In senior living, employer branding is just as important as general branding for your ideal residential audience. Finding, attracting, and retaining top talent has become increasingly more difficult in recent years.
So..when was the last time you looked at your employer branding elements to make your company a top place to work in senior living?
But first…What is Employer Branding?
According to Hubspot, “Employer branding is the reputation you have as an employer among your employees and the workforce. It’s also how you market your company to job seekers and internal employees.”
You may be asking a follow up question which is… ”What makes up my employer brand as a senior living operator?”
Your employer brand is simply just an extension of your overall brand. However it’s geared towards candidates you want to hire instead of customers or prospective residents.
As an organization, you may be very clear on the goods and services your communities offer your residents. But, what about what it offers to prospective employees?
As a senior living marketer, it’s just as much our job to maintain your overall brand, as it is to help maintain the organization’s employer brand. This means “employer branding” falls under that umbrella of senior living marketing.
With all of that said, let’s take a closer look at employer branding. We’ve organized some information to guide you through understanding your employer brand and why it should matter to your senior living organization.
In this blog we will cover:
- The Who, What, When, and Why of your Employer Brand
- Getting Started Building your Employer Brand
- Embracing your Employer Brand Messaging
- Making the Most of your Careers Page
- Gaining Deeper Insights with Google Analytics
- Don’t Forget your Employer Reputation
In each section, we give you quick tips for taking your employer brand to the next level.
Who is my employer brand for?
The obvious answer is… Job candidates of course! But there’s more to it than just attracting new talent…
The less obvious answer is…your employer brand is for current employees.
Imagine a current rockstar team member who loves their job sees that job posting. What if they have a friend or colleague who would be interested in serving in your community?
If your current team member is loving their job and engaged with your employer brand, the likelihood of them referring the open role to their friend is high.
The referred potential rockstar most likely will go to check out the careers page to see about open positions they might be interested in.
No matter which category of employee (present or potential), your employer brand doesn’t stop there.
One of the most unexpected audiences who are looking at your employer brand… prospective residents and families.
Prospective residents and families are looking over every detail when it comes to making their move. They often will look at overall staff satisfaction and retention rates as a sign of the care a loved one will receive at a community.
It’s not uncommon for a prospective family to check out the careers page on the community’s website to see if the community’s employees seem engaged and satisfied.
In all of these audiences for your employer brand, the next question is…what will they find when they get to the careers page, job listings page, or see on those job board reviews?
Why Do Senior Living Employer Brands Matter?
Attracting top talent in the senior living industry has become critical to keeping your organization’s doors open and able to build census.
The team you hire takes care of the residents in many different ways. They are the front line to your resident experience and care. So, having a solid employer brand is important for recruiting and retaining team members.
Retaining your current talent pool is a lot less expensive than hiring new employees. But sometimes that can be challenging when competing with other communities and related industries all vying for the same talent pool.
When Is The Right Time to Create an Employer Brand?
Um…Yesterday!
But don’t freak out if you haven’t considered this yet.
The good news is that you actually already have an employer brand. Whether you’ve put energy and resources into refining it, promoting it, and maintaining it or not, there is always an opportunity to make your employer brand more robust and attractive for job seekers.
Plus…your employer brand can help you stand out for retaining existing team members.
Getting Started With Your Employer Brand
To get you started…Give some thought into what makes your community a unique place to work. Consider surveying your current team members.
Ask specific questions related to their job satisfaction and why they are proud to be a part of your team. Take into consideration the job, the role, the department, and the location. What a marketer thinks is unique about their job, is going to differ from what an environmental services team member or caregiver has to say.
Compile the answers to team member surveys into your employer branding messaging.
When it comes to creating your employer brand messaging…be honest. Make sure what you are saying about your employer brand is the truth and not embellished storytelling to just attract candidates.
Candidates know that a job is going to be work, so making your community seem all fun and games (think ping pong table and pizza parties) is unrealistic, and frankly, not what candidates are looking for in an employer.
Embracing Your Employer Brand Messaging
Now that you have a clearer message for your employer brand, it is important to get that message in front of your ideal candidates.
First, start with your website. This is likely one of the first places a potential employee will be looking once they find an opening that they are interested in applying for.
Having a dedicated “Careers” page that is easily accessible on your website is imperative. (Ideally, a clear link to your careers page is above the fold on the home page). We will look deeper into this section of your website in the following section.
Next, look at your job boards. Indeed is one of the top job boards for recruiting new talent. They make it easy for you to build your employer brand as well as post jobs and search for resumes through their robust database. Indeed features a “Snapshot” section, which breaks down the work wellbeing that employees experience as well as a section about the CEO. You’ll also want to build out the “Why Join Us” section. This is where you can post photos, videos, news and updates, links to social media, employment-related accolades as well as mission and vision statements.
Finally, review your social media channels- specifically, LinkedIn. This is the top social media site for professionals at all stages of their career. Your LinkedIn page is an excellent place to tell your employer branding story.
In all of these areas, your employer branding messaging should be showcased front and center. In the following sections we will dive deeper into the different parts of your employer brand messaging as it relates to your website.
Making the Most Out of Your Careers Page
Your careers site is the first place to start. Qualified and engaged candidates will take a critical look at this page when considering if they want to apply or work for your community. Candidates will quickly leave, if the page doesn’t give them what they’re looking for.
