Everyone tries to market themselves as being an employee-friendly place to work, even if (or maybe especially if) they aren't. It is very difficult for a candidate to separate signal and noise here. On the other hand, a salary is a salary. Anyone's primary motivation in working for your company is going to be the compensation - why are you pretending otherwise, and selecting for candidates who will play along with this pretense?

Where 'employee-friendliness' comes into the picture more is in retention and it can have a big impact there, since once a person is working for you they will know very quickly whether the employee-friendliness rhetoric is steeped in bullshit, or not. But it is not a very effective recruitment tool except perhaps with the very naive i.e. people just joining the job market.