Three people in the office chatting over coffee
Three people in the office chatting over coffee
Return to the office

Your office is part of your employer brand now

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by Gemma Hill

Your employer brand isn't only the careers page and the values printed on the wall. It's the room people walk into on a Tuesday morning. The temperature, the noise, the light, the coffee, the small stuff nobody writes down. People form a view of you as an employer from all of it, whether you planned it that way or not.

For years the office was treated as plumbing. Somewhere to sit. A cost per square foot. An operational detail to keep ticking over. That's changed. Now that coming in is a choice as much as an instruction, the office has become something people judge you on. It's part of your reputation, and it's on show every day.

What people see, feel and taste travels

The office used to be private. What happened inside mostly stayed inside. Not any more. People photograph their desks, their lunches and their worst-ever coffee. They tell friends what it's actually like to work somewhere. A tired canteen and a good flat white both get talked about, just in very different tones.

So the daily experience leaks out. It shows up in casual conversations, on social feeds and in the quiet verdict someone passes to a mate who's thinking of applying. Your building has quietly become a public-facing part of how you're seen. The bit you thought was back-of-house is now front-of-house.

And people weigh atmosphere heavily when they choose where to work. Randstad's Employer Brand Research UK 2025 found that 63% of UK workers rank a pleasant work atmosphere among their top reasons for choosing an employer, behind only pay and benefits [1]. That puts the feel of the place above job security and above most of what we assume drives the decision to take a job.

Employer brand is built in small daily moments

A job advert is a promise. The office is where you keep it. Someone reads about your culture, gets excited, then arrives to a cold room and a machine that dribbles something lukewarm and brown. The gap between the promise and the Tuesday does more damage than a weak advert ever could.

Small moments add up. The welcome at reception. Whether the heating actually works. Whether there's somewhere decent to take a quiet call. None of these are grand gestures. Put together, they tell people whether the place was thought about or just filled with desks.

That matters more when attendance is up for debate. King's College London found that 58% of UK workers would quit or start job-hunting if forced back to the office full-time [2]. People will come in. Far fewer will happily be made to, for a place that gives them little in return. The experience has to carry some of the weight a mandate never can.

The cup people meet first

Of everything in the building, coffee is the thing people reach for most, and earliest. It's often the first thing they do after hanging up their coat. It's shared across every level, from the graduate to the MD, all drinking from the same machine. And its quality is obvious in a second. Nobody needs a staff survey to know a bad cup.

So every cup quietly answers a question. Does working here feel like somewhere that pays attention? Good coffee says yes, several times a day, without making a show of it. It's a small signal. But it's the one people meet most often, and the one they'll mention first when someone asks what the place is like.

Where this leaves you

None of this means gutting the building or spending big to keep up. It means noticing that the office now speaks for you, and deciding what you want it to say. The daily experience is the part of your employer brand you can actually shape, this week, without a press release.

We've pulled the full picture together in our guide, "The office is part of your employer brand now. Here's the bit you can control." It covers what shapes the daily experience and where a little attention goes furthest. Worth a read if the office is yours to improve.

References

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