Randstad Employer Branding Research 2026 with Chris Dell

The Randstad Employer Brand Research 2026 is one of the most comprehensive employer brand surveys on the planet: 166,720 respondents, 34 countries, 25 years of data. This year's central question is how employers build trust when AI is reshaping the workplace at pace. In this episode, Emily Firth sits down with Chris Dell, Global Head of Content, SEO and Localisation at Randstad, to pull apart the 2026 findings and tell employers what is actually going on with talent right now. From the false comfort of stabilising mobility numbers to the widening gap between what companies promise and what employees experience, this is essential listening for any leader, HR team or employer brand professional paying attention. In this episode: 00:00 — Introducing Chris Dell and the Randstad Employer Brand Research 2026 01:08 — Why Chris admits to feeling like a fraud: three months into Randstad and already presenting its flagship report 01:30 — What the REBR actually is, why it matters and what makes it unusually objective 02:35 — The central question of the 2026 report: how do you build trust when AI is changing the workplace faster than people can adapt? 03:25 — The headline employers want to hear: mobility is stabilising. The headline they should hear: the gap between what talent wants and what employers deliver is widening 04:03 — Regional splits in the data: why North America is bucking the global stability trend and what that might signal for the rest of the world 05:37 — The two big drivers of talent retention in 2026: compensation and work life balance, and why neither is as simple as it sounds 06:27 — The uncomfortable truth about motivation: across almost every demographic, money still wins. Purpose is not paying the bills 08:09 — Work life balance as the fast-rising number two: how Covid permanently shifted what people expect from work 09:45 — Why you cannot define work life balance for your people and what leaders should be doing instead 12:57 — Job security redefined: it is not just about avoiding layoffs anymore, it is about career growth, transparency and not being left behind by AI 14:34 — The AI anxiety underneath it all: only 62.5% of employees trust their organisation's future, and the gap is widest among those who feel they are being left behind 16:03 — Why leaders need to be more visible, not less, during uncertainty and what leading through white water actually looks like 19:43 — The internal survey trap: why anonymised internal data still skews toward what people think managers want to hear 21:49 — The EVP delivery gap: why employer brand teams cannot fix this alone and who actually needs to own it 23:07 — What a good EVP really is: honest, owned at leadership level and built for the last mile, not the headline 26:00 — The frustration of glossy social media recruitment content that has nothing to do with the day to day reality on the ground 27:05 — Job boards are not dead: 42% of talent still uses them and why behavioural change is much slower than technology assumes 28:35 — AI in job search: 24% are using it, but human connection still matters to 82% of applicants 29:00 — Why referrals are becoming more important, not less, as recruitment gets more automated 32:22 — How to think about where AI makes sense in recruitment and where it actively damages the candidate experience 34:02 — Chris's three takeaways for employers: comp still matters, the EVP gap is real, and do not assume uncertainty buys you loyalty Download the report: https://www.randstad.nl/werkgevers/ke... Explore TruthWorks: https://www.thetruthworks.co/ 💬 Join our free Community for independent People and Culture experts: https://thetruthworks.circle.so/join?... Connect with Emily Firth:   / emilyfirth   Connect with Rhiannon Stroud:   / rhiannon-stroud