A recent study shows that 77% of the employers find employee acquisition & retention as a huge challenge. The main reason being increased expectations of job seekers. Candidates read reviews posted online on several platforms and can gather any kind of information about a company they would like to apply for.

This is where Employer Branding plays a major role. It is about building a perception about your organization in a way that impacts your org talent strategy. With the resources available, candidates are constantly evaluating what they want. Authentic Employer branding provides the transparency about company and its culture to help candidates take decisions on finding right job in the right company. One of the aspects of discussion here was the fact that organisation have ignored psychological safety for the longest time without realising the impact of psychologically unsafe workplaces, which could be detrimental.

Authenticity in Employer Branding is about Consistency

Authenticity in Employer Branding can be measured by what percentage the org’s branding matches with the perception of the employees about the company. Companies like Indeed, Glassdoor are playing a critical role in building this authenticity. An effective employer brand is two parts – what you want to tell people as an organisation and what your employees are telling people. And if these two circles don’t meet, then you’re telling an entirely different story to what your employees are saying and creating trouble for yourself. A true authentic experience for employees and job seekers is where you are saying the same thing your employees are saying.

The Accountability for Employer Branding lies on the entire system.

The fireside chat included some interesting discussions.

With gen Z joining the bandwagon, there has been a change in the job seekers’ value system. The organization should first accept the changing value system and be well equipped to cater to the needs of the 4 generations of employees. Be ready to resolve the value conflict. Flexibility w.r.t time, place and manner are the new “Mantra”.

The accountability for Employer Branding lies on the entire system. But strong ownership is required. Branding is not just promotion; it involves the organization’s aspirational thoughts. It should be used to make informed choices and not just to promote or sell jobs.

Employer Branding, we all know is important. But one must use authenticity as a core to what they’re going to talk about mainly because job seekers nowadays are very smart. If we put out something that seems inauthentic, they are going to spot it a mile away. And then it affects their employer brand in ways that they can’t imagine.

Employer Branding involves two kinds of roles:

Role 1: Actual Branding

Role 2: Accountability of Living a Brand

Authentic Employer Branding will continue to play a major role in attracting and retaining the best employees.

To the question on, what changes we are observing in job seekers values that have an effect on how recruitment happens, we had some interesting insights captured in the session. To begin with there is no one consistent value, because different generation are motivated differently. Having said that what has happened is that the old values have remained, and some new values have gotten added and the one virtue that cuts across has been FLEXIBILITY.

Job seekers value flexibility and discretion as one of the biggest drivers at workplaces

Clearly people want to work from a place of their choice, and the time of their choice in in the manner of their choice wherever possible. Also the other value is discretion. Caution has increased, and we haven’t really had them that well, the next generation is not able to kind of understand what discretion is about. So there is a struggle in perception itself really right now. At the end of the day, because of the way work is happening, it still implies that coming, working together, collaborating, discussing together, debating together, fighting together – our values still haven’t significantly changed. And these fundamentals are going to stay as we decode and build authentic workplaces.