Questions to ask before you rewrite your employer brand

Rewriting an employer brand is a significant undertaking, and it is easy to jump straight to new messaging without first understanding what is actually wrong with the existing one. Some employer brands fail because they are inaccurate. Others fail simply because nobody has communicated them consistently. These are different problems with different solutions, and confusing one for the other tends to waste both time and budget.

The following questions are worth answering honestly before committing to a rewrite.

Who was actually consulted when the current employer brand was written?

Many employer brands are written by a small group, often marketing, HR, or senior leadership, without wider staff input. If the answer to this question is “leadership” or “the communications team,” that alone may explain why the brand feels disconnected from what staff actually experience. This does not necessarily mean the brand is wrong, but it does mean it has not yet been tested against reality.

Would your current staff recognise the description if they read it without knowing it was about your organisation?

This is a useful, low-cost test. Take your current employer brand messaging and ask a handful of staff, ideally from different levels and departments, whether it sounds like the organisation they actually work for. If the answer is a hesitant “sort of” rather than a confident “yes,” that hesitation is informative.

Where does the brand and the lived experience diverge, specifically?

Vague dissatisfaction with an employer brand is hard to act on. Specific divergence is not. If the brand describes flexibility but staff experience rigid scheduling, if it describes career progression but promotion is rare, these specific gaps are what actually need addressing, rather than the tone or wording of the brand itself.

Is the problem the message, or how consistently it is delivered?

A genuinely accurate employer brand can still fail if it only appears on the careers page and nowhere else, if job adverts, interviews, and onboarding all say something different. Before rewriting the message, it is worth checking whether the existing message is even being delivered consistently across every touchpoint a candidate encounters.

What would staff say is genuinely distinctive about working here, if asked directly?

This question often reveals whether the current brand is built on genuine organisational truth or on generic sector language. If staff, when asked directly, describe something specific and different from what the current brand says, that gap points toward what an accurate brand should actually say.

Has anything material changed since the employer brand was last written?

An employer brand that was accurate three years ago may no longer be accurate today, following restructuring, leadership changes, a shift in ways of working, or a change in the organisation’s strategic direction. It is worth checking whether the brand simply needs updating to reflect genuine change, rather than being fundamentally rewritten from scratch.

Do you know what candidates who withdrew or declined offers actually said about your employer brand?

Candidates who chose not to join, whether by withdrawing or declining an offer, often have useful insight into where the employer brand did not match what they expected or experienced during recruitment. If this feedback has never been gathered, it is worth doing before assuming the brand itself needs rewriting.

Working through these questions before starting a rewrite

Answering these questions honestly usually reveals one of two situations. Either the underlying brand is broadly accurate but poorly or inconsistently communicated, in which case the priority is activation and consistency, not new messaging. Or the brand describes something that is no longer, or never was, genuinely true, in which case a rewrite grounded in current staff reality is the right next step.

Either way, working through these questions first means any subsequent investment in employer branding is addressing the actual problem, rather than assuming the solution before the diagnosis is complete.