So that’s another decade over with. We’ll look back fondly on the 2010’s as That Little Agency came into being, ’way’ back in 2017. So, as we enter 2020 that makes us nearly three. But, we’re not going to start being difficult toddlers, oh no. We’ll keep on being as helpful as we’ve always been, starting with a look ahead into the world of employer branding and some trends we think could be important.

So, grab yourself another cup of tea and let’s see where this goes.

We’ve shared a few prediction pieces in the last few months on LinkedIn and they always generate good engagement. It seems like our readers are as interested as we are in what industry experts think will be coming our way. So, we thought we’d offer our pick of the ones that resonate most, starting with social media usage to support the employer brand.

Social media will remain the top digital channel – and may grow by 70%

As we say in our own posts about social media, you need to be where the conversation is – that is between your candidates and your existing employees. And that’s going to be on Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, maybe Snapchat too. Social media has been growing as an important platform in which to give your candidates a positive and essentially authentic experience of what it’s like to work for you.

Using social media for employer branding is poised to grow by 70% in the next five years say Universum. But not everyone is going to be as good at measuring social media activities to test effectiveness and results. Perhaps that’s why EveryoneSocial predict that social media marketing will be the most in-demand HR skill by 2020, with the second being data analysis.

From this we would say, develop a social media strategy (our blog will help), but also, don’t shy away from getting to grips with the analytics button you’ll see on every social media platform, the data will help you spot what’s working, what’s not and where to re-focus your efforts.

Greater convergence of the employer and consumer brand

Who ‘owns’ the employer brand – HR, marketing or CEO? We’ll stick our necks out here. This argument is getting a little dated. The employer brand is moving into the mainstream and is set to be as important, or even the same thing, as the consumer brand. But, ask CEOs and 60% think they own it, ask HR and 58% think they own it – according to findings by Universum who polled over 2000 global HR professionals and CEOs.

So, better communication between your leadership and HR or employer branding and marketing teams in the development of your brand is the way to help this convergence. The bottom line is that your customers or candidates won’t care half as much – but what will interest them is seeing great work being achieved and people they can relate to doing it – whether you call that your consumer brand or your employer brand.

And, if you still have a CEO who needs a bit of convincing to invest in your employer brand in the first place, you could even send them this article. It might just do the trick.

Measurement needs to change from inward-facing to outward

This is an interesting one. The Universum research found that the top three KPI’s measured that relate to the employer brand are all inward facing. 46% measure the average retention rate, 45% measure new hire quality, 45 % measure the employee engagement level. All perfectly good measures of course. But, external indicators – such as the brand perception were chosen by fewer than 20% of respondents. If you consider how much budget goes on outward facing activities – and ‘just’ the job board budget alone can add up, it’s surprising that not more attention is given to finding what the target market – the ‘customer’ of the recruitment offer after all, actually thinks.

Perhaps the convergence of employer and consumer brand will see a little more focus on researching attitudes and perceptions (which is where we always start our projects). As well as a better grasp of the data that is freely available through Google Analytics, your ATS and LinkedIn, some qualitative data could complete the picture.

In conclusion

So it seems that 2020 is going to be another year dominated by conversations around social media, employer brand and measurement. Just like 2019. And 2018. But perhaps this is the year we stop talking about it, and start actually doing it. Because despite some really encouraging and interesting work being done in 2019, we’ve still a long way to go as we move from transactional recruitment advertising to strategic employer marketing.

Need a little extra help?

We are That Little Agency, we help employers tell their story and we do this by developing award-winning employer brands and careers websites. All designed to help you deliver measurable results. If you feel that you’d like some help, support or even a little chat around selecting your ATS, defining your employer value proposition, developing your employer brand or any aspect of your talent attraction strategy just drop us a line. After all, much of our best work has started with a cup of tea and a biscuit.