a day ago
The Value of an Employer Brand
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An employer brand represents how employees feel about their experience working at a business and how potential job candidates and the public view it as an employer. It is shaped by its values, culture, employee experience, and how it communicates those. (Employee ratings on a review site like Glassdoor are one way to gauge the strength of an employer brand.)
Employer branding has traditionally been seen as a nice-to-have. But we've noticed that many successful organizations view their employer brand as a powerful lever for performance. Their investment in employer branding makes sense: workers who view their employer as a desirable place to work are more likely to be productive and deliver better customer service. Not to mention that a strong employer brand makes it easier to attract top talent in the first place.
At our New Employer Brand Summit on Thursday, we launched a new research playbook exploring the correlation between a strong employer brand and business performance, which we produced in partnership with Welcome to the Jungle, the employer branding and jobs platform, and working with Panoplai, the AI-powered research platform. You can download it here. Takeaways from the research, which included a survey of 800+ workers, include:
Companies with stronger employer brands generally exhibit greater revenue growth and stock market returns over time. A specialized AI analysis of the worker sentiment in our surveys found that the companies with the most positive sentiment demonstrated consistently strong revenue growth and higher stock market returns over time than other companies we examined.
Career growth opportunities are critical to an employer brand. We heard that workers are asking employers about what access they'll have to cutting-edge AI tools and training in the workplace, which they view as critical to their own growth and advancement.
Leadership communication and employee confidence in executives have a big impact on how a company is perceived. Workers, above all, want authentic communication, especially in times of uncertainty.
There are differences in what prospective employees, current staff, and former employees value in an employer brand. Prospective employees, for example, emphasized external reputation and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, and were more likely to be influenced by word-of-mouth or employee reviews.
You can read more in the playbook about the research and the most effective levers companies can use to strengthen their employer brands. It also includes a detailed case study of the employer brand refresh that Cisco is in the middle of and interviews with experts from Glassdoor and Oxford University.
