Employer Brand Headlines: The "Face the Face" Edition (#98)
My mission: Help you understand your employer brand better and make it work for you.
In this issue
Objective is subjective
Measure it!
Year of YOLO?
Have better meetings
The big idea
Nestled smack-dab in the middle of everyone’s favorite three-letter acronym is a word we don’t talk about much: Value.
When we say we’re “a great place to work,” what we are saying is that we offer some value to our employees. By working here, you get to take part in that value.
And whether or not your values are stated or assumed, a single idea or a series of pillars and principles (but not values, as in things you believe in, which is a completely different thing), the mistake is in assuming all kinds of value are equal. They are not.
Ultimately, there are two kinds of value that companies offer: objective value (OV) and subjective value (SV).
Objective value is the value that everyone sees, ones that are not a function of perception. When you buy a car, objective values are its miles per gallon, overall maintenance cost, reliability, or how much it can carry. If a car can tow one ton, you can’t “see” its ability to tow ten tons. OV are facts and traits that are inherently true.
Objective value of a job includes the salary, the benefits package, perks, bonus structures, steps in a career ladder, etc. If you are hired at a salary of $80,000/year, no amount of perceptional shenanigans turns that into $300,000/year. The salary one of the objective values you get for working there.
Subjective values are completely dependent on perceptions. They are the value you see that perhaps others can’t, or don’t… ahem… value. SVs of a car might be how it makes you feel to drive, how it makes you feel to be seen in it by your neighbor, or the story you get to tell you about yourself because you own it. But they are completely dependent on individual perception. You drive that Tesla because you think it makes you look like a forward-thinking and clever person, but someone else thinks you’re a jackass who is buying Elon’s brand of b.s. way too much.
Subjective value in a job is how much freedom you get or how much stability it offers. It could be that the products you work on are shipped and/or can be found on store shelves. It could be the connection between your work and the business impact. It could be the amount of access the job gives you to leadership. It could even be how proud you feel working for a company other people want to work at. None of these things are inherently or intrinsically valuable. What you value, I might not care about, and vice versa.
Splitting things into OV and SV isn’t an academic exercise. OV, because they aren’t based on perception, is obvious. When you get the job offer of $80,000, and when you start, you only get paid $70,000, that’s not an incorrect value assessment; it’s fraud.
As something objectively true, you really don’t have to “prove” those values. When you say, “We offer unlimited PTO” on your career site, you don’t have to show me the policy in a handbook or show me three people talking about how it’s true. As an OV, it is objectively true.
SVs are not obvious. They are purely perceptual, so you really need to prove those values. If you claim that you offer “work-life balance,” it isn’t real until you make it real.
Here’s the magic: most of your candidates desire and appreciate your subjective values more than your objective ones. Hell, they are literally motivated by those ideals. They want work-life balance and opportunity and freedom and collaboration and stability (et al.). They would be willing to take a pay cut to get a lot more of those things. You could hire better talent if you made your subjective value real and meaningful.
Instead, you’re ignoring the need to prove and validate them. And without that proof, without feeling like those claims are real and concrete, they aren’t credible. You’ve become a used car salesperson. And the candidate who wants access to leadership or stability or the ability to see their work in the field that you offer (and is 100% real, but you haven’t proven it) will walk away to a company they won’t be as happy at because you forced them to make a decision based on objective value.
Know the difference. Execute accordingly.
Headlines!
Measuring the Effectiveness of Your Employer Brand
I was lucky enough to hear some of the conversations that lead up to this article, which by virtue of offering insight from 13 different pros, does a great job reminding us all that there is no one way to measure EB. Know your goals and build your metrics from there.
employerbrandwagon.com • Share
Attracting Talent During a Worker Shortage
*cough*itsnotaworkershortage*cough*
Spoiler: you have to change. GASP!
The Talent Revolution Is Here: What’s At Stake And How To Respond
I was legitimately surprised that an article written by someone outside of EB could do such a great job establishing that what attracts talent isn’t what keeps them, and so having a comprehensive and compelling narrative works. I mean, we already know that, but this Forbes piece might be the thing you send to leadership to keep the conversation going.
The Future of Work is Already Here: 4 Ways to Find and Keep Top Talent
The Year of YOLO. Huh. Interesting way to see it.
How Discovery Inc spots great ideas
Assigning yourself a label of “culture of innovation” is free. Building a culture of innovation is hard work. More to the point: articles like this that prove what a company is doing to support innovation is what it takes to make the claim credible (see big idea section). See also, this article from Pepsi on flexibility.
www.computerweekly.com • Share
GSK on employee experience and office culture in the age of remote work
Further proof (from a nice conservative and well-regulated pharma mega-brand) shows a clear connection between employee experience and what the customer feels. It’s yet another to put in the whole “people drive the business, dummy!” pile.
How to boost people’s energy and productivity during meetings
There are at least FIVE former bosses I wish I could send this article to…
www.strategy-business.com • Share
Quick hits
Google’s CMO shares her team’s inclusive marketing toolkit: ‘We have to be all in’
How to Confront Industry Challenges with your Employer Brand (article and podcast)
Tip of the week
As people return to work at offices (don’t call it “return to work” because most of us were working all along), are you telling the transition story? Asking leadership about how they made decisions? The values that lead to those decisions? What processes need to be put in place to make returning possible/feasible/safe? What are employees thinking and feeling? Much like last spring, this is the event that will define your employer brand for the next year, so tell the story. Don’t skimp out.
Inside the fortune cookie
All painting is an accident. But it’s also not an accident because one must select what part of the accident one chooses to preserve. - Francis Bacon
Thanks, everyone!
Reminder: The more people at your org who read my books, the better your job will get! employerbrandbook.com (They’re free!!!)
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Cheers and thanks!
-James Ellis (LinkedIn | Twitter | Podcast | Articles)
Where the subject line came from:
pete townshend face to face
By James Ellis, Employer Brand Nerd
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