Employer Branding is Dead! What About the The Future of Employee Experience?

Is employer branding just about communicating employee benefits? If you’re not backing up your promises with action, then unfortunately, the answer is yes.

I would like to take you back a little bit to the past, to the games you used to play when you were a child. Have you ever spent a long time setting up a game, only to get bored and quit 10 minutes in? Sometimes, the setup was so enjoyable that playing the game wasn’t even the goal. We simply wanted to experience the joy of building it—like when playing with Lego.

When we stood in front of the Lego bricks, we’d first decide what kind of world we wanted to build—a house, a garden, an amusement park, or wherever our creativity took us. Then we’d empty the box of tiny pieces onto the carpet, pick out the ones we needed, and build our dream creation, step by step. Finally, we’d bring in the Lego characters, give them names, and start playing. Just for ten minutes.

When we decide to create an employer brand strategy, we start with research and analysis. Next, we define the core pillars that will represent our brand. Then, we prepare a brief and meet with agencies to design our employer brand. Based on their input, we decide on communication formats, messaging approaches, and content. Finally, we plan a major launch. Once we’ve even designed the employee gifts for the launch, it feels like we’ve finished setting up our game.

Then what happens? We go on with the communication activities we’ve designed.

But where are the employee expectations that are so often highlighted in research?

Where are the initiatives we need to develop to support the employer brand we’ve defined?

Isn’t the employer brand, as Simon Barrow—the creator of the concept—put it, 'a package of functional, economic, and psychological benefits offered by the employer'?

Unfortunately, we tend to focus more on developing a communication strategy than on creating initiatives that genuinely address employee expectations. We place our hopes in social media content and university event appearances to set ourselves apart.

But I have two pieces of bad news. First, according to Universum's Employer Branding Now report published in 2023, the key elements that make up the employee value proposition across organizations are strikingly similar.

Which of the following best describe the key elements included in your EVP / employment promise? (Max. 5)

In other words, no matter how much we try to create slogans like 'Development holds a special place for us' or 'Development is our main focus,' many organizations are already using similar messages. What will truly set us apart isn’t how we say it, but what we do.

If you thought the bad news was over, I’m afraid there’s more. According to the same research, employer brand strategies often have little to no impact on actual HR processes. For example, how can we genuinely embrace a message like 'inspiring meaning' if we haven’t embedded it into our leadership development programs?

Which of these processes have been influenced by your Employer Brand strategy?

This is exactly why the concept of 'employee experience' has entered our lives in recent years. It was introduced to refocus attention on the core elements that employer branding often overlooked.

Unfortunately, the news isn’t much better here either. Just as employer branding became the domain of external communication, employee experience is now being positioned primarily within the realm of internal communication.

According to employee experience research conducted by Josh Bersin in 2021, the maturity levels of organizations in this area is as follows. I can even say that the data seems almost optimistic.

Around 32% of organizations that claim to focus on employee experience—perhaps even more—interpret it merely as internal communication or messaging around special occasions.

Very few organizations have established listening mechanisms to genuinely understand their employees, continuously monitor these mechanisms, and revise their experience strategies accordingly. Even fewer have built governance structures for employee experience or embedded an experience-driven mindset into leadership and culture.

The game-building preparation we saw with Lego—used earlier as a metaphor for employer branding—is almost entirely missing here. It’s more like picking a random Lego piece or character from the box and wandering around the house with it.

At this rate, it wouldn’t be surprising if, in the near future, we feel the need to invent a new name for the department responsible for truly addressing employee expectations. Something like Human Experience or Experience-Driven Culture—who knows?

So, what should we do? It’s time to ask ourselves some critical questions:

Are you managing employee experience and employer branding in a holistic way?

Which areas should you focus on to develop a comprehensive approach?

What barriers are preventing the creation of a sustainable employee experience and employer brand, and how can you overcome them?

How effectively are you using listening mechanisms to understand employee needs and expectations? Where can you begin?

