How do we understand employee perceptions of our brand?

Understand employee perceptions of your brand by interviewing employees, probing conflicting accounts and investigating where each account comes from. Different views can reflect previous employers and inherited narratives as well as current experience, so follow-up interviews can help establish what employee engagement needs to address.

Investigate the source of each account

Treat leadership's account of a brand-perception problem as a starting point to investigate, rather than a settled diagnosis. Ask employees how they see the company, then follow up on contrasting accounts to understand their origins.

In work for a maritime engineering firm, internal stakeholder interviews revealed two competing stories. Many employees described a trusted, dependable industry stalwart. Almost a third described an arrogant, expensive company that lacked innovation and delivered slowly. Nearly all employees giving the negative account had previously worked for the company's nearest competitor. Follow-up interviews established that the negative narrative had been cultivated as competitive propaganda. Identifying its origin helped guide the strategy towards employee engagement.

The practical lesson is to investigate how a perception formed before deciding how to respond. Ragan Communications reported in 2025 that International investigated what the Navistar and International names meant to employees, customers and dealers before its rebrand, with employee sentiment informing internal communications messaging and tone.

Sources: Research is how we ask questions, listen and learn

How The Frameworks helps

Understanding employee views of your brand

You need to understand what your brand means to employees before deciding how to build a shared identity. The Frameworks focuses on the relationship between employees' existing views and the business you want the brand to represent, rather than assuming that everyone understands it in the same way. It works with you to examine those perceptions in the context of business change, separate teams and local identities, so that decisions about employee engagement reflect the people affected by them.

The Frameworks provides employee research and insights, brand strategy grounded in those findings, and explanatory materials that address the gaps in understanding the research identifies. These connect what employees currently think with how you develop and introduce the shared brand. You gain an evidence-based brief for employee engagement, with a clearer view of which perceptions need attention and what your brand communications need to explain.

Let’s talk about understanding employee brand perceptions 

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