A ‘good job’ nowadays is no longer only a high-paying one. Going by employer branding statistics, employees look for flexibility, purpose, and inclusiveness to commit to their jobs.
Here’s what numbers say about the importance of global employer branding:
- According to the Universum Global Report, 2021, employer branding is a priority for 60% of all companies.
- 82% of people consider a company’s reputation and branding before applying for a job.
- A strong employer brand reduces employee turnover by 28% and costs by 50% per hire.
International employer branding talks about the company’s personality. It works as the core of how to attract the world’s best talents, hire, and retain them.
It communicates your visions, values, and messages to your target audience to make them collaborate with you over your competitors.
To know more about International employer branding, stay with us!
What are the Global Specifics of Employer Branding?
Employer branding involves certain factors. In other words, a few key factors influence employer branding. These are;
- Job security
- Compensation
- Employee benefits
- Positive work ethics and good work culture
- Pleasant working atmosphere
- Work-life balance
- Career advancement opportunities
For positive International employer branding, you must consider all of these factors.
Besides taking care of the above-mentioned factors, there are certain international employer brand specifics that you must maintain.
Think globally, act locally
This slogan fits employer branding perfectly, and it is indeed one of the best practices of global employer branding.
Going by this strategy, companies need to create a unified brand. However, when you hire employees globally, you may need to adapt to certain changes in your branding.
For instance, you may need to change your language or images to adjust the local sensitivities and preferences. For example, if you create a video in one language, you may want to add voiceovers in different languages. Another scenario is that you may promote your company’s diverse and inclusive culture in countries where it is a more sensitive subject.
Incorporate your company culture into branding
Maintaining a high employee retention rate is the first step toward building your global brand. A great way to do that is by building a comfortable organizational culture.
. Your company culture can be your employees’ conduct – the way they dress and behave, their work ethics and values.
Bring your company culture to the spotlight in all your communications. Be it your social media channels, emails, website, or internal memos, ensure the promotion of your culture.
This will help make your company culture a part of everything you do. Thus, you can incorporate it easily into your global employer branding strategy.
Single recruitment strategy
Though your local recruitment managers will do the actual hiring, ensure that you have a centralized recruitment strategy. The hiring needs or vacant job positions will differ by location. Ensure that all your candidates experience the same process at every location.
Further, you can also put a standardized feedback method in place to gather the applicants’ feedback on the recruitment process. Moreover, use a standard communication method to interact with candidates.
However, if there is a specific local communication preference, you can adapt to that to ensure the implementation of the best practice.
Leverage your current top performers
Several global companies use their existing high-performers as an advantage to fill entry-level job roles.
Many of these roles have low pay, long work hours, low-quality work conditions, etc. These roles and responsibilities usually lead to dissatisfaction among the employees who then share negative experiences and grudges to the world outside. As a result, these hamper the employer’s brand image.
Although you cannot prevent these negative reviews, you can use your top performers to leave positive comments, reviews, and testimonials. Employers can request the existing employees through emails, weekly newsletters and other forums to leave positive comments on various review portals.
Also, try to improve the quality of entry-level jobs to the highest possible extent.
Ensuring Employee Onboarding and Retention through Global Employer Branding
International employer branding plays a huge role in marketing and recruitment. If companies cannot attract, engage, and retain talents, they are unlikely to achieve their business goals.
Hence, the best players in global business are trying their best to attract and retain employees. Here are four main areas they focus on:
Target the right talent
Attracting the right talent is important. Hence, your hiring managers must create talent profiles defining the skills, qualifications, and qualities for different job positions.
Along with qualities and qualifications, hiring managers must also mention a few leading attractions that can drive the right applicants. For instance, if you want to hire engineers, you can emphasize innovation as an opportunity. Similarly, for marketing or finance executives, you can mention leadership opportunities.
Also, for every job position, you can mention a few attractive career progression opportunities applicants would get if hired.
Companies can also market their global employer branding to attract the right talent. For example, L’Oreal mentions its brand characteristics on the global careers website homepage to attract the ideal candidates.
Similarly, you can leverage your International employer branding to attract the right talent for the right position.
Try to stand-out
To stand out from the crowd, you need to find out the response – What makes your company culture and employment opportunities different from your competitors?
