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