existing ones.
More than 70 percent of them also need to
work on defining and sharing their EVP in
a better way. It was seen that medium sized
IT companies had a good average score of
63 with only one-fourth of them scoring
less than 60 out 100; and close to 60 percent
of these organizations had a good presence
on social media sites and are focusing
on effective recruitment communication
through advertisements on the Internet.
Three-fourth of them believed in sharing
firsthand experience of their employees
through images, videos and testimonials.
Almost 60 percent of them have their

| APRIL 2016

brand promise defined clearly for the

target population. For example, Johnson
and Johnson's career website appearance
is very simple yet has a sense of class
that come through the way information
is displayed. EVP is clearly defined in
terms of the opportunities, innovation,
challenges, and impact that one can create
being part of the J&J family. Employer
testimonials are shared across their core
categories and EVP messaging has been
consistent through their social media
recruitment communications. Similarly,
ITC Group scores high in terms of
employer brand presence not only because
of its clear EVP communication but also
because of the way they have connected
customer brand to employer brand.
It is important that experience is
conveyed in terms of testimonials to
a prospect. Many organizations are
now putting efforts to ensure that real
experiences are conveyed through videos
and written stories on the website and
social media. The presence on social
media through LinkedIn, Facebook,
and also availability of recruitment

campaigns online influences the image of

an organization. Many new organizations
and startups especially in the e-commerce
space are leveraging the power of
articulating the EVP and communicating
effectively. For example, Flipkart hooks
the visitors to the career site with the
visual design that is exciting and highly
creative. Tabs such as Why What
Who What address every question that
a job seeker at Flipkart might be looking
for. Discover I in Flipkart is their
EVP where they promise High growth,
Impact and Technology to its employees.
Their strong promotion of Fun, Problem
solving and Innovation in their culture
through Fliptionary, Awesome First
days, Awesome Everydays, Interview
Humour Problem Solvers gives a
comprehensive understanding of life @
Flipkart.
It is critical that organizations build
communication with the support of the
experiences that employees undergo. Sites
like Glassdoor.com provide employees an
opportunity to convey the positives and
negatives of working in an organization
through ratings and experience sharing
on multiple fronts. While organizations
can do little to manage such platforms,
providing an experience that is consistent
with the promise they offer is critical to
generate credibility.
An effective employer brand is built
by defining a value proposition that is
rooted in reality and is important that
an organization promises to its employees what it is delivering and what it can
deliver in the near future with the ongoing
efforts. Defining the brand promise in line
with the existing experience or unique
strengths along with the stretch that is
required to attract and retain the talent for
business success becomes the first step.
The next step is to align the various HR
practices and employee touch points including leadership and managerial behaviors
to the brand promise. Such an inside-out
approach aims at building the first step
of a credible value proposition and with
the increasing importance of the social
media, the key here is to have consistent
messaging across and bringing credibility through testimonials and experience
sharing. Building a social employer brand
by leveraging various media can bring
results in terms of better brand recall,
quicker conversions, reduced cost of
hiring, and a more informed hire.
About the author

Dr. Sandeep K. Krishnan is Director at the

Human Resource and Leadership consulting firm,
People Business