A marketing trend
Employer branding became an issue in HR in the 1990s in connection with the skills shortage. It is expression of a changed power relationship between companies and employees on the labor market. With employer branding, companies build up a brand with regard to employees, as companies do in product and service marketing. Branding gives customers security in their product choice. This is particularly helpful in markets where a systematic comparison of product characteristics is not possible. The motivation for employer branding is therefore to attract the best specialists and managers to the company. Whereby professional branding not only works on the external image. It also ensures that employees are offered a working environment that meets their needs. Prospectively, the skills shortage will intensify in the coming years. Companies will therefore increasingly attract the specialists they need through a good employer brand and retain them through a well-developed retention management system.
Employer Branding and Recruitment
Building an employer brand is a long-term strategy. It begins by researching the needs of the target group and tailoring the offering to these needs. The brand must be strong before companies need it in a concrete search for employees. It is about being on the radar of potential employees while they are still working for other companies. Employer branding is ideally combined with another trend in recruitment, active sourcing. In order to compete for talent, companies have professionalized their employee search. Recruitment has evolved from a sideline to a specialist function. It is becoming more and more important for companies strategically to attract the right employees. Strategic sourcing also takes a long-term approach to this. Sourcers seek contact with specialists before there is a need for recruitment. Through sourcing and employer branding, a successful company has a contact network of specialists that it can approach if necessary.