Your “Best Place to Work” Award Is a Fridge Magnet

Congratulations on your workplace award. Seriously. Now the uncomfortable question: did it change anything? Did cost per hire drop? Did offer acceptance go up? Did agency spend go down? Or did you do what everyone does—stick the badge on LinkedIn once, tuck it into the career site footer, and call it a win?

If that’s the plan, I have bad news: you didn’t win an advantage. You got a decorative asset. A bumper sticker. A fridge magnet. Because a workplace award is not a strategy. It’s not a tool. It’s not even a tactic.

What it is—what it can be—is proof. A receipt.

And receipts only matter when they support a specific claim about what you offer as an employer.

So “Top Workplace” is… fine. But top workplace for who? For team players? For people driven by bonuses? For people who do their best work when they feel supported? For people who are laser-focused on career growth?

Because “best” is meaningless now. Candidates don’t look for the best. They look for what’s best for them.

Here’s the fix, and it’s simple enough to do between meetings:

Stop treating the award like a trophy. Start treating it like evidence. Evidence of one promise.

In the video I share a clean framework you can reuse forever:

Award → Claim → Proof beyond the badge → Behavior the candidate will experience.

Example: if your award relates to growth, don’t claim “we’re the best at development.” That’s a poster. Instead: “Here’s how quickly people grow here,” then back it up with promotion rates, training budget, internal mobility, and real stories—then show what happens in week one, month three, and beyond that makes it true.

Use the award where doubt happens: the first 10 seconds of a job page, right before “Apply,” after interview one, and at offer stage—when the candidate thinks, “Sounds good… what’s the catch?”

Watch the full video

Link: https://youtu.be/wiwACilKHhs

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If you want more help becoming more choosable, check out Employer Brand Labs—and grab Becoming Choosable on Amazon.

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