How to Craft an Employment Brochure

Organizing company benefits into a well-written brochure format can help you stand out to prospective employees

How to Craft an Employment Brochure

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When you work here, you get a take-home van, cellphone, health care benefits and a 401K. Now be here at 8 a.m. on Monday and get to work.

That was once a common way you might end a job interview. But today, younger employees want the details in writing to review before a commitment. When you told the previous generation of workers their benefits at the job interview, they generally understood what they were getting and saw its value. The younger generation feels that those benefits are a baseline for employment regardless of their industry or where they work. They judge whether they want to work for you based on the details.

These days you have to sell yourself to a prospective employee just as you sell yourself to a customer. You have to clarify the differences between working for, say, $15/hr at the car wash versus the same pay plus benefits at your company as an entry-level employee. Not only that, but you must also show the difference between working at a similar trade shop to working at your business. You must make it feel like it's a career path and not just some job.

You can do all that and stand out to a prospective employee by organizing your benefits into a multi-page, well-written marketing piece called an employment brochure.

Organizing existing benefits

While doing research, you may notice that many of the "new style benefit packages" aren't all that new. Instead, most of these high-tech startups and mega-billion-dollar companies are just organizing benefits that people have been using for years and re-branding them into a talking point within a well-made brochure.

Pay and benefits

Make a “Pay & Benefits” section of the brochure that outlines each type of pay you can acquire at the company: Base Pay, Annual Bonuses, Commission Incentives, Rewards, etc.

Each of these should have a well-written, concise paragraph about how awesome it is. This makes the payment system look tiered and ripe for earning potential.

Health care services

Another trick is to look at the marketing material your health care provider gives you. Take your health care plan and use its marketing to fuse into your brochure with the broad stroke benefits, listed in the same small paragraph format as the “Pay & Benefits.” For example, there could be an entire section about medical coverages with charts about “in and out of network" preventive services, specialists, chiropractic coverages, acupuncture, lab and X-rays, urgent care coverage, etc.

Another section could be prescription drug coverages, telemedicine, dental, root canals, fillings, orthodontic services, vision, disability coverage, health advocacy specialist coverages, etc. Whatever you provide should be briefly detailed and marketed as one huge giant benefit package.

You may laugh and say, “What are you talking about? Most companies around me have had those packages for years; this isn't new!” You would be correct. But most younger people have medical coverage but rarely use it and don't even necessarily know how beneficial yours is. Just like you have a company brochure that tells prospective customers why you are better than the competition, you need to have one that markets your pay and benefits package to an employee.

Rewards and recognition

Throw in a section on vacations, holidays, Employee of the Month awards, Employee of the Year awards, or any other special recognitions you may have. Give each of these items its own bullet point with a small explainer paragraph of the benefits of each.

Retirement benefits

Have a page that focuses on the retirement package you offer. Again, you can steal the bullet points from the marketing material that your financial firm sent over for the program.

Ongoing education and opportunities

Do you have a way to provide ongoing education? What about advancement through more trade-specific certifications? Most employers don't even consider that “ongoing” education, but it is. For example, do you provide your technicians with the opportunity to get their backflow testing license? What about the backflow repairer license? Licensing for DOT gas training or your area's version of certification to work on gas lines? All those should be listed as ongoing training.

Put it in writing

Prospective employees want to go home and explain to their families that they are taking a great job with incredible opportunities and an exceptional benefits package. It is enormously helpful to give them something to take home and go over at the kitchen table.

You don't necessarily have to add new benefits. But you do need to organize what you already provide in order to better “sell” the prospective employee.


About the author: Anthony Pacilla is a registered master plumber for McVehil Plumbing in Washington, Pennsylvania. He has over two decades of experience in the plumbing and HVAC trades, and has a bachelor’s in business and economics from Thiel College.



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