--- title: What Happens to Employer Branding if We Agree to Disagree? description: Explore the complexities of employer branding, the importance of accountability, and how to align promises with employee experiences for lasting impact. image: https://blog.jobpixel.com/hubfs/CanaanKagayPhotography-131.jpg --- [![jobpixel-logo](https://blog.jobpixel.com/hs-fs/hubfs/JP_primary_logo-3.png?width=600&height=140&name=JP_primary_logo-3.png "jobpixel-logo")](http://jobpixel.com) [Skip to content](https://blog.jobpixel.com/what-happens-to-employer-branding-if-we-agree-to-disagree#main-content) [![jobpixel-logo](https://blog.jobpixel.com/hs-fs/hubfs/JP_primary_logo-3.png?width=600&height=140&name=JP_primary_logo-3.png "jobpixel-logo")](http://jobpixel.com) Search back to blog October 12, 2026 [by Susan Collins](https://blog.jobpixel.com/author/susan-collins) # What Happens to Employer Branding if We Agree to Disagree? [Tips](https://blog.jobpixel.com/tag/tips), [Employer Branding](https://blog.jobpixel.com/tag/employer-branding), [Employer Branding Strategy](https://blog.jobpixel.com/tag/employer-branding-strategy), [TalentAcquisition](https://blog.jobpixel.com/tag/talentacquisition) [![FB Icon](https://blog.jobpixel.com/hs-fs/hubfs/social-sharing-icons/facebook-color.png?width=48&name=facebook-color.png)](http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=https://blog.jobpixel.com/what-happens-to-employer-branding-if-we-agree-to-disagree) [![Twitter Icon](https://blog.jobpixel.com/hs-fs/hubfs/social-sharing-icons/twitter-color.png?width=48&name=twitter-color.png)](https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?original_referer=https://blog.jobpixel.com/what-happens-to-employer-branding-if-we-agree-to-disagree) [![LinkedIn Icon](https://blog.jobpixel.com/hs-fs/hubfs/social-sharing-icons/linkedin-color.png?width=48&name=linkedin-color.png)](http://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url=https://blog.jobpixel.com/what-happens-to-employer-branding-if-we-agree-to-disagree) ![link](https://blog.jobpixel.com/hs-fs/hubfs/social-sharing-icons/link-icon.png?width=48&name=link-icon.png) ![](https://blog.jobpixel.com/hubfs/CanaanKagayPhotography-131.jpg) It has been 28 years since Ambler and Barrow first used the term "Employer Brand" in print. Twenty-eight years later, millions of dollars, multiple frameworks, LinkedIn arguments, thousands of conference attendees, and a few self-proclaimed gurus still cannot agree on what it is, who owns it, or whether it belongs in HR, Marketing, or a department that still doesn't exist. ## **What Everyone Thinks It Is** I started by asking multiple leaders in various departments how they define employer branding, and the answers all seemed to make sense; it's your EVP, how you attract and retain talent. It's the story your employees tell when nobody from HR is in the room. The problem is that all of that is true. When a thing can mean anything, it tends to get funded like nothing. According to HR.com's 2025 State of Employer Branding report, over three-quarters of organizations consider employer branding an important HR strategy, but only 28% have a consistent strategy in place. So why the gap between what matters and what is actually committed to? Could it be the definitional confusion? The result is Glassdoor management dressed up as a strategy (I mean – I've used it). But the struggle begins with a budget line barely detectable, career pages that haven't been updated since the last reorg, "real employees" who left years ago still on the website, and an EVP statement so generic it could belong to any company in the industry. Worse, the function keeps having to "re-prove" its value to leadership every time the hiring market shifts. ## **It is Not Accidental That it can't Be Defined.** We can debate it, intellectualize it, but until we tell the truth, we will face the same issues. So, I will say it - because I have lived it; **it's political.** A clear definition creates accountability. Accountability requires someone to own the promise. Owning the promise means owning the breach. In a world with layoffs that contradict the culture story, the bad boss, the misbehaving manager whose desk sits facing the wall proclaiming company values, and the candidate experience that falls apart in three rounds, it is easy to point fingers and place blame. Of course, nobody wants to be blamed when something goes wrong. A soft employer brand allows individuals, departments, and managers to claim a strong hiring pipeline while sharing or displacing responsibility when retention collapses, and you can find similar examples for each part of the business. It doesn’t matter which department; the story is still the same: take credit - deflect blame. Something else to consider: the original 1996 definition was written in a world where companies controlled the information we knew about them. Ambler and Barrow defined employer brand as "the package of functional, economic, and psychological benefits provided by employment, and identified with the employing company." In other words, the company tells the story. They control the message. It was controlled, but that world no longer exists. Candidates ask questions on Reddit that employers never anticipated. The bitter go to Glassdoor first, and the company tries to counterbalance the message by inviting "happy" employees to share their story with an encouraging email that includes a link to respond. And just before your candidate heads into the interview, they look up your CEO on LinkedIn and have an opinion before they ever sign into Zoom. ## **What "Agree to Disagree" Actually Means** I only half-heartedly put out there the idea that we should "agree to disagree" on the definition. The last thing I want is for everyone to shrug their shoulders and keep doing whatever they want. That version ends badly. It allows leadership to continue treating employer brand as a soft cost, and you know what comes next – budgets keep getting cut, and the discipline never grows. The active version of agreeing to disagree looks different. We have to stop fighting over what employer branding is and start aligning on what it does. Employer branding is the management of a promise. You can write the promise on the walls, say at every meeting, make sure it is part of onboarding, but it is important to understand that it is an imperfect, living part of the business. It is the ongoing work of building and maintaining the commitment between an organization and the people who give their working lives to it. This framing changes everything. If employer branding is a promise, it is never over. You don't launch it and walk away. You don't refresh it every three to five years, under the guise of "strategy." A promise is either kept or it isn't, and it becomes the responsibility of every manager, conversation, performance review, town hall, and exit interview. Everyone is responsible for the promise.   ## **Where the Promise Gets Hard** **Who makes the promise?** Promises without promisors are just marketing. It can't live in a document. Everyone, from the CEO to the brand-new employee, becomes responsible for the promise. That also means that, in hard times and difficult situations, when people behave badly, or business is difficult, accountability is part of the promise; so are apologies and contrition. **One promise can't speak to everyone.** A 24-year-old engineer is not using the same lens as a 47-year-old operations director when deciding whether to leave or stay. Their lived experience of your employer brand is personal, meaning the promise has to be principled enough to be consistent and specific – and ***believed***. **The promise will break.** Reorganizations, layoffs, and leaders who championed the culture and then took it with them are part of running a business. The test is whether your company can acknowledge and repair the break. Good leaders understand that the repair is just as important as the promise. Whether ego or the inability to see the behaviors and patterns that caused the break, too few work to repair the damage, and the promise becomes words on the wall, and the culture is lost. **The promise goes both ways.** The offer includes the language of the promise and the expected reciprocity; all parties must agree to and fulfill the promise for it to work. The 95% of candidates who were rejected before getting to an interview will build an opinion on your brand. Alumni will talk about their experiences with your promise for years to come. Your vendors and community will form an opinion based on their interactions with your promise. Your employer brand is not what you say it is, but instead the gap between what you promised and what people actually experienced. ## **What Changes if We Accept This** Accepting this means the employer brand is no longer something a department owns, and other functions incorporate it into onboarding. It lives in employee actions and decisions. You are either delivering the employee promise, or you aren’t - there is no in between. This is a fundamental change for the entire organization. Activating this change means not only looking at internal processes but also finding every place where the promise touches the person and honestly reflecting on whether what is actually happening matches what you said it would. It starts with the candidate journey and continues through the employee lifecycle, and doesn’t end at the exit interview. It lives in actions long after someone has left. Measurement and metrics shift; impressions and application volume tell you how loud you are, but they don't reveal whether you are telling the truth. In 25+ years of watching organizations hire, lose, and scramble - competing to hire the same people- the question that actually predicts brand health is not the dashboard. It is understanding where the promise first breaks. How fast does the gap open between what you said in the interview and what someone experiences in the first ninety days? What do people say when they leave, and does that match what you said when they joined? Most organizations don't ask those questions because they don't want the answers. Leadership buy-in gets easier when it stops being about employer branding, and it becomes about organizational trust. What moves companies is not a slide about cost per hire, but instead whether their company is an institution people believe in, or just a stop until something better comes along. I've sat across from enough senior leaders to know they feel the cost of broken trust, but they must connect their behaviors, including holding everyone to the same level of accountability, to the promise. ## **The Hardest Part Nobody Talks About** I've watched organizations assign employer branding to one department and walk away. They pull everyone together, agree on the strategy, launch the EVP, refresh the career page, and then the activation stalls. Nobody prepared for the work that comes after the big unveil. The hardest part is the people: leaders who agreed in the room and then returned to the behaviors that got them safely to today. This is where employer branding and leadership development become part of the same conversation. When the promise breaks, and it will, someone has to stand up and say it broke. That requires a level of self-awareness and accountability that reactive leadership patterns make nearly impossible. ## **Twenty-eight years of debate haven't given us a definition.** Maybe the work was never about finding the right words, but about deciding whether the company was ready and willing to do what the words would require. Instead of chasing something to write on the wall, maybe it was about knowing what promises your company can deliver and preparing your team to show up when the promise is broken. *Susan Collins is an executive career and leadership coach at The Network Concierge, with 25+ years of experience leading Talent Acquisition before moving into consulting and executive coaching. She helps good leaders have great careers by identifying the patterns and behaviors that build, or quietly break, great teams. She stays active in the TA community, serving as advisor and strategist.* ### Subscribe Here! ![Job Pixel Logo](https://blog.jobpixel.com/hs-fs/hubfs/JP_primary_logo_white-job-text.png?width=150&name=JP_primary_logo_white-job-text.png) [Follow us on Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/JobPixel/) [Follow us on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/jobpixel) [Follow us on Twitter](https://twitter.com/jobpixel) [Follow us on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/jobpixel/) © 2024 JOBPIXEL INC • [PRIVACY](https://www.jobpixel.com/privacy-policy) • [TERMS](https://www.jobpixel.com/terms-of-service)