How to create an effective Employer Brand strategy: A guide for HR teams in hospo

In the competitive world of hospitality, attracting and retaining top talent is an essential ingredient for success. If you’re wearing the hat of HR for your venue you no doubt play a role in shaping the employer brand strategy of your organisation.  

A strong employer brand not only helps you attract the best candidates but also fosters employee engagement and retention.  

If you haven’t come across the term Employer Branding before, don’t be alarmed. We interviewed some of the best in the business, and while they were delivering a lot of elements of Employer Branding in their HR or People functions, many hadn’t gone as far as formally building an Employer Branding strategy. 

So what is Employer Branding?  

The clue is in the title. Employer. Branding. That's right, it's building a brand showcasing you as an employer of choice. Branding strategies, such as building company brands or personal brands, help you create a distinctive identity and perception for your audience. In this case, you're building a brand that aims to attract or retain the ideal candidates or employees in your business.

The way you promote your business helps candidates decide whether they’d like to work for you, and elements of employee branding helps your current employees decide if they’d like to continue to work for you and recommend you as a great place to work.

While employee experience is a key element in a well-formed employer branding strategy, it is not the only element. Let's dive into all the components that make up an effective employer brand strategy. We'll also show you how to bring all the elements together to form your Employer Branding strategy.

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Align to company goals

It’s important to ensure that your employer brand strategy aligns with the overarching goals and values of your organisation. Whether your business is focusing on delivering exceptional guest experiences, driving revenue growth, or fostering innovation, your employer brand should reflect and support the broader objectives of your organisation.  

Top tip: If your employer brand doesn’t align with your overarching companies' objectives, you might find it’s an uphill battle to deliver the plan and get your leadership team and employees to embrace it. The undesired outcome will be an employer brand strategy that looks and feels confused and inauthentic.

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Get to know your people

Developing a strong employer brand requires a deep understanding of your 'audience', in this case, your audience is your existing workforce and candidate pool.

Getting to know your audience is particularly crucial in the hospitality industry, where employees come from a diverse range of roles and may be casual or lifers within your business.  By delving into their preferences, motivations and career aspirations, you can start to segment your audience and craft employer brand messaging that resonates, attracting top talent across the business and fostering retention in all departments, irrespective of their roles.

Without this insight, your well intentioned employer brand strategy risks falling flat, failing to engage the very individuals you aim to attract and ultimately resulting in a disjointed talent pool, most likely leading to a workforce that churns too often.

Top tip: Unlike your role in HR, your frontline workforce don't work 9 to 5, don't have desks or company emails. Overcome their varied schedules by getting to know your team and candidates via surveys they can complete on apps from their mobiles. The survey insights you gather about your place of work will help shape your employee value prop, your employer brand strategy and to help tailor your messaging more effectively.  

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Develop your Employee Value Proposition (EVP) 

Your Employee Value Proposition (EVP) helps you explain the benefits and experiences that sets your organisation apart as an employer of choice.  

An EVP supports you to crystalise the promise you’re making to candidates and employees about the unique experiences they will have when they work for you.  It may be a vibrant company culture, opportunities for career advancement, competitive benefits, or perhaps a commitment to employee wellbeing. An EVP is the foundation of your Employer Brand strategy, once you’ve written your EVP, all your strategies to improve employee and candidates experiences flow from there.    

Top tip: When you’re developing your EVP, ensure you include data and feedback from existing team members and past candidates about what they’re looking for from their employer. This will help you to make sure your EVP is representative of the people that work there and the people you're trying to attract. Remember to align your EVP to your company goals.

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Build and promote your brand narrative

Once you define your EVP and understand your audience, it's time to craft compelling brand messaging that communicates the essence of your employer brand. Align your brand messaging to your Employee Value Proposition and start to promote the unique opportunities your workplace offers candidates and employees. In an industry of highly creative people, storytelling is key to bringing your employer brand to life and is a great way to showcase real-life success stories of your employees.  

Top tip: Don’t forget to communicate your brand messaging across multiple channels. Share updates on your website, social channels, job boards, in your venues and at industry events regularly. Ask your employees to do the same across their own social platforms to their own networks to help you spread the word.  

