Employer branding campaign checks in England

The campaign arrives for approval

An employer in England is preparing an employer branding campaign built around a careers site, a role advert, social posts, an application form and a talent-pool sign-up. The hiring lead pauses approval until the wording, public claims, candidate data and right-to-work sequence have been checked.

The draft package also contains an employee testimonial, an award badge, a flexible-working promise and a pay-gap statement. The team treats each item as part of recruitment and decides to change or withhold anything it cannot support before publication.

The advert is tested against the role

The reviewer applies the Equality Act 2010 to the advert and careers page as recruitment arrangements, rather than treating them as marketing alone. Familiar wording can still deter applicants, so the team tests each phrase against the actual requirements of the role.

Section 39 of the Equality Act 2010 covers applicants and prohibits discrimination in arrangements for deciding whom to offer employment. The team treats an advert as part of those arrangements, which is why its wording is reviewed before publication.

Section 4 names age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation as protected characteristics. Section 13 defines direct discrimination as less favourable treatment, because of a protected characteristic, than another person is or would be treated.

The reviewer compares the draft with the guide to writing job adverts that attract talent, asking whether wording could put off a group because of who they are. For borderline phrases, the employer seeks advice from an employment lawyer rather than assuming they are safe.

The UK employer branding rules and ethics guide helps the team connect this advert review to duties across the wider hiring cycle. The review focuses on whether the language fits the role, rather than assuming that familiar recruitment expressions are neutral.

The form trail is traced

The team follows each point where a candidate provides personal information, including CVs, application forms, talent-pool sign-ups and event lists. It maps those points before approving the forms, so the information trail is considered across the campaign rather than at a single sign-up stage.

The ICO's recruitment and selection guidance covers the path from vacancy advertising through deletion and addresses employers and recruiters handling candidate information under UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018. The team uses it to trace what each form collects and where the information goes.

The guidance page carries a notice that it is under review, so the employer checks it again before relying on it. Its scope includes organisations recruiting for an employer, such as agencies, head-hunters and consultancies; if an agency runs the talent pool, the parties agree in writing who is responsible for the data.

For every form or sign-up, the team records the purpose, selected lawful basis, retention period and people who can access the information. It states the retention period in the privacy notice where candidates can read it, and uses the candidate data compliance guide to settle lawful-basis questions.

Eligibility checks set the start-date wording

Before approving start-date language, the employer checks whether each job applicant is allowed to work for it in the UK before employment. The same check and wording apply to every applicant, without discrimination because of where someone is from.

The available routes are an online check using the applicant's share code, inspection of original documents, or an identity service provider offering Identity Document Validation Technology. British and Irish citizens cannot get an online share code, so the employer checks their original documents or uses a provider instead.

If someone cannot show documents or an online immigration status, the employer asks the Home Office to check it. Section 15 of the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006 says the Secretary of State may give an employer that employs someone contrary to that section a notice requiring a penalty up to the prescribed maximum.

Employing an illegal worker without a correct right-to-work check can lead to a civil penalty. An employer is excused if it complied with the prescribed requirements for the employment, so the team avoids promising a start date or process that a check could undermine.

The Home Office guide Right to work checks: an employer's guide lists the documents an employer can accept, and GOV.UK sets out how to carry out checks. The employer confirms that checks happen before employment and applies them to every applicant in the same way.

Unsupported claims are held back

For campaign marketing communications, the team checks the applicable CAP Code rules and Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) guidance on substantiation and testimonials. Before approving public claims, it asks for evidence behind each award, ranking or badge, including its source, date and method. It withholds a claim until the evidence is available, keeps the original, and uses the advertising rules while assembling the evidence file.

For the employee testimonial, the team obtains the employee's agreement to the words and any photo, then checks the quote against real pay, hours and policy. It also verifies a flexible-working promise from day one against the written terms and policy, so the advert does not promise more than those documents support.

If the public commitment is a statutory gender pay gap statement, the team checks the Equality Act 2010 (Gender Pay Gap Information) Regulations 2017, the Equality and Human Rights Commission's gender pay gap reporting guidance and the employer's entry on GOV.UK's Gender pay gap service. The disclosure policy guide sets out approvals to agree before publication, and the team keeps those decisions with the campaign materials.

Release leaves a record and reusable checks

At release, the employer files the advert text, its audience, the data basis, the approver and the date, alongside evidence for each claim and the data notice. Legal and data sign-off owners are named, and the saved record is ready to explain the decisions made for this campaign.

If a candidate asks why they were screened out, or the ICO asks how their information was handled, the dated record gives the team's account of its actions. The exercise leaves a repeatable sequence: test recruitment wording, map candidate data, apply right-to-work checks consistently, substantiate claims and preserve an audit trail.

Before release, work through this checklist:

This is general information, not legal advice. Borderline wording should go to an employment lawyer; the employer should keep a dated record of each advert, approval and data notice, review claims before publication, and delete candidate information when its stated retention period ends.