What is employer branding and how can it be built?

What is employer branding, concretely? At its core, it’s simply your company’s reputation as a place to work. It’s the image held by your current employees, the candidates you’re trying to attract, and even the general public.

Be careful: we’re not just talking about HR marketing. Employer branding is the living reflection of your culture, your values, and the day-to-day experience people have within your company.

Understanding what really lies behind employer branding

To truly grasp the idea, imagine a person’s reputation. It isn’t based on what they claim to be, but on what they do, what they say, and the values they genuinely embody. It’s exactly the same for a company. Forget the catchy slogan in a job posting or the perfectly designed logo.

Employer branding is the sum of all the perceptions, emotions, and experiences people associate with your company. Every interaction matters: from the first job ad seen on LinkedIn to the informal chat at the coffee machine—everything helps shape that reputation.

The DNA of your company as an employer

To make things clearer, you need to break employer branding down into several fundamental building blocks. It’s the combination of these elements that creates an overall, coherent image… or not.

Here’s what fuels it on a daily basis:

• Your company culture: The values, rituals, and behaviors that shape office life.
• The candidate experience: How you treat every applicant, whether they’re hired or not. Every detail matters.
• The employee experience: What your teams actually live through, from their first day to their farewell gathering.
• Your external communication: What you share on social media, your careers site, and in your job postings.

In short, employer branding is the promise you make to talent—and the daily proof that you keep it with your teams. It’s the perfect alignment between what you say and what you do.

Today, having a strong and authentic employer brand is no longer a simple nice-to-have. It has become the key strategic lever to attract the right profiles and, above all, to retain them. It doesn’t show what you want to be, but who you truly are.

Why investing in employer branding has become essential

In today’s job market, the balance of power has shifted: talent chooses its company just as much as the company chooses its talent. In this context, ignoring your employer brand is no longer an option. It simply means missing out on a major lever for performance and growth.

Far from being a passing HR trend, it’s a strategic investment that touches the core of your ability to recruit, retain your teams, and ultimately succeed.

Reducing costs and securing recruitment

Think of your employer brand as a talent magnet. A strong, positive reputation naturally attracts profiles who recognize themselves in your values and culture. The result? You rely less on headhunters and drastically reduce your recruitment costs and timelines.

A strong employer brand also acts as a natural filter. Candidates apply with full awareness, already won over by your culture. The quality of applications improves, and the risk of a hiring mismatch drops significantly.

Concretely, the benefits can be measured:

• Lower spending on recruitment agencies and costly advertising campaigns.
• A shorter hiring time, which limits productivity losses linked to vacant roles.
• A higher offer acceptance rate, because candidates are already convinced they want to join you.

Retaining talent and boosting engagement

Attracting the best is great. Keeping them is even better. And for that, employer branding is your best asset. When the day-to-day experience an employee lives matches the promise they were given, trust and loyalty settle in for good.

An engaged employee isn’t just someone who stays. They’re a driving force for the company—someone who actively contributes to its success. In fact, studies show that a well-developed employer brand can reduce turnover by up to 59% and is directly linked to a productivity increase of up to +20% among engaged teams.

The true strength of an employer brand doesn’t lie in what you say about yourself, but in what your employees say about you. They are your most credible ambassadors.

Ultimately, investing in employer branding means taking care of your most valuable asset: your people. Sometimes, simple initiatives that bring people closer together have a huge impact. Organizing bonding moments—such as sports predictions for team building—turns company culture into shared, memorable experiences.

These moments of cohesion become living proof of your employer promise. And that’s far more powerful than any communication campaign.

The 3 pillars for building an authentic employer brand

For employer branding to be more than just a marketing showcase, it must rest on solid foundations. Imagine you’re building a house: without strong pillars, the entire structure eventually collapses. It’s exactly the same for your reputation as an employer.

The most common mistake is to bet everything on external communication, forgetting that authenticity comes from within. A credible employer brand isn’t what you say, but what your teams live day to day and what your candidates feel.

These foundations are built around three fundamental axes.

The candidate experience: the first touchpoint with your culture

The first pillar is the candidate experience. It’s the very first gateway into your world, long before a talent joins your teams. This journey—from reading the job posting to the final answer—shapes their perception of your company for the long term.

A transparent, respectful, and human recruitment process sends an incredibly powerful message. Think about it: even an unsuccessful candidate who had a good experience can become an ambassador for your brand. Conversely, radio silence after an interview or vague feedback can damage your reputation in no time.

