Any employee can be an ambassador

HR and marketing are strange bedfellows. And yet they come together through employer branding. Is it a happy marriage?

The honest answer is that the extent to which HR and marketing need to collaborate is conditional on so many factors, including company size, team setup, skillsets, and critically, how the brand itself is structured. When the corporate and commercial brand are one and the same, you need these two teams locked in for the long term, with a shared objective to protect the brand’s visual identity, the tone of voice, and the overall reputation.

Where there’s a brand split, and in organisations that build dedicated employer brand functions that sit more independently, the need for close day-to-day collaboration lessens. But alignment doesn’t disappear. Those brands are still connected, still reflecting on each other, and some level of shared standards around messaging and quality of output has to exist regardless.

What never changes, and whatever the setup, is that how you are perceived as an employer has a direct impact on your success as a business. It’s in everyone’s best interest to get it right.

Where things go wrong is usually when both departments forget this and start operating on a brief-and-receive arrangement, producing average work on both sides. The good collaborations I’ve been part of started with genuine curiosity about the problem, not just the deliverable, and with both teams clear that what they’re producing is important for business success.

What are the main aims of employer branding?

Employer branding offers a window into what it’s genuinely like to work at your organisation. And from that foundation, it aims to attract and retain talent, to define what you can offer prospective candidates, and to make sure that what you’re offering is actually their experience when they join. It should communicate an organisation’s reality.

I believe the tactical execution of employer branding should sit closest to the People function as the team that understands the internal culture and reality best. That understanding is what should drive the message.

But the importance of a strong employer brand, and the consequences of a weak one, is a conversation that belongs at the executive table. We know from research that companies with strong employer brands see up to 50% reduction in cost per hire. Beyond that - how you’re perceived as an employer affects whether customers buy from you and whether businesses want to partner with you. That’s a commercial conversation.

What role does employer branding play in iGaming, a sector where talent is in huge demand?

Employer branding matters as much in every competitive sector, not just this one. But iGaming does make the stakes more visible.

Research and experience tell us that when opportunities are abundant, top candidates are not just asking “what does this pay?”. They’re asking “do their values match mine? Will they invest in my growth? Do they care about their people and communities?”. These are questions that a strong employer brand should answer.

In iGaming specifically, there’s an added layer of complexity in that the sector carries reputational nuance that most others don’t. Candidates often come in wi-th questions about the industry itself, so the employer bra-nd has to do more explanatory work. Beyond who you are and how you behave internally and externally, candidates want to understand how you care for your customers - and rightly so.

Your employer brand always matters, but the competitive and reputational nature of iGaming puts it under a brighter spotlight.

Does employer branding favour a particular generation, or can any employer be an ambassador?

Any employee can be an ambassador, and guess what? They already are. Your employees are already your employer brand whether you involve them or not. They are talking about what it’s like to work for you, in reviews, to friends, to candidates they know. The question isn’t whether they’re ambassadors, but rather, if what they’re saying matches what you’re saying.

Research consistently tells us that we trust a peer’s review or personal account far more than we trust a corporate message. Rougher, more human content tends to perform better precisely because audiences can feel the difference between something real and something scripted.

Which generation you’re trying to reach will determine the vehicle, the platform, and the way the message is framed. You might reach a Gen Z candidate through short-form video in a completely different register to the long-form content that resonates with a senior hire. The packaging can shift by audience, but the substance shouldn’t.

And that’s the case for making sure that your employer brand is built from the inside out

How would you define an effective employer brand strategy?

Beyond the usual measures of talent attraction and retention, which are dependent on so many other factors too, an effective employer brand strategy is the ability to communicate the true reality of your organisation, internally and externally, such that the talent you attract is best matched to your core values.

That framing matters because not every company is for everyone, and a strong employer brand should be honest about that. It helps candidates self-select. The ones it attracts are more likely to stay because the experience matches what drew them in. The ones it doesn’t reach were probably never going to thrive there anyway.In practice, three things make it work. It has to be built on truth and tested against internal reality before anything goes out. It needs to be recognised as commercially critical, and championed by leaders in the business. And it needs to stay human where it counts.