Does Your Business Truly Reflect Your Employer Brand Image?

We have talked a lot about employer branding and becoming an employer of choice, and with good reason to, as a global research study conducted by the Employer Brand Institute showed that four key benefits of a well executed employer brand strategy are: Recognition as an employer of choice, ease in attracting candidates, decrease in staff turnoverand recruitment costs.

However, while I have focused on talking about how to design an attractive employer brand we have spent less time looking athow to assess whether your internal business actually reflects your brand, that is, “does it do what it says on the tin?” It should not be taken for granted that your day to day business environment actually reflects your brand, as it may not. This means that top talent could join your business of the strength of the brand image only to find that your employees and managers do not live or feel the brand. This can lead to disappointment, low morale and increased turnover. This will eventually begin to damage your reputation as an employer and make it harder for you to attract talent as the candidates become aware that your business is in actuality failing to live up to its brand message.

Whether a small or large employer, it is therefore vital that you regularly gauge the mood of your business to check that the employee experience is matching the brand message – and this is typically done using an employee engagement survey. As key stakeholders in the employee branding program, recruiters should be lobbying for and driving the business to ensure that employee engagement surveys are carried out regularly so they can assess whether the employer brand truly penetrates the business.

While larger and medium sized businesses are likely to have a formalized employee engagement survey, smaller businesses may still be in the embryonic stages, but this is still no reason to delay with conducting your engagement survey. Either you can do it yourself by preparing a simple set of questions and deploying it via Survey Monkey (or some equivalent survey deployment tool) or you can get some third party support.

Either way, I thought it would be useful to provide you with a set of questions that you can use to assess the mood of your staff to see if you business truly reflects your employer brand.

Note; since the Employer Branding Institute study (mentioned above) found that the most important brand areas for attracting talent were:corporate culture/reputation, work environment, career development and leadership capability and I will primarily focus on questions which assess these areas, and you can find them below.

1. Leadership

• Do you respect the leaders of your business?
• Do you respect your manager as a competent professional?
• Do you believe the leaders of this business have a clear vision?
• Do your leaders and managers exhibit strong leadership skills?
• Are you satisfied with your manager?

2. Opportunities for Personal and Career Development

• Do you have enough opportunities for personal growth and career development?
• Do you receive enough training to do your job well?
• Is your manager currently aware of your training needs?
• Is your manager interested in your professional development and career advancement?
• Do you have a mentor at work?
• Is your work challenging and stimulating?

3. Work Environment

• Is there a strong sense of teamwork across the business?
• Is team work encouraged and practiced around the business?
• Do you have the resources you need to do the job well?
• Are there adequate data and IT systems in place in order that you can get your job done?
• Do you have all the information you need to do your job effectively?
• Is your work environment safe and well maintained?
• Is your workplace a comfortable place to be and work?

4. Culture and Reputation

• Do you feel that the organization cares about you as a person and professional?
• Do you believe that staff are treated fairly?
• Does the company have a good reputation and positive company culture?
• Does the company have good ethical standing in your opinion?
• Does the company demonstrate adequate social corporate responsibility?
• Is the company of good social standing?
• On balance, do you think the company treats its staff well?

These questions are just a starting point and are by no means exhaustive and are simply meant to introduce some of the areas of employer branding that are thought to be key to attracting talent, and these should form the backbone of your employee engagement survey. Other areas to consider are: Communication, Compensation, Mission and Purpose, Quality and Customer Focus, Work Life Balance, Feedback, Ability to Express Oneself.