The Power of Strategy

Employer Branding Trends in the Czech Republic 

In the last five years, employer branding has been a frequently used term, much like Bitcoin. Many people talk about it so naturally that to ask what it actually means is tantamount to social suicide. But how did it start and what does employer branding actually mean for Czech employers?

A discipline still underestimated 

Employer Branding is the process of managing to build the best name and position of a company in the labor market. Presenting it to candidates, current employees, as well as former colleagues. It encompasses the company’s image, values and vision. How the employer behaves, what the organization says about itself and how it works – not only with its employees, but also with its customers. 

We can certainly find several nice examples of both small and large companies that have been operating in the Czech market for decades and have naturally built their employer branding since the beginning of their existence, without it being their primary intention. However, the majority of Czech employers underestimate the importance of this discipline in many respects, and one can say they are still at the beginning of employer branding – or keep returning to the beginning due to some wrong steps they have taken. 

The most common mistake large companies make 

It is probably obvious that for companies that have a stable – often-family – management, a well-set vision and a corporate culture within the company, it is easier to present their brand externally to maintain their position in the market in the long term. Examples include Czech companies such as Jablotron or Lasvit that are – not coincidentally – also very successful abroad. One should note that these companies have about a hundred satisfied employees who has worked with them for a long time.

Most companies in the Czech Republic – especially foreign ones – are currently in various stages of introducing employer branding into their practice. Our agency, Comtech CAN has had clients such as Amazon, DHL or Mercedes in its portfolio for several years, and we have been conducting continuous HR-marketing-communication for them. This allowed us to gain insight of the situation of these companies as well as their competitors.

So let us have a look at the companies that need to recruit large numbers of employees. Amazon is one of them. For these companies, employer branding is automatically part of their annual plans and external corporate policy strategies with regard to recruitment. However, due to a number of factors – such as the effort to centralize HR marketing communications across Europe, the multi-level management of HR marketing within the company, the unclear competencies of the responsible managers, and the turbulent times with major macroeconomic changes – the very essence of employer branding gets lost. In practice, employer-branding looks like the company focuses on communicating its values externally to attract as many candidates as possible, but forgets about building the communicated values internally among existing employees. It is important to remember that employer branding must always be approached as a comprehensive strategy.

Still mainly recruiting 

The job market in the Czech Republic has been very tense for a long time. For several years now, the percentage of unemployed people has been at the lowest level in the European Union, so the fight for employees is huge. Most companies therefore tend to use a standard HR-strategy and tactical recruitment communication that primarily emphasizes pay. On the one hand, this is the benefit for which people are willing to change jobs the most. On the other hand, this approach requires higher investment in communication and also creates a spiral of annual salary increase that leads to high turnover.

This is where a good employer branding strategy would work great, and some managers are well aware of it. But they have not yet created the right conditions and procedures to make it happen. This fact is also confirmed by our media research, in which we found that only 17% of the implemented campaigns included some element of the employer branding strategy, while the remaining 83% were simple recruitment campaigns. This shows that Czech companies still have a long way to go. They face the challenge of how to incorporate employer branding into their vision ass well and their actions.