Most businesses want to present themselves as a great place to work.
Look at almost any careers page and you will see familiar messages: supportive culture, career development, flexibility, collaboration, wellbeing and people being at the heart of the business.
But what happens when the experience inside the organisation does not quite match the message outside it?
That gap matters more than many employers realise.
Candidates have more ways than ever to research a potential employer, while employees can easily compare what was promised during recruitment with what they experience once they join.
Your employer brand isn’t simply what you say about your culture. It is what people experience when they work for you.
Start with the reality, not the marketing
It can be tempting to decide how you want your organisation to be perceived and build your recruitment messaging around that.
A better starting point is to understand what is already true.
Ask your employees what they value about working for the business. Why have long-serving employees stayed? What do new starters notice? What frustrates people? What makes your strongest employees recommend you to someone else?
The answers may not be the polished phrases you would naturally put on a careers page, but they are likely to be much more useful.
Perhaps employees value the accessibility of senior leaders. Maybe they appreciate being trusted to manage their workload. It could be the opportunities they have been given to develop, the stability of the business or the way colleagues support one another when things get difficult.
Those are the things worth communicating.
Be careful with words that mean different things to different people
Some of the most commonly used employer-brand messages are also the easiest to misunderstand.
Take flexibility.
Does that mean employees can work from home three days a week? Flexible start and finish times? Occasional flexibility when personal circumstances require it? Or simply that managers will consider requests?
All could legitimately be described as flexible working, but they create very different expectations.
The same applies to phrases such as:
- “Excellent progression opportunities”
- “People-first culture”
- “Supportive leadership”
- “Great work-life balance”
- “Investment in development”
If you use these messages, candidates should be able to see what they mean in practice.
Look for the evidence
One useful exercise is to take the claims you regularly make about your business and ask:
How would we prove this?
If you say people can build careers with you, where have they done it?
If development is important, what opportunities do employees actually receive?
If wellbeing matters, how does that influence everyday working practices?
If collaboration is a core value, what does collaboration look like when teams are under pressure?
If you describe your culture as inclusive and open, how comfortable are employees challenging decisions or suggesting a different approach?
You do not need a corporate initiative behind every statement.
Often, the strongest evidence comes from the everyday experiences of your people.
Don’t hide everything that is difficult
Employer branding can sometimes become an exercise in presenting an organisation as perfect.
Candidates rarely expect perfection.
In fact, experienced candidates are often more cautious when everything sounds too good to be true.
There is nothing wrong with explaining that a role is demanding, that a department is going through change or that someone joining the business will have challenges to solve.
For the right candidate, those things may actually make the opportunity more attractive.
The important thing is that expectations are clear.
Recruiting someone based on an unrealistic picture may help secure an acceptance. It is unlikely to help retention.
Check whether your managers are delivering the same message
There can also be a difference between the culture an organisation intends to create and the experience individual managers deliver.
A business may promote autonomy, but does every manager genuinely give their people autonomy?
It may encourage development, but are employees actually given the time and opportunity to develop?
It may describe itself as collaborative, but what happens when teams disagree?
This is why employer branding cannot sit solely with HR or marketing.
Leadership and management behaviour are part of the brand too.
If the external message is going to be credible, the experience needs to be reasonably consistent across the organisation.
Listen to your new starters
One of the most useful sources of employer-brand insight is often sitting inside the business already.
Ask employees who joined during the last six or twelve months:
“Is working here what you expected it to be?”
The answers can be revealing.
What surprised them positively?
Was anything different from what they understood during recruitment?
What information would have helped them make a better-informed decision?
What would they tell someone considering joining the company?
This can identify gaps between recruitment messaging and reality before those gaps begin affecting retention.
Your culture will change, so your messaging should too
Businesses evolve.
Leadership changes. Teams grow. Working arrangements change. Benefits develop. Priorities shift.
Yet careers pages and recruitment materials can remain unchanged for years.
That creates another potential gap.
Employer-brand messaging should be reviewed periodically in the same way you would review job descriptions, salaries or benefits.
Ask whether it still reflects the organisation you are today, rather than the company you were several years ago.
The aim isn’t to appeal to everyone
A strong employer brand should not convince every candidate that your organisation is right for them.
It should help the right candidates recognise that it could be.
If your culture is highly entrepreneurial and fast-moving, some people will love it and others will not.
If your organisation is structured and process-driven, that will suit some candidates better than others.
Neither is inherently better.
Problems arise when the external message suggests one environment and employees discover another.
Close the gap before you increase the volume
If you are struggling to attract candidates, the immediate response can be to advertise more widely, increase recruitment activity or invest in employer-brand campaigns.
Before doing that, check the foundations.
Does the story you are telling externally match the experience people are having internally?
Because increasing the reach of the wrong message will not solve the problem.
The strongest employer brands are not necessarily the loudest.
They are the ones candidates believe and employees recognise.
At Bond Williams, we work closely with employers and candidates across the recruitment process, giving us insight into what attracts people to an opportunity, what causes them to hesitate and what influences their decision to stay.
If you are reviewing your recruitment strategy or struggling to attract the right people, speak to us at Bond Williams about what the market is telling us and how your opportunity is being perceived.
