are you on the right track to attract talent?
When Randstad started investigating the employer brands of Belgium's largest companies 24 years ago, there was a lot of scepticism in hr circles. People questioned whether this was an hr topic at all. In itself, this was strange, because back in 1997 McKinsey published the study The War for Talent. There is no hr theme predicted so long before that. The initial scepticism has since completely disappeared. Nobody questions the importance of a strong employer brand anymore. And every hr professional knows that this is part of their broad remit, shared or not with other departments in the company.
The way potential employees look at a company does not depend on a few coincidences. A laudatory newspaper article and a hip, inspiring CEO are nice touches. But the labour market stakeholders' perception of your company as an employer is largely based on actual and sustained developments in the company. Communication obviously plays a role, but the general public's opinion is primarily influenced by a company's facts, actions and initiatives. In other words, by how the company does what it does. So each company, within certain limits, influences its own employer brand. However, environmental factors have changed. Companies have become glass houses with the rise of social media. There is no longer a structural difference between internal and external communication. And any company can be swept up in a media storm at any time, sometimes by simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Randstad wants to support companies to improve their employer brand. That is why every year - and this year for the 24th time - we survey the attractiveness of Belgium's largest employers. The Randstad Employer Brand Research and the accompanying Randstad Award have become a fixture on the job market. For the past five years, Randstad has also been doing more than making the information from the research available. We also developed services for companies that want to actively engage with their brand.
As always, this survey covers all large private employers with more than 1,000 employees. We included all large companies operating in Belgium in the study. This year we are talking about 179 companies.
