What is an employer brand?

Your employer brand gives potential employees an idea of what it’s like to work for your company. This often includes how you engage with your employees and candidates, along with the employee benefits and perks you offer, your employee value proposition (EVP), company culture and the overall work environment.

The right employer brand helps businesses attract, engage and hire the right employees. It can also help you fill positions faster and more effectively and set you apart from your competitors.

So, what’s the difference between employer branding versus organizational branding?

Employer branding is how a company showcases its employee experience to candidates applying for jobs. Goals may include increasing the number of high-quality candidates, reducing time/cost to hire, standing out among competing job postings and improving retention rate.

Organizational branding is how a company promotes its products and/or services to clients and customers. It often focuses on a company’s brand identity, purpose, beliefs and mission. The goal may be to improve sales, increase brand awareness for customers, differentiate from competitors or establish brand loyalty.

The employer branding process: step-by-step

Employer branding is more than a logo, color palettes, fonts and a catchy tagline. It’s your reputation as an employer and a comprehensive look at everything that makes your company a great place to work.

Here’s a step-by-step process for creating, implementing and managing a successful employer branding strategy.

Audit the perception of your current employer brand

Look at your company through the eyes of your current employees. This can help you identify problems that may be affecting your ability to attract and retain talent. For example, you may discover that employees feel like they don’t have enough career development opportunities. In this case, offering more opportunities for growth at work could help you improve your employer brand.

Here are some ways to audit your current employer brand:

• Employer review websites: Read online reviews and ratings of your company on Indeed Company Pages and Glassdoor Employer Profiles to pinpoint both positive experiences and areas of improvement.
• Employee feedback: Conduct an internal employee satisfaction survey to find out how your current employees feel about working at your company. Ask questions like “Why did you join our company?”, “​​What do you enjoy most about working here?” and “What do you enjoy least about working here?”
• Employee wellbeing report: As part of Indeed’s commitment to measuring and understanding work wellbeing, Indeed offers a wellbeing report that you can use to review your organization and see its Work Wellbeing Score. The report, which is available on Indeed Company Pages, provides an overview of the happiness, purpose, stress and overall job satisfaction of your employees. From the report, you may gain insights into areas of your organization that need improvement. Job seekers may also benefit from the report, as the score can offer a transparent overview of your organization’s work wellbeing and may help them make a more informed decision regarding whether or not to apply.
• Social media: Track your brand mentions on social media to get unfiltered opinions about your company. There are several social listening software tools that can help you do this like Hootsuite or Sprout social.

Define your company’s unique value proposition

Your employee value proposition (EVP) is what your company stands for, including your company’s core values, mission, vision and culture.

When a candidate sees an EVP that reflects their personal goals and passions, it may convince them to choose your company over another. Many job seekers want to work for companies that align with their interests and values. According to an Indeed survey, 29% of job seekers say they would reconsider accepting an offer from a company if the mission/vision doesn’t resonate with their values — even if the job is perfect for them otherwise. 

Here’s how to define your own employee value proposition.

Develop an employer branding promotion strategy

Once you’ve established your employer brand, decide how you’ll manage and promote it. Telling job seekers why you’re a great place to work can be a powerful way to share what makes your company stand out with more people. In fact, 81% of employer decision makers believe that their employer brand set them apart from competitors.

Here are some employer branding promotion ideas to consider:

• Create an attractive career page on your website with behind-the-scenes photos, employee testimonials and other employer branding elements.
• Consider optimizing your Indeed Company Pages Premium and Glassdoor Enhanced Profile by using the Employer Branding Hub for custom branding options.
• Monitor company reviews and consider responding to both positive and negative employee comments. 76% of Glassdoor users agree their perception of a company improves after seeing an employer respond to a review.
• Add branding elements, such as your logo, to your job postings to make them stand out.
• Start a company blog to share positive, internal aspects of your company, such asr employee experiences, company news and updates or unique benefits and perks for potential future candidates to see.
• Ask employees to share their experiences working for your company on social media.

Track the success of your employer brand

Start by monitoring your Indeed Company Page to see if there’s any improvement in ratings and reviews. Next, watch for changes in your Work Wellbeing Score. Your score reflects employee satisfaction and engagement, so an increase may indicate how your employer branding efforts have improved your employees’ overall wellbeing.

Organizations with a high wellbeing score may see lower employee turnover and better employee retention rates. 85% of people believe it’s important to find companies that care about how you feel.

Other ideas to gauge the success of your employer brand could include tracking hires made through an employee referral program and sending out occasional surveys to measure employee satisfaction. You can also conduct exit interviews with departing employees to gain more insight into your employee experience and learn about any areas of improvement in processes and company culture.

Grow awareness and intent for your brand

A strong employer brand strategy has the potential to positively affect an organization’s performance, client satisfaction, employee satisfaction and overall company revenue. 