When it comes to your website and the “Careers” page. We’ve assembled some key employer brand messaging ideas that will showcase your community brand, community culture, and overall organizational values.
So…what are qualified and engaged candidates looking for on a Careers page?
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- Values and Mission – If you want to attract top talent, it’s extremely important that you spell out your organization’s values and mission.
- Culture – Your organization’s culture should be thread throughout everything that you do, especially in every day operations. You can communicate your culture regularly by posting on social media (ever seen a careers-specific Facebook page? They exist!), and updating your careers page with any employee-appreciation or culture-boosters that take place in your community.
- Benefits – you’ll want this to be a comprehensive list of benefits with any details or stipulations spelled out. Many candidates will not apply for a job if the benefits don’t meet their needs. You’ll want to make this section of your website as robust as you can. Benefits can include: health insurance, paid time off, company holidays, 401k or 403b contributions, and childcare options. If your organization has additional benefits not listed here, be sure to include as many as you have, you’re only sweetening the deal for a prospective candidate.
- Ease of Application Process – Can your applicants fill out an entire application from a mobile device? If not, this could definitely be a barrier for some who are exclusively looking for positions from their phone or tablet. Are you asking applicants to fill in items on an application that can be found in a resume? Having a resume parser integrated with your application process can eliminate repetition in the application process for the candidate.
- Life of an Employee – Tell the story of what life is like working for your community through the use of photos, videos, and testimonials from current team members. Let these stories demonstrate the employer brand messaging you’ve been working hard to capture.
Quick questions to ask yourself when you are auditing your careers page on your website:
- Is the Careers Page easy to find from the home page of my website? (Think top right corner, or easy to find in the website footer)
- Is the Careers Page easy to navigate from a user experience?
- Complicated search bars or requiring that the candidate choose a location, can cause confusion on the candidate’s side and can increase your likelihood that they will leave the page.
- Are you listing salary ranges or starting at wages on your site?
- If you are not listing wages, from a competitive standpoint, the community down the street may be. If a job seeker doesn’t see the wage listed, and are applying for multiple jobs, they may decide to look elsewhere.
- Pay transparency is important to include in a job listing, and in a few states in the US, it is required for employers to publish salary ranges in job listings. (Linkedin.com)
- Does the Careers Page highlight what working at our community is really like with photos, videos, and team member testimonials?
- Does an applicant quickly and easily know what to do if they want to apply?
- A call-to-action button, like “Apply Now”, should be readily available to encourage interested applicants to take the next step.
Gain Deeper Insights with Google Analytics
Depending on your hiring process, everything begins on your website. By implementing Google Analytics, you can measure specific recruiting efforts for deeper understanding and insights.
For example, you can see what sites people come from to get to your Careers page. You can see how long visitors spend on your Careers page. You can see where they go after the Careers page. And, you can even set up events that measure application volume.
Since senior living websites often have potential employees and potential residents all coming to the same website to learn more about life in a community, a best practice for your employer branding efforts is to segment out website visitors who come specifically looking for a job.
To do this, consider these options:
- Create a separate Google Analytics profile specifically for your Careers pages.
- Add an option to your web forms that allows candidates to indicate they are looking for ‘employment’.
In many cases, we may see inflated traffic numbers to a community website when the visitors coming to the site are actually going to the Careers page.
Segmenting out employment traffic will give you a better idea of the true conversion rates for sales prospects from overall traffic numbers.
Doing this, should make your conversion rates higher and more accurate- which we all like!
Don’t Forget Your Employer Reviews
Reputation management is incredibly important when it comes to attracting residents to your community. But, your employer reviews and reputation scores matter just as much when it comes to a potential candidate considering an application for your open job position.
Candidates, just like prospects, are checking out your organization’s reputation online. Candidates have sites such as Glassdoor and Indeed where current and past employees can leave reviews of their experience working there.
Glassdoor has a “Give to Get” policy which allows visitors of the site to access certain valuable information only after they have submitted a piece of content based on the visitor’s personal experience at a company or organization. This makes Glassdoor a popular place where reviews get posted by previous employees who are on the job hunt for something else.
Indeed is another place current and past employees can leave reviews, be sure to manage this in conjunction with your job postings.
In some cases, social media sites like Facebook, may capture reviews from past or current team members.
The key is to have a plan for monitoring and managing the platforms where employees can leave their thoughts, feedback, and ratings about working for your community.
Job seekers are absolutely considering the brand’s reputation before they apply for a position at your organization. You cannot forget the power of these employer reviews!
Employee Reviews on Google…
Google is often the first place people look when searching for a job, Once they’ve found where they’d like to apply, Google Business listings may also come into play.
Candidates may also leave reviews on Google as well.
Making sure that you are responding to reviews, of any kind, and note that you will be taking any negative reviews into consideration, this will show prospective employees that you take complaints seriously.
It’s important to manage the reputation of your employer brand by establishing who at your organization is responsible for monitoring your online presence on Glassdoor, Indeed and Google.
Consider Smart Girl’s Executive Guide to Doubling Your Google Reviews in 7 Days
Now what?
Now that you’re aware of who, what, when, where and why behind employer branding, feel free to reach out to the Smart Girl team for help and support to highlight your employer brand on your website.
We can help you with your Careers Page, Google Analytics, Asking for Reviews, and even creating workflows to nurture your talent pool automatically as your hiring process progresses.
Perfecting your Employer Brand is an ongoing process. Start here…but don’t stop!