Most companies are striving to be ‘good’ employers. Hence, you must become better than the ‘good’ or simply great to attract superstar performers.
Creating an Employee Value Proposition is one way to communicate what makes you stand out in the crowd. This value proposition lists the qualities that make you great and special to your employees.
One of the best examples of global employer branding when it comes to being different from the rest is Apple Inc. Apple is one of the leading destinations for tech talents. Former Apple employees market themselves by mentioning ex-Apple employees in their portfolios.
But why? What makes employees feel so great working with Apple Inc.?
A major part of the brand’s success is its branding. Their employee value proposition emphasizes being different. Apple’s ‘Think Differently’ campaign calls for the misfits, rebels, and troublemakers who see things differently. The brand talks about how it considers the ‘crazy ones’ as genius.
Apple’s branding talks about its search for innovators. Also, the brand highlights its quality of treating its employees as genius who can change the world.
The moral of the story is that differentiation must be a priority when defining your employee value proposition.
Keep your promises
Employment experience is one of the aspects that companies must focus on. Most businesses focus on recruiting and onboarding rather than the employee’s employment experience.
Companies often miss out on performance management reviews and career planning that are vital to ensure an employee’s positive experience within the organization. As a result, they are unable to retain their talents.
Face the facts
Branding data plays an important role in attracting the right talent, retaining them and driving a positive global employer. Gone are the days when brands made intuitive decisions. Nowadays, all decisions that businesses make are data-driven, thereby much more informed.
Organizations have undergone a significant transformation in how they use data. They evaluate historical performances to improve efficiency, predict outcomes, and manage risks.
For instance, PepsiCo uses a data-driven approach to evaluate the preferences of its target audience. The company, through surveys, measures the extent to which its International employer branding has resonated with the audience. Also, employee surveys evaluate how their branding reflects on the employee experience.
The Importance of Regional Employer Branding
We can consider regional employer branding as a part of the global employer branding strategy. It ensures that the brand’s core values have a universal appeal and regional elements.
Regional employer branding also ensures that whatever a brand communicates speaks to and resonates specifically with a local audience.
Generally, companies create country-specific brand messages. But regional employer branding is one step further. For instance, a brand message may speak to the US audience but may not resonate with India or Australia.
Thus, regional employer branding is significant to ensure the brand appeals to specific markets. Regional branding and messaging must feel like a message from the same brand, but it should possess the local themes or elements important to a specific market.
Overall, regional employer branding is important. While an International employer branding strategy connects to the global or country-specific audience, regional branding brings the strategy to life locally.
How can Regional Tactics Strengthen Global Employer Branding?
Regional branding strengthens the global employer branding strategy. We have discovered a few ways in which you can enhance your global brand by making regional branding efforts.
Test new ideas in particular markets before their global launch
This is one way how regional branding strategy enhances your global employer branding. It is far easier to test a new product in a regional market than in a global one.
Hence, you can consider a specific local market as the testing ground for your product. If it works, consider a global rollout.
Furthermore, businesses can use regional markets to try out different strategies. If a particular strategy is successful, they can translate it into a global strategy, thereby enhancing global employer branding.
Map overlapping areas to find out if localized messages can help in the establishment of other markets
Regional employer brands can have a crucial impact on new markets. For instance, an Australian business may enter the Indian market with the key message ‘Best Workplace in Australia.’ With this message, it may leverage the Australian regional employer branding to hire the top talents in India before establishing a new employer branding for the Indian market.
Final Thoughts
Building a global employer brand is crucial to hiring the right talents from all over the world.
But your work doesn’t end with creating an employer branding strategy. It is continuous tracking, testing, and adjusting to ensure that your brand is appealing to the right talents at the right time.
As you track and analyze your global employer branding strategy, you will see what’s working and what needs further tweaking. Adopt a data-driven approach to fine-tune your strategy and invest your efforts in optimizing it.
Platforms like Multiplier can help you maintain your brand image by making the onboarding process seamless. With the different solutions by Multiplier, you can provide your employees with a positive work experience. For instance, the EOR solution can help you manage payrolls, and employee benefits, make multi-currency payments, etc.
Book a demo to know more about our services.