Why You Should Create an Employee-Led Branding Campaign

December 28, 2021

When it comes to branding, an employer’s greatest asset is their current employees. But most companies don’t use that to their advantage. Employee branding can help present the company in a positive light to current employees, job candidates, stakeholders, and customers.

What is employee branding?

It’s the way your employees make your brand come alive for your clients and customers. Employee branding can be created by word of mouth, social media posts, and other interactions. When your employees feel a positive connection to the company’s mission and values and express that connection to others, they help create the employee brand.

Why is good employee branding essential?

Simply put, positive employee branding makes your company look good – ultimately helping you attract top candidates with less recruiting efforts. When enthusiastic employee advocates refer candidates for hire:

Those candidates are 4X more likely to get hired
45% of those candidates stay with the company for more than 4 years
Candidates’ start date is sooner than with job board or online applications
Employers save money on recruiting costs

How can you create an employee-led branding campaign?

Whether you want to kick off your employee branding efforts or improve an in-progress campaign, here are 5 tips for creating a successful campaign:

Educate employees about the brand. The crucial piece of employee-led branding is that it is an authentic expression of how the employee feels about their workplace. To form thoughts and opinions, employees must understand the company’s brand, mission, and values. Take every opportunity to educate candidates and employees alike about the foundations of the company.
Create a great employee experience. Engaged employees are more likely to be advocates of the business. Invest in your people by offering opportunities to improve their tech skills by taking specialized workshops or online classes. Offer them opportunities to participate in service projects or their own IT passion projects on company time. Provide paid time-off to recharge their ability to innovate and develop their work. When employees feel like their employer is invested in them, both personally and professionally, they are more likely to compound their investment in the company and be vocal about their work satisfaction.
Perform an employee brand audit. Solicit feedback from employees to identify the strengths and opportunities of your brand. Ask employees to fill out engagement or surveys or participate in focus groups and use that information to improve the employee experience.
Set objectives. When you identify opportunities, set goals for improvement. Try to make these goals quantifiable so that results will be easier to measure. Some goals may include:
- Create an employee referral program
- Achieve more active employees on LinkedIn
- Improve onboarding process
- Create an employee training program
Encourage employees to engage. Employers benefit from positive employee branding, but participation must be voluntary, not forced. Consider these ways of encouraging employee participation:
- Equip your employees with branding tools. Examples include business cards with referral information printed on the back or t-shirts that say something like “I love working for [company name] – ask me why!”
- Provide guidelines and content for your team to share on social media.
- Create fun and friendly competition with a leaderboard for sharing company LinkedIn or Facebook posts.
- Provide a cash incentive for successful candidate referrals.
- Reward employees who provide feedback on company branding.