Is the CEO Becoming Your Most Powerful Employer Brand Signal?
Spoiler alert. No.
We've collected data from 200,000 people over the past 5 years about what they think of the world of work.
When we slice and dice this data, we see different changes across all of our audiences. For some roles, flexibility has become more important. In others, job security has risen up the ranks.
But one themes remained constant. Leadership is becoming less and less important as a priority for different target talent groups.
Where's leadership declined?
One of Wisdom's data sources is that we ask people to rank 20 different work priorities.
Since 2023, we've seen leadership decline
- From 6th to 15th for the GWP
- From 6th to 14th for Gen Z talent
- From 5th to 18th for Technical talent
It's becoming much less important across the board.
How this impacts choice of company?
Between December and February, we saw the number of people citing 'I like how the company is run' as a reason they would consider them fell by 8.81%.
Conversely, the number of people saying that the reason they did not consider a particular firm because they 'did not like how the company is run' also fell by 5.35%.
Leadership is becoming less important in driving candidate decisions.
What This Might Mean for Employer Brand Leads
Instead of focusing on leadership, look towards UGC and authentic content for more junior roles.
When leadership is less of a driver, there's more value to foregrounding the experience of the majority of workers, and exposing candidates to the real day to day of the role. Focus on managers rather than leaders - pivoting towards focusing on the leaders closest to them.
The one exception...
However, some of our clients have seen major problems with scandals around their leadership.
Here, employer brand data comes into its own. It allows you to quantify the impact that leadership scandals have had on your employer brand, track your mitigation efforts and identify the audiencs where this has the biggest impact.
If you want to know exactly what role leadership plays in shaping your employer brand, take a look at Wisdom.
Make your brand talented.
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