Stacy Parker
I really feel that ‘26 is gonna open up all kinds of new opportunities. Don't try and own it all. Own the parts that you know you can influence and then figure out who needs to stand beside you and above you to make the rest of this shape the culture.
Speaker
As we step into 2026 one thing is clear: employer branding is entering a new chapter. EVP can no longer live as a recruitment message. In 2026, it has to operate as a human contract, guiding leadership decisions, shaping daily experience, and holding up when talent can verify everything in real time. This is Blu Thread Conversations, with Leandra Harris and Stacy Parker of Blu Ivy Group. Today's episode explores the six trends shaping employer branding in 2026 and what leaders need to be ready for now.
Leandra Harris
Good morning, Stace.
Stacy Parker
Good morning. I love that you have just the single name Leandra. Yeah. I love it. I love it. I love it. It suits you.
Leandra Harris
Thank you. I'm going to try it this year.
Stacy Parker
I love it.
Leandra Harris
My new brand.
Stacy Parker
I love it. It suits you.
Leandra Harris
Thank you. I like it too. Stacy, today, I feel like we're going to kind of do a recap of all of our podcasts over.
Stacy Parker
It's that time of the year.
Leandra Harris
Right. It's that time of the year. And what we have planned to do is to talk about 2026 trends.
Stacy Parker
Yep.
Leandra Harris
Before we get into the trends, Stace, I like how you suggested that we should pause and reflect on 2025 because we have seen a lot. And some of the things that we have seen are concerning because they're inhibiting organizations from seeing the impact and value of employer branding and an EVP can have on performance, right? And growth of an organization. So I love your idea. Like, let's first start there and talk about like, there's some myths out there that many believe in. And we want to be real with our listeners and share those myths with you, because obviously we're very passionate. We've seen the impact an employer brand and EVP can have on an organization. So it's important that we kind of are upfront about the myths that exist today that many believe in. And then let's talk about our six trends for 2026.
Stacy Parker
Yeah, I think honestly, if I were to have a conversation with anyone about what this last year has been, I think it was a real shake up – wake up for the industry. It's time to evolve. Like you need to evolve. And it does not matter how much you yell to the masses that employer brand matters, you need to connect back to the business and you need to look at the bigger picture. And I think you need to be honest about who you are in the world of employer branding and what it is that you serve. Just be honest, stop trying to be everything because there's a lot of components of this work. Be honest about who you are. And I think even we had to face some of those questions this year.
Leandra Harris
For sure. So let's start with myth one, Stace, would you like, let's share some of the things that we're seeing that we want to set the record straight here.
Stacy Parker
Yeah, that an EVP is a talent marketing message. It's talent marketing. Yeah, I think that’s the first myth. And we know that really it's like, I love to think of that EVP is the human contract. It's the why people join and stay; why they want to be on the ride and deliver everything that the culture foundation is asking for. That is your employee value proposition or your commitment to talent. Yeah. And if it is only used as a talent marketing message, it's serving no help to the organization in terms of retention. It's serving no help in terms of rallying talent around what you as leaders are trying to achieve.
Leandra Harris
Because if you don't make sure that what you're telling candidates is being lived consistently internally. It's going to hinder your ability.
Stacy Parker
Absolutely, you're so right. I love the calls that you sometimes get. I got a call that was, ‘I need help. I need you to fix our Glassdoor and Indeed reviews and give me a campaign that's going to attract talent.’
Those reviews were below an average of two. And the solution was ‘Give me an EVP and campaign that's gonna fix this dynamic.’ I mean, it's a prime example.
Leandra Harris
It can't.
Stacy Parker
No, it can't. That campaign is like the front door of a house. And when you step in, the EVP should be the foundation of the house; that it's got legs, it's got strength. And most are treating it like, just focus on that front door, that facade.
Where do you think that myth has been? Like what propagated that myth? Because it's so deeply entrenched.
Leandra Harris
Yeah, like the fact that they just focus on that external messaging and it's so interesting. Well, I think that it kind of goes with the myth that values and behaviors aren’t enough for your culture, right? So I feel like there's just a big misunderstanding that if you have values, you have a vision, you have behaviors, that's all you need to form a great culture. And then the EVP is just to help you recruit and market your organization. What's missing, and we did this podcast,
is what you said. If you're just talking about your values, which is what you stand for, your mission is your purpose, your vision is where we're going, the behaviors are what we expect from you. Like you said, organizations need to move at a rapid rate. If you want this crew, if you want your people to feel inspired and to push and to work and to be productive, what are you going to do for them? You need that. It's just basic sense that we expect this from you and in return, this is what we are going to commit to you. It's just a misunderstanding or people don't understand the purpose of an EVP and what it is.
