HR brand: how to build and what benefits will it bring to your company
In the article we will tell you how to develop your HR brand, as well as why it is so important in the IT field.
HR brand can be described as a set of opinions about a company, which are formed by former and current employees, customers, as well as applicants for its open vacancies.
Why does it matter? It's very simple – a high-quality HR brand reduces recruitment costs. Everybody knows that it costs a lot to replace an employee, especially, a top level it specialist. This includes the need to find a new candidate, conduct interviews with applicants, and onboard a new employee. Instead of incurring such costs, you can invest in a strong HR brand: after all, even if it ends up having to look for a new employee, a company with a better HR brand will spend less time and money on this process.
HR brand is important not only for recruitment, but also to retain and increase the involvement of those who are already working with you. As a consequence, your company can prevent staff turnover and increase motivation.
What is important for a good HR brand?
First of all, carefully manage the image your company creates, its presence on social media, visible online activities, as well as internal activities that are noticeable for current employees such as corporate culture, transparent system of bonuses, performance reviews.
Secondly, the qualitative process of working with applicants who respond to your vacancies is very important. Never delay the process of considering a resume by weeks or even months, always give feedback even if a candidate does not meet the requirements. Word of mouth is a very powerful channel for transmitting information, especially in narrow communities such as of IT specialists: the negative experience of one candidate will be shared with friends which can eliminate several other specialists.
Thirdly, it makes sense to invest in the training of your employees – in the majority of cases it costs much less to retain talent than to replace it. This includes the importance of monitoring burnout , offering opportunities for growth, organizing opportunities for communication with colleagues, etc.
Steps on how to build your HR brand
Before starting this process it is worth noting that change will not be fast: it is important to systematically take steps towards increasing the recognition of the company, the formation of a positive impression among people with whom you have contact: whether they are customers, applicants or just interested. Brand images last long and a large lag exists between improving your process, people noticing, and people trusting the change to be permanent.
An important tip is to create company pages in social networks (e.g. LinkedIn), and use these platforms to give updates. Also, try to leave a pleasant impression even towards those with whom you are not yet ready to cooperate: the IT market is quite narrow, and there is a high degree of certainty that those whom do not meet your standards today will do so a few years down the line. Burned bridges are harder to repair than dilapidated once.
In addition to working with an "external" audience, it is important not to ignore the "internal" audience. For example, some of your employees would be more comfortable working a few days from home, or start and finish their working day an hour later. Unless you have built a culture that seems open to these types of requests you won’t even receive them. By creating comfortable conditions for your employees, a company increases their loyalty which increases talent retention, and motivation.
Another important details to pay attention to are reviews about your company on specialized websites/apps, for example Glassdoor. If your company's resources allow it, you can create a role for someone who will competently process these reviews, respond to them, and implement suggested changes. It will highly impact a company's image on social media, user experiences, and reputation in online communities.
Remember that you shouldn't expect quick results at the beginning of HR brand building journey, but this is what you need to build, otherwise if you are not working on it, it will be still formed, but without your control.