Are you executing employee experience communication correctly? What can you do to make it more accurate, focused, and effective?

Let’s revisit our approaches by asking ourselves these questions—without rushing to create a new department name.

This article was written in Turkish for Inc. Türkiye in April 2024 by Jale Aktug Aydogmus, Founder of Outliers Global

How To Manage Employee Expectations During High Inflation Periods?

We have to admit that employee engagement is dead! According to State of the Global Workplace report published by Gallup in 2023*, even 43% of engaged employees are watching for or actively seeking a new job.

Another research made by Gartner in 2022** shows that only 3% of organizations match pay increase to inflation.

Considering this high inflation period and unsatisfying increase in salaries, we can say that there will be much more employees seeking for new jobs. So, as a natural consequence, the ratio of engaged employees seeking for new jobs will be much more higher than 43% in coming months.

2024 will be a tough year for employees and organizations.

“How much salary increase can we give? What if our employees quit their jobs and start to work for other companies because of our salary policies? Can we attract talents? What effects these might have on our objectives?”

These are not the only questions organizations need to ask themselves. Instead, focusing on just these questions may prevent us from taking much more important steps towards the solution.

According to Employee Financial Wellness Survey made by PwC*** this year, 57% of employees say that finances are the top cause of stress in their lives. (We must keep in mind that stress is one of the biggest threats to human health.)

The same research also reveals the difference between employees who are stressed about their finances and who are not.

74% of employees seek financial guidance when dealing with financial decisions, crises, or life events. But according to Health and Wellbeing Report made by CIPD in September 2023****, financial well-being is the least focused subject at organizations, among other wellbeing subjects.

What actions do organizations take in these circumstances? Unfortunately, most of the organizations just focus on physical and mental well-being activities. We cannot meet employees’ expectations and preferences.

We must focus on analyzing employees' needs and expectations and shape our approach / practices accordingly.

What Can Organizations Do?

You have to know our employees! I'm not just talking about demographic data or information about their careers. Who are the employees? What are their priorities and difficulties in life? As an organization, how can you go beyond their expectations? What can you offer for these priorities and challenges?

Financial well-being. There are many actions you can take to increase employees' financial literacy and support them in managing and investing money correctly. What can the first step be for you on this subject?

Financial support packages. When there is an imbalance between income and expenses, employees experience more financial stress. How about being the first in helping your employees in such situations?

Fringe benefits. Organizations must go beyond fringe benefits such as health insurance and respond to employees’ needs occurring from remote/hybrid working that are not just limited to contributing to internet, electricity costs for days they work from home. Organizations must ask themselves these questions: What are employees’ difficulties in working from home? Not being able to cook during the busy work schedule, not being able to create a suitable environment for a meeting, going to an office in another city and staying in that city... What would be potential solutions that would both make the lives of employees easier and support them financially? For example, you can organize gatherings at cities where your employees live. By reaching an agreement with coworking spaces, you can ensure that they work together at regular intervals and strengthen the company culture. In addition, by providing a meeting room for important online meetings, you can support employees who do not have a suitable working space at home or have problems with their internet connection.

Motivation packages. During financially difficult times, we can neglect ourselves and our areas of interest. How can you better know your employees and support them in setting aside time for themselves? For example, you can learn about employees' areas of interest and subjects that matter to them in life through a survey. After a busy working period, you can give them such a gift that will make them spare time for themselves. Considering that holiday costs are very high, you can create an opportunity for them to take their loved ones to a holiday.

Open communication. It is necessary to consider this topic from two perspectives. How can you enable employees to speak to you openly in case of need? Also, can you be brave enough to eliminate misunderstandings and wrong expectations by openly sharing what you can and cannot do for employees in this high inflation period?

Managerial approach. Managerial approach is one of the top job change reasons among employees. Are your leader assessments designed to select the right managers? Do you invest in leadership development programs and adopt the coach-style leadership approach throughout the organization? It has become even more important recently.

