How Did We Fail Employer Branding?
How did marketers fail employer branding, and what lessons can they take from past mistakes to fully unlock the potential of this field in the current year?
The end of the old year and the beginning of the new one are typically reserved for forecasts and predictions, but now is not the time for that. “We must do this, we must do that, things will improve, the market will stabilize, blah, blah, blah,”
I call bullshit! It’s easy to turn towards the “future,” but to make sense, we first need to learn from what’s behind us. When it comes to employer branding, to move forward, we all need to take a few steps back. All of us. The entire community.
And let’s admit it out loud: We have failed employer branding!
The division of roles within companies hasn’t been set up properly. How is this function created? Is the right approach to form a dedicated team or to assign the title to someone deemed capable of handling the activities? The impression is that, in most companies (kudos to the exceptions), the creation of this function has been reduced to role allocation simply because EB is “new and shiny” — so let’s just have that too.
So, who’s going to handle it?
Well, it’ll be the HR colleague who has a knack for this employer branding thing, whatever that means. After all, it’s just a fancier job ad, right? The overwhelming talk about EB has led to the perception that it’s “nice to have,” especially when a company is hiring. But what about the employees who are already with the company? Well, something will sort itself out, after all, we created an EVP. We’ve identified a few patterns in how the EB function has been established in organizations.
1. The HR Person Assigned to the EB Role
It’s still common for the person with the EB role to be someone who already has a thousand other responsibilities. EB is just number one thousand and one, never the first priority. So where does that leave prioritization, understanding how the company operates, and setting a strategic direction for its development? There’s hardly any room left for such tasks amid the overwhelming day-to-day activities we’ve grown accustomed to, and that management expects to be carried out.
This leads to complications because, realistically, there is no space allocated for these — far from trivial — responsibilities. The EB person must understand how the company functions, how its people function, and the strategic goals that unify these two factors.
If they don’t understand the company’s needs, how can they understand the needs of the people? And vice versa, if they don’t understand the needs of the people, how can they understand the company’s needs? Add the importance of internal communications into the mix, and you’re left with a slippery slope where it’s all too easy to stumble…
2. EB as a Substitute for Marketing
An interesting concept, and one that’s frequently seen in IT companies operating in Serbia. These are mostly development centers without a direct sales team here, as that’s handled by some HQ abroad, while the heavy lifting is done locally. The idea is to form an EB team or hire one person who, in many ways, becomes more of a marketing department.
In addition to activities aimed at building the company’s reputation, they often take on tasks that are typically associated with marketing. This shift causes the focus on the bigger picture to be lost and leads to a misunderstanding of the true responsibilities of this role within the company’s system. I think this is a better approach than the previous one, but caution is needed when defining tasks and duties.
3. A Working Group Tasked with Implementing Activities
A group of people brought together around the idea of handling this function and executing activities. It’s a good line of thinking, I must admit, as it should gather people who are genuinely interested in this work. However, this model has proven effective only in smaller organizations. The reason is — they aren’t too burdened, so they contribute as much as they can whenever the opportunity arises.
The result is a dilution of the importance of this function, leading once again to that oft-mentioned perception of “nice to have.” When you add to this the fact that people come from vastly different areas, it often ends up being more of a social gathering with colleagues than the actual setting of goals and execution of tasks.
So, What Now That We’ve Completed Our Training, Courses, and Workshops?
This way of working and the division of roles has led to various trainings, workshops, and consultations in 2022, aimed at familiarizing people with the workings of the function. It’s a great initiative, but there’s a significant BUT. This very big BUT has manifested this year through the question — BUT what now that we’ve completed our training, courses, and workshops?
This is where the first misstep occurred. The company rightfully asks what needs to happen next, but it doesn’t receive a clear answer in return. Or perhaps that answer is too high-level, almost political — “We’ll do this, we need to do that…” In the end, nothing gets done. Eventually, it boils down to defining the EVP.
Ah, that beautiful EVP, that empty promise we made to our employees. It ends up being just a well-crafted text designed to look good on the website and to align with some culture dictated by management. Or perhaps it has imposed itself, because, let’s face it, there’s no one else to handle it. Then comes layoffs and cost-cutting in various forms, all without any communication, but it’s okay because there’s an EVP written somewhere.
It’s Not Just About the Company; There’s Something in the People Too
What do we call the promise employees make to their companies? Does that even exist? After all, this is a two-way street. It seems that employees are also hesitant to take on responsibility, with some even abusing their positions. Yes, that’s right, and it’s happening more and more.
In Storyline, We Thought This Would Work in Our Favor; It Should Have
However, we fell into the trap of creating a narrative shaped by community sentiment. We enter discussions with companies where we put people at the forefront, but somehow we always forget to mention how much people will influence the company’s profitability. Because, for goodness’ sake, people come first. Ugh, profit!
And now, look at what this has caused. Let me illustrate with an example:
‘Decision makers’ sit at the meeting, and the topic of building the company’s reputation arises, mentioning the engagement of some creative agency aimed at ensuring employee satisfaction. Hm, but what’s the outcome?
