Positioning your company as the employer of choice

Employer branding is a HR marketing strategy communicating the USP of your company to current and prospective employees, clients and other stakeholders. It basically reflects what the company is all about and projects the complete employment experience. With the job market becoming more and more competitive it has become essential for companies to go for employer branding.

Organizations today have realized the importance of this concept and are concentrating on building a strong employer brand. Certain specialist agencies have also come up to take care of this need.The concept of employer branding is relatively new in the Indian market. Gone are the days when established companies like Tata or Godrej never cried out to the world saying that they were the best places to work. Today with so much information available to the key stakeholders that companies have no choice but to position themselves aggressively to gain competitive advantage. Says a HR executive of an IT company, “It is an essential tool used by modern-age organizations to attract and retain quality talent. If employees can identify themselves with the values of the organization then they will be satisfied and motivated workers. It is as much important to companies visiting campuses for new recruits as it is for lateral hiring.”

Not only private players like Google or Marriott Hotels India Pvt. Ltd. but even public sector companies like NTPC have realized the importance of brand building and made it to the most preferred employers list. Cognizant’s “celebrating work” theory is evident in a participative work environment prevailing in the company. Google offers employees to pursue research on topics of their own interest during some amount of their work time. In fact in this way the concept of Google News came up. Infosys provides a strong learning culture for its employees. It could be as basic as offering flexi-hours to employees leading to a better work-life balance or providing them with work from home option.

Employer branding initiatives should be undertaken by both established companies and startups alike. A strong employer brand will give you a definite edge over your competitors. So just be creative to make that all important image but make sure what you communicate, as part of this endeavour will be actually offered to your employees in reality.

- Ranjita Chattopadhyay (views expressed in the article are that of the author)