Hi!

Your employer brand says a lot about your broader corporate reputation. But how closely does the story your company tells match what employees experience, what candidates discover, and what others say about working there?

At our most recent Culture Connect Roundtable session, we explored what makes an employer brand credible, particularly during periods of growth, restructuring, and significant change. Carolin Groh (BioNTech), Tom Karim (Cytiva), Charlotte Marshall (Give & Get Employer Branding), and roundtable chair Amy Bowman (Danaher) examined the importance of being candid about the realities of working somewhere; how communications, HR, and leadership share responsibility for delivering on the employer brand; and how AI is increasingly shaping what candidates learn about potential employers.

If you missed the conversation, you can watch the recording here.

Our 10 Takeaways From Building a Credible Biopharma Employer Brand Through Growth and Change

1. Distinguish the employer brand from the employee value proposition (EVP). Employer brand is your reputation as a place to work, while the EVP is the give-and-get exchange behind it, spelling out what people receive and what the organization expects in return.

2. Name the trade-offs along with the rewards. Claims like innovative and collaborative show up at nearly every company, so spell out the real demands of the work and what people gain in exchange for taking them on.

3. Build the employer brand from what employees and leaders tell you. Pair survey data and desk research with leadership interviews and separate employee focus groups to identify gaps between how leaders see the culture and how employees experience it.

4. Tell the story beyond science and R&D. Biopharma employer stories tend to center on the science, so translate the purpose for finance, commercial, and other enabling functions to show how their work moves the mission forward.

5. Ask AI the questions your candidates are asking. Candidates now ask AI tools what it is like to work somewhere, and those tools draw heavily on LinkedIn, Reddit, and Glassdoor, so check whether you recognize your organization in the answers.

6. Audit the evidence behind the claim that matters most. Pick the attribute you most want to be trusted for and look for proof across job descriptions, recruiter conversations, leader remarks, employee posts, and internal mobility stories.

7. Collect employee voice inside work already underway. Add one or two employer brand questions to leader and employee interviews you are already filming, and post testimonial videos on third-party platforms, where AI tools are treating them as credible.

8. Hold the brand steady and refresh the EVP as the business changes. Pressure-test the EVP every few years and shift its emphasis toward candor and empathy during restructuring, so the external story stays in step with what employees are living through.

9. Carry the employer brand past onboarding. Align with leadership on the behaviors the next five years will require, then partner with HR and internal comms to champion and reinforce those behaviors in the current workforce.

10. Assign one owner and build shared delivery. Employer brand can sit in comms, HR, or TA as long as one team holds accountability while leaders, recruiters, and hiring managers deliver it, backed by metrics that matter to each partner.

Thanks to our speakers – Carolin, Tom, Charlotte, and Amy – for sharing their perspectives with the community.

#ICYMI: New Culture Connect Roundtable Resource: Planning for 2027

As we head into annual planning season, our Culture Connect Roundtable has put together a new resource with five practical recommendations for planning and prioritizing in 2027.

Drawing on members' experiences, it covers how to evaluate what's working, align communications with business priorities, make realistic decisions about time and resources, and identify what to stop doing. Take a look if you’re interested in tips for building a focused, flexible communications plan for the year ahead from Amy, Ann Melinger (bink), Agatha Newman (Astellas), Stacy Nobles (BCBS), and Jessica Weinstein (Cullinan Tx).

ynnea
​

​
​