A strong employer brand does not begin with recruiting.
It begins with the question of what a company stands for, what kind of culture it wants to live by, and what promise can arise from this for employees. We worked intensively with SWARCO on these exact questions over several years – from a shared future vision of the brand, through culture and values work, to a clearly defined Employer Brand and a systematic process for its further development and anchoring.
Corporate Brand: Creating a Shared Vision for the Future
In 2017, SWARCO faced a challenge typical of corporate groups that have grown significantly. Around 80 companies were operating worldwide, many of them still under their original company names. A common identity was missing, but above all, a shared vision of what SWARCO should stand for as a group and how the company should be perceived in the future.
An international project team with more than 20 employees examined market trends, stakeholder feedback, and their own brand and organization. The current image at the time was deliberately self-critical. This was contrasted with a vision for the future: a self-confident company that provides orientation, communicates openly, learns from mistakes, reacts quickly to changes, and aligns its international organization toward common goals. This created the first shared reference point for what SWARCO wanted to be in the future.
Culture and Values: Translating the Future Vision into Behavior
The vision for the future was subsequently translated into shared core values and specific behavioral expectations. The decisive factor was that the values should not just remain in the brand manual but be lived in everyday life. For example, they were integrated into performance reviews and reflected upon with managers: What does reliability, for instance, mean specifically for daily actions at SWARCO?
For international anchoring, SWARCO relied on internal branding, workshops, and a train-the-trainer or changemaker concept. Employees from different regions were empowered to translate the future vision and values into their local organization and to derive what the strategic image meant for the local entity. This is precisely where an important insight lies: Culture does not change by decree. It arises through continuous engagement, translation, and repetition.
Employer Brand: Developing an Employer Promise from Identity
The SWARCO Employer Brand was further developed in 2025 on this strategic foundation. At the headquarters level, the strategic content of the employer brand was defined and recorded in an Employer Brand Strategy. The focus was on the question: What does our shared self-image at the corporate level mean specifically for existing and future employees? The SWARCO Employer Brand Value Proposition (EVP) for the relevant target groups was derived from the corporate brand, culture, and values, as well as benefits and development opportunities.
In parallel, concrete tools were created for the local companies: from implementation
guidelines and planning tools to support for campaigns and career fairs. Group-wide campaigns finally translated the employer brand into visible communicative activities for the individual branches.
From Employer Branding to Systematic Anchoring
With increasing activity, however, a new challenge emerged: The employer brand was defined, but its implementation was still partly carried out through uncoordinated individual measures in the various branches. A common planning process that consistently coordinated activities between headquarters and subsidiaries was missing. Therefore, SWARCO developed its own Employer Branding Planning Process, which links strategic development and operational activities.
The employer brand is regularly compared with developments in the labor market and employee feedback. Target groups and their needs, the Employer Brand Value Proposition, and desired associations are reviewed and, if necessary, adjusted and sharpened. Based on this, strategic goals, initiatives, and specific activities are planned for the following Employer Branding Year. Employer branding at SWARCO is thus transformed from a selective communication task into a continuous management process.
CONCLUSION
The SWARCO case shows that a strong employer brand is particularly effective where the corporate brand, culture, and employer brand interact consistently. A shared vision for the future provides orientation, values and behavior make this claim tangible internally, and the employer brand translates it into a relevant promise for existing and future employees. The decisive factor here is continuous anchoring: Only through regular reflection, clear processes, and translation into concrete measures does a strategically defined employer brand become a permanently credible and effective employer positioning.
3 Questions for
Markus Mitterecker
Where do you see most clearly whether the employer brand has truly arrived in the organization?
How do you manage to strengthen a shared employer brand while simultaneously taking local characteristics into account?
In this way, we create a common framework without losing sight of local needs and characteristics. The result is a coherent overall picture with enough room for regional relevance and independence.
In your view, what are the most important prerequisites for employer branding to be anchored in the organization not just as a campaign, but as a continuous process?
