Obviously, Employer Branding (EB) is a key component of any integrated talent acquisition strategy; it is both a long term strategic solution (laying the foundation and long term image in the minds of passive candidates—your ultimate target) as well as an employee retention strategy for current employees. It can be your firm’s much needed “organizational glue”, as I call it.

A compelling Employee Value Proposition and EB Program (integrated and fully aligned with your on-boarding/candidate experience, (best-class) HR offerings, professional development, company culture, social media, brand message/internal newsletters, brand ambassador program and “Best Place to Work” awards honors), can be very valuable in the talent hunt and serve as a strategic approach in the war for top talent in 2018 and beyond.

As I did at Monsanto, the global Ag bio-tech giant based in St. Louis, you can position the brand message & Employee Value Proposition in your: offer letters, new hire on-boarding & welcome emails, radio commercials (sponsor a 30 minute local FM/AM radio program), video commercials, marketing materials (US & Global), town halls, internal news announcements, recruiting toolboxes (for use by far-flung staff away from your corporate headquarters), external/internal career websites, in-house company TV screens and computer monitors, and internet job postings, campus events and flyers, table tents, trade booth displays, etc.

Here is a quick (new idea) consider creating an image driven “Electronic EVP” as I did this year–for use inside your organization, displayed on your internal TV screens and large screen monitors. Also, you should expose your new hires as well as your firm’s senior management to Employer Branding sessions.

For example, I frequently go in to new hire induction/orientation and cover the EVP and the Employer Branding Program. And “make the rounds”, as I have done, of the C-suite by doing senior manager presentations of your Employer Branding efforts.

You can even “push the envelope” and incorporate elements of employment branding into your performance appraisal system for existing employees and staff; for example, consider this: why not measure employees on what positive “employer brand improving activities” they have engaged in over the course of a review period, such as volunteerism work, community good deeds, student tutoring, food kitchen volunteer work, etc.?

Additionally, the Employer Brand can be used to provide a road map and code of behavior for existing Employees. It could inform, educate and indoctrinate new entrants into the company culture and provide an explicit set of norms and behavior. In fact, create supporting collaterals and make it part of the new hire handout “welcome kits”.

So, don’t miss an opportunity to use EB as a long term strategic talent acquisition solution; get started today planting those long-term “seeds” for attracting the right people to your organization.

AUTHOR

Johnny” Torrance-Nesbitt is an award-winning Global Recruiting and Employer Branding executive with 16 plus years in building/leading global and US talent acquisition and employer branding functions at several global Fortune 500 companies. He was an RPO Employer Branding Director at Randstad Sourceright and has been Director of Employment Branding & University Relations & a Diversity Trainer at Monsanto in St. Louis for over five years where he won four consecutive “Rapid Recognition Awards” for superior achievements. Prior to that, he was at Lockheed (corporate) in Maryland as head office Corporate Staffing Supervisor & Senior Recruiter, and he built global recruiting (US, UK & Asia Pacific directed) for Unext.com, an innovative Chicago start-up. Johnny was also nominated in 2018, by his former organizational behavior professor, Dave Ulrich, for the prestigious “Employer Brand Leader of the Year 2018 (Global Leader Category.)” He is also a volunteer appointed judge for Employer Brand Management Awards and the Web Marketing Association. Mr. Nesbitt holds a Bachelors in Cultural Anthropology from Amherst with Dean’s List honors. And he received an MBA graduate fellowship and worked his way through Graduate School (working between classes for a NYC Headhunting firm) graduating in Corporate Finance in 1988. You can follow him on Twitter @JohnnyTorrNesbi, or connect with him on LinkedIn.