Employer branding is essential for any business looking to recruit talent but especially important for tech businesses in Australia. According to the budget projections released by the Australian government in May, borders are likely to remain closed until mid-2022.
There are currently too many tech jobs and not enough workers to fill them. With the borders remaining closed, any hope your business might have had about skilled migrants coming in to fill your roles will now have been extinguished. So, what does this mean for your tech business?
You need to start focusing more on employer branding in your recruitment. And you need to keep that branding simple and genuine.
Employee value propositions are becoming more important. But these value propositions need to be authentic and present your tech company as an authentic business. Authentic might be a word you are tired of hearing. It has lost some meaning over the years as it has been thrown around by brands, recruiters and marketers.
By authentic, we mean that you need to be honest. Honest about who your brand is, what you value and how you treat your employees. Now more than ever it is fast and simple for candidates to find information about your brand. Airbrushing and fakery are quickly sniffed out by jobseekers and will deter candidates from applying to your role.
Tech companies have a history of not prioritising the needs of their employees logically. Ping pong tables and bean bag chairs may give your office the ‘cool’ vibe you are looking for, but are they really what your employees want?
You can keep the ping pong table or even add in a foosball table but there are some areas of your employee values propositions you need to prioritise before you start thinking about these things.
You should approach employee value propositions by looking at Maslow's hierarchy of needs. This states that there are five areas of human needs that dictate a person's behaviour. These are physiological needs, safety needs, love and belonging needs, esteem needs, and self-actualization needs.
Creating effective employee value propositions is simple. In fact it is so simple that when recruiters or HR managers do it well, they think they are doing it wrong because it is so easy.
Tech companies in Australia think it's all about the platitudes. The branding for employees does not go beyond the surface level. Businesses focus on the fancy office, the nice decor and don't realise this will never be reason enough for someone to join your team, and it definitely won't be a good enough reason for them to stay with your business long term.
You should be thinking about branding with integrity. What makes your business unique? And what do you do for the employees that make you a great company to work for? This can be simple things like your policies around inclusivity or sexual harassment in the workplace, that will reassure candidates your office is a safe place to work.
You can show that you have great communications within your team, and regularly seek feedback from employees about ways that your project management can be improved to make their lives easier. These are the types of things that candidates value over having a ping pong table.
Recruiting top talent in tech is tough right now. There are simply not enough skilled workers to fill all the vacant roles. You need to use employee value propositions as a recruitment tactic and approach creating them without overcomplicating things and instead focusing solely on what your employees need.
Despite being in business for over two decades, Phocas’ product launch cadence is still very much like a hot new startup. Engineers get to learn something new every day while exploring new tech stacks while working to fix a lot of ‘world’s first’ problems and assessing the latest technology available to improve existing products and create new ones.
Whether you’re looking to switch roles, advance in your career, or just looking for a change of pace - this article is for you.
You don’t need to look further than the news to know that there’s a lot of pressure on employees in tech… Burnout, the great resignation, tech valuations… It’s a lot. And showing your team some love can make a big difference at times like these.