Ulrica Björnhag (Senior Consultant HR) runs the HR blog bjornhag.se where a variety of interesting topics are discussed. Most recently, Ulrica took up employer branding.
Create an attractive employer…
A collective concept around attracting, motivating and retaining staff is employer branding. You have both an external and an internal focus – attracting new talent while retaining and developing the ones you already have. In the last ten years, employer branding has become an increasingly common concept. The term was coined in the early 1990s, but it is only now that we can really see how it is used in practice and what effects it has.
For it to work, you must have a corporate culture that is worth communicating. You must take care of your employees and regularly monitor how the organization is doing. The important thing about an employee survey is not the result itself, but what you do with it. If any problems are caught in time, the relationship with the employees develops and the basis for an ambassadorship is created. In industries where there is a lack of skills or where competition is high, it becomes even more important to be able to attract and retain the best.
In the past, employer branding has worked a bit behind the scenes, for example in classic jobseeker forums such as Linkedin. Now we can instead see how this phenomenon has taken the step out towards the large audience. At the beginning of the year, we were able to take part in Volvo's commercial "Made by people". In the past, they have used various well-known profiles such as Zlatan and Börje Salming to market their cars. Now they have instead shifted the focus to the employees. Åsa Borg, marketing director for Volvo Cars' European organization, said on 26 February 2016 in the magazine Resumé: "We have a couple of tough years behind us in the Swedish car industry, but thanks to our 30,000 employees who work for us every day, we had a fantastic 2015. We want to pay tribute to them.”
In the film, we get to follow Volvo's employees during a normal working day. The feeling is that this is a company that knows its employees on a personal level despite its enormous size. They manage to make us want to be part of the brand both as consumers and as employees. This is precisely where you find the strength of this open form of employer branding. In the best of worlds, a customer who is an ambassador for the company becomes an employee.
How do you work with employer branding? When was the last time you talked to your employees?
Would they recommend you?
Below are three films on the theme. I really like the first two... the last one maybe there is a bit of a difference of opinion about what it achieves... or what do you think?
Volvo commercial:
Wonderful little film:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IsL5AMqLMY#action=share
Here is another example… perhaps less successful…
Published 2016-02-27 15:01:00 i https://www.bjornhag.se
