An employer brand is not just another brand

The most confusing part of the term “employer brand” is the word “brand.” Because developing your employer brand isn’t about creating a new brand. It’s not the HR department splurging on an ad campaign. It’s not a problem that can be solved with a video and some new T-shirts.

Your employer brand is your existing brand, and it must be accountable internally. It’s how you use it to guide your recruitment, evaluation, and retention processes. It’s the consistency between what you say on your website and what happens during your annual performance reviews.

If you currently feel the need to work on your employer brand, it’s a good idea to start by identifying the root of the problem you need to address.

There are three potential sources to consider.

1. Your brand is weak.

Employer branding is the version of your brand that speaks to your employees. But if your brand has nothing to say, good luck getting the message across.

Vague positioning and vague corporate values are often the first things that need to be addressed. Obvious concepts like excellence, integrity, commitment, trust, honesty, and collaboration (and many others) pose two problems:

1. Your competitors all say the same thing.
2. The terms are completely subjective anyway.

That was the part that was supposed to convince me to choose you, but it seems like you outsourced it to a consultant who generated it using Gemini.

If you’re having trouble creating an appealing value proposition for your team, go back to your overall proposition and flesh it out further. Authenticity always helps, as the example of Shopify shows.

“We’re Shopify. Our mission is to make commerce better for everyone – but we’re not the workplace for everyone. We thrive on change, operate on trust, and leverage the diverse perspectives of people on our team in everything we do. We solve problems at a rapid pace. In short, we get shit done.”

2. Your principles are for other people.

Ideally, you shouldn’t tell one story to customers and another to employees. You can run a campaign claiming that you’re innovative, but if your employees have to log their hours by hand with a blunt pencil, that’s where the lie ends.

A study conducted by ADP shows that only 28% of employees feel their company lives up to what it communicated during the hiring process. In the realm of promises, few actually keep their word.

So perhaps the problem isn’t with your brand. You may have a compelling story on your hands. But if it’s only true on paper, it will eventually catch up with you.

3. Your processes are lacking.

There’s the form and the substance. You can run a great recruitment campaign and set up a little dog-friendly corner in the office. But that’s just the form. It might work for a while, but sooner or later, you have to address the real issues.

In fact, we’ve just launched a partnership with EPSI for exactly this reason. We know how to present things. But our work is better when it’s based on the work of experts. And that’s exactly who they are!

Recruitment. It’s the first point of contact. The filter. Everything else stems from there. When you think about it, recruiting well is perhaps the most important thing for a company. And nearly half of candidates (49%) walk away if they have a bad recruitment experience. If you recruit poorly, forget about your brand. There’s a more urgent issue to address.

Evaluation. We can say whatever we want on our website, but in the end, it’s the raises and the layoffs that matter. A principle isn’t a principle until it’s cost us dearly. So what are you really evaluating? What behaviors lead to advancement within the company? Internal engagement can rise by 30% when performance metrics are truly aligned with the brand’s values. It’s what’s encouraged on a daily basis that makes the difference—not what’s said once a year at the Christmas party.

Retention. Every company dreams of finding loyal employees who will care about the company’s well-being as if it were their own. But what do they get in return? It isn’t their company, after all. How do you recognize these sustained efforts and this rare loyalty? Once again, there’s what we say… and what we do. Your team is your best ambassador—if you give them the recognition they deserve. Before you think about branding and big campaigns, take a look around your own organization and listen closely. That’s where your true influencers are.

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Employer branding isn’t about window dressing—it’s about consistency. It’s about making sure you tell the same story everywhere, both privately and publicly. It’s also about looking at things with humility and realizing that you may still have work to do as an employer.

If that’s the case, that’s good news.

We know exactly who to call to fix the situation.