# Why employer branding is now essential

- **Episode:** [115](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/115.md) (2024-07-15)
- **Type:** interview
- **Tags:** employer-brand, importance, business-case
- **Time:** 4:38–10:23 (start 278s)
- **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/115?t=278](https://truthliesandwork.com/115?t=278)

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[4:38] Al Elliott: This sounds a bit like a nice-to-have, not an essential. Change my mind
[4:42] David Thompson: Now, if you'd asked me that, if you'd said that maybe 3, 4 years ago, I probably would have said, yeah, kind of is. I think we've changed and people have changed enormously, and it's made employer branding really, you know, a must-have. I think principally employer branding is trying to tap into the emotions of people. Making them feel, you know, making them feel something about working for an organization. In the past, that didn't really used to matter to us much. I think kind of the attraction of talent and the retention of talent was largely based around kind of fairly transactional things. So, is this job near my house? Does it pay well? Does it have some decent benefits with it? After that, everything else was like, yes, that's nice to have stuff
[5:30] Leanne Elliott: Yeah
[5:31] David Thompson: But I think we've changed over the last few years. We've become a lot more emotional. And these days, employees and potential employees are kind of looking for the story as to why they should join you, why you're different, why they should join you as opposed to somebody else. So, in the past, I would have said, yeah, it's a nice to have. Now, I think if you don't have it, you are really going to struggle to get the talent that you really need and to hold on to that talent
[6:00] Al Elliott: We'll come on to that in a second. You say that we've changed. Do you think that change is skewing towards the younger generations, the Gen Zs and the millennials, or do you think we've all changed?
[6:11] David Thompson: I think we've all changed. I think we're all very much used to, you know, I think there's just much more information available to us now, so we go out and seek it. So, you know, we were looking at some statistics the other day that were saying kind of 80% of job seekers now look for information about the culture, the values, of an organization before they even consider putting in a job application. So I think we've all become more attuned to looking deeper for things, and I think we see that not just when we're looking for the right employer, we see it when we're looking for going on holiday. We look at TripAdvisor, we want to know more and more. When we go on Amazon, we want to see reviews from real people. I think the world of kind of job seeking has kind of followed that
[6:58] Al Elliott: Yeah
[6:58] David Thompson: We're all just looking for more information and more validation that we're kind of working for the good guys and making the right choice. So, what employer branding enables us to do is kind of elevate an organization in the eyes of potential employees and their own employees, and take it beyond the transactional, take it beyond the basic, well, our pay is the same as their pay, our holiday entitlement is the same as their holiday entitlement
[7:26] Leanne Elliott: Yeah
[7:27] David Thompson: And give much more of a sense of what it feels like to work for an organization. So there's a stronger emotional connection. And then, you know, if given a choice, then, well, the candidate's going to choose that organization that they feel something for over the one that's just giving them a list of stuff, if you like. So I think we're just all a little bit more emotional now than we were in the past. It's moved from being something transactional to being something more emotional
[7:52] Al Elliott: I think that before we spoke, I would think, I would have thought employer branding is, well, let's just do a Glassdoor account and hopefully everyone will say it's cool. It sounds like it's a lot more than that
[8:02] David Thompson: No, it's more complicated than that. So, a Glassdoor account is part of it, but essentially what you're trying to do is create your own story, your own narrative. And so, you know, if you think about any brand, if you think about Nike, if you think about Audi, they create their own narrative. Why is it different? Why are we different? Why are our products different to others' products? What's our story? Essentially, employer branding does that as well. So, it's why is it different working here? Why are you going to feel different working here? And to do that, you need to, yes, have a Glassdoor account where people are leaving good reviews, but you need to have a career site which is giving a really great story about your people, why they feel different, what you're aiming to do. You need social media doing that work for you as well. So, there are many, many different touchpoints where you want to be telling that story. But the main thing is understanding what your story is and being able to kind of present that to the market. There's so many, you know, whenever I go and see clients and they kind of say, okay, we need to do something with our employer brand, first question I always ask is, Why is it different working here? And you can ask their CEO or their HR director, and usually the answer is, we're not really sure. Don't really know why we are different. Why— they don't really know why someone should come and join them beyond the transactional. So it's really important to research that and understand that and form that story so you can then take it out in lots of different places and tell it consistently. That's how you kind of change people's view and change the emotional kind of connection they have. I think essentially, Al, it's marketing for people rather than products. It's the confluence of kind of recruitment activity and retention activity and marketing, and it's putting the two together. It's still quite an alien concept in some ways. Marketeers are very used to the language of marketing and But actually, the people we're working with are mainly in human resources, mainly in talent acquisition, and they're not trained in that. So, their world, this is quite alien to them. So, it's taking some time for the principles of marketing to permeate into the world of people, but it's happening