The Importance of Your Employer Brand
As your business strategy for our post-Covid world takes shape, you must then think about what this means in terms of your team of employees.
The world has been changed drastically by the pandemic, and there may still be changes to come.
There will be no ‘going back to normal’ – it will be about adapting to our new environment, and as an employer, this means a few different things.
Support Systems
Despite all of the destruction caused by the pandemic, there are positives to be drawn. One success story of this year is the way that employers have stepped up and looked out for their teams.
Never before has so much thought and emphasis been put onto employee physical and mental wellbeing. This has been essential for protecting teams, but it has had the fortunate effect of increasing trust between employers and employees, which has ultimately strengthened teams.
A Flexible Approach
No-one could have predicted that such a devastating event would have had a positive effect on some businesses, but everywhere you look, the pandemic has strengthened teams.
Flexibility, remote working, a focus on wellbeing, and an enhanced team spirit that comes from surviving a crisis have all strengthened employer brands across the board.
However, how have you supported your team throughout recent years?
Think about the systems you put in place, the changes you made to accommodate flexibility, the way you support teams both professionally and personally – all of these are the fundamentals of your employer brand.
Communicating this to prospective candidates is an essential part of building your talent pipeline, which we go through in detail in our recruitment report.
But before that, let’s think about what kind of candidates you need to be attracting to your post-pandemic organisation – will they be different from what you would normally seek to attract? Let’s find out.
New Candidate Profiles
Closely tied to your employer brand is your ideal candidate profile – an avatar – of the ‘type’ of individual you know will work well in your team.
This goes deeper than just the skills they need to possess; it includes their attitude, their attributes, and their personality type; it can be hard to find the perfect match.
As a recruiter, we understand how crucial it is to find employees with the rightskills who will also fit into your organisation. When employers get this wrong, it leads to
problems such as disruptions in the team, low morale and then ultimately having to re-hire for the same position, sometimes over and over.
When you come to make your next hires, first you must decide exactly what it is you are looking for – both the hard and soft skills, as well as attributes and attitude.
And now there is the added post-pandemic dimension, too.
Nowadays, hiring means thinking about what skills your employees will need for the challenges that lie ahead.
Some of the themes that we have seen employers increasingly look for post-Covid include -
Digital and technical skills for an increasingly digital world
Cognitive skills to be able to navigate a
challenging working landscapeEmotional intelligence, which will mean the ability to stay positive, to see past challenges and to support colleagues during difficult times
Adaptability and flexibility – and someone who approaches every task and situation with an open mind
Additionally, many businesses have changed their model recently – are you providing new or different products or services? If you know that you plan to introduce new areas or markets into your business, employing the talent with the best possible skills to allow your business to grow is essential.
Once you have your candidate profiles in place, it’s time to start building your talent pipeline- we have written a detailed Recruitment Report on how to build a talent pipeline. Click here to access it: https://www.magpierecruitment.com/building-your-talent-pipeline