Employee experience. All touch points, starting from the moment you first contact a candidate until the last day of their job determine if they will recommend you as a great place to work or not. In particular, important moments that matter in the employee experience (recruitment and orientation, performance & feedback, promotion, etc.) leave indelible marks on our minds. So, what about the experiences you offer to your employees? For example, you can plan an orientation program that will make it easier for new hires to get to know and adapt to the job, processes and teams they will work with. You can make them feel valued by adding personalized approaches in that process. Likewise, by structuring promotion or internal job change processes, you can ensure that important moments that matter make good experiences for your employees.

It is important to remember that all the steps you take or do not take will spread among your employees and their friends / families. Considering high turnover rates and high recruitment numbers as a result, it is your actions that will make candidates choose you or not.

Do you want to save the day or your future? The decision is up to you…

This article was written in Turkish for Inc. Türkiye in November 2023 by Jale Aktug Aydogmus, Founder of Outliers Global

*Gallup, State of the Global Workplace 2023 Report

**Gartner, Attracting Talent and Improving the Employee Experience Amid Uncertainty 2022 Report

***PwC, Employee Financial Wellness 2023 Report

****CIPD & Simply Health, Health and Wellbeing 2023 Report

Have You Ever Thought About Employee Engagement from a Psychotherapist Perspective?

Psychotherapist, serving as an organizational consultant for Fortune 500 companies around the world and New York Times bestselling author Esther Perel emphasizes very important key points that I think most organizations, HR departments do not take into account when talking about engagement.*

When you think about your life so far, what is constant in your life? The city you live in? Your friends? Your partner?

What would your parents’ or grandparents’ answer be if you have asked these questions to them? They probably worked at the same workplace until they got retired. They probably got married once without having relationship with any other people.

Stability was the norm in their period; it made them hard to leave (cities, jobs, marriages...). However change is constant in our time. And it affects all our life.

If we talk about employee engagement, it means different considering stability or changeability in the time we live.

Putting another perspective, our grandparents lived in production economy; our parents in service economy and now we are living in identity economy.* What does it mean?

“Our jobs and relationships are place for identity and fulfillment. We want a person in our lives that will make best version ourselves. That’s identity model for relationships. The same thing is also at work. We want a job that cares for our emotional and physical wellbeing, flexibility so that it can adapt to our situation, help our professional and personal growth.”*

Putting these information all together, we can say that many people will probably have more than one job and more than one career.*

So the question we need to ask is more than “how do we increase employee engagement scores?”. It is about “how can we provide a great employee experience so that people recommend our company as a great place to work?” or “How can we adapt our companies to this identity model?” or “How can we support our employees in building their second career?” or “How can we make them want to work here again after they work at some other companies?” They will change jobs, careers even if we provide a great employee experience and career opportunities within the company or not.

So, why do we continue to ask the very same engagement questions that we asked 10 years ago? Why do we try to measure engagement in old ways?

Most of the companies consider employee engagement scores as a performance indicator or as the most important topic to focus on. Considering the shift in our lives, we need to change our approach on employee engagement.

In June 2023, Gallup launched “State of the Global Workplace 2023 Report”. In this report, there are some “good news” and some very bad news.

Good news is that, the percentage of employees thriving at work reached a record high in 2022. Twenty-three percent of the world’s employees were engaged at work in 2022, the highest level since Gallup began measuring global engagement in 2009.**

Bad news is that, globally, over half of employees expressed some level of intent to leave their job. So this second insight shows that even if employee engagement scores are high, it doesn't mean that employees are totally engaged.

Engagement is not a characteristic of employees; employees’ approach to work can’t be understood with just existing HR perspective. We need a mindset shift to really understand employees and what we can do for them.

So, which point of view, strategy or approach do you think you need to change in your company?

*Esther Perel / How’s Work? The Prologue: What couples therapy teaches us about work?

** Gallup, State of the Global Workplace 2023 Report, June 2023

June 20, 2023