Employer Brand Headlines: The "Cuddly Toy" Edition (#95)
My mission: Help you understand your employer brand better and make it work for you.
In this issue
Giving it away
What’s your narrative?
What does culture eat?
“Quality” content?
The (really) big idea
I’d like to make your work-life a little better right now.
One year ago, I published Talent Chooses You. I tried to pour everything I thought I knew about employer branding into one document for a few reasons:
Writing helps me think better
Writing it down allows me to think of the next thing (you should see my whiteboard)
Stop having the same arguments with people who didn’t think much about employer brand
Help people starting their employer branding journey to level-up quickly
Note that none of my reasons are to make any money. Between the podcast (4 years worth), numerous blog posts and articles, webinars and interviews, the books, the link archive, and now this newsletter, I haven’t made a single penny. I am filled with gratitude for the thousands of people who have bought the books in various formats, and all the incredibly smart and kind people said really nice things about them.
But it turns out that I love to give things away. I’d much rather help people get smarter about employer branding.
And now, I’m going to do it again.
As of last week, I put the complete text of both Talent Chooses You and Employer Brand Handbook Vol 1 into a Google Doc. I reviewed the doc, annotated it with some interesting notes and related articles, and made it public.
More than public, I made both books open source.
So right now, and for as long as Google lets me get away with it, these books are now living documents. You can read, clip, comment, annotate, cheer and argue with the books. Add a comment and tell me where I’m wrong (or where you think I’m right). Add a comment with a question about something (maybe me or someone else will answer it). Steal one of the templates. Grab a paragraph or a chapter and give it to your new EB intern to help them see what their job is. Clip a quote and put it in your next EB deck. Send the link to your boss to help them see the bigger picture. Use it to remind yourself that you aren’t alone in this weird world we call employer branding.
—- http://employerbrandbook.com/ —-
I hope you get value out of these books. I hope it makes your work life a little easier to just have a digital, searchable, and living copy of these books just a click away.
Please share!
All I ask is that you tell people about these books. Tweet it. LinkedIn it. Facebook it. I just want these ideas to spread to HR leaders and business leaders around the world so they can see their talent problems from a whole new perspective (and make your job a little easier)
There’s an added benefit to making the books living and open documents: I get mental room to start the next thing. I’ve got an interesting idea and a potential co-writer to work with, so stay tuned!
Headlines!
Every Company Needs a Narrative
This isn’t “storytelling” (which tends towards a “how I push emotional buttons” territory), narrative is more about the idea of the story and how we find ourselves in it. Narrative helps align disparate teams and agendas without them feeling “nudged.”
Market Research for Success, Purpose, and Connection
“Sometimes, our desire for something to be a certain way is so strong, that it’ll unconsciously make us see it that way, even if it’s not accurate.” Word.
Does culture really eat strategy for breakfast?
“Culture” was code for “middle managers who make 98% of the decisions away from oversight.” What happens when that middle-management layer gets slimmer and decisions are more transparent?
www.strategy-business.com • Share
Zen and the Art of Content Maintenance
How are you defining the “quality” of your content?
Are Your Company’s D&I Efforts Shallow?
Probably.
(That was a shallow quip to a pretty good breakdown as to why DEI efforts are changing anything, though I quibble with any article that assumes that the term “high potential” staff means anything real.)
Employer Brand and Recruiting Hourly Employees
We often (guilty!) think of employer brand first as a way to hire developers and execs. But if you think about it correctly, it should have a significant impact on hiring even hourly-level employees.
Brand Revitalization And Changing Customer Needs
We are all, in some way or another, revitalizing our brands.
www.brandingstrategyinsider.com • Share
How video communications is helping AstraZeneca drive engagement and credibility
If you can ignore the brand name-dropping, the key idea might be that having a strong communication infrastructure can change the broader conversation.
Spoiler: the “new model” is called employer branding.
Quick hits
Tip of the week
Go read the books!
Inside the fortune cookie
“In life, the challenge is not so much to figure out how best to play the game; the challenge is to figure out what game you’re playing.” - Kwame Appiah
Thanks, everyone!
There are now more than 800 links in the link archive. That’s 38 articles on diversity, 39 on employee engagement, 42 on trends, 30 on metrics, 9 on pipelining, 2 on micro-culture, not to mention the other 100+ tags to sort by.
And as always, when you reply to this email I will read your questions and comments. Is there any article I should be commenting on? A book? A podcast? Is there something you what to know? How can I help? Just reply to this email and it comes directly to me.
Cheers and thanks!
-James Ellis (LinkedIn | Twitter | Podcast | Articles)
Where the subject line came from:
Roachford - Cuddly Toy
By James Ellis, Employer Brand Nerd
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James Ellis, 421 W Melrose, Chicago, IL 60657