Everyone is familiar with the concept of branding, but only some businesses have applied branding concepts to their image as employers. Nearly 90% of HR professionals agree that recruiting is starting to look more like marketing, and hiring managers need to adjust accordingly.
In this article, we’ll take a look at seven of the most powerful employer branding examples for companies to be aware of in 2022. It can take months or even years to develop a successful employer brand, but you can start taking the first steps to improve your image at any time.
What Is Employer Branding, and Why Does it Matter?
While conventional branding involves your customer-facing image, employer branding is all about how you’re perceived by potential employees. Instead of trying to get leads to buy your products, you’ll be trying to get the top talent interested in working for you instead of your competitors.
With a strong employer brand, it will be easier than ever to minimize turnover, fill positions more quickly, and build a talent advantage over other businesses in your niche. You should be treating employer branding as a long-term investment in the same way that you approach conventional marketing campaigns.
In fact, when you look at key employer branding statistics, it’s clear how important employer branding is:
- 86% of HR professionals say that recruiting is becoming more like marketing
- 68% of Millennials, 54% of Gen-Xers, and 48% of Boomers look at social media accounts to evaluate an employer’s brand
- Those actively managing their employer brand can reduce turnover by 28%
So what kind of posts do you create, and how can you manage your employer brand?
We’ve got seven excellent employer branding examples to help guide you through your journey.
7 Employer Branding Examples to Inspire You
1. Oktopost
Employees shouldn’t have to choose between their personal goals and the goals of your company. With employee advocacy, your goal is to show potential employees that they can grow as workers and individuals as a member of your company.
In this example, an Oktopost team member posted about how she was able to work as a social media manager while traveling abroad and pursuing her personal projects. She is replying to another post from Oktopost that talked about the company’s remote work culture and current job openings.
One key difference between employee advocacy and other types of employer branding is that employee advocacy comes from the employees themselves. Even though employer branding can be valuable on its own when coming from corporate, posts from real team members will give your company even more credibility.
As an employer, you can encourage your team members to get engaged with employee advocacy by giving them ideas and providing incentives for branding content. The initial post from Oktopost covers some of the benefits of working for their brand, while the follow-up from Olivia shows what the work experience looks like in practice.
2. Hulu
Hulu is a major streaming service and one of the top competitors to Netflix. Like many other tech brands, Hulu has made an ongoing effort to develop its reputation as an employer.
The LinkedIn post below gives readers a closer look at how Hulu creates its content and how team members come together to achieve a creative vision.
3. PayPal
Providing a safe, supportive, and equal environment for women is a key issue for all companies. However, it’s particularly relevant for tech companies, which are trying to escape their traditional male-dominated image. PayPal posted on LinkedIn on Equal Pay Day to share their efforts to offer fair compensation to female employees.
While this post doesn’t highlight any specific employees, it shows that PayPal is trying to build an inclusive environment. This could help them break out of the typical tech brand image and attract more female candidates who are apprehensive about applying to this kind of company.
The reason Equal Pay Day takes place on March 15th is that that’s how long women typically have to work to make up for the extra money that men earned in the previous year. It would be great to see PayPal acknowledging that unfairness (even if it doesn’t exist within PayPal) and promoting women who are trying to make a difference.
4. Chewy
Chewy is a digital pet store that offers products for dogs and cats as well as other pets such as fish, birds, rabbits, turtles, and even horses and farm animals. It’s known for its personal customer service and its commitment to animal welfare, which makes the brand appeal to both consumers and employees.
This employer branding post focuses on a charity event that led to nearly $9,000 in donations for at-risk animals. Highlighting team events that happen outside the workplace is a great way to show that working for you is more than just showing up at the office.
All charity work is good, but it’s even better from an employer branding perspective when you can connect the service to your core brand mission. At the same time, Chewy demonstrates its genuine commitment to animal welfare along with its collaborative culture.
5. Wayfair
While PayPal claimed to provide 100% pay equity within its organization, Wayfair went above and beyond by highlighting an award it won from a reputable platform. Remember that it’s always better to back up claims about your workplace with verification from a third party—otherwise, your posts are likely to come off as simple self-promotion.
In this case, Wayfair was named one of the best workplaces in the USA for 2022. Any time you win a workplace-related award like this, you should be leveraging that recognition in order to generate more interest from candidates. Most people are unlikely to look up the top workplaces on their own, so you need to let them know that you’ve earned that status.
At the end of the post, Wayfair makes sure to include a link to the list as well as a link to their careers page. This is a good model for other brands that are unsure of how to approach their employer branding posts.
If candidates have to take the time to find your careers page, they will probably go on with their day after seeing your content. On the other hand, they’re much more likely to look at openings if they can click directly from your social media posts to your careers page.
6. FedEx
Some employer branding posts focus on the workplace culture as a whole, while others highlight the successes of individual employees. Even though stories about employees don’t necessarily say anything about the experience of working for a particular company, they show that the employer cares about its employees as individuals, and their wins.
FedEx highlights the achievements of two of its pilots, who were the first African American crew of a FedEx plane. By showing their work in the context of personal achievement, FedEx demonstrates that they’re about more than simply paying employees for a defined service.
7. American Express
Flexible work arrangements have always been important to some employees, but they’ve become much more relevant during the COVID-19 pandemic. Candidates are more likely to be interested in a position if it gives them the opportunity to work in a way that matches their schedule, personal obligations, and work preferences.
This post from American Express is all about the steps the company is taking to accommodate the new reality of work. With most employees choosing either a hybrid or fully virtual work arrangement, American Express makes it clear that new workers will have the chance to contribute in the way that works for them.
According to the full article, Amex Flex is already available in the New York, Atlanta, DC, Taiwan, and the UK offices. They are planning to make it an option at all of their locations in April 2022.
However, the LinkedIn post itself doesn’t provide much information about what the event was or why employees came in for that specific week. This would be a great way to add more detail and personality to their content while demonstrating what makes American Express unique compared to other brands that offer a hybrid work environment.
Final Thoughts
Recruiting and hiring workflows had already changed dramatically throughout the 2010s, and they were transformed even more in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. If you’re not investing in your employer brand, you’ll end up falling behind in turnover, hiring costs, and overall productivity.
Hopefully, these examples of great employer branding gave you some ideas to start strengthening your employer brand and adapting your digital presence to the modern hiring landscape.
Learn more about how employee advocacy can impact your employer branding—Book a demo with Oktopost today, and see it in action!
