These are the Real Heroes of Your Employer Brand

To create authentic messaging around your employer brand that accurately reflects your culture you must make employees the star of the show. Here's how...

Putting employees front and centre is key when crafting employer brand narratives. 

Make them the hero of the story, showcase them learning and growing from the themes in your employer brand. If you do that, it’s authentic, aligned, and useful to your talent audience.

Today's candidates want an inside look at company culture from the perspective of real employees. They envision themselves walking in the shoes of someone already thriving and growing in the role. Shining a spotlight on actual employees and their journeys makes your employer brand authentic and compelling.

In-depth research should be the jumping off point for every employer brand project. The aim is to uncover the authentic employee stories and experiences that reflect company values and culture. This intensive research phase involves:

1. Focus groups with both leaders and teams across departments, tenures, and levels. Facilitated discussions are designed to draw out perspectives on culture, satisfaction, growth opportunities, and more.

2. One-on-one interviews diving deeper into individual employee stories and career paths, unlocking emotional elements that provide colour and insight into what makes the organisation and its team unique. Ask the right questions and you can strike gold

3. Company-wide surveys gathering quantitative and qualitative data on what employees love about their roles, what keeps them motivated, and what they would share with candidates.

4. Analysis of existing content like employee testimonials and social media that provide clues into potential brand narratives.

Such extensive research should reveal recurring themes and stories aligned to the company's values and purpose.

Building Trust in Your Organisation

Use insights from employees themselves to craft content and campaigns that put them in the hero role. This builds trust and connection with candidates by moving beyond generic claims to showing real culture in action.

When staff are empowered to share what they love about their work, it resonates both externally and internally.

Here’s a number of ideas about how to incentivise teams to advocate for your organisation through helping to create content that resonates with your talent audience. And some tips on making simple but effective  videos.

And don’t forget your former employees. Their experience and their stories can be just as valuable and will resonate on all-important employee review sites such as Glassdoor, Indeed and The Work Advisor. Create a network of valued alumni and make their journey into and out of your organisation part of your employer brand story.

Many huge organisations invest seriously in their alumni experience to create one of the most authentic and believable aspects of their employer brand.

The foundation for an effective employer brand narrative is laid through that research phase to give employees an active voice. Taking the time to uncover genuine experiences and stories allows your culture and values to shine through in employer branding.

Remember, make sure your employer brand is authentic, aligned, and useful to your talent audience.