The employee experience: the beating heart of your reputation

The second pillar, and arguably the most crucial, is the employee experience. It’s the day-to-day reality, the concrete proof that your employer promise isn’t empty talk. If the candidate experience is the trailer, the employee experience is the full movie.

It includes everything that shapes life in the company:

• Company culture: are values truly lived, or just displayed on the lobby walls?
• Management: is it supportive, inspiring, and focused on talent development?
• Growth opportunities: are career paths clear and accessible to everyone?
• Well-being at work: is work–life balance a real priority or just a marketing argument?

This diagram perfectly illustrates how a strong employer brand, fueled by a positive employee experience, directly influences overall company performance.

You can clearly see that everything starts with the employer brand. It triggers a positive chain reaction, impacting retention, productivity, and—of course—the ease of recruiting new talent.

Communication: the art of aligning words and reality

Finally, the third pillar is communication, both internal and external. Its role? To tell an authentic story, grounded in what your employees actually experience. It’s the megaphone of your culture—not a tool for fiction.

Your best story isn’t the one you invent, but the one your employees are already telling. Your role is simply to give them the means to share it.

Internally, communication should strengthen a sense of belonging and transparency. Team-building events, for example, are perfect for boosting cohesion. To go further, check out our complete guide on how to organize a company contest, an excellent initiative to energize team life.

Externally, your communication must rely on concrete proof: employee testimonials, office videos, blog articles about your projects… The goal is simple: align these three pillars perfectly so your message is never disconnected from reality. That’s the only condition for your employer brand to become credible, powerful, and sustainable.

To help you visualize how these three elements fit together, here is a summary table.

Summary of the three pillars of employer branding

This table summarizes the foundations of a strong employer brand and the concrete actions associated with each pillar.

Pillar	Definition	Key touchpoints and actions
Candidate Experience	How a talent perceives your company throughout the recruitment process.	Careers site, job postings, interviews, recruiter communication, onboarding process.
Employee Experience	The sum of interactions and feelings an employee has within the company, from first to last day.	Company culture, management, working conditions, development opportunities, recognition.
Communication	How the company tells its story internally and externally, grounded in lived reality.	Internal communication (newsletter, events), social media, employee testimonials, PR.

By working on these three axes consistently, you build much more than an image: you build a solid reputation that will naturally attract talent who truly fit you.

How do you know if your employer brand is really working?

Implementing an employer branding strategy is one thing. But how do you know if your efforts are truly paying off, beyond simple intuition? It’s an essential question. Measuring the impact of your actions is the only way to steer your strategy, prove its value, and justify the resources you dedicate to it.

No need to drown in dozens of complex indicators. The idea is to focus on a few clear, meaningful KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that give you a fair view of performance. The goal is to create a simple dashboard—a real cockpit to manage your efforts.

This approach is all the more crucial because there is often a real gap between how companies see themselves and what employees actually experience. In France, while two-thirds of HR decision-makers say they have an employer branding strategy, only one-third of employees feel it in their daily life. KPIs help bridge that gap between intent and reality. To dive deeper, feel free to read the full study on employer brand perception in France.

Key indicators for attracting talent

The first mission of your employer brand is simple: bring the right profiles to you. To know whether you’re succeeding, two metrics are particularly revealing of your ability to attract talent in the market.

• Time to hire: On average, how much time passes between publishing a job and signing the contract? If this decreases, it’s an excellent signal—it means you’re receiving quality applications faster.

• Offer acceptance rate: Across all your hiring offers, what percentage get a “yes”? A high rate—typically above 80–90% depending on the sector—proves candidates are not only interested, but truly convinced. Convinced enough to turn down potential counteroffers and choose your company.

Essential KPIs for retaining your teams

Once a talent says yes, the real challenge begins: keeping them engaged and fulfilled over the long term. Retention is the ultimate test of an authentic employer brand. It measures the quality of what happens in reality once someone walks through your doors.

The simplest and most powerful question you can ask your teams is: “On a scale from 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend our company as a great place to work?”

This question is at the heart of the Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS). This indicator gives you a clear sense of how many ambassadors you have within your workforce, and a quick snapshot of overall morale.

In parallel, keep an eye on your voluntary turnover rate. A low resignation rate is the most concrete proof that your employer promise is being kept—and that your employees feel good where they are.

Finally, don’t forget to measure external perception. Analyze engagement on your careers page and your social media, as well as average ratings and reviews on platforms like Glassdoor. These data points—both quantitative and qualitative—are the finishing touch on your dashboard for continuously managing your reputation.