Increasing the visibility of your employer brand, enhancing how the brand is perceived and aligning the brand with what job seekers look for are all parts of a strong employer brand strategy.

To develop an effective strategy for growing your brand awareness, consider the following suggestions:

• Prioritize diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB) in your hiring practices. With Indeed’s diversity recruiting solutions, you can reach a wider range of underrepresented talent. Consider showing your commitment to DEIB on your Indeed Company Page, crafting inclusive job descriptions and highlighting inclusive benefits and guidelines. 
• Analyze well-rated companies and competitors. Find gaps in your branding by analyzing employee reviews from competing organizations and use these insights to improve your brand awareness.
• Publicly promote success stories. Share employee success stories, initiatives to support career development and employee testimonials on your Company Page, website or social media channels.
• Stay consistent. Make sure your brand story matches the real experience of your employees. For example, if you want potential candidates to know that you value work life balance, include programs and initiatives that showcase your organization’s commitment to employee wellbeing.
• Collaborate across departments. Collaboration between branding teams, marketing and other departments helps ensure a unified approach to your branding efforts.

How to improve employer branding with Indeed

Building and maintaining your employer brand isn’t always easy, but Indeed can help you by putting your jobs and employee experience in front of the right potential candidates. Here’s how you can promote a compelling employer brand.

Share why you are a great place to work using the Employer Branding Hub

To save time and stay organized, consider using Employer Branding Ads together with the Employer Branding Hub. With these two platforms, you can manage your Indeed Company Pages Premium and your Glassdoor Enhanced Profile all in one place.

By using the Employer Branding Hub you can:

• Partner with global branding experts: Gain access to job and employer branding experts who can help you build or enhance your branding strategy.
• Show what sets you apart: Amplify your hiring results by proving to job seekers why you’re a great place to work with Why Work With Us and Why Join Us content.
• Highlight what’s best about your company regularly: Attract talent aligned to your purpose by sharing your Company Pages, Company Updates, Featured Reviews and social media links.
• Gain competitive insights: Compare Rating Trends and Heat Maps with your competitors to improve your brand through employee reviews and candidate feedback.

Reach quality job seekers with your unique employer brand story

Employer Branding Ads can improve your Indeed and Glassdoor branding efforts and help your organization reach job seekers in a competitive job market. By using Ads, you can encourage job seekers to consider applying whether they are actively looking for new work or not.

On average, employers who purchased Employer Branding Ads saw a 5.5X increase in brand impressions on Indeed.^[1]

By using ads, you may see benefits like:

• Supercharged Reach: Reach millions of job seekers and increase engagement across Indeed, Glassdoor and popular job sites. “The greatest benefit of Employer Branding Ads is that we can consistently reach new audiences of relevant, active jobseekers.” – Maureen Laventure, Account Director, Glacier Media
• Adaptive Targeting: Achieve consistent demand from top talent with flexible targeting. “Employer Branding Ads offer a solution to connect with a passive audience of top talent.” – Maureen Laventure, Account Director, Glacier Media
• Real-time Insights: Maximize brand ad performance with insights that matter to you like campaign performance, video plays and centralized analytics. “Adjusting our campaign in real-time by targeting new cities led to more impressions and double the clicks.” – Brenda Beheng, Talent Acquisition Manager, Knute Nelson
• Purposeful Storytelling: Attract talent interested in you by showing why your company is a great place to work. “With limited wording and graphic space, Employer Branding Ads forces us to tell the best story for our clients concisely and powerfully.” – Maureen Laventure, Account Director, Glacier Media

Using Employer Branding Ads often leads to higher started applications as well, with employers who purchased Employer Branding Ads alone seeing a 13% increase in started applications across both Indeed and Glassdoor.^[2]

Win over key talent

The Employer Branding Hub can be used to manage your brand, leverage insights and inspire job seekers to apply across two leading platforms: Indeed and Glassdoor. Employers who purchased the Employer Branding Hub on average saw a 27% increase in total job clicks across their Indeed and Glassdoor Company Pages. ^[3]

With the Employer Branding Hub, you can:

• Promote your unique brand story across Indeed and Glassdoor
• Reach candidates with your brand story
• Learn about actionable brand insights 

Designed to help enhance your ability to attract and retain top talent, the Employer Branding Hub provides you with valuable insights to improve your employer branding. To maximize your brand potential, consider combining it with Employer Branding Ads — employers who purchased both together saw a 26% increase in started applications on Indeed.^[4]

The Four Key Steps to Building a Strong Employer Brand Strategy

Indeed is dedicated to helping organizations build and improve their employer brand strategy. Here are four steps to facilitate and support an effective employer brand using Indeed and Glassdoor tools.

1. Claim your Indeed Company Page

Your Indeed Company Page is a dedicated profile that you can use to showcase your company culture, job openings and work environment to potential applicants. To claim your company page, start by creating an employer account and searching for your company on the Indeed Company Pages reviews page.

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