Employer Branding today often feels like a balancing act between data dashboards and human stories. For Arti Gangaiya, the real test is far simpler: if what an organisation says does not match what employees experience, the brand will not hold. In this conversation, the SVP of Global Employer Branding at NatWest Group reflects on why employer branding must move beyond polished campaigns to something far more grounded in reality. From empowering employees to become creators of the brand narrative to ensuring leaders visibly walk the talk, she shares how large institutions can still feel credible and human to a sceptical Gen Z workforce. The result is a perspective that is equal parts strategic, reflective and refreshingly honest.
You come from a communications and storytelling background at a time when employer branding is becoming deeply data-driven. How do you balance analytics with creative instinct, and how does this shape the way you push talent and business leaders to view employer branding as a long-term reputation play rather than just recruitment?
Yes, taking some fundamental notes first, we should understand that employer branding is ultimately about building aspiration, influence, and long-term brand reputation. I always keep saying this: employer branding is not just a short-term agenda. It is an everyday lived, shared, and experienced initiative. And it should have strong business buy-in.
From that perspective, data helps us understand whether we are heading in the right direction or whether it is telling us something different. If I have to simplify it, data helps us with the diagnosis. It tells us which narratives our colleagues are consuming or experiencing. For instance, if you run an internal survey or a pulse check, it will clearly tell you the three positives and three negatives of the organisation.
In that sense, data is the foundation for us. Creative storytelling, on the other hand, cannot be faked. You cannot paint a different picture. That is where we aim to bring authenticity through storytelling and develop it into a treatment. Once we understand the diagnosis, we then build the treatment around it.
Over time, that is how brand health is built in. I see it as different phases, but always integrated. You cannot rely solely on data, as numbers can dip, and the growth we expect may fluctuate. But that does not mean experimentation in employer branding storytelling or value creation should stop.
Thus, it is always an integration of how we tell the story, what we tell, and when we tell it. We map that consistently, and that is how we manage the balance.
Banking is built on trust and credibility. In a sector often perceived as conservative, how do you craft an EVP that feels bold, human and aspirational for Gen Z without diluting the credibility expected from a financial institution?
We tend to think about everything through a 3C model. The first is ‘customers’. Ultimately, whatever we do is to enable customers to solve a particular problem. That applies to any industry. So we constantly ask ourselves: what exactly are we solving for the customer?
The second aspect is ‘colleagues’. How are we solving those customer problems through our colleagues? On a day-to-day basis, are they bringing enough value in identifying and solving those problems? If not, where are the gaps we need to address?
The third lens is the ‘candidate philosophy’. In a market where there is such an intense war for talent and competition for skills, we also have to ask whether we are telling the right narrative to candidates. Are we building the right pipelines and attracting the right talent so that our hiring quality, inflow, and attraction metrics continue to improve?
We always bring a 3C view, regardless of the industry. In banking, this becomes even more nuanced. For instance, what sort of story do we tell a wealth customer versus a commercial or institutional banking customer? Ultimately, it comes down to the colleague and candidate philosophy, because we are doing employer branding.
Identifying the right persona becomes very pivotal. It fundamentally comes down to the skills and people you bring in, and how they fulfil the three key retention levers: attraction, retention, and engagement.
Essentially, a 3C model is something we consistently follow, and in many ways, it is a framework that any organisation can adopt.
Gen Z demands transparency, flexibility and purpose. But they also question large institutions. How does NatWest address scepticism towards legacy organisations and position itself as a progressive employer?
Gen Z believes in authenticity and action, not just statements. When I say action, I mean: are leaders actually walking the talk? Or are the statements only visible on the careers website and other fancy places, while the lived experience is completely different?
So the real question becomes: are we bridging the gap between what exists inside the organisation and what we present outside? That is a constant effort and a constant set of experimentation projects that we keep running. There can never be a perfect balance, but we have to keep bringing it to the table because what is inside should ideally be what goes outside.
