Employer branding.

You may have heard the term thrown around, but what does it really mean and why should you be doing it?

In short, employer branding is about marketing your company and what working with you would be like. It is taking the value and ethos of your company, and trying to convey it to the world.

And creating an employer brand, particularly through socials, should be a key component of your Gen Z attraction strategy.

So here’s how we’ve gone about building our TapIn employer brand:

1. Established our core values

You cannot build something out of nothing.

So before you start building your employer brand, you need to ask, what is it made up of? What are the core values of your company, what do you prioritise?

You should hopefully already have the answers to these questions.

When it came to TapIn, this was fairly easy. Some of our central values are inclusivity, flexibility, authenticity, and humour. We believe an environment that is welcoming and workable for everyone is one where people are able to thrive and do their best.

Having these values is one thing, but being able to follow through on them is another – and it is key for employer branding. Gen Z looks for companies that are authentic, that can show their actions rather than just their words.

Therefore, some of the things we do are have both flexible hours, remote working, and a four-day work week.

Our team can choose to start and end at times that best fit their schedule and productivity as long as they complete their 8 hours working each day, with a 1-hour lunch break. It is also possible for them to shift some of their hours in between days, so if they work overtime they can take it back another time.

We have also recently introduced the four-day work week, which allows employees to have their Friday off. We find this has been incredibly motivating and also has helped to maintain our employees’ staff and general well-being.

Lastly, we have purposely cultivated a more casual working environment. We are remote, there are no specific dress codes for being on camera, and we just want everyone to come to work as they are. We found that the ability to connect to one another, to get to know one another and break down the traditional idea of corporate professionalism creates a more inclusive environment and improves our ability to work as a team.

2. Socials, socials, socials

So we have all these values, we have the actions to back them up – now we need to demonstrate them.

Your employer brand has to be conveyed through somewhere, and the channel you choose should depend on who you are trying to attract. As a Gen Z company, our target audience lives on social media like Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.

Therefore, this is where we cultivate our brand.

We do this by posting team content that demonstrates these values in actions. This can be anything from videos of the team being taught a TikTok dance over Teams to videos of the team failing a quiz that was made about the team themselves. Through content like this, we can show the culture of our team as well as our values of authenticity and humour.

We also have a series of ‘meet the teams’ where each member of the team is introduced, a fun photo and their avatar is shown, and they answer a few questions about themselves. This is a key way for us to brand ourselves as a people-focused company, and giving an idea of the people that work with us gives a brilliant insight into the personality of the brand itself.

These may not seem like massive actions, but slowly they build together to create a picture of what life at TapIn is like.

And that is the best way to build an employer brand.

3. And how has this worked out?

Well, let’s look at the numbers alone.

In the last year and a half, we have grown our team from 3 people to 16 people. And this will only continue to grow – we are projected to hire a further 4 more people before the end of the year.

Our following has also grown on social media. Our LinkedIn page alone has around 2,350 followers and 500 of those followers have been gained in the last 6 months. Our engagement has also increased significantly during this time.

And we’ve just been nominated for an award for our employer brand in the 2022 In-House Recruitment Awards!

So it’s worked pretty well for us so far.