Employer Branding Strategy: What it is – and what it is not

We believe that the best way to achieve your employer brand objectives is with an employer brand strategy. We asked Marcus Body, one of our strategists, to talk us through what that means.

What's the difference between strategy and tactics?

Can you explain how you're going to achieve your employer brand objectives in a couple of sentences? If you can't, you probably don't really have a strategy. You might well have a plan – a list of stuff/tactics you're doing or going to do. A strategy should explain why those things are on that list, and why other things aren't. I'll bet quite a few of you can't even explain the objectives in a couple of sentences, let alone how you're going to achieve them.

How do I start creating an employer brand strategy?

With those objectives. A good approach is to see if you can define a "solution neutral problem statement" – a statement of what you're trying to achieve with no implication of how you'll achieve it. It's harder than it seems at first.

What does your business REALLY want the employer brand to deliver in hard business terms? More staff? Better staff? The same staff but faster/cheaper? Reduced turnover? Increased productivity? Try to get it down to the simplest possible version and be ruthless about removing anything the business doesn't really care about. If you're not sure, you won't be able to come up with a strategy to achieve it.

We have our business goals, now what?

I like to take that statement of the problem and come up with EVERY possible solution I can think of – even bonkers ones. Some of the best ideas I've had started out as jokes or silly thoughts, but that contained the grain of an idea that could be made sensible and achievable. The UK "Compare the meerkat" campaign for CompareTheMarket is a very successful advertising campaign that clearly started as a joke and then someone realised they could actually do it.

Okay, so now I have a page of ideas. What then?

Start evaluating them for how well they achieve your objectives, and how practicable they are. That might involve cost considerations, but it could involve brand limitations (or if you got VERY imaginative, legal or moral ones). You could get stakeholders involved once you have a sensible shortlist – after all, you'll probably need their buy-in to the strategy before you can use it.

I've picked a strategy. What do I do with it?

Use it to decide what you are going to do, and possibly more importantly what you're not going to do. Go back to that plan you had, and if an element on it doesn't fit your strategy, cross it out. Then you can use the time/resource you just freed up to try new things that DO fit your strategy. Your job just got a lot more interesting and fun than simply trying to do what you did last year slightly more efficiently (which was as close to a strategy as most of you had before).

Marcus Body has been working in Employer Branding for over 20 years. If you have a question or a topic you'd like him or any of our other experienced specialists to cover – get in touch.