How brand clarity strengthens culture, recruitment and retention.
The care sector faces unprecedented challenges: high staff turnover, spiralling agency costs, workforce shortages, and increasing scrutiny from regulators and the public. While most responses focus on pay, process, and compliance, one critical factor is often overlooked: brand.
Why brand matters more than ever in care
Care is a people-first business. Your staff are your brand.
But sector data consistently shows:
- Turnover rates in social care remain among the highest of any UK sector
- Agency reliance is increasing costs and reducing the continuity of care
- Recruitment advertising is expensive and rarely solves the root problem.
When staff lack a meaningful connection to an organisation’s purpose or identity, engagement drops.
That disengagement leads to:
- Higher staff churn rates, requiring more agency cover thereby increasing costs
- Lower morale leading to poorer service quality and greater risks around compliance
- Inconsistent messaging leading to brand erosion among stakeholders.
The link between brand, culture and retention
Our research and client experiences confirm that there is a direct correlation between a strong, clear brand and a more resilient and enduring workforce. That’s because:
- Organisations with a clear brand see stronger cultural alignment
- Staff who understand and believe in an organisation’s values are more likely to stay, reducing agency dependency
- A consistent brand message simplifies recruitment – candidates know what you stand for and are attracted by that certainty.
Brand is not an HR or marketing silo. It’s a strategic enabler for workforce resilience.
Common barriers in care organisations
Most care providers face similar brand-related issues. The most significant are:
- Growth and diversification, often leading to a fragmented identity across sites and services
- Leadership turnover diluting the organisation’s narrative
- Outdated branding which doesn’t reflect the organisation’s quality or values
- An inward focus which undermines the importance of external perceptions particularly amongst families, funders and regulators.
These barriers weaken staff cohesion and external credibility.
Case Study: Supported living provider
A regional home-based care provider, despite delivering highly personalised care, lacked brand clarity. Staff, trustees, funders, and families held inconsistent and weak perceptions of the organisation’s purpose and culture. Its lack of salience was reinforced by its outdated and confusing visual identity.
Our first task was to conduct stakeholder research across the whole range of internal and external audiences. This research allowed us to gain a deep understanding of how the organisation operated, focusing specifically on its strengths and weaknesses, both absolute and relative.
Our findings were instrumental in the preparation of a draft brand strategy, which was used as the foundation for the brand development workshop. This was run amongst the core client team, honing the thinking and ensuring that everyone was fully supportive of the new brand strategy and resulting communications brief. The brief led to a new visual identity, strapline and set of key messages.
The identity was strikingly contemporary, anchored in a butterfly mark communicating the transformative role the organisation plays in improving the lives of the people it supports and bringing them joy. The new strapline, “Live your best life” reinforces this positive approach.
New marketing materials including a new website were created to ensure that the brand communicated clearly and consistently.
The project had a powerful impact, resulting in increased internal pride and cohesion and greater external recognition.
As the CEO put it:
“The rebrand has brought our team together, instilled pride, and helped us get noticed. We are now on a much surer financial footing”
Case Study: Care home provider
Another case study worth looking at is a care home provider we recently worked with. They operate some 60 sites attended by over 1,800 staff, so it perhaps wasn’t surprising that the organisation appeared highly disunited and culturally fragmentated.
From our initial perception study, it quickly became clear that staff felt disconnected from the brand and the different teams were operating in silos. So, we worked with the organisation to reinvigorate their brand identity – refining their vision, mission, values and proposition so that it was firmly rooted in the reality of the organisation yet sufficiently aspirational to engage staff.
The brand definition was used to create a winning new identity and appropriate marketing materials and our brand identity system and communications toolkit made it easy for all the different sites to adhere to the new brand both visually and in spirit.
We embedded the brand internally through a launch strategy led by internal champions and featuring both workshops and communications initiatives. The result was a renewed sense of pride and unity in the organisation and a deeper sense of team across the 60 sites.
“Since launch, the efficacy of the new brand is evident in the renewed sense of pride and purpose throughout the organisation”
CEO
Practical steps for care leaders
If you are interested in using your brand to build cohesion amongst your team, here are some tips for starting on that journey:
- Audit your current brand reality
Do staff describe your organisation the same way that the leadership does?
Does your visual identity reflect your quality of care? - Engage staff early
Brand is co-created, not imposed. Listening drives engagement and enthusiasm - Align brand with operations
Your brand values should influence recruitment, training, behaviour and performance – not sit growing dusty on the shelf - Equip your teams
Create easy-to-use comms toolkits and ‘onboarding’ packs - Tell your story externally
Position brand strength as part of your recruitment advantage.
