How to Build an Engaging Employer Brand with Visual Storytelling

Most brands think employer branding is all about selling themselves — but that’s where they go wrong. In reality, candidates today see right through generic claims of being a “great place to work.”

What attracts them the most are brands that feel authentic. And crafting visual storytelling is a game-changer when it comes to giving your brand a distinct personality.

Telling your brand’s story weaved in visuals helps you create a “funnel” that attracts the right customers and the right talent to work with you. It also helps improve employee productivity, increase loyalty and hit your business goals every year.

At Venngage, we have the perfect solution with over 10,000+ ready-to-use templates that help you create visuals that resonate deeply with your audience. In this blog, we’ll share how you can use visuals to transform employer branding.

Here’s everything we’ll cover in this blog:

The power of visuals in employer branding
Key elements of a strong employer brand
Templates for hassle-free employer branding
How to measure the impact of employer branding

The power of visuals in employer branding

Visual storytelling can make your employer brand stand out in ways your social media presence or Glassdoor reviews can’t. Here are three ways using visuals can help you elevate your employer branding.

Grab attention in a crowded market

In a content-heavy job market, visuals like infographics, videos and graphics cut through the noise. Studies show that people remember 65% of visual content even after three days, compared to just 10% of text alone.

Have you come across Google’s “Life at Google” video series on YouTube and LinkedIn? It’s a prime of a brand that uses visuals extensively in social media to attract talent and build an enviable employer brand.

The videos feature behind-the-scenes footage, employee interviews and office tours, offering a glimpse into the company’s culture, innovation and diversity.

But of course, you can’t match Google’s employer branding budget. So what can you, as a small or midsize business do to grab attention in a crowded market? Here are some practical tips:

Use Venngage to create visually appealing, shareable content.
Leverage storytelling through short videos that doesn’t require a lot of post-production.
Share testimonials, recognitions, and positive reviews from current employees.
Develop an employer value proposition (EVP) to communicate what sets your company apart.
Offer your employees learning and development opportunities.

Here’s an example from another brand that does it well.

Wegmans, the American supermarket chain, spends more than $50 million a year on workforce training and development. The company awards college scholarships to the interested ones without any catch.

As a result, Wegmans maintains an impeccable employee turnover rate that’s half the industry average. Everytime Wegmans opens a store in a new location, thousands of job applicants swarm the store to apply for the few hundred open positions the company advertises for. All thanks to its newsworthy employer branding.

Communicate company culture and values

Visuals allow your business to showcase its culture and values in a way that text alone can’t match. Case in point, the Life at Google campaign.

Visuals humanize the brand, making it more relatable and appealing to potential hires.

Don’t have the budget to invest in video production? Not a problem. You can use Venngage’s Employee Spotlight templates to highlight individual team members and offer insight into their roles and personalities.

You can also use the Team Photo templates to showcase the frameworks of principles you use to collaborate and encourage a diversity of thoughts within your workforce. These visuals create an authentic connection, giving candidates a clearer picture of what it’s like to be part of your organization.

Here are some actionable, yet simple, tips on how to clearly communicate your company’s values and culture:

Use employee-generated content: Encourage employees to share their work experiences through photos or videos on social media.
Create a culture highlight reel: Create short videos of team interactions or company retreats to highlight your culture.
Develop custom graphics for core values: Create a landing page to communicate your company’s core values.
Share behind-the-scenes moments: Make it a part of your social media marketing to share employee’s experience through light-hearted, authentic photos or stories.

Here’s an example from Zappos’ landing page that talks about the company’s culture and values through engaging graphics:

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Simplify complex information

Many employees quit their well-paying jobs to join a new employer that offers them clear career growth opportunities.

Visuals like infographics, flowcharts or slide decks make it easier for you to communicate complex information, such as company benefits, career paths or onboarding processes. Instead of overwhelming candidates with long documents, you can share these complex details in a clear, digestible format.

Here’s an example from Venngage’s Career Path Infographic or Onboarding Flowchart that lets you visualize growth opportunities in your company:

Here’s how you can simplify complex information without wasting your valuable time and effort:

Use infographics templates to present career growth opportunities and company benefits clearly.
Design flowcharts to illustrate onboarding processes or decision-making steps.
Develop slide decks to break down complex information into digestible segments.
Repurpose your wordy employee pages into concise, visual formats.

Key elements of an engaging employer brand

Building an engaging employer brand hinges on several crucial elements. Here are the three most important ones:

1. Authenticity and transparency

Being genuine and transparent is essential for a compelling employer brand. Prospective employees value honesty about company culture and values. Use visuals to showcase real employee stories and experiences — like through Employee Testimonial videos or Day in the Life infographics.

For instance, HubSpot uses real employee stories and behind-the-scenes videos to highlight its culture and values.

This approach helps you showcase your workplace culture authentically and build trust with candidates who share your company’s true character.

How to do it?

Use testimonial videos to feature real employee experiences.
Showcase a typical workday to share what it’s like to work in your company.
Share the best photos or videos from your office outings and team events.
Feature individual team members on your website or social media with short bios and photos.

2. Compelling storytelling

Storytelling is the ultimate human experience, which is why it’s also the best way to connect with audiences who want to work with your brand.

You can use storytelling in your visual communication to be more relatable to candidates. For example, you can craft narratives about your company’s origin, its real-world impact or social responsibility initiatives.

Although not directly aimed at attracting talents to their company, Patagonia frequently uses infographics like this to gain the attention of the people who share its beliefs and values:

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This kind of exercise has helped Patagonia not just build an admirable employer brand, but keep its employee turnover under 4%.

How to do it?

