Employer marketing tips for marketers

With talent being scarce, an increasing employment rate (1), a decreasing tension ratio (2), and regional differences (3), as an employer, you need to secure a competitive position between demand and relevant supply. This is not easy with cross-sector competition (4) and intermediaries often playing by unequal rules. If you want to dive into employer marketing, knowledge of our labor market and its complex dynamics is essential.

Tips:

Statbel
Centre for Work
VDAB - Trends
VDAB - Bottleneck occupations list

With employer marketing you target your current employees and potential candidates: a unique audience with motivations such as pay and appreciation, company culture, career opportunities and work-life balance. It's best to delve thoroughly into this particular game of extrinsic and intrinsic motivations.

Tips:

Randstad: employer brand research
VDAB: thresholds on the road to work
Workable work
Indeed: the big gap
Jobat: talent drivers

Do you usually go for the biggest reach, the most clicks or the cheapest leads? And are you used to convincing as many people as possible or selling as many units or services as possible? Think again! With internal communication you specifically approach your own employees, with external communication you prefer to turn to the right candidates and their influencers. After all, employer marketers don't want the most, but the best possible match(s).

In the world of b2c and b2b marketing, the customer experience is often down to the last detail. Websites, communications and customer service are all focused on a seamless and positive experience. In employer marketing, unfortunately, this often falls short.

Either employers make it too complicated to apply, or they try to move visitors through the funnel to an application too quickly. But internal communication is also often difficult for employees. As an employer marketer, you work on all these employer touchpoints with a wide variety of employees and potential candidates.

As an employer marketer, you are the bridge figure between hr, marketing and management. So it's up to you to reconcile different stakeholders with sometimes conflicting views on a strategic, tactical and operational level. Your goal? Unite, convince and inspire in function of the shared interests. To do this, you often have to stimulate internal empathy and encourage steps that seem unconventional.

Employer marketing lies at the intersection of marketing and hr and requires a good understanding of new target groups and their motivations. It is a unique and complex playing field with often numerous challenges in internal processes and systems. Still, the most fascinating part of the role of employer marketer remains the linking function between hr, marketing and management to get and keep human capital on board.

Curious for more? Be sure to read the blogs about our employer branding research among more than 500 companies in Flanders and Brussels.

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1. The activity rate or employment rate corresponds to the proportion of the population working within the population group at working age.
2. The tension ratio reflects the number of job seekers per vacancy. The indicators on (critical) bottleneck vacancies show what proportion of vacancies are difficult to fill.
3. It is common knowledge that there are large differences in labor market performance in Belgium, especially in the regions. But there are also strong differences within the Flemish Region.
4. Companies face competition not only from similar employers, but also from employers from very different sectors, from recruitment agencies and because of the differences between the private and public sectors.