The Impact of eLearning on Employer Branding

Position yourself as a home for employee development with a strong learning platform. 

Finding the right people for your workforce is almost always easier when, instead of having to hunt, the candidates come to you. But the job market is a noisy place, and candidates have to sift through an enormous amount of information to pinpoint their perfect fit. To speed the process along, it helps to have a clear, compelling value proposition—a way for prospective employees to quickly pick up on who you are and why they’d love working for you. Designing that message is the ultimate goal of employer branding.

Other concepts exist that attempt to capture your organization’s values and overall vibe—company culture, for example, or corporate brand. If “culture” describes the way employees engage with one another, and “corporate brand” captures the way your organization engages with customers and the world at large, then “employer brand” is all about the way your organization engages with its employees. Your reputation as an employer, the benefits you offer, and firsthand accounts of the employee experience at your workplace all play a role in your employer brand.

As a popular employee benefit, it’s no surprise that training would help shape your employer brand, but the reality goes even further. A strong learning and development (L&D) strategy backed by the right technology can boost your employer brand in nuanced, far-reaching ways. 

If you’re not investing in your employer brand, you’re missing out.

Employer branding is a strategy that organizations should invest in. Curating how your organization appears in the marketplace helps ideal candidates find you more efficiently. You’re more likely to have aligned goals from the start, your interview-to-hire ratio drops, and the odds of a mismatch—resulting in short tenure and quick turnover—is much smaller.

Data from Glassdoor, a prominent employer review site, reveals the concrete benefits of investing in employer branding:

• 68% of Millennials, along with 54% of Gen Xers and 48% of Boomers, say they visit an employer’s social media specifically to get a sense of their employer brand.
• A strong employer brand can reduce cost per hire by as much as 50% while a weak or negative one can increase it by as much as 10%.
• Actively investing in employer branding can reduce turnover by as much as 28%.
• By contrast, nearly 30% of job seekers have, at some point in their careers, left a job within 90 days—a symptom of a mismatch between employer brand and employee goals.

Three key factors make up an employer brand.

Harvard Business Review breaks the concept of employer brand into three component parts:

1. Reputation: This is the public perception of your organization and what it offers employees. HBR further separates reputation into the “three C’s,” career catalyst, culture, and citizenship.
   
   Organizations determine for themselves the emphasis they want to place on each “C,” and those variations are part of what might attract a candidate with matching goals (or divert one whose goals are different). Career catalyst refers to personal development opportunities and advancement. Culture, as we mentioned earlier, captures specifics of the work environment and how employees relate to each other. And citizenship covers community and global impact. 
2. Employer value proposition (EVP): In the give and take of employment, EVP encompasses what employees are expected to deliver, and what they’ll receive in return. A fast-paced job might demand a lot of energy and working hours, but in return, provides top-notch benefits and a high salary. Another role may offer a better work-life balance, but with less comprehensive insurance. Every candidate has their ideal balance in mind, and it’s your responsibility to be transparent about what you offer, so they can make an informed decision. 
3. Employee experience: Your reputation and EVP make a statement to job seekers about what it’s like to work for your organization. Does the actual employee experience deliver on those promises? Genuine employee answers can cement or undermine your authenticity. 

Elearning touches every part of employer brand.

The job of an employer brand is to state your case to prospective employees: “Here’s why you’ll want to work with us.” We’ve talked before about how development opportunities are a popular benefit that can draw in top talent, and that’s one way an investment in elearning contributes directly to your employer brand. But there are other, less obvious ways that elearning can burnish your brand, and at the same time, help you deliver on the promises your brand makes.

Reputation

Financial investments and a well-developed strategy shows candidates where you spend your money and time, which is to say they’re a strong indicator of your priorities as an organization. Investing in an elearning platform emphasizes your role as a career catalyst. What’s more, it displays your commitment to a culture of learning: a data-driven environment of continuous improvement and opportunity.

Employer Value Proposition

As a benefit, development opportunities are in demand—young workers value them more highly than even paid time off.* Promising learning opportunities is a surefire way to attract motivated candidates. 

The structure of your L&D strategy, however, can also add weight to your EVP. Explicit career paths reveal your preference for promoting from within, and assure candidates that they’d have a route for advancement within your organization—a valuable goal in and of itself, and a sign that you’re aiming to retain employees for the long term.

Employee experience

As well as improving job performance, L&D improves employee satisfaction and retention. Elearning (as opposed to traditional, in-person training) makes the benefits more broadly accessible through alternative learning formats and leading-edge technology. More accessible learning means broader employee satisfaction.

Happy employees help your brand most, however, when they can spread the word. A key tool for strengthening your employer brand is equipping your employees to be brand advocates: on review sites, on social media, and in other public venues. Fortunately, elearning can help with that too. It reinforces organizational culture, keeping everybody aligned on the same messaging. And in the same vein as any other knowledge, an elearning platform can host resources for employees on representing the brand.

Find your people with the help of the right elearning tool.

If learning and development is a core part of your employer brand, you need a robust framework to support your strategy. Pinnacle Series offers an expansive library of regularly updated training materials, surrounded by a suite of customizable tools that let you build the learning environment that’s right for your organization.

With Pinnacle Series, you have the resources you need to position yourself as an L&D leader—and to deliver on it. To dig deeper into what Pinnacle Series can do for your employer brand, request a demonstration today.

* “The American Upskilling Study: Empowering Workers for the Jobs of Tomorrow” (Gallup/Amazon, 2021)