⚡ Employer Brand Headlines: The "A Sort of Homecoming" Edition (#128)
My mission: move the conversation around employer brand forward.
Employer Brand Headlines, is brought to you by James Ellis.
In this issue…
What do candidates want?
Jumpstarting change
Where management and labor disagree
Dog food branding
The big idea
This is going to be a bit of a tightrope act, so I hope you’ll indulge me.
Today in the US, it is MLK day, which I hope at this stage I don’t need to explain. There are many quotes and expressions of his mission, but understanding of his message looks like this: Treat each person like a person. And if you don’t see this [black, hispanic, asian, gay, female, trans, muslim, jewish, et al] person as a person, you’re not much of a person.
As rhetoric or poetry goes, its no “I Have A Dream,” but it’s how I hold it in my head.
Now, while I am firmly in the “oppression and discrimination is inherently bad, and most of the people considered ‘under-represented’ are in fact under-served” camp, I don’t consider myself any kind of great thinker on the subject. In fact, most of my thinking has been informed by Torin Ellis and Madison Butler (though following a few women of color on Twitter and just being a fly on the wall has been positively illuminating). But I bring this up, because the same ideas can be applied to your thinking about “the great resignation.”
If you spend a little time on reddit’s r/antiwork channel (and you should because it is AMAZING), you’ll see story after story of employees getting fed up by being mistreated, taken advantage of, being threatened by crappy bossy, perpetual micro-aggressions and passive-aggressiveness, etc. Read enough stories and you might come to the same conclusion that I did: the so-called “great resignation” is simply people getting sick of not being treated like people.
Connecting the dots to the political realm, people everywhere are tired of feeling like they aren’t being treated like people. They are walking votes, they are talking points, they are backdrops for speeches, they are photo opportunities, they are moral lessons, heroes and villains, but never people. Regardless of party affiliation, can you say that this idea of “I’m tried of not being treated like a person!” isn’t rampant?
The next 5-10 years will see the pendulum swing away from optimization and automation work-hackery and towards making work feel more human. Maybe this trend won’t hit everyone equally (because these kind of things never do), but the strongest companies and brands certainly will embrace it.
LinkedIn is filled with articles about companies can retain talent by showing that employees are appreciated. I’d suggest they’d do a better job actually appreciating their people.
“We’re hiring” posts rot on the vine while “here’s a goofy story about how my manager actually did the least amount another could do to help me and it was amazing” posts go viral.
The best employee videos aren’t about perks and offices, they are about how people are treated, be it flexibility with the chaos of the world or simply a little human understanding.
The long-term strength in your employer brand isn’t related to your tech stack, its in how you can encapsulate and prove how people are treated.
People are people and want to know that you see them as such. That’s the beating heart of your employer brand (or the open sewer you’re spraying gallons of air freshener to cover up).
Podcast
Yeah, so in case you missed it, The Talent Cast is returning with a bang. Go check out “What does employer brand want?” wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe. Or don’t. I’m not your mom.
Headlines!
This Change Will Mean More Placements
An argument that small/medium businesses who can pivot to talk more humanly to candidates and develop policies around their people will beat big name (and high-paying) brands [Greg Savage]
How to jump-start innovation and organizational change
Once more for those in the cheap seats: Our job is to create change! [Strategy+Business]
Report: Company leaders and employees are operating under a striking disconnect
TL;DR: Managers think they are doing a great job being flexible. Labor would like a word. [Ragan]
Reengineering the Recruitment Process
Throwing a new cool tool into your tech stack can only squeeze a smidge more juice from the lemon, so maybe it’s time to look for oranges. [HBR]
What Every Leader Can Learn From McKinsey About Employer Branding
I’ve got some thoughts on following McKinsey’s playbook on anything, but the real interesting part is that someone expects CEOs to take part in employer branding [ChiefExecutive]
Don’t Be Just Another Person With Data
It wasn’t long ago that we were saying “don’t be another person with an opinion; bring data,” but with so much data, the real impact is in knowing what questions to ask of the data. [Workforce Futurist]
The Women’s Tennis Association Set a Standard For Crisis Response
Why does so much employer branding and recruiting content suck? Because it has to run a gauntlet of HiPPOs and people who doesn’t understand the brand strategy. This is an excellent example of the different between writing that’s clear and writing trying hard not to be. [Malcolm Gladwell]
The 8 Best Marketing Frameworks You Need to Know
Remember in marketing school when you learned different marketing frameworks? Of course you don’t! Almost none of you went to marketing school (don’t worry, I’ve only got a poli sci degree), so may have missed foundational thinking that most marketing take for granted. [HubSpot]
Dog Food Branding: How Companies Differentiate Their Products in a Saturated Market
I’m not saying your brand is dog food. I’m saying that the jobs you offer are 99% identical to the jobs I offer. So let’s all learn from industries where the products are effectively the same [Branding Journal]
Real Change Requires A Challenger Mindset
Ignore the Tesla fetishization and focus on the idea that you can’t change things by trying to be the same. Yeah, that sounds obvious, but then I read your job adverts… [Branding Insider]
Inside the fortune cookie
“‘But which is the stone that supports the bridge?’ Kublai Khan asks.
’The bridge is not supported by one stone or another,” Marco answers, “but by the line of the arch that they form.’”
-Italo Calvino
Thanks, everyone!
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Cheers and thanks!
-James Ellis (LinkedIn | Twitter | Podcast | Articles)
Where the subject line came from:
U2 - A Sort of Homecoming
