Warren Buffet once said, “it takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.” Your employer brand is your reputation personified. It’s a window into your company, providing candidates, customers, and potential customers insight into what you value and how your treat people. It works in tandem with your public persona – the social capital of how your company is perceived in the press and to the general public.
For financial institutions, building a positive employer brand is imperative if you want to recruit and retain high-quality talent. Online review sites such as Glassdoor are littered with employee reviews detailing cultures where employees are lured into working at a company with promises of wealth and social status, only to emotionally combust from long hours and stress. A recent workplace survey from a group of junior analysts at Goldman Sachs recently made headlines for describing debilitating 95 hour work weeks leading to declining mental health. Among the highlights:
- “There was a point where I was not eating, showering, or doing anything else other than working from morning until after midnight,”
- “My body physically hurts all the time and mentally I’m in a really dark place,” one analyst wrote in the survey.
Financial institutions need this negative perception to change. But the good news is that once you’ve identified a problem, you can work to change it. Through hard work and dedication to improving your employer brand, you can become an employer of choice – a company where top talent fights to get in and sings your praises even if they eventually leave.
Once you’ve become an employer of choice, you’ll gain a financial edge over your competitors. Here are just some of the benefits.
Less recruiting costs
Time is money. Companies with a stellar employer brand don’t have to spend as much on recruiting because they don’t have to work as hard to attract high-quality talent. In fact, LinkedIn research shows that a strong employer brand can help to attract more qualified applicants and improve key hiring metrics like cost-per-hire and time-to-hire.
Easier to hire top talent
Financial services companies are competing for talent with high-profile brands across a variety of industries. A strong employer brand can help you capture the interest of top candidates and stand out from those competitors. Combined with Talemetry, our recruitment marketing suite, your employer brand can attract and engage a pool of candidates – So when you’re ready to hire, you’ll be scheduling interviews while your competition is still sourcing.
Enhanced diversity and inclusion efforts
In our 2020 Recruiter Nation Survey, 36% of recruiters in the financial services industry reported receiving more questions from job seekers about diversity and inclusion (D&I) initiatives than they did in the previous year. This is no surprise as these initiatives have been on a meteoric rise even before the events of 2020. Why? Because not only does a more diverse workforce lead to better employee engagement, acquisition, and overall client service – it moves the bottom line. A 2019 McKinsey study revealed that top-quartile companies for diversity outperformed those in the bottom quartile by 36% in profitability. A strong employer brand showcasing a commitment to diversity and inclusion will attract these diverse candidates and benefit your business for the long term.
Increased employee referrals
Employee referrals are among the most efficient and cost-effective ways to bring in top talent — and employees who are satisfied and proud of their employer are more likely to invite their connections to join them. Having a well-developed employer brand makes current employees proud of their positions. It becomes something to brag about. Current employees will act as ambassadors if they’re proud of where they work. These ambassadors will source their networks and deliver top candidates who they believe will thrive at your company. Plus, once that referral hire starts, they’ll already have someone to help onboard them.
Let Jobvite Help You Build Your Employer Brand
These are just some of the benefits of a strong employer brand. To learn how you can get started creating yours, download our guide. Also, recruitment marketing is just a fraction of our complete, end-to-end suite of products that will help increase efficiency and reduce costs throughout your talent acquisition function. Contact us for a demo today.