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Make your candidate experience stand out

In a competitive talent market, providing a seamless and positive candidate experience can set you apart from other employers. From the initial job application to the final interview stage, delivering clear communication, timely feedback, and a personalised touch at every interaction will make you stand out.  Consider implementing innovative recruitment techniques such as a quick personality quiz to get to know your candidates better. This will allow you to customise your communication with them throughout the interviewing process and improve their overall experience with your brand.  

Top tip: Even if a candidate is not successful in the interview process, they still deserve a great candidate experience. We all know how powerful Word of Mouth (WOM) is in the hospo industry, so treating them well during the candidate process will go a long way to help your employer brand reputation in the long run.

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Deliver a meaningful employee experience

Finally, we get to talk about employee experience! It's worth noting how many other components there are to build a great employer brand strategy before we even had a chance to touch on the employee experience element. Now that we're here, let's get into it.

A great way to think of employee experience for hospo is to consider who is responsible for it. When your team are busy serving your customers, who's serving your team? While it's the role of everyone in the business to look after each other, they way that people interact, or the experiences they live are delivered through a standout employee experience strategy.

The hospitality industry exists to deliver exceptional customer service, and delivering a great employee experience plays a crucial role in ensuring customers reap the benefits of a happy team.

Your employee experience is deeply linked to your Employee Value Proposition, and the employee experiences that you deliver for your team are a way to bring your EVP to life. You may start to invest in employee benefits such as comprehensive training programs, wellness benefits, or by making work a fun place to be, irrespective of the hour of day you're working.

Employee experience also focuses on fostering a supportive work environment where effective communication is a priority to help employees feel valued, empowered, and motivated to deliver their best every day. In the end, your customers will be the greatest beneficiaries.  

Top tip: A great employee experience will help you not only retain staff but also activate your team to recommend your business as a great place to work. If you look at that from a business perspective, it not only reduces a lot of headaches, but it also reduces your cost of hiring, onboarding and training.

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Celebrate employee advocacy

Employees that love coming to work are your best brand ambassadors. Encourage them to share their experiences on social media platforms, participate in employer branding initiatives, and refer potential candidates. Recognise and celebrate employee contributions publicly to boost morale and reinforce a positive employer brand image both internally and externally.  

Top tip: Make it easy. A simple way to get your team to be brand ambassadors is by asking them to like or reshare your company's posts across their social channels. You could also take photos across your venue of them and the team at work and encourage them to post a picture of themselves on the job on their own social accounts.  

Measure and iterate

Regularly measuring key metrics such as employee satisfaction scores, turnover rates, and recruitment effectiveness will allow you to monitor the impact of your employer brand strategy. Request feedback from employees and candidates that you’re interviewing through surveys or focus groups to identify areas for improvement and make necessary adjustments to your strategy year over year.  

Having data at your fingertips, such as feedback about candidate experiences, employee retention rates and reasons for staying or leaving the business are vital to share as you continually revisit your overarching Employer Branding strategy.

As your company objectives shift, be sure to evolve your employer brand strategy to match it... Yes, it will take you back to the beginning of the employer brand strategy process, but it will ensure you attract and keep the right talent as a business evolves.

Top tip: Every time you roll out a new Employer Branding initiative, make sure you capture real time feedback to see if it’s making a positive impact on your employee and candidate experience, that way you can learn and iterate on the go.  

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Wondering how to weave these key initiatives into an effective employer brand strategy for your hospitality business?

Here's your 7 step checklist to get you started: 
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1. Start by delving deeper into your organisation's target audience and overarching goals. Align your strategy with your business's core needs for maximum impact.

2. Engage with existing employees and potential candidates. Understand what drives them at work and pinpoint areas where you can enhance their career journeys that are unique to what other employers offer.

3. Craft your Employee Value Proposition (EVP) to resonate with segments of candidates in the market that your brand is trying to attract and retain.  

4. Invest in improving the employee experience and refining the candidate journey. Regularly showcase these experiences to the world, highlighting what sets your organisation apart.

5. Empower your team to become brand advocates, amplifying your employer brand organically.

6. Continuously gauge and improve employee satisfaction metrics to ensure ongoing improvement.

7. Above all, resist complacency. Evolve your employer branding strategy to surpass expectations year over year.

Follow this simple recipe to create a compelling employer brand that attracts, engages, and retains top talent, ultimately driving business success and delivering exceptional experiences that customers will continue to come back for.