Employer Branding in The Era of Remote Work

Employer branding (EB) refers to building and maintaining an image of your company as a workplace.

An employer brand answers the following questions:

• What makes this workplace stand out?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of this organization as an employer?
• Why should one work in the organization?
• What are the organization’s values like?

Every employer wants to look attractive for new potential employees. Just like marketing products to customers, it’s important to market your company to job hunters.

Maintaining a good employer brand in the eyes of your current employees is also important.

In this article, we focus on how you can leverage the experience of your current employees in employer branding, with a focus on remote work.

Happy Employees Are Your EB Superpower

There is no denying that existing employees are the best asset in employer branding.

Employees who advocate for their company are a sign of a great and attractive workplace. They are much more credible than anything that the employer can say or do.

If you manage to make your employees so happy that they are willing to endorse you, you are in a great place.

Much can be said about how you can become a great employer whose workers are happy, but that is a story for another time.

Now, let’s focus on a pressing problem that even the good companies have in the post-pandemic times.

How to Highlight Company Culture when People Are Working Remotely?

The pandemic caused many companies to move to remote work, and it also made people want it – even demand it.

These days job hunters might see the possibility of remote work as a criterion for a new workplace.

This has led to a new challenge for employer branding: how to showcase a great company culture, when people are not gathering together?

Your employees might be happy, but you never see them around except when having a Zoom call.

Here are a few tactics that you can try and use to enhance your employer branding efforts.

Social Media Posts

Encourage your employees to share work-related content on social media.

The key is that your employees share personal stories in their own channels. We have all seen the polished LinkedIn posts and professionally filmed videos, and they just don’t come across as genuine.

What kind of content should you publish, then?

Some examples include Instagram stories, blog posts, even personal LinkedIn posts. The more variety you have, the better.

Don’t force your employees to a certain mold: let their own personality shine through. Photos and videos can be shot in their homes, remote work stations, or wherever they want.

Of course, you should compensate for the time that your employees spend on creating content. There should be time to do it during the work day. 

Additional reward is also a good idea, such as a gift card to movies or a treated dinner.

Written Testimonials

Testimonials are endorsements in which people tell about their positive experiences with brands.

You have most likely seen customer testimonials on a company’s website.

Similarly, employee testimonials help you showcase your happy employees’ experiences. 

Testimonial requests can be incorporated into a regular feedback questionnaire, which guarantees you get fresh endorsements.

Add a section for testimonials to your regular feedback survey. Make clear that what they write in this section can be used in marketing.

Questions to ask in this section could be:

• Why do you like working in this company?
• What is the best thing about your workplace?
• How would you describe your experience working here?

Another way to do it is to use a separate testimonial tool, so that there will be no confusion about what is confidential feedback and what is meant to be a public testimonial.

Remember to communicate the importance of testimonials to your employees. This will motivate them to write about their experiences.

Remote Video Testimonials

If you thought that hiring a videographer or the whole group is the only way to make a convincing video testimonial, you need to update your knowledge!

Today, anyone can film a video with good quality on their own devices. All you have to do is provide them with an easy way to do so.

Luckily, there are remote video testimonial tools that help you. They let you store and manage testimonials in one place.

Especially in the case of remote work, a video testimonial is an authentic way to showcase the variety of locations in which your employees work.

You can use video testimonials on your website, on social media, or include a link in a job advertisement so that job seekers have easy access to the content.

Conclusion

Employer branding is essential, and your existing employees are your superpower.

Some ways in which employees can join EB efforts is to post on social media or leave employee testimonials.

These tactics are suitable even for remote workers.

There are a couple things you should consider when asking your employees to spend time on EB activities.

First, make sure that your employees are happy to do so. If they are dissatisfied with the workplace, naturally they wouldn’t want to participate.

Ensure that no one feels pressured or feels like they will face repercussions for not participating.

In the end, when you take good care of your employees, they are willing to give back to you and participate in employer branding.