What’s the single most influential factor in attracting top talent to a company?
If you guessed high pay, awesome benefits, upward mobility or even pet-friendly policies, those are all nice perks—but not quite right.
So what is the best bait for luring top talent? Here’s a hint: It’s not necessarily something that has a dollar sign.
The answer is reputation.
A company’s reputation can make or break its hiring efforts, its relationship with consumers and, ultimately, its bottomline. After all, a business is only as good as the people willing to work for it.
And surprise, surprise—good people don’t want to work for a bad business. In fact, 69 percent of unemployed job seekers would refuse to work for a company with a bad reputation.
Having a severely limited talent pool is only one consequence for employers though.
A study spearheaded by LinkedIn’s VP of Talent Solutions Wade Burgess made some key insights as to how much employers pay for a bad reputation:
1. A bad reputation can cost a company $7.6 million from annual turnover and other wages for companies that have over 10,000 employees.
2. Employers who don’t invest in their reputation may be paying an additional $4,723 per employee hired.
3. Almost half of US professionals wouldn’t take a job with a company that exhibited the top three negative employer brand factors, no matter what pay raise they were offered.
4. Even a 10% pay raise would only tempt about a quarter of US professionals to sign with a company.
A Company’s Best Investment
The findings show that employer branding is among the most important investments a company can make.
It reduces organizational turnover, improves the quality and speed of a company’s hiring process and boosts productivity through employee engagement and much more.
Despite its effectiveness, many employers don’t realize how crucial this form of marketing is to their success.
Perhaps that’s why the top challenges plaguing the workforce today are: employee retention and turnover, recruitment, culture management and employee engagement.
If companies want to hire the best, then they have to work harder to get it. Though offering financial comfort is nice, it’s no longer enough to attract top talent. Opportunities for growth, flexible work schedules, a fun culture—these are what professionals really value.
Until employers can adapt to what professionals want, finding the best people for the job will be an ongoing struggle. That means some companies will have to make some organizational changes to get what they want.
Get Started Now
Where does a business owner even begin in deciding what needs to change? That’s a question for their existing staff.
Employer branding is supposed to highlight the aspects that make a workplace desirable. Who better to evaluate that than the very people who work there? Employees can provide invaluable insights as to where a company culture meets their needs—and where it doesn’t.
For employers, this also means that employee happiness should be of utmost importance. Because if their existing staff doesn’t enjoy working for them, chances are nobody else will either.
Not to mention, employees can either be a company’s best brand ambassadors or its worst dissenters. It all depends on how the company treats them. They can even be a company’s best recruiters, as many businesses cite employee referrals as their top source of quality hires.
Companies who want a good employer brand need to invest in their people first. Only then can they create a culture that attracts top talent. After that, the only thing left to do is reel them with a smart marketing campaign.
That’s where ICON Staffing Network comes in. Our creative agency ICON Creative offers all the tools and services you need to equip your company with only the best. From video production to email marketing to social media recruiting and more, ICON Creative is here for all your employer branding needs.
All you have to do is make the first move.
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