Naming a Category Leader's Employer Brand Problem Out Loud
Employer brand · Qualitative research · Executive alignment
The Challenge
A national aesthetics and medspa chain with more than 150 locations had lost its grip on its own reputation as an employer. Turnover was high, review sites were brutal, and a new CEO was six months into a turnaround. Leadership wanted an EVP. What they actually needed first was an honest accounting of what it felt like to work there, and the confidence to hear it without flinching. The risk was obvious: an aspirational EVP published on top of an unchanged employee experience would confirm every suspicion associates already had.
The Work
I ran a full employer brand audit across everything a candidate or associate actually touches: job postings and descriptions, orientation and onboarding materials, benefits communications, internal huddles, org charts, training, recruitment collateral, the careers page, paid social, and the search results that come up when someone types "should I work here." I paired that external footprint with a values survey and group interviews with current associates, then benchmarked three direct competitors on messaging, career pages, and social to show leadership exactly where the gap sat.
The findings were harsh, so I structured the session to make them usable rather than defensive. I presented the unflattering material and the genuine strengths side by side, distilled the interviews into four emerging values, and mapped each one to an existing brand superpower so the internal work laddered to the brand platform already in flight. Then I split the work ahead into two columns, mine and theirs, and held a line on one rule: nothing enters the EVP unless it is already true or already has a plan behind it.
The Outcome
Leadership aligned on four core values grounded in what associates said, not what the company wished were true, and accepted a set of commitments they owned outright: a documented history, real career pathways, and transparency on commissions and scheduling. The work moved into ethos and EVP development with a shared standard for what the company was allowed to claim.
If the engagement continued past the EVP development phase, tell me what shipped and I can sharpen the outcome section with the harder proof.