Employer brand must be felt inside before it works outside

The key to attracting talent in a competitive market is strong employer branding, according to Vanessa Ribreau, the Chief People Officer (CPO) at Safe Software in Surrey, B.C.

Canada's technology sector is growing at pace, and the competition for the people who power it is growing faster. With net tech employment projected to rise 1.8 per cent in 2026 – adding approximately 28,000 jobs to a workforce already exceeding 1.5 million workers, according to CompTIA's State of the Tech Workforce Canada 2026 report – mid-sized Canadian technology companies face a narrowing window to differentiate on talent.

Safe Software is faced with a pressing need to attract talent. It’s the creator of an enterprise data integration platform that’s being expanded across the globe. Having recently crossed $100 million in annual revenue, the company said in an April news release that it’s targeting $250 million by 2028 and is entering the most consequential growth phase in its 30-year history. Ribreau joined in April 2026 after guiding other organizations through rapid growth and transformation, and is now in the midst of a talent quest in which employer branding is a key part of that strategy.

The definition of employer branding, Ribreau says, has fundamentally shifted. What once meant a careers page and a strong set of job postings now has to withstand direct scrutiny – from Glassdoor reviews to LinkedIn conversations with current employees to the daily experience of the people inside the organization. Candidates have already formed an opinion before anyone in HR picks up the phone, according to Ribreau.

"To me, employer brand is two things: the promise we make about what it's like to work here, and the proof people find once they're inside," says Ribreau. "In a borderless market, the proof matters more than ever – a candidate in Vancouver is comparing us with a U.S. company offering remote work in U.S. dollars, and with a global name opening an office down the street.”

Employer brand felt internally and externally

With the kind of talent market in the State of the Tech Workforce Canada 2026 report, Canadian employers are rethinking talent attraction and retention. Employee brand is a key way an organization can stand out, says Ribreau.

The logic Ribreau returns to consistently is one of sequence: “Start with what you have, not what you'd like to have,” she says. "An employer brand has to be felt inside, across every team and not just the leadership table, before it can be reflected outside."

Having guided people functions through multiple growth cycles, Ribreau has a clear recognition of what happens to employer brand when it meets the sustained friction of rapid scaling, as well as the evolving role and influence of top people executives.

"It rarely breaks all at once. It drifts," she says. "As you scale, it gets harder to walk the talk. You lose your north a little, then a little more, and those small gaps compound until what you say and what people live no longer match."

Brand alignment from the top on down

The remedy is operational rather than communicative, and starts with alignment at the top, according to Ribreau. "The leadership team has to be singing the same song about our customers and our people, and that has to be built into the strategy, not sitting next to it," she says.

But leadership alignment is only the beginning and branding has to percolate through the organization, she says. "Employees don't experience the brand through a leadership town hall,” she says. “They experience it through their manager and their team."

Ribreau believes employer brand lives in the quality of one-on-ones, how decisions get made, and how people treat each other on a day-to-day basis. And onboarding is key, where it’s ultimately won or lost: "That's where people learn not just what we do, but why we do it and what we expect of each other," she says.

According to Ribreau, the practical application in her organization centres on giving leaders tools to have honest, early conversations with their teams. "Trust is built in those everyday moments, not in a careers page," she says.

She also recognizes that maintaining a consistent employer brand is more difficult as an organization grows and changes, so transparency is essential. “Entering new markets and moving into new growth phases are big changes, and how we handle them inside is what makes the difference,” she says. “How we bring people along, how clearly we explain our decisions, and whether people feel the ‘why’ behind them, all goes back to walking the talk at scale.”

Building reach without household recognition

Safe Software competes for engineering and technical talent without the name recognition of the companies that dominate technology sector headlines, says Ribreau. It’s a challenge common to mid-market Canadian technology firms, and one that people leaders building talent attraction strategies across Canadian tech navigate constantly. As a result, employer branding can be a difference-maker in the quest for the right talent, according to Ribreau.

"It may sound cliché, but our differentiator is our people – I've worked at household names, and Safe has something I hadn't seen before: a level of collaboration that's been there since the beginning,” she says. “Most companies try to build that as they grow. At Safe, it's already in the DNA. It's a big part of why retention is so high, for our employees and our customers."

The challenge isn’t building an authentic employee value proposition (EVP) – it’s amplifying it, and the company's own people are the primary channel for that authenticity, she says. "The best messengers are [employees] themselves, telling their own stories, along with the community that's grown up around [Safe’s products]," says Ribreau. "We approach our EVP the same way we approach product positioning – by being different, not by sounding like everyone else."

Holding up to scrutiny from candidates

The most instructive data point in any employer branding conversation may be the executive who chose to join. Ribreau says she relocated from Montréal to Vancouver – moving her family across the country – to take the CPO role at Safe.

"In HR, we often talk about the right person in the right role, but I think that's only half the equation,” she says. “It also has to be the right company – today's top candidates look harder at the company than ever, even if what matters differs from person to person."

It is, in the end, the employer brand – lived from the inside, not constructed from the outside, according to Ribreau. The distinction carries a practical message for growing organizations looking for a competitive advantage in a market where top candidates can hold the leverage – the employer brand that holds is the one that was never just marketing.

“Growing while still doing what's right and never losing what got you here, is one of the rarest things I've seen in my career," she says.