Stacy Parker
Yeah. And I think like, honestly, I know we talk about this a lot, I think a part of that, the challenge is that early adopters were often talent acquisition and their primary focus remains attracting talent. A lot of organizations in the recruitment marketing space had huge demand over, you know, that growth era and really used employer brand and recruitment marketing interchangeably. But they are not interchangeable strategies and EVP is foundational to your culture framework like you just talked about. I really think that that myth has evolved over the last few years because recruitment marketing often used EVP and employer brand interchangeably.
Leandra Harris
Yep, good point. What other myths are you seeing?
Stacy Parker
Authenticity, that word that we love to use. Authenticity in your EVP and employer brand is going to come from the interviews and the workshops that you do. That if employees said this is why they joined and stay, you've now got an authentic EVP. And that's…
Leandra Harris
… Not true.
Stacy Parker
Not true. You got some data to back why you have an EVP, but that doesn't make it authentic. What really makes it authentic is that it is lived, that every leader is making decisions, messaging, behaving in ways that are aligned to what we're calling our commit, our promise, our employee value propositions, is your human contract. That it is acting as a governance system. That's when it's authentic because the company is using it to direct how it makes decisions and how it recognizes greatness.
Leandra Harris
Yeah, if you don't see it, it's not real. It's not authentic. Third, third myth you're seeing.
Stacy Parker
It's not authentic. No.
Leandra Harris
Third, third myth you're seeing.
Stacy Parker
Differentiation. Differentiation is going to come from better copywriting. It's going to come from more segmentation. Let's go down as far as we can. And then we're differentiated from all of our competitors. And I think that's a big myth as well. Like in that case, again, we're really leaning into campaigns. And campaigns are important. I never want us to dissuade, there's a huge part of recruitment marketing that is employer brand strategy. But differentiation in your employer brands comes from the fact that you chose to double down on the programs that you were gonna have to support your growth culture, your collaboration culture. It's not because you've made that one tagline just a little bit sexier. And a part of why things are not as disparate anymore in industry EVPs is because that's all we focused on is language and campaign instead of all of the proof points of what makes your promise a little bit different.
Leandra Harris
And I think to add to those, Stace, I mean, you've already mentioned them. Employer brand is not communications. I think you've made that point very clear. It has to be integrated into the experience. You have to see it, you have to feel it, you have to experience it or it's not real. And then the EVP is not something or the employer brand is not something that is adopted across a global organization. It's not, ‘Okay, we did this work, this is our EVP, this is our employer brand, European Regions, APAC. Here you go.’
Stacy Parker
‘Now do it.’
Leandra Harris
‘Now do it.’
Stacy Parker
‘You have the taglines. Now do it.’
Leandra Harris
Exactly, which it's not going to be authentic because the culture and APAC is quite different from the culture in Europe, which is quite different from the culture in North America. So it's really important for that authenticity, for that realness, for people to experience it, that you dig a little deeper and understand what those EVP, those commitments truly mean, what they look like in APAC versus Europe versus North America, it's really important, versus South America. Like it's really important that that work is 100%.
Stacy Parker
Yeah, how they use it, where they use it, why they need it. Yeah, the problems that we need to solve are not the same as the problems emerging from HQ employer brand.
Leandra Harris
I know we've seen organizations, like I've worked with organizations where the central team was frustrated because Australia wanted to use different pictures and they weren't in the brand guidelines. But the sentiment, overall sentiment was still there, but it had that Australian kind of that a little bit of their culture and the way talents, who cares? You're not changing. It's still who the company is. There's proof points. It's too often we see examples where work is delayed because a region doesn't want to use the right photos or they want to use orange instead of blue to tell their story because… who cares? Why are we doing this? Why are we doing this? This is the commitment. And if this commitment is going to be told better in Australia by replacing one word, because that is a common term in Australia that really resonates with talent, who cares?
Stacy Parker
Yeah, yeah. Well, I know you hosted an executive roundtable recently. There was a lot of talk about the need for more adaptation, flexibility. Yeah, don't be a police state on this. Like understand that perhaps those in Australia know best how to adapt some of the brand framework. And remember that that is a component. That is some of the marketing and advertising messaging. Let's get back to what the foundational requirements are and why we're doing this.
Leandra Harris
Exactly. So let's talk, I mean, you and I could talk more about trends and what we're seeing. But let's talk about, I mean, we could talk a lot about what's happened in the past year, but let's talk about going forward. Six for 2026.