Share your company’s origin stories, such as its founding and growth over the years, through engaging visuals.
Use infographics to show how your company makes a difference in its customers’ lives.
Share real-life stories about employee achievements and career growth within your company.
Use timelines or milestone charts to share key moments in your company’s history.

Here’s an example template that you can edit to create a timeline of your company’s evolution in a visual format:

Consistent branding

Consistency breeds credibility and it’s really important for building a cohesive employer brand.

Consistency ensures that every touchpoint — whether a career page, social media profile or recruitment brochure — gives people a unified feel of your company.

It reinforces your brand’s identity and values and makes it easier for candidates to connect with your message.

If you need inspiration to create consistent employer branding, check out Venngage’s Brand Kit feature. It will help you maintain a visual unity across all your brand communications and create an easy-to-reference repository of branded templates, colors and fonts.

How to do it?

Use Venngage’s Brand Kit to maintain visual unity for colors, fonts, and templates.
Use logos, colors, and fonts consistently across all customer-facing platforms.
Ensure that career pages, social media, and brochures share the same tone and style.
Develop reusable templates for documents and visuals to keep your branding aligned.
Regularly review and update your brand guidelines to maintain brand consistency.

Venngage templates for employer branding

Using design templates can help you simplify the creative process and achieve consistency. And Venngage’s templates make it easy to create remarkable visuals for your employer branding needs.

Career page infographics

A great way to engage potential hires is to create a career page on your website and publish visually appealing infographics for them to explore.

Venngage offers templates like the Company Benefits Infographic. You can use this to highlight key perks such as flexible work schedules, health benefits or generous paid time off.

Similarly, the Career Path Flowchart is useful for clearly outlining growth opportunities. And the Employee Testimonial Graphic can help you highlight real-life stories of happy employees.

Venngage’s templates not only enhance your career page’s appeal but also help you set the right expectations in a captivating manner.

The other alternative is to present everything in plain text, which can make even your world-class company perks read like dry prose.

Social media graphics

It’s no secret that well-designed social media graphics can significantly improve your brand’s visibility and appeal.

Venngage offers a wide range of infographic templates to make your social media content shine.

For instance, you can use the Company Culture Graphic template to share snapshots of daily life and employee experiences to showcase your workplace’s friendly vibe. Or, you can use the Event Promotion Graphic template to promote current job openings, highlight team achievements or announce team-building activities.

Onboarding and Training Materials

First impressions matter, especially during onboarding. Venngage offers plenty of templates that help you create engaging onboarding and training assets that create a positive impression on new hires.

Here are a few examples:

Use the Onboarding Checklist Infographic to guide employees through their first days and to let them know exactly what to expect.
Edit the Training Flowchart Template to break down complex procedures into simple steps, such as how to create a new support ticket.
Make learning less overwhelming with the Employee Development Plan template to track progress and goals.

These templates make information easier to digest and reinforce your commitment to a supportive onboarding process.

Tips to measure the impact of employer branding

Improving employer branding requires analyzing its performance because you can’t manage what you can’t measure. Measuring the right data points also allows you to identify the best practices and adjust your employer branding strategy.

With that in mind, here are two key ways to measure if your employer branding efforts are making a difference:

Identify the key metrics to track

You can’t gauge the impact of employer branding by counting social media likes and follows. While these metrics show your brand’s popularity, they don’t necessarily reflect the success of your employer branding efforts.

Instead, focus on identifying key metrics that drive your branding success. Here are some relevant metrics to measure your employer branding’s impact:

Monthly website traffic to your career page.
The application conversion to measure the number of candidates who visit your career page and turn into full-time employees.
The number of organic inbound inquiries for job openings.
Time-to-fill for open positions from the date you advertise a job post.
Employee referral rate to measure the percentage of new hires coming through existing employees.
Retention rate to track the percentage of employees who stay with the company beyond their first year.

But the metric that really matters is the quality of applicants applying for any open roles in your company. If you are able to attract the right talents to your company and are closing the hiring requirements effortlessly, you are probably crushing your employer branding.

Gather candidate feedback

This is the most direct way to measure the effectiveness of your employer branding campaigns. Collecting feedback from future, current and former employees can help you refine your branding strategy and improve the overall candidate experience.

Candidate feedback offers raw insights into perceptions, expectations and pain points. These are valuable data points to improve your employer brand.

For instance, running exit interviews is a great way to understand what appealed to your employees to leave the company or decline a promotion. You can use the data to refine your onboarding process, design better incentive programs or introduce an employee advocacy campaign to improve employee retention rates.

Similarly, running anonymous surveys among existing employees can enhance manager-employee relationships. You can aggregate the survey feedback to address the gaps in the employee experience and improve people’s morale.

So what are some effective ways to collect employee feedback? Here are a few simple methods:

Surveys: After applications, interviews and onboarding. Here’s an example from Venngage’s template library:

Feedback Forms: For existing employees to understand their experience. Here’s a perfect example of a Feedback Friday template from Venngage:

Exit Interviews: For candidates who leave the company or decline promotion offers. Venngage has plenty of templates for employee offboarding and exit processes.

Polls: In company wiki or Slack to gauge your employees’ sentiment and engagement. Here’s a perfect template for this use case:

Elevate Your Employer Brand with Visual Storytelling

Visual storytelling is crucial for crafting an engaging employer brand that resonates with top talent.

By using compelling visuals, you can vividly showcase your company culture, values and opportunities. HR professionals should take advantage of Venngage’s user-friendly templates and design tools to create impactful graphics that attract and retain exceptional candidates.

Explore Venngage’s website to sign up for a free trial and start transforming your employer branding today.