When did “employer branding” become such a dirty word? OK, two words, but you get my meaning. At the CIPD’s employer branding conference last week, every speaker offered a case study of tangible, results-driven good work they’d been doing in this area. However, almost all admitted that they had to somehow disguise this work before proffering to senior management and the wider workforce in a different form. As if any suggestion from HR would immediately be pooh-poohed and rejected. Isn’t this a bit worrying?

The Ministry of Justice’s (MoJ) director of communications, Clare Harbord, said that you have to use the word “brand” with caution, lest the jargon “puts people off”; Madeleine Abdoh, head of employee brand, BBC, admitted that a significant factor of its success is “all about the packaging”; and Charles Cotton, CIPD adviser, reward and employment conditions, made the point that trade unions “are down on employer branding because they think it deflects from pay”.

All spoke of great wins in recruitment, retention and engagement as a result of the brand work they’ve done. And, significantly, all spoke of the unity between employer brand and external, consumer brand. The experience of the customer is the experience of the potential employee; the experience of a job applicant, whether successful or unsuccessful, is retold to countless others. As Harbord put it, her 100,000 colleagues “go down the pub and talk about the MoJ – so I have 100,000 people in my comms team!”

As far as HR terminology goes, employer branding seems a fairly clear and simple concept. But is it really true that it will only be accepted if it’s somehow re-marketed internally as coming from anything and anyone other than the HR department? If it’s good, and it works, surely HR should shout about it – as long as you have the metrics to back it up, what does it matter how you phrase it?