The brief always arrives the same way. Leadership wants to "invest in employer branding". The budget is approved, an agency has pitched, and somebody already has a video of people laughing in the lunchroom.
Three months later the careers page looks excellent and turnover has not moved. A campaign never touches the thing it claims to improve.
An employer brand is a reputation, not a message
Your employer brand is not what you publish. It's what your three-year technician types back when a former coworker asks what it's actually like over there.
That conversation happens without you, in a LinkedIn DM on a Tuesday night. You cannot correct it, and it decides whether the person applies.
An agency can write your message. Nobody can write that reply.
Harvard Business Review said it in how to strengthen your reputation as an employer: the fastest route to a credible employer brand is letting your people do the talking, which works only if you like what they say.
An employer value proposition gets verified, not invented
An employer value proposition answers one question: why work here instead of somewhere else?
The instinct is to draft it in a workshop: two hours, the leadership team, four values and a tagline. That produces what leadership wishes were true, not what is.
The test takes a week. Take your three promises and ask ten people across three teams for a real example from the last six months. If they have to reach, you have an aspiration, and an aspiration printed on a wall becomes a debt.
The gap between promise and reality
Gartner asked thousands of employees in 2024 whether their organization consistently delivers what it promises. Thirty-three percent said yes, so two out of three are living inside a gap.
A new hire measures that gap in about three weeks.
None of those lines is a communications problem. All are management problems.
Why a good campaign on a broken workplace makes things worse
If the campaign works, it brings in more candidates with higher expectations, who find the gap faster. You have not reduced turnover, you have accelerated it, and you are paying the cost of a departure on roles you just filled.
Every person who leaves after eight months becomes a credible narrator. They saw the video, they lived the sequel, and their version circulates where you recruit.
Review sites are a symptom, not the battlefield
Somebody will raise Glassdoor or Indeed, usually after a two-star review from a former supervisor, attached to a plan to get more positive ratings.
Resist. Soliciting reviews from happy employees works for about a quarter, then the average drifts back toward reality.
Do two things instead. Respond publicly to every review, good and bad, in plain language with no HR boilerplate. A calm, specific reply tells a candidate more than the review did.
Then treat the recurring complaint as data. If four unrelated people over eighteen months describe the same broken shift-scheduling practice, that is a finding, not a reputation issue.
An employer branding strategy that holds up
Sequence matters more than content. At Inlead RH (inleadrh.ca) we won't touch the external story until the first three are done.
In this order
- Pull voluntary turnover by manager, not by company.
- Read the last twelve months of exit interviews without summarizing them.
- Confirm the salary bands still hold before promising anything.
- Write the employer value proposition from what three teams confirm.
- Publish only what survived the four steps above.
The first three cost nothing but time. Turnover rate by manager tells you where to look, exit interviews what to look for, and the HR self-assessment whether your practices can carry it.
Pay deserves its own line. A promise about growth sitting on top of a salary band three years out of date irritates instead of inspiring. In a mid-sized Quebec market, people compare with someone they know.
What to measure instead
Careers-page followers measure nothing. Four numbers tell the truth:
- Voluntary turnover at 12 months. The distance between what you promised and what the person found.
- Offer acceptance rate. It slips before your retention numbers do.
- Share of hires coming from an internal referral. Nobody refers a friend into a workplace they wouldn't defend.
- One statement, tracked by team: "I would recommend this employer to someone I respect." Ask it in a two-minute pulse, not a sixty-question annual, for the reasons in why your engagement surveys change nothing.
Segment by manager. A company average hides the only place an employer brand is made.
