Choosing the right brand consultancy: employer branding and employee engagement
When organisations think about branding, the first things that often come to mind are logos, campaigns, or customer messaging. But employees bring your brand to life every day – shaping how your customers experience it. That’s why employer branding and employee engagement are essential pillars of a strong brand. And it’s why choosing the right brand consultancy makes all the difference.
At The Team, we’ve spent more than 40 years helping organisations like bp and Natwest Group, create brands that aren’t just visually compelling, but culturally embedded.
Here’s why partnering with a multi-disciplinary consultancy like ours delivers results that truly resonate.
We build brands that employees believe in
Many brand consultancies create striking visuals or catchy messaging. But few understand how to connect a brand to the people who deliver it.
At The Team, we approach employer branding as a strategic challenge as well as a creative one.
We combine:
- Behavioural science and organisational insights – to understand what motivates employees and shapes behaviour.
- Strategic frameworks – to align purpose, values, and culture
- Design and communications expertise – to make the brand tangible and relatable
This approach helps employees understand the brand, embrace it and live it – turning them into authentic advocates inside and out.
A strong employer brand relies on a strong employee engagement strategy. Employees are brand mascots, after all.
As a multi-disciplinary brand consultancy, we have the experience and the expertise to help you bolster your employer brand and engage your employees. We know how important it is for brand saliency and revenue.
As our director, Cliff Ettridge, touched upon in a previous blog:
The CIPD estimates that it costs £6,000 per year to attract and recruit the average employee. That rises to £19,000 for more senior hires. Getting your employer brand wrong is not just bad for employees, it’s bad for customers and your bottom line.
So, let’s take a look at some of work.
bp
When bp asked us in 2022 to help evolve its values system into a refreshed set of ‘Beliefs’, the task was deep: how do you embed new behavioural principles in an organisation the size of bp, and make them part of daily decision-making?
We supported the launch of the new Beliefs by crafting a simple visual device (brush-strokes) and delivering line-manager briefing packs and employee experiences designed to embed the language and thinking in practice. The campaign ‘What’s the value?’ then extended the embedding process: within 3 months, two-thirds of employees reported seeing colleagues living the Beliefs; by 2024, over 70% of employees were clear on what “value” meant in their role and 75% were using the campaign language at least weekly.
This case illustrates how employer branding is not just about attraction, but about behaviour, experience and culture. By linking purpose (reimagining energy for people and planet) with everyday employee language and tools, the brand becomes lived, not just stated.
Natwest Group
For NatWest Group (then part of RBS), we supported the transformation of their workplace environment, creating a new co-working identity for around 950 mobile workers.
Our work included the development of a visual identity applied across super-graphics, wallpaper, furniture, glass manifestations and way-finding — all geared to reflect a more dynamic, agile, collaborative culture inside the bank. In doing so, we linked employer branding (how people experience the workplace) and employee engagement (how they feel in it) in one powerful initiative.
This demonstrates the power of aligning physical environment, design language and internal communications to bring a brand’s promise to life. Natwest’s people could now see and feel a workplace that reflected the values of modern collaboration and mobility — reinforcing a brand that is relevant to employees and future talent alike.
Here are some key differentiators that make our approach as a brand consultancy unique.
Multi-Disciplinary Expertise
We don’t just offer strategy or design – we combine strategy, creative, and behavioural insights under one roof. This means employee engagement initiatives are aligned with the broader brand strategy, ensuring consistency and meaningful impact.
Tailored, Evidence-Based Approach
Every organisation is unique. We design engagement strategy based on research and behavioural insights, ensuring that interventions resonate with employees and drive measurable results.
As our Employee Engagement consultant, Jennifer Robinson notes:
When insights are carefully derived from the people inside the business, you can understand what the challenge really is and what might just be a sticking plaster. Whether the solution is a single, high impact campaign, or a more expansive exploration into the workplace culture, being led by insight makes sure we get it right.
End-to-End Delivery
From initial research to strategic frameworks, creative design, and full activation, we manage the entire journey. You don’t have to juggle multiple agencies or risk gaps between strategy and execution.
Proven Track Record
With decades of experience across complex, large-scale organisations, we’ve delivered employer branding and engagement programmes that transform culture, strengthen alignment, and improve business outcomes.
Choosing the right brand consultancy: the bottom line
Employer branding and employee engagement aren’t nice-to-haves – they are foundations for a brand that works in reality. A brand consultancy that understands this, and has the multi-disciplinary capability to deliver it, makes the difference between a brand that looks good on paper and one that truly lives and breathes across an organisation.
By choosing The Team, organisations benefit from decades of expertise, integrated strategy, creative design, and behavioural insights – all focused on bringing your brand to life internally and externally.
If you’re ready to make your brand matter to the people who bring it to life, talk to The Team today.
