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Explore SolutionsThis article is written by guest contributor Will Andre, CEO of NodCards, an employer branding tool. For more tools like NodCards to help your recruitment marketing efforts, visit our marketplace now. Happy hiring!
A subtle shift in perspective can have a measurable impact on brand and business success.
Employer branding is at an inflection point. For as much time and investment as organizations are making in their employer value proposition, the wants, needs and–dare I say–demands of the workforce are becoming more acute every day.
Navigating the evolving recruitment landscape requires a solid foundation. Prepare your organization to tackle the daily challenges of the shifting talent market actively. Without a solid foundation or supporting data, market conditions or shifts in corporate focus may overshadow or even deprioritize your employer brand.
Whether you call this foundation the “ground truth,” “north star,” or “core values,” when you’re building and refining your employer brand, it’s important to approach it with the voice of the prospect (VOP) in mind.
What is the Voice of the Prospect?
The voice of the prospect is a shift in perspective from, “What do we want prospects to know about working here,” to “What questions would a prospect want answers to, even if they’d be afraid to ask?” Your proactivity in bringing the VOP into your talent acquisition conversations will be noticed and noted by your prospective employees, effectively giving you a cheat code for connecting with your prospects.
As you embark on this journey of creating your employer brand (or as you seek to refine it from elsewhere in the process), it always helps to start by putting yourself in the prospective employee’s shoes and by asking yourself questions as though the prospect were asking you.
Examples of VOP
As you will see later, these simple examples touch on deep and universal human needs. Naturally, as you seek to strengthen your employer branding foundation, bringing the VOP into your brand will subconsciously signal to your prospects that you understand their primal needs and want them in your organization.
Now, put your prospect hat on and ask yourself these questions:
1. Will I be empowered?
The effectiveness, character and judgment of their people define great organizations. Empowering the people who embody your organization to represent your brand is one of the most powerful growth levers any organization can pull. How will you empower your employees?
2. How will I know I am adding value?
In an organization with a healthy culture, every employee wants to add value. Different roles are ultimately measured to different standards, so value is added in different ways, but it’s in everyone’s purview to help evangelize the organization’s brand. How will your employees know that they are valuable to your organization
3. Will I be recognized?
It’s one thing to host company events in the interest of team building and developing internal relationships amongst employees. These are important, but it’s another thing altogether to demonstrate to each individual employee, and indeed, the world, that you value the unique experience and perspective that they bring to your organization. How will you recognize the unique perspectives and contributions of your employees?
As you run through these questions and embody the VOP, their answers might not be obvious or come easily to you. That’s not necessarily a bad thing because it means that your employer brand still has space to evolve and improve.
Think about the ways that your organization meets these needs. By proactively offering answers to these questions in your hiring process, you will be sending a strong signal to your prospects that you “get” what they are seeking in their next role, elevating your organization to the top of their list of potential future employees.
Lean On Human Nature In Your Employer Brand
While the framing of these questions from the perspective of prospect might be a new angle, their origin in human psychology has been studied extensively.
In 2013, the noted workplace design firm, Herman Miller, conceptualized what they call a “Living Office.” Informed by their 80 years of office-life data, Herman Miller condensed their findings into six key work motivations that all people seek from their workplace: security, status, achievement, autonomy, purpose, and belonging.
Of these six basic human needs, four are directly reflected in the VOP perspective exemplified above. They are:
- Status
- Purpose
- Autonomy
- Achievement
Moreover, these four are qualities in a workplace that an employer can actually promise and deliver on, whereas security and belonging are, unfortunately, not.
It’s worth noting also that these core values relate specifically to the work that the employee provides to an organization and the culture that it cultivates. So, while ping pong tables and catered lunches are certainly nice benefits to working somewhere, these types of perks should be seen by employer branding specialists more as vehicles that facilitate the development of these values within an organization’s workforce, rather than as true examples of their overall employer value proposition.
Threading the voice of the prospect throughout your employer branding efforts will convey to your potential new hires that you understand their most visceral human needs, that you lead with empathy, and that your employees matter to you.
What more do you want?
Business Value of Employer Branding
The voice of the prospect should always have a seat at the employer branding table, not just because it will help you to create a more comprehensive employer brand, but rather, because including it will also deliver real business results from your employer branding strategy.
When the boss eventually comes around asking why they should keep investing in employer branding (and they certainly will), you can sum it up in a word: engagement.
According to Gallup’s 2023 State of the Global Workplace report, organizations with a highly engaged workforce are 23% more profitable than those without.
The same Gallup poll revealed that organizations with workforces in the top quartile of employee engagement are more than twice as likely to find success when compared to the bottom quartile. These are compelling numbers all around.
Simply put, the business case for employer branding and the voice of the prospect is clear:
- Investment in employer branding results in higher employee engagement.
- Employee engagement should be a goal of employer branding.
- Higher employee engagement results in increased profitability.
- Cultivate employee engagement very early on in the hiring process with reverence for the voice of the prospect.
Measuring the Impact of Employer Branding
The impact of an employer branding program can be difficult to measure. There is such an enormous number of influences on a major life event like finding a new job that talent acquisition and retention efforts often fail to get the credit they deserve when they’re up against more personal and therefore less visible factors like compensation and quality of life.
There’s a somewhat straighter path to measuring employee engagement. However, tools like surveys and social content often come from the organization. This approach usually introduces a positive bias towards the employer. After all, even with “anonymous” workforce surveys, few people are willing to risk their livelihood by voicing their true opinions to their employer.
People say your brand is what others talk about when you’re not in the room. In other words, a brand’s true value lies in the interactions you don’t see. Ironically, these are precisely the interactions you’d want to analyze. They give you real insight into how your brand is performing in the real world.
As a CEO, what I really want to know is how my team is representing our company in their daily lives. Even with their friends and family. Are our team members seen as subject matter experts? Does everyone in their orbit know where they work? If we sell roofing services, for example, are we the first people that come to mind when it rains? That’s the kind of employee engagement I want to measure. It’s the kind of evangelism that I know will grow the brand and move the business forward. That’s why we built NodCards, so you can know, too.
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