Stacy Parker
Yeah, I love that. Let's keep it.
Leandra Harris
Let's keep it. What's the first trend you see, Stace?
Stacy Parker
Yeah. Every theme this year is six for 26.
Leandra Harris
Six for 26. What's the first trend you see, Stace?
Stacy Parker
Yeah. Okay, before I do, I found it really interesting that a lot of what we're talking about was actually in our forecast for last year.
Leandra Harris
Yes.
Stacy Parker
So I think perhaps some of the shifts in the economy, we were just a little bit ahead of some of those changes. But like the demand, the conversations are 100% now aligned to these messages. And the first is inside out branding, living the EVP. So using that EVP, I feel like we just keep talking about it, using the EVP as a management system. And it's so many leaders that we're having conversations with, three this week. It is about using the employee value proposition to connect talent, to reignite leaders and how they're doing the messaging and to elevate the whole culture framework, the purpose, vision, values and use this as that part of the human contract, the why we're all doing it together. We've had a lot of clients that have now made a much bigger effort to launch as an internal brand first. So we're going to send a big message, not just a launch day and events, but we're going to rebrand and message internally first on all of our programs that touch the employee life cycle. We're going to give our managers the tools and playbooks first to make sure they know how to talk to it. So our employees see, experience, feel, and validate before we then decide that we need to do talent marketing externally.
Leandra Harris
For sure. And what I love to, Stace, is the number of clients that have asked us now, ‘I don't need your help uncovering an EVP, I actually need your help uncovering our culture story.’ Well, right? Like, so we're getting more clients and we're working with them on their holistic story: what your values are, what your EVP is, behaviors, vision.
Stacy Parker
Way more.
Leandra Harris
Holistically, right? So they're looking at it not as this, ‘Okay, this is just for recruitment. We need to look at everything holistically,’ which you and I are so happy about.
Stacy Parker
Yeah. Just this past week, a client is like, ‘Listen, we redid our values. We've got them. We've got our principles. There's like 16 of them. We've got commitments. But it's so confusing. Nobody knows how to use it, how they all fit together. Can you help us using the employee value proposition to create a simplified contract and commitment?’
Leandra Harris
Love it. Second trend?
Stacy Parker
Second trend, radical transparency. Yeah, so really, let's get down to the brass tacks. If you've got this EVP, let's start to see how it's lived. How does it show up regularly? Show me through pay transparency. Show me through the way people's careers are advanced. Talk to me how you invest in it, where I will be able to turn. Let's talk about EDI, DEI and how that continues to live in programs and experiences across the organization to drive belonging. Let's talk about your belief system on how managers are developed and what I can expect to get out of that contract. Like, so a lot more transparency externally on what it is that you offer. Do you see any more on that?
Leandra Harris
No, I agree. I think it's just being real. And, you know, when you were saying that I was thinking about the culture handbooks and, you know, policies that you and I have, you know, clients have shared with us in the day. And it's like, they need to ask themselves, this is 100 page document on all the like, how are you actually showing some of these commitments in here? So it's just, I think it's really stripping away and getting at the fundamentals, more like how will they know that this is true? Yeah.
Stacy Parker
Yeah. Like, did you know? Did you know on this EVP pillar? Did you know what programs we offer that support this? Did you know how your benefits, what parts of your benefits program support this? What parts of your variable comp support this? What elements of the performance management that we have worked on actually support this? Like, yeah, I think it is so important. Trend three?
Leandra Harris
Yes, I love this trend.
Stacy Parker
The “Social CEO”. I know.
Gosh, right now everyone wants to talk about employee brand ambassadors and all for it, but not as just an added content system. Let's think bigger. People join an organization, leave a leader. More and more the way we need to differentiate our organizations is by the leaders that we have invested in and we're putting more and more money into training and developing. People trust leaders and need to hear from them. Talk a little bit about what you've seen, because you've done so much work on what we'll call the “Social CEO”.
Leandra Harris
Yeah, well, I love like we're working with a client, Stace, that is now doing social posts. Some of their social media storytelling is showcasing leaders like we've seen to your point, a lot of employee storytelling, which we don't want to lose. Of course, they're amazing. You know, a lot of clients do such a great job, but I don't see a lot of clients and I love that this client is doing this is like meeting this leader and all the things that they have done that make them a great leader. What a great way to attract top talent. Like I want to work for her or I want to work for you. Amazing, amazing. And I think just the CEO brand, how important it is because that brand has an impact. Your CEO's brand now, it's shown, has an impact on the valuation of your organization. So once again, we spoke about this in a podcast. If your CEO isn't posting regularly about culture and talking about culture as much as it's talking about products or services, that sends a message.