From that standpoint, we often talk about experimentation. We openly talk about successes and failures in the same breath. For example, we consistently highlight use cases where things may not have worked out perfectly, but we still try to put the right narrative around the learning that came from them. It is about celebrating opportunities as much as achievements.
From my earlier experiences in other industries, I have also seen how important it is to equip Gen Z with the right tools. For example, when I was at Myntra, we constantly considered whether Gen Z had the tools they needed. If you do not provide the right infrastructure, technology, and platforms, the intent may be there, but access will not be.
So the real question is: are you positioning them with the right infrastructure and the right tools?
From an employer branding perspective as well, we are constantly analysing how our content is being consumed and how large language models are picking it up. We look at whether we are adding too much complexity through generative engine optimisation. In many cases, simpler and more concise content works better for LLM models to interpret and surface within larger systems.
So rather than adding too many frills or cosmetic layers to the narrative, we try to keep communication clear, crisp and authentic. Ultimately, it comes down to continuously listening to the market, understanding what needs to be adapted quickly, and also recognising when something should be simplified or optimised rather than constantly adding more.
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Banks often face reputational risks. How prepared are employer branding teams to respond in real time, and should they be more integrated with corporate crisis communication?
Today, we have a much stronger level of integration. If you had asked this question a few years ago, the answer might have been different. Now, as we move towards a simplification strategy, there is a clear need for a more streamlined, optimised structure than multiple teams working in silos.
The models we are currently building are largely at a global enterprise level. We try not to fragment things by saying one market needs something completely different from another. Of course, there are regional tweaks where necessary, but wherever possible, we aim to build global structures, global models and enterprise-driven strategies.
This approach significantly simplifies effort and allows teams to bring their best contributions forward. It is particularly relevant to crisis communications and recruitment marketing, where we consistently see risks such as scams or misleading communications in the market.
We regularly receive reports on such issues, so it’s important to monitor the brand’s health and ensure we provide sufficient, accurate information to the market.
If I had to summarise it in two words, they would be ‘simplify’ and ‘optimise.’ Those are the two principles we are emphasising as we build stronger cross-functional integrations.
There is growing fatigue around polished EVP narratives. What are some uncomfortable truths organisations must accept if they want Gen Z to believe their employer brand?
For Gen Z, belief comes only when there is a strong source of truth. They do not easily buy into a narrative. In fact, it is quite difficult to instil belief in Gen Z purely through messaging.
For example, I am also part of the India Inclusion Council at NatWest Group, where I support hiring strategies and brand-building strategies. When we go to campuses, we speak very clearly about our inclusivity parameters and the policies and programmes we have in place. We go into that level of detail because we do not want to leave any stone unturned when it comes to attracting the right attitude and mindset.
From that perspective, we also bring our workstream members to campuses. It is not just the traditional binary representation of male and female. We bring voices from across workstreams, including LGBTQ+ and people with disabilities, and we invite leaders or employees from those groups to share their experiences.
They become authentic voices on campus and share their lived experiences, serving as a powerful source of inspiration for students to learn about the organisation and consider raising their hands to join.
That level of authenticity is what we try to build. Because ultimately, that becomes the real employer brand. It creates a far stronger cascading effect in terms of people believing in the brand, rather than simply placing a few standees on campus, playing a corporate video and leaving it at that.
Do you think employer branding teams must now think like media houses, empowering employees to become creators rather than ambassadors? How is NatWest approaching this shift?
The landscape around employer branding is definitely changing. Today, employer branding teams have to wear multiple hats. It is no longer just about the creative side. You have to balance the creative hat with a data-driven hat, a talent strategy hat, and increasingly even an influencer or advocacy hat.
That last part is particularly important because if leaders do not buy into your EVP, your brand perception or the narrative you are building, it becomes very difficult for that belief system to trickle down to colleagues. Without leadership alignment, none of it can truly be achieved.
