These days understanding your company’s employer brand can be as important as your consumer brand. But to understand your employer brand, you have to know and understand your employees. We mean really know them. Not just their names and the job positions they hold at your organization. Knowing your employees will give you a huge leg up on building a positive company culture and increasing employee engagement. Here are four questions from a recent blog form Forbes.com that you can ask yourself about your employees to help get you on the right path:
Who are my employees?
One again, this goes beyond their names and the positions they hold in the company and includes other demographic characteristics such as age, gender, education, experience, attitudes, geography, etc.
What matters to employees?
This is not a simple question to answer, but from the information you collect above and your experiences with employees, you can start to make some guesses. Then ask them. Find out their fears, motivations, goals and priorities.
What do my employees think of the brand?
Employer brand like company culture is something that you can attempt to guide and shape, but ultimately your employees have control over. How engaged an employee is with your organization directly affects their perception of your brand. If you find that employees have a negative view of your brand it may be due to a lack of engagement. Take a look and see if there are areas where engagement could be improved.
How do employees like to receive information?
How you communicate with employees directly affects their perception of your company and their level of engagement. Find out how your employees prefer to receive information about the company. Should you be doing staff meetings, or would an employee Facebook group or other online option fit better.
Talking a look at your employer brand and get ready to ask your employees some questions. Getting feedback from employees will allow you to shape your company culture and employee engagement initiatives in ways that will positively impact your employer brand.
Did you miss our webinar on employer branding? Check it out here.