Stacy Parker
Yeah. And it gives you a clear perspective on how culture, experience, and talent are valued.
Leandra Harris
Yep. And we've seen a correlation between employer review scores and how often the CEO talks about culture.
Stacy Parker
Absolutely.
Leandra Harris
Yeah, very, very. The fourth trend, I mean, I won't speak too much about it, Stace, is just we need to have, you know, continued employee advocacy. We need them to be involved in creating content, but you need to provide them the tools. And you need to collaborate with them and global organizations need to have those ambassadors, those co-creators of content. They need to engage. I really see heads of TAs, CHROs, the ability to persuade and influence and get people excited about contributing to the employer brand, sometimes without having, it's no longer you report to me, so you have to do this. Because often organizations are so complex, they may not report to you. They often don't report to you, but you need to engage them and partner with them and get them excited and know how to identify those people that have an incredibly strong network and partner with you on storytelling. So we've seen a lot of that. That's not gonna go anywhere.
Stacy Parker
Yeah, agree. And there's so many tools available now. Arm them, again, use that EVP as a framework so that the same theme of arming a CEO with the message of the organization, there's key talking points that they will always stick to because that is the brand.
So, EVP is the brand in the sense that these are the kind of three, four themes that we always want to drive home. Give that to your employees, but there's so many tools available now and let them have some freedom. Stop curating it to the nth degree where it doesn't feel like employees acting as ambassadors. It feels like you've put a picture and a highly curated quote and you've removed all of the magic of it and turned it into corporate messaging again. Give freedom, have the trust in your employees. That's where the beautiful stories and the amplification actually comes in.
Leandra Harris
I love that. And didn't we see, remember there was an employee who went viral, they were an ambassador, and they somehow linked their love for chocolate to the EVP at that organization. It was the most random post I've ever seen in my entire life. It was hilarious and it went viral. They just somehow put the link towards their love of chocolate and their EVP and they made it work.
Stacy Parker
Yeah.
Leandra Harris
Trust your people.
Stacy Parker
Crisis proofing.
Leandra Harris
Yeah, crisis proofing. Really important. I think really succinctly making sure that if you already have developed relationships, if you're already talking about your culture as an executive team, that is one way for sure to future proof your organization against a crisis, right? Because you already have the relationships. It's one thing if they're used to seeing me, if I'm a CEO and they're used to seeing me talk about culture and how important my people are and then when a crisis hits I go out there and I say I'm really sorry you know how important culture is and people are. That will make people, you know- hopefully, the trust can be rebuilt more quickly because they know, they've seen me before, they've heard me talk about culture and people.
I think it's also important to have a plan. Like a crisis, the likelihood of a crisis, reputation crisis happening in your organization is extremely high. It's most often, it's probably going to happen. The severity will differ, but it will depend, but it will happen. Prepare for it. And I mean, we did a podcast on this, but yeah. What else would you say about future proofing?
Stacy Parker
Yeah, well, and that issue of crisis management, like the reality this year, which we haven't really talked about, and gosh, I don't want to go into it too much because everyone's talking about AI. But the reality is that prior really to 2025, organizations could intentionally shape a lot of reputation through PR, through marketing, and brand messaging. But with the advent of just how dramatically search has shifted to AI tools like Chat GPT, the employer brand is shaping so much of reputation. And when there is a massive restructuring that's not handled or messaged well, when there is pressure to sell or push, which a lot of leaders have to explore in tough markets, when there is a decision to shut down or restructure a part of business or a new leader comes in, these are all dramatic moments that will now really shift reputation. And people are loud about it. Your engagement scores aren't telling you the whole story. The reputation and story is actually being told externally. So, I think that we put it as trend five, but it's starting to become dramatically essential to watch, measure, and manage.
Leandra Harris
Yeah, and using the EVP as a change management tool will help you because if you have one post, only one post that talks about how terribly they were treated or something they didn't like, that can make a huge difference on your reputation.
Stacy Parker
Yes. I love that. There's been two conversations I've had just this week alone where either a new CEO came in, probably the right CEO because they need to scale the business. The former founder CEO was always door open, inspirational and tone, and they're not experiencing that anymore. But there's no ‘What's in it for me now as we're changing. What are my commitments to you?’