From that standpoint, employer branding has to become evidence-based and rooted in real-life experiences. It has to be leadership-owned, but also something that the broader organisation feels responsible for.
Because of that, the function is increasingly moving towards thinking like a media house. If you had asked this question two or three years ago, we might have focused on a single campaign with a relatively long shelf life. Today, the expectation is very different. We are constantly being asked how much content we have in the calendar, whether we have an always-on strategy, and how quickly we can respond with insight-rich narratives.
To achieve that, the content has to remain unfiltered, human and authentic, while still being delivered at pace. That is why we are also activating creator-led or advocacy-led communities within the organisation. This allows stories to move faster to the market, ensures realness in the narratives we share, and at the same time helps us meet evolving business expectations.
AI and automation are transforming content creation. How do you see the role of AI in employer branding without losing the human voice that Gen Z expects?
What we are more interested in is AI-assisted authenticity than AI-generated perfection. We are not chasing perfection. We still rely heavily on authenticity, employee feedback and real experiences.
In fact, whenever people refer to it as ‘storytelling,’ we often correct them and say it is really ‘truth-telling.’ Storytelling can sometimes carry different narratives or agendas, but truth can only be one. So the question we constantly ask ourselves is: are we telling the truth? In many cases, it is even acceptable not to say something at all, but whatever we do say must be truthful.
From that standpoint, we are beginning to introduce some self-led models for advocacy stories. For example, if employees want to create user-generated content, we now have systems where they can submit their inputs through structured platforms. This allows us to process and publish content much faster while still keeping it authentic and rooted in the voices of our colleagues.
We are using AI to make the content creation process faster and more efficient, while ensuring it still reflects real employee perspectives.
Have we achieved this end-to-end? The answer is still no. But it is definitely the direction we are moving towards.
Having built employer brands across sectors like fashion, technology and now banking, what has been your biggest unlearning about talent and brand perception?
One fundamental truth I have realised is that talent does not perceive a brand the way you position it. They perceive it the way they experience it, regardless of the industry, whether it is technology, banking, finance or fashion.
That is why we constantly try to build narratives around inside-out models rather than outside-in models. If internally you are strong in three areas but have five things that are not working well, you should not amplify those five negatives externally. Instead, you focus on what is genuinely positive and authentic to the brand. The question becomes: what do people actually gain from being here, and what is the strategy that is truly authentic to the organisation?
The second big learning is that employer branding is not just owned by the talent acquisition function or by the people function, but by everyone in the organisation. Are we getting the right buy-in from business leaders and senior leadership? And in a GCC model, are we collaborating closely with global partners and aligning on the effort required, whether that is time, investment or strategic support?
That is also why many aspects of employer branding can remain industry-agnostic. But what truly matters is consistency, and that has been both a learning and an unlearning for me.
If you communicate the right narrative but do not follow it with consistency, and instead treat employer branding as a one-off campaign, that becomes a major gap. The real question is: are you consistently translating and delivering the stories you want the market to believe?
If it becomes a situation where one campaign says something and you expect people to believe that is your EVP or your employer brand, that does not work in this market. Consistency is essential.
At the same time, consistency also requires context. One of the biggest unlearning moments was recognising that the story you tell must also reflect the reality of the time. For example, during the COVID period, many organisations talked about ‘work from anywhere’ and extremely flexible work models. But over time, many moved back to two-day, three-day or even five-day office models.
Ergo, the question becomes: were we telling the right story at that point in time? Narratives that work in one phase may not work in another. Today, with the rapid rise of AI and growing uncertainty around jobs, organisations have to remain authentic in the stories they tell.
For me, that has been the biggest unlearning.
Arti is a corporate storyteller specialising in brand building, social media marketing and communication strategies, with extensive experience in driving social media campaigns and omni-channel brand narratives. In her current role at NatWest Group, she leads the Global Talent Attraction strategy. Prior to this, she led the Employer Branding charter at Myntra and managed Branding and Internal Communications for Aptiv (formerly Delphi) Technical Center India.
