Decades of marketing best practices dictate that effective external branding is essential for connecting with customers, enticing prospects, and creating lasting brand affinity. While corporate and product branding is critical to business marketing, few companies extend the same urgency to employer branding.
What is employer branding? It’s how a company positions its value not only to end users or consumers but also to prospective employees seeking opportunities to join the team and existing employees who can serve as effective evangelists.
Companies often pay more attention to crafting a compelling external brand while neglecting their employees' critical role as brand ambassadors, leading to a disjointed and inauthentic brand experience. That’s why the Harvard Business Review stated that employer branding “is no longer simply a concern for recruitment marketing; it is also a key component of effective organizational leadership.”
A strong employer brand attracts top talent and enhances employee engagement, retention, and advocacy. However, many companies fail to align their employer brand with their external brand, creating inconsistencies that can undermine both brands' effectiveness.
Today's competitive talent landscape demands that employers effectively dovetail the company’s external branding with its employee branding, giving employees the brand language and experience to become effective brand ambassadors who are deeply connected with the company’s purpose and values.
According to a LinkedIn study, companies with a strong employer brand can reduce their cost-per-hire by up to 50% and have a 28% lower employee turnover rate. Another survey by Glassdoor found that 86% of employees and job seekers consider a company's reputation and values before applying for a job. These statistics highlight the importance of a cohesive brand experience that resonates with employees and customers.
Optimally, your internal brand supports employees and helps them become effective and knowledgeable advocates. To achieve this, employees need clarity about the company as an employer and must understand what is being communicated to the outside world as a market-facing brand. Those two things need to feel connected and integrated. Without this perspective, employees may erode the brand’s power in their everyday interactions with the outside world—from casual conversations to social media posts.
I often work with business-to-business consulting and purpose-driven companies, where this connection is essential. In professional services, we are marketing people—their expertise, minds, and relationships—and that will not resonate if the consultants who work side-by-side with clients seem at odds with the marketing brand. Similarly, your authenticity will be questioned if your external brand hinges on purpose and your employees do not have the insights and tools to express that purpose.
Effective employer branding requires transparency, storytelling, and involving employees in the external brand narrative. Organizations often silo employer branding under HR without integrating it with marketing, which can undermine both brands. To create a cohesive brand experience, leadership must purposefully connect employer and external branding efforts across teams.
Here are a few tips for constructing a compelling employer brand narrative:
Create connections between internal and external branding.
Employees are the living embodiment of a company's brand. Their experiences and engagement directly shape how customers and stakeholders perceive the organization.
Employees often choose to work where they connect to the over-arching brand. They will perform best and feel loyal when they buy into—and ideally feel passionate about—the brand facing the market. For employees to be authentic brand ambassadors, the internal and external brand narratives must align. Inconsistencies breed confusion and inauthenticity. Integrate the HR/internal communication and marketing communication functions to create a cohesive employee and customer experience.
Break down silos to build trust.
In some organizations, the employer brand is managed exclusively by HR without involving the marketing team. The external brand does not consider the employee experience. Breaking down silos between HR and marketing can lead to a more cohesive and powerful employer brand and a more authentic external brand. When these two teams collaborate effectively, they can create a unified narrative that resonates with current employees, potential recruits, and the market. This collaboration not only enhances the external perception of the company but also fosters a sense of unity and common purpose among internal stakeholders.
There is no one answer to structuring this unit. For example, a marketing and internal communications staff member can be assigned as a partner to HR, or a communication professional within HR can explicitly partner with marketing.
Be transparent and authentic through storytelling.
Employees want to feel valued in their organizations. It's important to them that their contributions are recognized and appreciated. If the company doesn't see them as part of the value chain, how can they fully commit to representing its purpose and values? It's not just about a job on paper; it's about embodying the company's purpose and mission.
Storytelling is a powerful tool for communicating an employer brand because it engages people emotionally, making information more memorable and impactful. It helps to connect the audience to the message, making it easier to internalize and remember the information. Additionally, storytelling can be used to illustrate complex ideas in a more relatable and understandable way, making it an effective tool for communication and brand advocacy.
For example, I have developed a company’s internal brand and values story series that takes employees from the foundational experience to the present and then points everyone toward a familiar North Star. These encompass the internal culture and the external brand as a cohesive narrative.
Conduct brand advocacy workshops.
Once these brand narratives are in place, brand advocacy workshops bring the brand meaning directly to every employee. When I conduct these sessions, I include a storytelling component so the employees can effectively layer their experiences on top of the brand message. This empowers them as true brand advocates, both internally and externally.
Plenty of employees may believe in the organization's purpose. They could be enthusiastic brand champions, but they don’t have the tools to describe their experiences in alignment with the organization's mission. These workshops provide the means to internalize and compellingly verbalize their commitment to the company.
Think, act, and speak as one organization.
The word organization tells the story: we will perform better as employers and marketers when we recognize that we are one organism. An organism requires the integrity of all its parts and system to function at its best. When it comes to employer branding, successful integration is essential.
The structure of that integration may vary from one organization to another. What matters is that those responsible for employer and market-facing brand, internal and external communication, focus on how they work as a team rather than on who bears ownership. They understand a common and cohesive story. They achieve shared results.