The messages are very much about the direction the company needs to take, but that new CEO is missing the piece, which is how you come along, and the former CEO had that. Yeah. And there was another, which was a large organization that did a restructure. The new CEO responsible for that restructure was very intentional in telling people about what they could expect in terms of difficult changes, but again, didn't root what they can expect in terms of his level of commitment to them as they went through the changes.
Leandra Harris
For sure.
Stacy Parker
And what happens, psychological safety falls down, performance falls down. Yeah.
Leandra Harris
Yeah, and we could do a whole podcast on that, Stace. I think there's a lot of, you know, strong analytical CEOs, C-suite out there, amazing execution, but they're going to have a tougher time relying on those skills if they don't develop those skills of ‘We're collaborating with you, we're partnering with you, this is why this is our commitment to you.’ A huge piece that they need to learn and adopt to get people to go where they want to go.
Last trend, of course, we always, always will have this on our trend is measurement. So measuring the impact. I mean, if this work isn't contributing to higher performance and isn't impacting the bottom line, why are you doing it? Why are you doing it? And it's really important that you measure those elements that can tell you that, yes, this work is driving the right performance, right? So we're seeing organizations look at sentiment online. They're looking at what their leaders are talking about. They're looking at new higher quality. There's a multitude of metrics, but they need to be consistent. And you and I really see three areas when you're looking at employer branding. Leadership: are they living it? The experience: do the employees believe in it? And then reputation and preference: Do you have a good reputation out there and do candidates choose you over other organizations?
Stacy Parker
And are customers choosing you? Are customers choosing you? Are you seeing that? From the get, we've tracked market share growth with organizations and have seen those directly. That's what a CEO cares about. And, you know, when we talk about, like earlier, industries made some mistakes and led with recruitment marketing as the priority. If the message of the value of this work and investment and time from people is the visits to the website, the number of applicants per job.
Leandra Harris
LinkedIn followers. I've seen that too.
Stacy Parker
It's no wonder that the value is not proven of why this work needs to happen. It's time for a lot of people to elevate the game, 2026 is the year. And that's an exciting thing to do. It affords so much opportunity for employer brands, talent acquisition, communications leaders to lift it up.
Leandra Harris
Yeah, and if you are right now, your priority as an employer brand leader is to develop amazing content and to see and to track the engagement of that content, you need to step back. Because you're not going to make the impact that you need or should make or can make on the bottom line. Stace, we have like, we talked a lot because you and I are a little bit passionate about this. Close us off, my friend. Close us off with words of wisdom.
Stacy Parker
Ah, I don't know if I've got the words of wisdom this morning, but okay. So shift from messaging to governance systems. That's your EVP. Think about that. Your EVP is a human contract, it is not a campaign. It is a human contract, the campaigns follow. Culture, that narrative and descriptions are kind of shifting from ‘This is what we need from you’ to ‘This is how we do it together.’ It's reciprocal. Culture is reciprocal. Credibility is earned and that requires leadership and employees. And the culture only works when an EVP is binding. And I love this: belief is your purpose. Values, behaviors, tell you how we do it. The experience tells you what you get out of it. And the outcome is business growth, client preference. And ultimately, we're looking at increased returns. So belief, behavior, experience, outcomes, those are the things we need to focus on with employer branding 2026.
Leandra Harris
Stace, excited! And to all of the listeners, you know like Stacy and I and our team, we love collaborating on this, like talking about this. People aren't alone. Reach out to your network, right? Because we really are going to, we're quite passionate about elevating the game in 2026 and working with our clients to do that. So I'm excited to continue partnering with you. Here's to year 14, my friend.
Stacy Parker
Can you believe it? We were just babies. We were just babies.
It's been wonderful to see how there has been this real shift. Into much more meaning, much more impact, and the level that's now interested in employer branding. And I hope everyone that's invested so much time or those of you that have been impacted this year by some difficult company decisions, I really feel that ‘26 is gonna open up all kinds of new opportunities. Don't try and own it all. Own the parts that you know you can influence and then figure out who needs to stand beside you and above you to make the rest of this shape the culture.
Leandra Harris
Yeah, and all those like love to all those champions out there that are doing a lot of great work. There's some amazing employer branding leaders and HR leaders and people in comms. There's a lot of amazing people out there that are doing the right thing. We just see opportunities for others, right? They can do more. We know they can do it.
Stacy Parker
I think it's an exciting year for everyone in this industry. I think the worst of it is behind and there's some exciting, bigger things ahead.
Leandra Harris
Yeah. All right. let's do it! Thanks, Stace.
Stacy Parker
Happy 2026!