Employer awards build trust with candidates in a way that can set you apart from competitors in the job market. Seeing a “best workplace award” builds credibility when candidates are evaluating your company culture. But if you want your awards to enhance your employer brand and help you recruit more effectively, they need to be promoted the right way, and in the right places.
While you can technically post your awards everywhere, this approach can often be overwhelming and time-consuming. Instead, it’s better to take a more targeted approach to help your recruiters see the best return on investment. To help you keep this strategy targeted, here are 8 places to promote your employer awards to reach talent and strengthen your employer brand.
1. Social media
Jobvite found that 33% of job seekers get their information about an employer’s company culture from social media. You can share content highlighting awards you’ve won on your corporate channels and include awards in your bios. Employees are your best brand ambassadors, so make sure you share the award announcement internally too! Let your employees know how they’ve contributed to company culture, and encourage your employees to share content across their own channels.
You can take this to the next level by sharing employee testimonials and stories that act as proof points. For example, if you won an award for being a best workplace for diversity, you may want to share your award alongside an employee sharing a story about how one of your company’s employee resource groups supported them.
Rally note: Read our article How to Evolve Your Employee Generated Content Using Technology for more help in this area.
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Consulting agency Bain & Company took to Instagram to share its naming as one of the Top 50 Employers for Women.
2. Company website
This is an easy one: place badges representing the awards you’ve won in high-traffic areas on your site. For example, you might place them on your homepage, about page, FAQ page and career site, as these are all places that candidates typically go to find out more about your company.
You can also place these badges on hiring event landing pages and registration pages to highlight to people being directed to those specific pages. It’s about increasing the web presence of your awards across your company website.
Nvidia has a dedicated section for all of their awards on their About page.
3. Careers blog
If you have a blog, posting a press release highlighting a new award you’ve just won is a great content idea. Aside from simply serving as a fresh piece of employer brand-friendly content on your blog, you can do all kinds of other things with a press release including:
- Incorporate SEO keywords and metadata to improve your chances of candidates finding it outside of your website
- Package it for your recruiters to share with candidates
- Promote it across your social channels
- Distribute it to an industry press list to get picked up by other blogs and news sources
Another way to point attention to a new award on your blog is with a Q&A. For example, if you win a best workplace for women award, you can create a series of posts interviewing women sharing their experiences at your company.
The synopsis of a press release from pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim detailing their Top Employer award.
4. Talent network
Your talent network consists of people at various stages of the candidate journey: whether they’re just beginning to consider a career change, doing employer research, applying or interviewing. Seeing that you’ve won an award might be the extra push candidates need to keep going forward with you — especially those in the later research and applying stages, to move from just a talent network member to a full-fledged applicant.
Use your applicant tracking system to identify leads in your talent network and share your employer award announcements with them. At in-person and virtual hiring events where you’re reaching passive talent, this is a great place to highlight your awards as well. If you have a newsletter for your talent network, this is a great place to share it.
An example of the resources that BAE Systems shares with its talent network. You can apply this same format to share awards as you win them.
5. Glassdoor
You’re no doubt familiar with the importance of employer review sites like Indeed and Glassdoor in the forming of candidates’ impressions of your workplace. But one aspect of Glassdoor that is still largely overlooked from an employer branding standpoint is “Company Updates.” Serving as a free status update tool, Company Updates is a way for employers to expand on milestones, news stories, product releases and yes — awards they’ve won. Plus, followers of your company get an email notification every time you add a new post.
A Glassdoor update from Hubspot highlighting their Best CEO in 2021 as rated by women award.
6. Recruiter and candidate reference materials
Some candidates are going to want to know more about your awards than just what is included in the badges on your site. For cases like this, a dedicated resource containing all award information can save the day. This resource can either be internal for recruiters’ eyes only or something that you can share with candidates in follow-up communications for them to go over on their own time.
A one-pager provided to recruiters and hiring managers at ADP to ensure that everything from job descriptions to candidate communication remain consistent and aligned with their new EVP. You can apply this same idea to creating a one-pager for awards.
7. Job ads
Don’t be afraid to include your awards in the descriptions of roles you’re hiring for! In some cases, your awards might be general enough to include all positions. An award in the title or subheading of your job ad is another idea to explore that may help convince a candidate to click your ad over your competitors’.
If possible, try to match open positions with complimentary awards. For example, a “Top Workplace for Innovators” award would be ideal to include in the description of a software engineer position.
In their job ads, Hubspot includes a section going over their workplace awards.
8. Email
Thanks to one-click applications, it’s not uncommon for candidates to now apply first and research later. Because of this, the first email they get from you can often be their first real interaction with your company. Including your awards in this follow-up email is an easy way to help make sure they form the right impression of you.
A smaller detail that can also help is adding awards to your company email signature, as candidates in communications with you will see this on a consistent basis.
Similar to how author Aaron Ross promotes his #1 book award in his email signature, you can promote your employer award.
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When it comes to employer awards, winning them is only half the battle. To make sure they actually benefit you in your hiring efforts, it’s important to promote them the right waythrough any of the methods above.
To kickstart your awards strategy for next year, check out our article 8 Workplace Awards to Strengthen Your Employer Brand!
