Yesterday I was browsing the web, searching for recent articles relating to employer branding. I came across a highly informative survey, which highlights some very interesting statistics.

The International Workplace Survey from Robert Half had some very interesting reflections – for example:

• 68% of worldwide companies lack an employer brand strategy.
• 44% of UK companies see the importance of a brand strategy.
• Worldwide, the responsibility for building the employer brand must come from top management.

This survey states that only a third (32%) of employers across the globe have any formal employer brand strategy in the process of being implemented. Although 20 per cent are planning to execute one within the next two years, over a third (35%) of employers have revealed that they currently have no plans to do so.

With 35% of employers missing a strategy to exploit their employer brand, the recruitment benefit therefore goes to those swift organisations that can develop a strategy, execute the plan, and upgrade their career sites the fastest.

In the UK, however, an ever increasing amount of employers appear to have embraced the concept of employer branding, placing them ahead of their global counterparts. As many as 44% of all the UK HR and Finance Managers questioned stated that their organisation has a formal employer brand strategy in place.

It is the larger companies, those with more than 200 employees, that are more likely to have a formalised branding strategy. In the UK, 69% of the employers with more than 200 staff members have a branding strategy in place, compared with just 23% for companies with less than 50 employees.

What a lot of smaller employers don’t realise, is that creating an employer brand needn’t be such a daunting task. In fact, certain steps can be undertaken by an employer, immediately, without any formal planning needed. Mediums such as HR-SEO (search engine optimisation, e.g. using Google, which is offered for free at employersjobs.com along with their packages), are a highly important step in creating successful employer brand awareness.