You’ve conducted your interviews and whittled down your shortlist of candidates. Finally, after much deliberation, you make an offer to your top prospect – and they accept. A few weeks later they join the team. Everything seems to be going fine, until one day, out of the blue, they hand in their notice. The work’s fine, they say. But the culture isn’t quite what they were expecting.
Hiring that candidate took months and now you’re back to square one. How can you prevent this from happening again?
- You may like: Is there a right way to lead?
in their first 45 days. There are countless reasons why people leave their jobs. But for new hires, one in particular stands out – they were expecting one thing, but got another.
Building an authentic ‘employer brand’
Marketing used to be the sole custodians of the brand. These days, HR are increasingly involved in brand decisions as it has such a huge impact on attracting and retaining talent. But while building an attractive employer brand is important, it’s also important to make sure that brand stacks up with reality.
No company is perfect. And employee review sites or social media make it easier than ever for candidates to see what a company is really like. So if your website is full of photos of staff having a great time, but your Glassdoor profile is full of people ranting about your toxic culture, you’re going to have an issue.
If you’re looking to avoid new hire turnover, here are three ways to build a more authentic employer brand and attract the right people.
#1 – Get in touch with reality
Most businesses have mission, vision and core values statements. In an ideal world, these form the bedrock of the brand and the company’s culture, and guide how the business and its employees behave. However, more often than not these statements do little more than gather dust.
The best place to start is to audit your own company culture. You can do this by speaking to your employees: try finding out:
- What makes them tick
- Why they do what they do
- What they like about their job
- What they’d change if they could
- And, most importantly, why they work for you
You may not like everything you hear, but an unvarnished picture of your strengths and weaknesses will help you root your employer brand in reality. Glossy photography, beautifully-worded job ads and lofty values statements are all well and good, but culture has to be lived and breathed. And a company that misrepresents its culture is no better than a candidate who misrepresents their skills. You need to be honest about what your culture is, not what you think it should be.
“Don’t just focus on the positives.”
Glassdoor is another place to look. And don’t just focus on the positives. In fact, if you’re not already, you should be responding to and managing all positive and negative feedback on Glassdoor. Researching potential employers on Glassdoor is par for the course and 73% of candidates are more likely to apply if the employer is active on the site.
#2 – Create your employer brand
Now that you’ve got a handle on your culture, you need to bring that to bear on your recruitment process and materials. This includes job ads, your Glassdoor profile, any recruitment boards you use and any recruitment collateral you produce.
Just as in your customer marketing, a consistent, multi-channel presence is key. Your brand behaviour should be identifiable and consistent across every touchpoint. It also needs to come across in the interviews themselves, as well as in any preliminary phone calls or video calls.
The crucial thing here is to stick to your guns – and keep sight of what you learned in your research. While it might be in vogue to have a ping-pong table in the office, beers on a Friday and flexible working, if that’s not what you do then it’s best to be honest about that.
A particularly good source for positive, authentic messages to weave into your hiring materials is your employees’ answers to your culture audit. Specifically, the questions:
- What they like about their job
- Why they work where they work
By rooting your employer brand in the answers you got from your staff, you reduce the odds of someone joining the company and quickly becoming disenchanted.
#3 – Repeat the process
Businesses rarely stand still. And when they do, it’s usually a bad thing. As your business grows, evolves or acquires other businesses, it’s culture will naturally shift. And it’s important that your employer brand keeps up with that, or it will cease to be relevant.
“Keep your finger on the pulse of the culture and the employee experience.”
The culture audit process only needs to be completed once a year. It may also be a good idea to run an audit after a particularly disruptive event, such as a merger. By speaking to employees and keeping a close eye on Glassdoor, you can keep your finger on the pulse of the culture and the employee experience. This helps with hiring, but it also helps to identify and resolve any challenges that come up.
Honesty is the best policy
Honesty is crucial in recruitment – and it goes both ways. Employers need to be honest with candidates, and candidates need to be honest with employers. And in the long term, it’s in both parties’ interests to do so. New hire turnover is unpleasant for everyone involved. An authentic employer brand is a great way for employers to manage and set the right expectations.
Ultimately, transparency and authenticity are about more than just hiring. They’re about integrity. In recent years there have been a string of household brands caught out by saying one thing and doing another, including Body Shop, Innocent Drinks and Iceland. By auditing your own culture, defining a strong employer brand and regularly repeating the process, you can avoid making the same mistake.
If you’re looking for help in finding the right personalities to enhance your company culture, check out our online assessment tool.
