Learn the tools and resources to create an attractive employer brand in 2025. Find out how EnterpriseAlumni can help you build successful branding today.
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Employer branding is critical for every company's recruitment, engagement and retention strategies. Organizations that have invested in branding have reduced staff turnover by 28% and minimized their cost-per-hire by 50%.
Alumni networks are the secret to establishing and growing a successful employer brand. A dedicated alumni community of past employees allows businesses to centralize their branding efforts, giving them a platform to showcase their core values and strengthen employee relationships.
Using solutions like EnterpriseAlumni for employer branding, businesses can offer former employees exclusive events, resources and content. They can also keep this extension of their workforce updated about their business progress, send personalized messages, and manage their online reputation.
This guide explores the importance of a strong employer brand and the critical elements of building long-lasting branding.
Employer branding is critical for attracting and retaining high-quality current and potential employees.
Organizations must develop a branding strategy to make their workforce proud to be a part of the company and attract talent. This includes creating and maintaining an employee-centric company culture and focusing on employee satisfaction.
Here are a few of the top reasons to prioritize employer branding:
Ultimately, employer branding is crucial for business growth and how customers, competitors, and potential employees perceive your organization.
These are the most essential elements of building an attractive employer brand, which will optimize your recruitment strategies, develop a positive reputation and maintain healthy customer and employee relationships.
Your employer brand starts with defining your company's mission, vision and values. This allows you to determine your organization's distinctive characteristics and identify the top job seekers who are a cultural fit.
Your brand mission, vision and values – your employer value proposition – tell potential and current employees who your company is and what differentiates you from your competition. These aspects make aligning your workforce and guiding them to a shared goal easier.
Employees who believe in your company's story are more likely to be loyal, motivated and productive.
Understanding what drives your organization can help potential hires and existing employees feel more connected to your business, supporting your employer branding strategy.
Defining your mission, values, and vision also improves employee engagement. Employees who resonate with your mission statement and vision are 67% more invested in your business.
Workplace culture is a critical element in your employer brand. The better your work environment, the more motivated your employees will be to help you achieve your goals and objectives. Satisfied employees can attract customers to your business, improve your rating on review sites, and refer top talent to your business.
But what makes a positive workplace culture? Essentially, it's all about employee experience.
Here is how you can develop a positive corporate culture:
In addition to developing a fantastic workplace culture for your employer brand, you must enhance employee well-being and retention. Employee well-being refers to your workforce's mental, emotional and physical health. These factors are influenced by workplace relationships and the resources you make available to support your employees.
For example, consider offering free counseling services if your employees experience mental strain in their everyday duties. Your company can also provide solutions for health aid, financial support, and opportunities for employees to relax and bond, such as corporate events and activities. Although your business pays employees to work, prioritizing their well-being will improve productivity, motivation and loyalty.
Likewise, employee well-being impacts retention. Happy employees are less likely to leave your organization. Instead, these workers can help your company achieve a strong brand and excellent reputation and support your employer's value proposition to attract and retain top-quality talent.
Gain as many authentic employee testimonials as possible to build a strong employer brand. Many job seekers will want to know what working for your company is like before accepting an offer or applying for an interview.
But they don't want this information from you or your website; they'll want to know directly from your employees, and this is where authentic testimonials become relevant.
You can post these testimonials to your social media platforms or add them to your careers page. Doing this is a fantastic way to reflect and develop your employer branding while optimizing your hiring process. Reviews from your employers speak directly to your employer branding and corporate culture so potential candidates know what to expect from your company.
Gathering employee testimonials is simple. Ask your employees for testimonials and use the best and most relevant reviews to promote and further your branding. Another approach is to ask for employee testimonials during offboarding. This highlights how imperative successful exit interviews are as you want to end your relationship with employees on an outstanding note. They are more likely to provide positive, honest feedback about their experience working with your business.
However, if you notice that most employees don't have many positive testimonials, you must rethink your branding strategy and determine how to improve workplace experience and morale.
Professional development is another imperative component of successful employer branding.
Providing your employees opportunities to learn and progress their skills and careers will motivate them to stay with your company. For example, you can include mentorship programs in your alumni strategy, helping employees develop leadership skills, improve communication, and expand their knowledge. Employees will feel valuable enough to your organization for you to invest in them.
The stats show that:
These statistics are no surprise. Employers want opportunities for employees to progress to better positions and increase their earning potential. Learning and development help employees achieve their professional goals while making them more valuable assets to your organization.
Developing a successful employer brand requires creating an engaging online presence; some 79% of job seekers use social media platforms to evaluate companies when looking for a job.
Companies must showcase their employer brand on social media to engage and attract top talent. This allows you to share your company culture and employee benefits and show potential employees what they can expect from working with your organization.
To develop and maintain an engaging online presence, follow these tips:
In addition, you can use your social media pages to share job ads. Before employees submit their applications, they can glimpse who your business is and whether they connect with it. Maintaining a consistent social media presence and responding to trends is essential to keeping your audience engaged.
Social responsibility refers to how companies control their impact on society. This plays a pivotal role in employer branding, as high-quality talent is attracted to value-based organizations with initiatives aimed at social and environmental sustainability.
93% of employees believe businesses must lead with purpose, highlighting the importance of implementing strategies that serve society.
Likewise, diversity is critical for organizations to uphold. Your employer branding must reflect that your company is diverse and inclusive, offering fair opportunities to skilled professionals from all backgrounds. Some 60% of job seekers look for information about a business's commitment to diversity and inclusion before submitting their applications.
This is how your business can establish and maintain strategies for social responsibility and diversity:
Here are two examples of successful employer branding and how this has helped these businesses.
Bird&Bird, an international law firm with over 30 offices worldwide, partnered with EnterpriseAlumni to turn their alumni network into a tool for business growth. The company recognized how valuable their alumni were, from referring potential clients to securing opportunities to pitch. It prioritized building relationships between it’s partners and alumni, to propel their brand and establish long-lasting connections.
Through a custom alumni network, Bird & Bird could keep past employees engaged with their brand, share their values, mission and progress, and motivate alumni to re-join their workforce and refer high-quality clients and prospects. As a result, Bird & Bird secured 106 boomerang hires, highlighting the importance of an alumni network.
Marks & Spencer is a retail company that provides food, financial services, home appliances, and clothing. It worked with EnterpriseAlumni to meet their hiring needs and boost employee morale and engagement. Marks & Spencer prioritizes positive relationships with current and past employees and leverages its alumni community to share valuable and fun content that shares its brand values.
This alumni network is the perfect solution for Marks & Spencer to develop, grow, and share its employer branding. It can use one platform to showcase its mission, vision, and values to former, current, and potential employees. This has also helped it minimize recruitment resources and costs and continue to build a strong employer brand through community events.
If you want to make your employer brand attractive, you must first build a positive reputation and image, attract top talent, and retain your best employees. Developing a successful employer brand can also help you maintain customer relationships while boosting employee morale and engagement.
Every employer brand is built on your mission, vision, and values, thriving corporate culture, employee well-being and retention programs, and authentic testimonials from past workers. Likewise, organizations must deliver opportunities for professional development, create an engaging online presence, and emphasize social responsibility and diversity.
Companies can build and grow an alumni network with EnterpriseAlumni to boost their employer branding. A dedicated community is the perfect solution to showcase employer branding and accelerate recruitment efforts.
We've helped many companies build successful alumni networks, and our blog offers the latest insights and tools for your employer branding strategy.