Decision makers jot it down: the company’s profitability is XY, employees have accepted their current salaries (okay, a few might quit, but what else would HR do if there were no resignations?), and on top of that, there’s the agency costing XZ annually. So, folks, they track profitability without any special investment, and now they’re expected to create an expense just to keep employees happy? No way, let’s just do one team-building event and call it a day.
The Most Important Thing We Didn’t Present to Them: All of Us at That Table
The departure of just one employee costs the company nearly as much as an annual engagement with an agency, that is, creating a partnership. Investing in employees will lead to reduced costs and a direct increase in profitability. So, what does that mean? It means bigger bonuses, better cars, larger apartments, and vacation homes. Now you are talking!
Employer branding is a strategic function within the organization that brings together various areas to build a system where every employee feels good, understands their responsibilities, knows their role, and feels valued enough to give their best in exchange for the agreed-upon conditions.
Employer branding is a support function for the business, with the primary goal being profitability. Profitability means better conditions for all involved; it signifies security, growth, and development—both personal and organizational. Employer branding unites HR, marketing, management, internal and external communications, sales, and experience—essentially bringing together a myriad of functions!
For this reason, numerous legitimate questions arise: “Is it HR or marketing? Is it a job ad or a team-building event? Is it a must-have or a nice-to-have?” One would think it’s quite clear, but practice tells a different story.
We have banalized employer branding—this incredibly fascinating and important area.
Let’s just make it look nice and colorful, so it’s clear from the outside that we are present and active. We’ve reduced it to a subscription service like Netflix, events, team-building activities, marathons, and the occasional CSR initiative.
Fun Fact No. 1: We sit in a meeting with a company facing a reputational crisis due to negative media coverage regarding poor management and employee dissatisfaction. People are rapidly leaving the company, and the nature of the work makes it difficult to find replacements. Immediate action is necessary; sleeves must be rolled up.
We present a plan: research, activity creation, and implementation—all of which take time to ensure quality. And all of this costs as much as a few gross salaries of employees. We receive feedback: “We’ll try to handle it ourselves; it’s a significant expense.” Significant expense or a minor investment? That’s the million-dollar question. An instant solution. A quick fix—what can be done immediately to make everyone want to work for this company?
Fun Fact No. 2: We were invited to pitch (or should I say, tender) by a large company. The task was to create a communication strategy aimed at facilitating the hiring of hundreds of employees. The deadline for submitting the strategy was seven days, but we managed to extend it to ten. The strategy was expected to include overarching communication, sub-communications, channels, messages, visuals, unicorn milk, and fairy dust. And, of course, we crazy folks agreed to it, only to find ourselves overwhelmed and ultimately not selected.
We simply don’t have the resources for this. Of course, we don’t, because we set the narrative poorly. We establish metrics to evaluate the cost per hire, rather than measuring how profitability will increase when we invest in our people. Here, marketing holds a significant advantage.
It supports sales, which increases, and the ROI aligns with the goals—money in the bank! Meanwhile, we’re operating in a market with a very low understanding of marketing activities. Don’t even get me started. That’s why employer branding often gets sidelined; it relies on resources allocated for marketing activities.
Fun Fact No. 3: Those who genuinely try to address this topic adequately often struggle with budgeting due to the reasons mentioned earlier. They feel frustrated because they cannot hire collaborators and support staff, as management is already allocating budgets for partners in other areas.
As a result, employer branding ends up at the mercy of the workload of the agency hired, let’s say, for marketing. The agency, caught in a bind—unable to say no—takes on the work to preserve the relationship. However, realistically, it neither has the time nor the capacity to focus on this important topic.
This leads to insufficiently clear communication. People aren’t speaking the same language, creating rifts between upper and lower management, as well as between internal and external audiences. The “one-size-fits-all” communication approach is pervasive, which is far from ideal. These facts contribute to missteps when communicating sensitive topics. This is especially true for layoffs that have been shaking the job market all year long. The IT sector, in particular, has seen its golden geese stop laying eggs.
Fun Fact No. 4: Unfortunately, this year will be remembered as a year of significant layoffs in the IT industry. What’s even worse is how these layoffs were conducted. Throughout the year, we’ve been highlighting how crucial crisis communication is in such situations, yet we’ve witnessed numerous poor examples of how it was carried out.
Let’s be clear: there’s no way to terminate an employee without them feeling bad about it. However, addressing this process with a human touch means understanding and facilitating a proper farewell. After all, it’s about maintaining a respectful relationship. Implementing layoffs should be accompanied by external communication to raise awareness about what is happening and why.
There are also positive examples of companies that didn’t feel the crisis as acutely, yet even they failed to share their stories of how they adapted to the situation. I genuinely believe that these stories could have added value and significance to the entire community. Yet, they were notably absent.
So, dear marketing colleagues, HR colleagues, decision-makers, and all of you engaged in this area of business, we have failed employer branding. Before we look to the future, let’s take a moment to look back, draw lessons, conduct some analyses, reset, and set things right.
