The challenge

After a decade-long partnership with a leading furniture brand that focused on filling sales, warehouse and head office roles, we spotted something bigger during a quarterly business review.

This was a business with a genuinely inclusive, flexible culture. One that gave people real reasons to join and stay. But none of that was coming through in the employer brand.

The problem was clear. The reality of working there was far stronger than what candidates were seeing from the outside. And without a compelling EVP to bring that story to life, the business risked losing great talent to competitors – and losing new hires sooner than it should.

Simply put, for all its strength as a consumer brand, it wasn’t yet standing out as an employer.

The solution

An EVP refresh wouldn’t do the job. It needed to be rebuilt from the ground up.

So that’s exactly what we did.

Bringing together our global Talent Advisory expertise and local market knowledge, we started with a deep brand audit. We looked at employee engagement surveys, spoke to employees, assessed pay and benefits, and sized up how the brand stacked up against competitors.

Then we dug deeper. Into the culture. Into the consumer brand. Into what actually made it a great place to work.

From that, we built a three-pillar EVP:

1. Committed to inclusion, safety and wellbeing
2. Building teams where you belong
3. Professional and personal growth

Leveraging our global Talent Advisory expertise whilst building capability locally, we conducted a comprehensive brand audit. We analysed employee engagement surveys, conducted employee interviews, assessed wages and benefits, and examined how their employer brand was performing against competitors. We unpacked their culture, their consumer brand, and what truly made Fantastic Furniture a great place to work. 

From this insight, we developed a three-pillar EVP: 

1. committed to inclusion, safety and wellbeing 
2. building teams where you belong 
3. professional and personal growth  

We created a bank of photography, employee stories and video content built around real people and real experiences. We refreshed the careers page and Springboard landing page. Updated LinkedIn, Seek and Indeed company profiles. Rewrote job ads. And embedded EVP messaging into candidate communications and talent communities.

But we knew this could not just be an external launch. It had to live inside the business first.

Cue in: Internal Activation

So we started with HR, Talent and Employee Resource Group leaders, turning them into early champions. We built an EVP toolkit, ran training sessions and gave recruiters and hiring managers what they needed to bring the brand to life throughout the candidate journey.

Then we rolled it out across the wider business through launch events, social campaigns, webinars, photo contests, internal marketing and rewards for employees championing the EVP themselves.

External activation followed

Once that was in place, we took it to market. Using paid, earned, shared and owned media, we activated the EVP across every touchpoint. That meant targeted messaging, employer brand ambassadors, talent communities and employee referral programmes. All designed to show candidates the real value of a career with the business.

Results

The impact was immediate and long-lasting.

• 30% drop in staff turnover overall, with an initial 18% reduction followed by a further 12%
• 15% increase in candidate applications
• 7 days knocked off the average time to hire

More importantly, the business is now showing up as the kind of employer people want to join – and stay with. Candidates are engaging more meaningfully. New hires are staying longer. And the brand now reflects the inclusive, flexible culture that was always there, but had never been fully brought to life.

What started as a recruitment partnership became something much bigger: a full employer brand transformation. And after more than a decade, the partnership is only getting stronger.