Bolster talent acquisition with employer branding and Oracle HCM

Employer branding is fast becoming a critical strategy to address current and future talent shortages as recruiting remains a top concern among CEOs. With people working from home more than ever before and organizations with four generations of workers, it is imperative that companies support and socialize their image and a culture using technology and other resources that reflect employer branding. Research shows that over 50% of employees value a company’s culture more than salary, but less than 20% of organizations have an employer branding strategy. This creates challenges with hiring and retaining talented workers who can drive the business forward—and becomes costly. 

Companies that don’t invest in their reputation as an employer spend on average $5,000 per employee—10% more than organizations with an employer branding strategy. One poll from CR Magazine and Cielo Talent showed that almost 50% of workers said they wouldn't work for a company with a poor reputation, even with a big increase in compensation. This all adds up: with a negative or non-existent employer brand, organizations must work harder for longer just to get quality employees through the door.

In 2020, LinkHumans analyzed 1,000,000+ employer brand data points and found that 69% of candidates are likely to apply to a company if they actively manage their employer brand. 

Is it time to improve your employer branding strategy?

When clearly defining your employer brand, it’s helpful to start by answering the following questions: 

• Who are your employees?
• What kind of organization is this?
• What is the character or ethos of the organization and its people?
• What is the organization’s social and environmental purpose?
• What do your current employees think about your company?

Answering these questions will then help you create candidate personas, define employee value propositions, and implement campaigns to support your strategy.

Here are some steps you can take to turn these questions into action:

Social media and employer branding

With the proliferation of social media, employer branding is a funny thing these days. You may even say that it’s a little out of your control. The real question you need to ask yourself is if you want to let the public build your employer brand for you, or if you want to create, cultivate, and grow your own unique employer brand that helps you attract the best talent. Social media is an essential part of developing a positive and well-known employer brand.

Potential candidates are curious about what their daily life at a potential company could be like, and social media is the perfect way to put everyday activities on display. It's not just about having a picture-perfect Instagram grid, but about showing a realistic depiction of the day-to-day life of your employees. Not only will you capture the attention of applicants, but you will also reduce the likelihood of receiving applications from candidates who are not a good fit for your culture.

Original graphics and images are an excellent way to increase social media engagement on Twitter and Facebook. But on visual platforms like Instagram where you’re already posting eye-catching images to engage your followers, how can you also increase engagement? The key is to create and/or post more videos that bring a refreshing change to your usual content.

Starbucks is one example of a company that is great at incorporating videos to highlight its employer brand. A key focus of its employer branding-related social media posts is sharing employee success stories. These stories are highlighted across Twitter and Instagram, and Starbucks has a Jobs Playlist on its YouTube channel dedicated to success stories. One example of recent content is a video highlighting technology jobs at Starbucks. In the video, real technology employees repeat the Starbucks mission statement—to inspire and nurture the human spirit—one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time—and talk about how inspired they are by their jobs every day—critical in the highly competitive technology field.

Don’t forget about employer branding and current employees

Losing top talent is expensive. Estimates of the cost to replace an employee range from one-half to two times the person’s annual salary. Let’s do the math—when an employee earning $50,000 per year resigns, a company can expect to spend between $25,000 and $100,000 to fill the position, depending on the specialization of the role.

Maintaining a positive employee experience over time is a big part of retention. That means making sure that reality lives up to the promises and branding that attracts talent to your company—the employee value proposition (EVP). What tangible and intangible rewards do you offer employees in return for their commitment to achieving business goals?

An example of a great EVP is at grocery store chain Trader Joe’s where leaders are very transparent about each benefit they offer. For example, they’re committed to providing biannual reviews, with the average crew member having the potential to receive a 7%-10% pay increase each year. There is also a strong emphasis on growth opportunity—the company promotes based on performance and prioritized career development.

On the careers page, they write that they “prioritize the development of our crew members” and “don’t pigeonhole crew members into ‘only running the register’ or ‘only stocking the shelves’,” saying that their “crew engage in a variety of tasks and hold a range of responsibilities—running the register and stocking the shelves, of course; also merchandising, creating signs, accepting deliveries, demoing products, and engaging with customers.”

How can you bolster talent acquisition with great employer branding?

After you’ve worked on strengthening your employer brand, you have better control over how prospective candidates view your company. Having a strong employer brand in place will not only improve the quality of your talent pool, but it also can enhance your ability to entice candidates to accept an offer. Let’s look at how Oracle Human Capital Management (HCM), a cloud-based solution, helped one customer, Equity Residential, a leading investment firm for apartments.

Oracle Cloud HCM helped Equity Residential personalize the user experience more than other providers that it considered so that the company could make its job search site reflect its brand. For example, the company added photos and videos of employees working in cities where it leases apartments. “We didn’t want you to go from a beautiful site for searching for an apartment, and then you search for a job and take a major step back. That was incredibly important for us to sustain a consistently high-quality user experience,” says Mark Johnson, Equity Residential director of HCM technology. Additionally, Equity Residential used the recruiting module of Oracle Cloud HCM to quickly build its new career website.

Oracle HCM helps Equity Residential with its recruiting needs and allows companies to:

• Enhance employer brand by providing a better candidate experience with more personalized communications with all applicants to ensure that each candidate is considered for positions across all locations.

• Strengthen employer branding by enabling candidates to apply for various roles and keep track of their application progress through online dashboards—even from mobile devices— ensuring all candidates are informed of the reasons they are not selected, through personalized communications based on a range of customized templates.

• Tackle high-volume or traditional hiring with email and social campaigns, amplifying outreach efforts, and encouraging applications.

• Provide teams with a single, consumer-like experience across different modules and devices.

• Improve productivity with dynamic automation for job postings, candidate communication, screening, interviews, and offers with a consistent employer brand across the board.

Natively built for the cloud, Oracle Fusion Cloud Human Capital Management is a complete solution connecting every human resource process from hire to retire. This provides a consistent experience across devices, enables one source of truth for HR data to improve decision-making, and empowers you with market-leading innovation to address your needs today and into the future. This one-stop solution will help you replace the dozens of disparate HCM solutions that you may have in place today.

For more information about talent acquisition and HCM, contact us or email us at infosolutions@alithya.com. Visit our blog regularly for new posts about Cloud updates and other Oracle Cloud Services such as Planning and Budgeting, Financial Consolidation, Account Reconciliation, and Enterprise Data Management. Follow Alithya on social media for the latest information about EPM, ERP, and Analytics solutions to meet your business needs.

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