How to Make Your Brand Appealing to a Skilled Workforce
Any business is going to want the best and brightest employees to help them carry out their operations, but not every business is going to want to do the legwork involved to realistically get to that point. It’s obviously going to be preferable to simply hire people who already have everything that you’re looking for, but you have to flip the script and ask yourself what you would be offering these people.
You always have the option, instead, of training your workforce from within and cultivating them, but even that requires you to make your brand an appealing home to people looking to develop a career in this area.
Offer Training and Development
The most appealing brand for many prospective applicants will be one that is capable of taking them higher. It’s natural that you’re going to be looking at this process from the perspective of your business, but you have to understand that simply providing a salary won’t be enough for a lot of employees. Nobody wants to be stuck in a dead-end job, after all, and that means you have to be prepared to offer them something more.
The Training Itself
Training is something that can come in a few different forms. It might be that you offer a certain allowance for training, which then enables your staff members to select the different areas they would like to receive it in – letting them manage which course or event they sign up for. Alternatively, it might be that you offer specific courses based on the kind of skills you’re looking to develop, which can help to draw the candidates who are also interested in nurturing those specific skills.
Another option is for you to offer training (or perhaps further training) through more hands-on experience with industry standard tools. After all, if the people that you’re hiring are looking to develop their skills in this area, few things will be able to do that than a direct engagement with the core of what this line of work consists of. Tools like concrete batching plants then become not only ways for your business to perform its best practical work but also a potential on-boarding practice.
Higher Positions
Once this training has been accomplished, it’s important that you have higher positions available for your staff to work into. This can provide them with an adequate incentive to not only carry out all of the training that you have on offer but also to stick around specifically with your business rather than head elsewhere. After all, if they feel as though they’ve got nowhere left to go, why not look for a job somewhere they can put these newfound talents to good use? If your brand is instead willing to promote into these roles from within, you showcase multiple positive traits at once. You not only demonstrate your willingness to let their hard work and training pay off, but you also show your team that you trust them enough to give them more responsibility through delegation.
A Unique Direction
People might also find themselves more interested in jumping on board with your brand if they feel as though they’re contributing towards something special. For those who are looking to develop their skills, this kind of business might not be the right fit – but for those who are looking to put what they’ve learned over the years towards something they’re passionate about? This kind of strong brand identity might prove to be incredibly helpful.
Avoiding Individuality in Name Only
The risk is that you’re ultimately coming up with this kind of reputation simply to reap the rewards – meaning that your personality ultimately becomes more transparent and flimsy, something that could backfire. If you are in a field that’s very practical, such as construction or manufacturing, you might feel as though you don’t have much room to maneuver here. You need to provide what the people want, and in order to get results that are consistently competitive, you might find that you don’t have much framework to work within. This restrictiveness can even extend to how you design your brand identity – unwilling to act in such a way that might be off-putting to the masses.
How Does It Relate to Them?
For your employees, there is a good chance that they’re going to be more interested in this direction of yours if it relates to them in a particular way. This link doesn’t have to be overtly strong, such as in the prior example of a qualified and skilled worker in the industry wanting to put their experience towards a cause that they’re passionate about. However, understanding exactly what it is that you’re offering prospective employees can help you to lean into that when it comes to your marketing and job listings. If you’re hoping to recruit only the best for a particular role, you have to be aware that they’re going to be in demand – and that means you’re not in such a position of power as you would be with a job that has many more applicants.
What Does Your Reputation Say?
The willingness of these types of employees to apply for a job with your company in the first place might then ultimately be dependent on what kind of reputation you’ve managed to acquire over your years in the industry. Again, it depends on what kind of applicants you’re trying to attract. If you’re a business that’s relatively new or small, it might be that you’re adopting a tone of working together to improve an aspect of the industry or even in a different area like the environment. However, if you’re more established, it might instead be about cultivating an image of professionalism and what you can offer the applicants in question.
Developing a Reputation
The question, of course, is getting any kind of reputation in the first place. In some ways, it’s something that’s quite similar to the tone of voice of your brand or the personality that you develop, but the issue is that it’s not something you can just decide for yourself. The reputation of a brand is instead formed by opinions and experience, and as much as you might want your own brand to be thought of in a certain way, the reality might be that the results tell a very different story. You have to understand what kind of image you’re trying to project, and that means that you can then work into it through taking the right actions – it’s a process that takes time.
A Reputation for What?
Going back to the previous example of being a business that makes environmentalism something that’s at the forefront of their ambitions – your actions are going to be doing a lot of heavy lifting here. This can be especially difficult if you’re operating in an industry that’s known for creating a lot of emissions, for example, as the tools that you use are inevitably going to be skewed in that direction. Deviating from this might be something that is risky in some areas, but it can showcase to your audiences that your statements about your intentions are real, and that can also help you to avoid allegations of greenwashing.
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