To truly define the term talent brand, we first need to define employer brand.
Employer brand: The attributes and values associated with your company as a place to work
Talent brand: The highly social and public version of your employer brand that incorporates what talent thinks, feels, and share about your company as a place to work.
In other words, a company’s employer brand is developed by the company, whereas the talent brand is based on what current, former and perspective employees say in relation to those developed attributes and values.
Why the Talent Brand Matters
First, it’s important to have a solid awareness of your talent brand so that you can understand what values, perks, benefits and ideals resonate most with your employees. That way, you can know what to invest in for the future.
Having a positive (and accurate) talent brand also helps you attract the type of people who you want to join and who will work best at your company.
At the same time, a negative talent brand will clearly adversely impact company recruitment. This doesn’t only result from bad reviews on job sites, but also from lots of turnover, low-value benefits, or benefits that don’t align well with your employer and talent brand. For example, a company that says it values employee health and wellness without a built-in wellness initiative won’t seem genuine in it’s talent brand.
Aligning Benefits with Your Talent Brand
This may seem obvious, but with trendy office perks and benefits taking off, it can be difficult to remember to keep your benefits aligned with your talent brand.
Remember, when a prospect begins to consider accepting a position at a company, he or she does the research. From that, a candidate can usually begin to formulate a fluid idea of what the company strives for, its goals and what it would be like to work there: your talent brand.
Imagine what would happen if a candidate received an offer with benefits that didn’t support that aura it had created? Even a good benefits package with better than average coverage can fall flat if it’s not connected to the company values. The same goes the other way around: a grand company mission can ring empty when there’s nothing there supporting it.
Consider asking your current employees how you feel your benefits align with company values—you may be surprised what you’ll discover and how much it could improve the strength of your talent brand.
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