Employer Branding Gone Wrong: The consequences that HR has to prep for.

Employer Branding Gone Wrong: The consequences that HR has to prep for.

Employer branding isn’t something new anymore. It has become a trend that is taking the corporate world by storm. This is what differentiates organisations from recruiting the right one for the right job to recruiting someone who seems good for the job. It’s the joint collaboration of HR and marketing that turns ones organisation into the dream employer.

While there are many ways and means of employer branding, a modern technique that is been put into practice is recruiting individuals with a large fan base or rather a follower base on social media as employees. Undoubtedly there is going to be more promotion and attention towards the organisation giving access to a large pool of potential and capable employees to recruit. While this sounds like an interesting concept to promote the work culture of one’s organisation, there seems to be quite a few consequences that HR would have to be prepared to face.

  1. This is not going to be cheap. Employer branding is not cheap to begin with. Added to this one would also have recruitment cost involved in this technique. As these influencers usually have an existing follower base and create a demand for themselves, usually the salary scales requested can also be something beyond the current scales.

 

  1. Most often these individuals are recruited for quite prominent roles within the organisation. While they promote the fancy work culture and balance it with their existing social life, there are tendencies that the workload can get stagnated reducing the overall performance as a whole. A solution to solve this would once again require an increase in hiring budgets as new employees need to be recruited to do the same job that is ideally the job role of an existing employee.

 

  1. HR needs to be ready to face the frustration. Its human nature to compare one’s self with others. Hence when some employees are treated differently with flexible working and reduced workload and given more prominence, it is a bound fact that the rest are going to turn against you at some point. Especially when these individuals need to balance an additional workload due to these practices, while they promote a comfortable and modern work environment to the outside world using individuals who actually contribute only partially to the organisation’s actual performance.

 

  1. The misconception of employer branding. The idea of employer branding in the first place is to showcase the work culture through indirect means in order to attract potential employees. Ideally one does not pay directly to do this task alone rather invest on some other activity and use it for employer branding. Thinking about it, what happens in this technique is specifically hiring an individual with the motive of promoting your organisation and this becomes no less than hiring a brand ambassador for advertising rather than making your own employees to represent the organisation. Hence clearly moving away from the ideology.

 

Everything has its consequences. But HR knowing to be the target of every organisation needs to always think twice and weigh down the pros and cons of any actions. Initiatives might seem interesting and attractive but it all boils down to basic principles and human nature and the responses obtained at the end of the day.

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