Turning your culture into memorable experiences

A strong employer brand isn’t decided in a meeting room. It’s lived and felt day to day. Big speeches about company culture are fine, but what truly sticks are concrete experiences. The goal is to turn your culture into strong moments everyone will remember.

These moments become living proof of what you promise. They embody your values far better than any institutional speech. If atmosphere and cohesion are truly priorities for you, then it has to show.

Building bridges between teams

Let’s take a simple example: organizing an internal sports prediction contest. At first glance, it looks like a simple game. But in reality, it’s an incredibly powerful tool for management and cohesion.

Suddenly, departments that barely interact find a shared topic of conversation. The developer and the salesperson start debriefing their picks at the coffee machine, creating informal connections that didn’t exist the day before. This kind of event breaks down barriers and strengthens the feeling of belonging to one collective.

The goal isn’t just to entertain. It’s to create a shared playground where hierarchy fades and conviviality takes over. It’s precisely in these moments that company culture comes to life.

These shared experiences fuel positive conversations both inside and outside the company. An employee who smiles while telling an anecdote about the contest becomes, without even realizing it, an ambassador for your employer brand. To explore the topic further, take a look at our guide to improving your employer brand through prediction game contests.

From event to social proof

These initiatives aren’t just one-off activities. They are social proof of your culture. They demonstrate through action—not words—that your company truly cares about well-being and team cohesion.

For these moments to have maximum impact, you need to think about them strategically. Here are a few keys to success:

• Authenticity: The event must match your values. If you promote collaboration, a contest that encourages interaction is simply perfect.
• Inclusivity: Make sure everyone can participate easily, regardless of role or interest in the topic. Simplicity is your best ally.
• Communication: Share highlights internally (newsletter, intranet) and externally (social media, careers page) to show concretely what life at your company looks like.

By turning your culture into authentic experiences, you build an employer brand that’s not only attractive, but above all credible. You no longer just say you’re an employer of choice—you prove it.

Your questions about employer branding

Talking about employer branding often means asking very concrete questions. Everyone wants to know where to start, especially with limited resources. So let’s get straight to the point and demystify the topic.

These questions are more than legitimate. A company’s reputation as an employer has become a strategic issue. It weighs heavily on your ability to attract the right profiles and keep them. Today, ignoring your employer brand is a bit like navigating without a compass: you risk missing the best opportunities.

The numbers speak for themselves: about 75% of candidates research a company’s reputation before even sending their CV. Another survey even shows that 8 out of 10 candidates are very sensitive to it. That’s how much it has become a deciding factor. If you want to dig deeper, you can learn more about the influence of employer branding in France.

What’s the difference between company culture and employer branding?

People tend to mix everything up, yet the distinction is crucial.

• Company culture is the “who we are” internally. It’s the DNA of your company: your values, your rituals, and how you work together day to day.

• Employer branding is the “how others see us.” It’s your reputation, the promise you make to talent—and it must reflect your culture.

Simply put, your employer brand is the shop window of your company culture. If your internal culture isn’t strong, authentic, and healthy, all your beautiful communication campaigns will ring hollow. Credibility can’t be faked.

How do you start a strategy with a small budget?

You don’t need to break the bank to start working on your employer brand. Authenticity and consistency matter far more than any marketing budget.

Start with what costs almost nothing but has a huge impact: the inside. Survey your teams to understand what truly makes you strong. They are your best ambassadors. Give them a voice and encourage them to share their experience.

Then optimize the basics:

1. Improve your job postings. Stop writing bland descriptions. Add testimonials, photos of your teams, a video of your offices… In short, humanize everything.
2. Take great care of the candidate experience. Everyone who applies, even if they’re not selected, should receive a respectful response. A transparent, human recruitment process leaves a positive impression no matter the outcome.
3. Showcase your teams on social media. Share successes, everyday moments, and projects they’re proud of. It costs nothing and it shows the reality of your company.

These small, people-centered actions are the foundation of a strong employer reputation.

What role do managers play in this strategy?

Managers aren’t just messengers—they are the pillars of your employer brand. They are the ones who make it real every day, on the ground. A big speech about kindness won’t mean much if frontline management is toxic.

Their job is to turn company values into concrete actions. That means doing simple but essential things: giving constructive feedback, recognizing work well done, supporting skill development—and above all, listening.

For them to fully play this role, you need to bring them on board. Show them the direct impact of their management on key indicators like turnover or engagement within their own team. A committed manager is the best guarantee of an authentic, positive employee experience.

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