Selling employer branding to top management

In order to effectively initiate and execute your employer branding strategy, support from top management is necessary. So how do you get top management interested? Employer branding is a cross-functional responsibility that spans across several functions and areas of expertise, such as marketing, HR and communication. Hence, it is vital to reach consensus and build co-operation internally. Without top management’s active support, effective employer branding may be difficult to execute.

I often see that Employer branding initiatives are often met with deeply rooted skepticism such as it is too difficult to conduct a cost/benefit analysis and measure results. Why should anyone invest in a new project with hard-to-measure pay-off and no solid facts to lean on? Hopefully, yours is the organization where the top management puts emphasis on people strategies. However, people-related initiatives are not alone in being difficult to measure. In fact, many marketing professionals I meet encounter many of the same kind of obstacles and critique. The difference is, however, that marketing professionals have more experience “selling” their ideas and initiatives to others. Therefore, the next time your top management team does not recognize the importance of employer branding, the solution may simply be to improve your sales pitch!