TL;DR
Employer branding in China is gaining strategic importance, but execution has yet to catch up with ambition. New research shows widespread agreement that employer branding should connect with business strategy, while executive ownership, cross-functional collaboration and measurement of business impact remain much less developed. The emerging challenge is moving beyond visibility towards creating stronger connections between business priorities and what talent values, chooses and actually experiences.
Key points
- 97.4% of respondents say employer branding should be closely integrated with business strategy, but only 53.78% report full alignment.
- Only 40.07% say employer branding is treated as an executive-level strategic priority.
- 50.52% of organisations still manage employer branding primarily through projects or campaigns.
- Measurement remains weighted towards awareness, reputation and candidate metrics, with business impact ranking last among the ROI measures examined.
- Employer branding remains heavily HR-led, while fewer than half report participation from marketing, business functions or HRBPs.
- The research points to a broader shift in China from employer branding focused on being seen towards being connected and chosen, linking business needs more closely with what talent values and experiences.
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Employer branding has a strategy problem, not a lack of ambition
Almost every organisation in a new employer branding study agrees on one thing: employer branding should be connected to business strategy.
Actually making that connection is proving rather harder.
Some 97.4% of organisations surveyed for the 2026 China Employer Branding Trends & Insights Report said employer branding should be closely integrated with business strategy. Yet only 53.78% said their employer branding philosophy, communications and activities were fully aligned with their organisation's strategic priorities.
That gap is one of the more revealing findings in Employer Branding as a Growth Engine: Enabling Strategic Transformation and Resilience, a new report from HR Excellence Center (HREC), with ITS as research partner.
Download the full report here.
The research is based on 303 responses from organisations operating in China, spanning multiple industries and company sizes. Of respondents, 41.58% were directly responsible for employer branding and another 45.87% were HR managers or leaders indirectly involved in it.
Across the findings, a consistent picture emerges. Employer branding in China is increasingly being discussed as a strategic discipline, but much of the machinery underneath it still looks like the employer branding of a decade ago.
Budgets remain cautious. Measurement favours communications metrics. Business functions are inconsistently involved. And employer branding practitioners themselves appear to be becoming more execution-focused.
The report frames the biggest shift as a move from employer branding being primarily about being seen to being connected and chosen, from both the company and talent sides. That means connecting business priorities with the people the organisation needs, while also making sure the employer proposition reflects what talent genuinely values and experiences.
“Employer branding in China is moving beyond visibility. The real question now is whether companies can connect business priorities with what talent genuinely values and experiences.” Roy Wang, Founder & CEO, ITS Consulting
For HR and employer branding leaders, four findings deserve particular attention.
1. Strategic agreement is running ahead of strategic execution
In 2026, 97.4% of respondents agreed that employer branding should be closely integrated with business strategy, up from 95.08% in the report's 2024 data.
But just 53.78% said employer branding was fully aligned with their organisation's strategic priorities. Another 37.78% reported alignment only in selected areas, such as recruitment, while 8.44% said employer branding remained disconnected from business strategy.
The result is what the report describes as a "knowing-doing gap".
The argument for strategic employer branding appears to have been largely won at the conceptual level. The harder work is translating a changing business strategy into talent priorities, employee experiences and employer brand activity.
The report offers another clue as to why…
Among organisations where employer branding is fully aligned with business strategy, more than 70% have established structured cross-functional collaboration mechanisms. Where alignment exists only in selected scenarios, formal collaboration falls to around 40%.
In other words, strategic alignment appears to depend on organisational plumbing as much as strategic intent.
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2. Employer branding is still struggling to become an executive priority
Despite the overwhelming agreement that employer branding should support strategy, only 40.07% of organisations regard it as a strategic priority at the executive level.
A further 44.95% consider it important to HR but not a company-level strategic priority.
The difference between those groups is significant. Among organisations where employer branding has executive-level priority, 60% report long-term, systematic investment and operations. Among those where it remains primarily an HR responsibility, 67.44% still rely on project-based management.
Overall, 50.52% of organisations are operating employer branding mainly through projects or campaigns, up slightly from 48.56% in 2024.
There is a familiar circular problem here; employer branding teams need sustained investment to build the systems capable of producing business outcomes. Senior leaders want evidence of those outcomes before committing sustained investment.
The report finds that among organisations where employer branding is considered an important HR function rather than a company-level priority, 79.07% of senior management take a cautious approach, preferring to evaluate results and business impact before increasing investment.
The challenge for employer branding leaders is therefore increasingly one of evidence. Visibility alone is unlikely to settle the argument.
3. Measurement still concentrates on the top of the funnel
That brings the research to perhaps its most consequential finding. Asked to rank indicators for measuring employer branding ROI, respondents placed employer brand awareness and reputation tracking first. Candidate experience and application quality ranked second, while digital engagement metrics ranked fourth.
Further down came employee retention and engagement, recruitment performance, and finally business impact metrics, which ranked last.
This hierarchy helps explain why employer branding can struggle to establish itself as a business discipline. Metrics such as reach, reputation and candidate engagement are useful. They show whether communication is travelling and whether audiences are responding. But they provide only part of the picture if the strategic argument for employer branding rests on better recruitment, stronger retention, workforce quality or organisational performance.
The report's authors argue that employer branding measurement currently has a strong "front-end focus", leaving organisations with a value gap between communication performance and business outcomes.
