🧪 Employer Brand Headlines #152: The "Enjoy the Silence" Edition
Yes, the world (and our jobs) feel more anxious. You should see this as an opportunity.
Mission: Create a million employer brand thinkers (that means you!)
Written by James Ellis. »» Say hello! ««
In this issue…
Are you feeling anxious?
Curiosity as superpower
Five disciplines
Employees more important than customers?
The big idea
Are you feeling anxious? Are your recruiters? Are the people in your business?
A quick scroll through almost anyone’s LinkedIn feed will likely reveal people talking about being laid off. Or a link to a story about Zuck or Elon talking about how much harder people need to work. Or numbers suggesting only a tiny fraction of employees are engaged at work. All piled atop a bed of covid, ongoing supreme court news and further blah blah blah about the great resignation and how people don’t want to work any more.
We are living in a VUCA world: Volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity seem to ramp up day by day. We reach peaks where we think it can’t get worse, and then it does. And then it does again.
When layoffs happen, when there seems to be a general movement towards the exits, it doesn’t just affect the people leaving. Voids are left in work-flows. People’s passion and personalities are missed. And there remains a lingering fear that this change is only the beginning for the people who remain.
It’s a potent recipe for anxiety. Yours, mine, your teams, your leadership, your co-workers, your friends.
Why bring this up?
In all candor, I’ve been feeling my own anxiety for a while, so I know that there are no easy fixes. Yes, real transparency and telling strong stories help people see how the world is moving and their place in it, but they don’t sweep those fears of the future away, especially when people don’t feel like they have control over their own destiny.
But anxious times breeds amazing art.
When most companies shrink from the fear and get more boring and more conservative, you need to find a way to push. Push into a new channel. Push a new way of thinking about the tagline. Push a new headline on your job postings. Push for less polished videos to tell employee stories. Push to get more hiring managers to talk about how their teams work.
When things get weird, the weird turn pro, as the one and only Hunter S Thompson used to say. As companies get nervous and start pulling budgets out from under you, don’t ask for more money, ask for more freedom. Ask for wiggle room. Ask for agency.
Use that freedom to find and tell stories you otherwise wouldn’t.
For me, this is the freedom we in the states celebrate on the fourth of July. Not the freedom to not hear what we don’t like, or the freedom to be an asshole, but the freedom to try new things, to take the risk in service of others.
Wherever you are in the world, now is the time to take advantage of that freedom, because that is how great work gets done.
Season 2 of The Talent Cast continues!
The revised and annotated audio version of Talent Chooses You (guaranteed to get your toes tapping) continues with episode 24, where we talk about turning pro, and all the ways this falls apart.
Headlines!
I think I’ve been pretty clear that a big part of employer branding is being a good strategist. So I try to keep an eye on what professional marketing strategists are talking about. This article on the value of curiosity really stuck with me. [Show Your Thinking on Substack]
The Importance of your EVP in Recruitment and Retention
Summary: It is the bridge between what a company offers and what a candidate wants. [Recruitics]
How To Create Job Postings That Boost Your Employer Brand
My friend Thomas Reneau does a good job talking about how an EVP/Brand can and should be seen in every aspect of your recruiting by focusing on job postings. [BluIvy]
I remember reading Senge’s The Fifth Discipline. It was like someone pulled the curtain back on my own thinking and showed me how the world worked in a way I sensed but could never articulate. Even today, it is a must-read. Kevin Wheeler’s article advances the concepts of book into the world recruiting, making a strong case that the success of talent acquisition must embrace systems thinking. [The Future of Talent]
How Organizations Can Embrace A Challenger Mindset
All employer brands are challenger brands (read Adam Morgan’s books on challenger brands… please!). The issue is that very often, a discussion of challenger brands tends toward the esoteric and academic. This article is a bit more nuts-and-bolts on how to start creating their own challenger brand. [Brand Strategy Insider]
Why Employees Are Becoming More Important Than Customers
“Employees at the companies with the strongest brand engagement were 28% more willing to go above and beyond in their work.” It references this work from Lippencott I hadn’t seen before, with much more recent data points on the value of employee engagement and connection to the brand. [Brandberries]
Does Your Strategy Have a Spine?
This and Two Questions to Ask Before Setting Your Strategy make a. pretty strong case that most businesses don’t really understand what strategy is, let alone know how to build and execute one. I have to imagine how appalled they’d be if they saw what passes for talent strategy these days. [HBR]
If you are looking for some employer brand education, EB Stars is probably you best “bang for your buck/euro” right now. They changed the format to be more focused on case studies and hands-on masterclasses, which I think is a really smart move. I’m doing a masterclass on auditing your competition’s brand, so I can offer you a 30% discount if you register before July 15. Just use code EBstarsjames30 when you check out.
Inside the fortune cookie
“Singing is a trick to get people to listen to music for longer than they would ordinarily.” - David Byrne
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Cheers and thanks!
-James Ellis (LinkedIn)
Where the subject line came from:
Depeche Mode - Enjoy the Silence
Okay, I’m cheating here. Violator was released in March of 1990, and this single came out two months before, so it isn’t really an 80’s tune. But I graduated high school the summer of 1990, so to me, the 1980’s ended as I started college. It’s absolutely putting my thumb on the scale, but when it’s your newsletter, you can do these kinds of things.
First, this entire album is kinda perfect, and this is the jewel in the crown. The proof? There are probably a dozen different covers of various flavors that all… work (eg versions by Lacuna Coil, Nada Surf, Failure, Foushee, and Carla Bruni). The hypnotic repeating guitar line, the burbling synth bass line, and the faux-chorus stabs supporting Dave Gahan’s vocals is an amazing combination. It manages to feel moody and euphoric at the same time. This is the sort of song you can put on repeat and let it just groove, which is saying something given the band was really the banner-carrier for the black-wearing goth synth rock scene.
Oh, and don’t miss this amazing live version recorded almost 25 years after it was released.
If you are enjoying the music, congratulations, you’re old! Just for you, I made a Spotify playlist of all the subject line 80’s songs I’ve referenced over the last year and a half. You don’t even need hairspray to enjoy it:
