The Employer Brand: Bringing the Best of Brand Management to People at Work

7

The Business Case

The first question you’ll need to address before developing an employer brand plan is: How can a stronger employer brand help the organisation to achieve its objectives? This chapter will attempt to provide some general answers to this question relating to goals that are common to most organisations. These include lowering costs, increasing customer satisfaction and, ultimately, delivering higher than average return on investment and profitability. We will also try to provide some more specific answers relating to organisational life stages and ‘rites of passage’.

THE MAJOR BENEFITS OF EMPLOYER BRANDING

The three major benefits of employer branding identified in research conducted by Hewitt Associates,¹ The Conference Board² and The Economist³ are generally cited as being enhanced recruitment, retention and employee engagement/commitment. Similar studies that have explored the benefits of being an ‘employer of choice’ (suggesting a strong employer brand reality, though not necessarily the conscious or explicit application of employer brand management) cite very similar benefits. While these improvements do not necessarily represent business benefits by and of themselves, there is a broad range of further evidence to suggest that these three factors can contribute significantly to overall business performance.

Lower Costs

While the primary role of brands is generally to add value, strong employer brands can also help to reduce costs. A North American study ...