There is some evidence that priorities are beginning to shift.
Among the relatively small group increasing employer branding and recruitment marketing budgets, 62.71% cited talent support for clearly defined new business initiatives as a reason for doing so. 52.54% cited more targeted engagement with segmented talent audiences.
That points towards a more specific role for employer branding: helping the organisation solve defined talent problems rather than simply accumulating visibility.
4. Employer branding remains overwhelmingly HR-led
Employer branding may aspire to connect business strategy, culture, recruitment and employee experience, but ownership remains heavily concentrated in HR.
The study found 93.94% participation from HR centres of excellence in employer branding initiatives. Whilst participation was considerably lower elsewhere: 48.92% for marketing and brand teams, 48.48% for business functions and 43.29% for HR business partners.
That matters because many of the inputs needed to build a credible employer brand sit outside the employer branding team.
Business leaders know which capabilities future growth requires. HRBPs see operational talent problems. Marketing teams understand the wider corporate brand. Employees know whether the promises being communicated externally bear much resemblance to working inside the organisation.
Without those connections, employer branding risks becoming an HR interpretation of the business rather than an organisational expression of it.
The report recommends more formal cross-functional structures, including employer branding committees bringing together HR, business and marketing, alongside clearer responsibilities and accountability.
The precise governance model will vary between organisations. The underlying finding is harder to ignore: employer branding cannot easily become a company-level capability while most of the company remains outside the room.
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The role of employer branding leaders may actually be narrowing
One finding deserves particular attention from practitioners themselves.The report compares how HR directors and employer branding leaders describe their roles in 2024 and 2026.
For HR directors, involvement in diagnosing business needs and employer branding requirements fell from 64.29% to 42.72%. Their role in translating and cascading strategic information also declined, from 61.9% to 54.85%.
The shift is even clearer among employer branding leaders. In 2024, 77.19% were described as "strategic executors", people who understood strategic intent and used it to shape employer branding strategy. By 2026 that figure had fallen to 59.22%.
Over the same period, the proportion described primarily as executors rose from 22.81% to 37.86%.
The report interprets this as evidence of weakening organisational capability to translate strategy into execution.
There is another possible reading worth considering. As businesses contend with restructuring, expansion, AI adoption and changing talent requirements, employer branding teams may simply be receiving more things to execute.
Either way, a discipline seeking greater strategic influence will find it difficult to achieve that while its practitioners are moving in the opposite direction.
Employer branding is being tested beyond recruitment
The wider report also shows why this debate is becoming more important.
Nearly half of the enterprises examined in its business transformation section were simultaneously expanding some areas while consolidating others. Employer branding therefore has to operate in rather more complicated territory than attraction campaigns.
That includes internal mobility, employee development, organisational restructuring and international expansion.
For example, 72% of companies said they provide transparent internal application mechanisms for employees seeking opportunities in new business areas. But only around half provide substantive capability support such as dedicated training, trial opportunities or transition mentors.
During organisational contraction, meanwhile, 91.6% recognise effective management of organisational optimisation as important to employer brand reputation. Yet 44.54% said limited resources mean they can provide only legally compliant support and basic employee care.
These are moments when the distance between employer brand messaging and employee experience becomes particularly visible. A careers campaign can describe an organisation's values. How an employer behaves when someone's role disappears provides rather more tangible evidence of them.
From communications function to business capability
The report ultimately argues for a move from what it calls "Employer Branding 1.0", dominated by communications and awareness, towards a model built around stronger connections between business strategy, organisational experience and trust. In the report’s terms, the shift is from being seen to being connected and chosen: helping the right people understand the organisation, decide to join it, experience the promise credibly once inside, and remain connected to its direction as the business changes.
ITS packages that thinking within its proprietary Talent Connection Index (TCI), which the report introduces as a framework for diagnosing the relationship between talent and business outcomes.
Whether organisations adopt that particular framework or another is a separate question. The survey findings themselves make the broader challenge clear.
Employer branding's next stage of maturity will probably depend less on persuading organisations that it is strategically important. Almost all of the respondents already agree with that proposition.
The challenge is building the operating model that makes the proposition true: executive ownership, cross-functional participation, measurement beyond communications, and enough strategic authority for employer branding teams to understand the business problems they are being asked to solve.
The strategy conversation, it seems, has moved faster than the function.|
Download the full report at https://www.itscasia.com/its/en/insights
TAKEAWAYS
Is employer branding in China becoming more strategic?
Yes, at least in ambition. 97.4% say employer branding should be closely integrated with business strategy, but only 53.78% report full alignment.
Has employer branding reached the executive agenda?
Only partly. Just 40.07% say employer branding is treated as an executive-level strategic priority.
Are organisations investing in employer branding for the long term?
Not consistently. 50.52% still manage employer branding primarily through projects or campaigns rather than sustained programmes.
How is employer branding success being measured?
Measurement remains concentrated on awareness, reputation and candidate metrics. Business impact ranks last among the ROI measures examined.
Who owns employer branding inside organisations?
HR remains dominant. Fewer than half of respondents report participation from marketing, business functions or HRBPs.
What is the bigger shift for employer branding in China?
The research points towards a move from simply being seen to being connected and chosen, linking business priorities more closely with what talent genuinely values and experiences.
EBN
