Today Is The Day Your Employer Brand Reveals It’s Real Value

Why is an employer brand important?

I am a total employer brand nerd. I talk about employer branding. I write about employer branding. I podcast about it. I sell it. And this question comes up a lot. 

The “standard” answer is that a strong employer brand helps you attract more and better candidates. That it creates a “reason” or set of features as to why people should engage with you to learn more about what it is like to work there. 

This answer sees employer branding as a magnet, a “pitch” to grab attention and create some alignment between what recruiters say and what the ads and content say. 

But that’s not the right answer. Rather, while that reason is true, it is a deeply simplistic way to think about your employer brand.

Some might suggest that your employer brand is a kind of structure, a way of ensuring that the messaging that attracted someone to the open role is what they hear during the phone screen, what they read online in their research, what they see in the interview, and appears in some shape within the offer. 

This answer sees the employer brand as a “north star,” a shared sense of direction that various people in various offices can use to ensure that their unconnected work is aligned in some deep and meaningful way.

But that’s not the right answer either. Again, it isn’t wrong (and I have certainly used that “north star” metaphor myself), but it is incomplete.

For those who like to really get into the weeds, they talk about the power of the employer brand to increase employee retention engagement rates, that knowing “why” someone works there can be re-communicated to the employee to reinforce its original intent in taking the role.

This answer sees the employer brand as a kind of value set, the core concept underlying the passion an employee brings to work every morning.

Again, that answer isn’t right, either.

Now, this isn’t some conceit to talk about your employer brand like blind men encountering an elephant for the first time, each unable to see the big picture and only able to see the facet in front of them.

Your employer brand is hope.

Because your employer is so much more than that. Your employer brand is hope. It is a path to a shared future. It is a north star and a purpose wrapped up in a pitch, but ultimately, it is the fuel that powers your company through a crisis.

And that’s where we find ourselves today. We are in the middle of a crisis we haven’t seen in almost 19 years, where it feels like the world hit the panic button and we are forced to blindly re-write all the rules.

In this world, in these circumstances, we see the real power of an employer brand. Because the brand is how every single person, team, department, office and element within the company sees their now and sees the path towards a better future. It is the glue that connects each person to each other and to their shared direction forward. 

If your brand is all about innovation, innovation is how you survive and thrive when someone flips the table. You create what’s next.

If your brand is about sharing responsibility and work, it will be together that your company navigates the rough waters. You collaborate towards a solution.

If your brand is about authority and prestige, it will be as a leader that each person steps up to keep the company on track. You lead to a better place.

If your brand is about opportunity, you’ll see each person come up with ideas and ways to keep clients satisfied and even finding new ways to serve them. Each person is expected to do more than their part.

Brands are tested in crisis, because the brand is how you survive the crisis. Watch over the next few days and weeks as every company brings out their amazing staff who embody the brand to talk about how they are surviving and thriving. It won’t be the logo, the building, the product, the service or even the leader who’s face you’ll come to associate with the company, but the person who does the work and lives the brand.

Today is when you see what your brand really is and how you can use it to turn a crisis into an opportunity.

That’s the value of your employer brand: it is your map to the future.