How to Make People See Themselves in Your Employer Brand Storytelling

EVP activation can be an elusive goal for employer brand professionals. Positioning statements and brand pillars are essential, but you really need people to feel it in their day-to-day. Authenticity is key.

In this episode of the Employer Branding Podcast, we spoke with Neil Daly, Global Head of Employer Brand & HR Communications at RWE. He shared how his team has activated their EVP throughout their organization by putting people at the center of employer branding storytelling.

A Global Brand with Diverse Talent Challenges

Founded in 1898, RWE is one of Europe’s largest renewable energy companies, with about 19,000 employees globally. Underneath the umbrella of the global business are individual operating companies, each with a specific focus. These include onshore wind, offshore wind, solar, battery storage, energy supply and trading, and research into new technologies like hydrogen production.

Each operating company has different talent needs, creating a unique set of challenges for Daly and his team to balance. Some are more focused on recruitment, while others are focused on retention. They may be hiring for a niche role, or staffing up in a specific location or region.

In order to develop their EVP, Daly and his team worked closely with each operating company to understand their requirements. When the time came for activation, they already had a working relationship and could essentially give them the ball and let them run with it.

How Employer Brand Contextualizes the Work We Do

Daly is something of a specialist, having headed up employer brand at EDF Energy and Baker Hughes before coming to RWE. Over the years, he’s noticed a change in how employer branding is received throughout an organization. While it used to be seen as just another form of recruitment marketing, it’s now recognized as a way to help employees understand the context and value of the work they do every day.

A key takeaway here is how Daly thinks about the job of employer branding. As Daly put it, “We know the company has values and goals but what does that mean for me?” Employer branding helps employees and prospective talent see the role they play in achieving those goals and upholding those values. And you do that by telling the human-centric story about the work that they do.

Telling Human-Centric Employer Brand Stories

A good example of this employer branding philosophy in action is how RWE revamped its social media strategy. When Daly joined the organization, they had already moved to a one-channel approach. While this gave them a lot of control over their voice and tone, it also tended to sound formulaic and corporate.

Daly and his team set out to tell the same stories through a human-centric lens. Instead of a press release about a new wind farm in Ohio, there’s a video about the local businesses and contractors RWE partnered with to build it. Instead of a generic statement from leadership about the importance of diversity in engineering, there are interviews with engineers from underrepresented demographics about the work that they do.

All of this goes back to Daly’s central question: What do these company values and goals mean for me? This human-centric approach to employer brand storytelling allows people to see themselves at RWE. It’s also received some external recognition, picking up three Employer Brand Management Awards in 2024, including “best communication of the employer brand to the internal audience” and “best social media strategy.”

Measuring Results with the EBI

When it comes to measuring results, Daly looks at a spread of metrics, including churn rate, social media, and website engagement numbers, the ratio of applications to interviews, and more. He also relies on Link Humans and the Employer Brand Index to measure sentiment and give him insights into what people are talking about when they talk about RWE. He’s found that even if someone doesn’t understand what an EVP is or what it means, going through the 16 attribute scores in the EBI allows them to see how it could help them immediately.

As Daly explained, successful EVP activation can be an engine that feeds itself. “The more successful you are with employer brand and the more that the organization is aware of what’s going on, the more they want to get involved with it.” At RWE, that success starts with putting humans at the center of the story.

To follow Neil’s work in employer brand, follow him on LinkedIn. If you want to know how your employer brand measures up to others in your industry, talk to us about the Employer Brand Index.