By Jacky Tai

The benefits of a strong employer brand are well-documented.

In the book Employer Brand: Bringing the Best of Brand Management to People At Work, authors Simon Barrow and Richard Mosley cite some of the key benefits of a strong employer brand as:

Cost savings due to lower employee attrition rate. For example, it costs US$3,500 just to replace one employee who makes US$8 an hour.

• Higher customer satisfaction.

The book cites the case of Sears & Roebuck which found that up to 80 per cent of customer satisfaction is accounted for by employee satisfaction.

• Better financial results.

Many studies have found that stronger employee commitment to the company usually translates to higher sales.

All the things mentioned above make perfect sense. The question on every company's mind, however, is: 'How do we build a strong employer brand that can attract and retain high-quality talent?'

Many things have been researched and written about building a strong employer brand, and HR specialists will tell you that these days, among the Gen Y employees, money is not the biggest motivator.

It remains an important component, but it is not the only thing.

HR practitioners that I spoke with over the years have told me that increasingly, Gen Y employees are looking for a purpose in life.

Sense of purpose

To build a strong employer brand that gives people a sense of purpose, you need to make an enemy.

You need to have someone or something to fight.

This is very important because it gives your brand a reason to exist. It gives credibility to your brand.

There are so many companies in the world.

When someone looks at your company, they need to be able to see the purpose for your existence.

If there is no purpose, then they will think there is no reason for you to exist.

The best way to create a purpose for your company is to have an enemy.

If you have an enemy to fight, you have a reason to be around and people will have a reason to join you.

Not everyone will want to join you, but the ones who do are the ones who share your vision and are passionate about what you do.

Human beings just love a good fight.

Give them a good reason to fight for something and they will join you.

It's up to you to decide who you want to fight.

When you are focused on fighting an enemy, attention will be concentrated on you and that means it will dilute the attention given to other companies.

Of course, you need to pick worthy enemies to fight and it would help a great deal if you actually believe that the enemy you have picked is worth fighting.

Your enemy can be another company. Let's say you are an IT start-up.

You believe that you can develop a better computer operating system than what is already available in the market.

Even if you can, it is not enough to attract talented people to join you.

You need to find an enemy to fight.

If you define your enemy as one of the current software giants, that's a good start.

People love to see David take on Goliath - and some might even want to join David.

You should:

• Define who the enemy is
• Define why this enemy is bad
• Define what you are going to do about this enemy

Your enemy can be a problem that currently exists.

Following the IT example, you might have identified that there is a problem facing the majority of SMEs with less than 30 employees.

They are not big enough to have an in-house IT manager.

They are not rich enough to afford an expensive CRM (customer relationship management) system.

They may not even have very IT-savvy people working in the company.

So, the enemy here is actually complexity.

IT systems are too complex for many SMEs to use.

You are here to fight complexity in IT systems.

That's why you exist. People who believe in fighting this enemy will join you.

Deliver results

You need to dramatise that enemy you are fighting.

Make it larger than life.

You need to dramatise your mission.

Make it look like the most important thing in the world.

And once again, it would help if you actually believe in what you say.

Many companies say all the right things but they don't really believe in it.

People can see through you eventually if that is the case.

And most importantly, you need to deliver.

If you say that you are going to fight complexity in IT systems, then make sure that you focus resources on delivering systems that are good, but does not require a PhD in computer engineering in order to operate.

Keep doing this and you will not only attract the right people to join you, but you will start attracting clients as well.

The writer is a principal consultant of StrategiCom (www.strategicom.com) - a brand strategy specialist that focuses on helping B2B companies differentiate themselves.

Jacky has written four books titled Transforming Your Business Into A Brand (2007), Killer Differentiators (2008), Get A Name! (2009), and B2B (2011).

He can be contacted via e-mail at jacky.tai@strategicom.com

This article was first published in The Business Times.