“Your choice of images on your website can say a lot of different things about you as a company,” Emil says. “It really depends on the context in which you place these images. Where and how are you using them? What’s their juxtaposition to the text on your website? These can change how they are perceived.”
Image position on the page, the image’s content, and the image’s relationship to any text on the page shape our understanding of what the image means. But this can be compounded by our own stereotypical expectations and unconscious biases about what — or more specifically — who we expect to see in the image.
“Often we use images in very stereotypical ways on websites — especially on recruitment websites,” Emil says. “Even on just a gender binary, you might have a web page linking to your customer service section, for example, that uses an image of a woman, for example. In male-dominated industries, it’s common to see images of men on the careers page.
“From a race or ethnicity perspective, organisations often run into problems, too. They might select team images, or stock images, that show people of colour. But usually, the people of colour are shown in the background — or they might take passive roles in the picture, which communicates a power dynamic, rather than actual inclusion.”
Things get trickier when organisations try to highlight they’re welcoming to all — especially if it’s not quite the truth yet. “You might be using images to highlight that your company is a welcoming place for people from all walks of life in a recruitment context. But if you’re using stock images on your careers page that display a greater level of diversity than what you actually have, that’s going to feel really misleading to candidates applying for roles.”
When your website images don’t match the reality of your organisation, says Emil, research has shown that there’s a cognitive dissonance between what people actually picture in their mind versus the reality. Ultimately, this harms trust in your company — whether it’s a candidate applying for a role or a customer.
