Employer Brand Headlines: The "Labor Day All Day" Edition (#58)
In this edition:
Is it an employer brand video?
Who is in charge of employee activation?
Thinking about metrics?
The best 99 cents on employer branding you’ll ever spend?
The Big Idea
Let’s have a friendly little fight, alright?
By now, you’ve seen Apple’s fantastic “WFH” video. About two weeks ago, it seemed to take over my LI feed and it’s been shared all over the industry as an amazing example of what a creating employer branding video can be.
If you know me, I love an example of pushing the envelope and avoiding doing things “the way you’re supposed to do them.” But I have a big problem with this video.
It’s not an employer branding video.
Presuming it is an employer brand video for Apple, it doesn’t have Apple employees. It doesn’t show what people at Apple do. It isn’t about the work experience, work promise, or even a glamorized version anything Apple offers.
It’s clearly a commercial for Apple products, how they might help you work well even when everything feels upside down. And I am all for the intersection and integration of consumer marketing and employer brand messages, but this simply isn’t an employer brand video.
The danger is holding this (amazing, wonderful) video as an example of great employer brand videos, and that’s 100% wrong. It is filled with actors in a semi-contrived situation to show off a set of products.
This leads to a bigger issue. Obviously, we want to make employer brand videos that attract and engage talent, but on some level, any video made more than 6 months ago, that doesn’t feature everyone at home and/or wearing masks, is as relevant today as a manual for an 8-track player. The pandemic was the big “reset” button and all our comms need to reflect the new world or feel dated.
But all the videos I see have the same story: Look! We went home and still did the job. We persevered! We put our kids and pets on our video calls! We saw inside each others’ homes!
But we all did that. If the goal of an employer brand video is to show how you’re different, how does telling the same story differentiate you at all?
I wonder how many of us are grappling with this same issue.
On to the Headlines
Who’s in charge of your company’s employee activation? Chances are, it’s no one. So I guess it’s up to you. But here’s an idea. Rather than think about employee activation as the best way to get your most authentic and credible employer brand narrative out into the world (which it most certainly is), what if you were to think about the rest of the organization first? Who are all the departments who would love to tap into that resources? If you want to make yourself invaluable, manage this ideas for them first (and your outcomes will come all by themselves).
Let’s talk metrics! No wait come back! If you are thinking about metrics, there are any number of ways to approach them, and none of them are “right.” I did a few presentations where I came up with three ways of thinking about metrics all on my own, and there are many others. But to start, connecting your metrics to the funnel is a smart go-to. (h/t Follow The Bear newsletter)
I will admit that my day job is forcing me to re-example some ideas I… well, in all honesty, I accepted without much inquiry. It’s a little exhilarating, I promise. One of those concepts is that of “belonging” at work. For years, we’ve heard variations on the idea of “bring your ‘whole self’ to work” which is intended to imply (for example) that black people can bring their black experiences (good and bad, and lately its a lot more of one than the other) to work and that we can’t expect people to leave those experiences at the door. We assume that we want people to feel like they belong at work, which encourage them to speak up and engage. But we haven’t always defined what we mean by “engage” or “belong.” So I was really interested when Josh Bersin broke things down on his site about what it takes to create that feeling of belonging. I would suggest that for a lot of people, the feeling that their work matters, that it contributes to a company’s success drives a sense of belonging as establishing an ERG or setting hiring targets. Everyone’s looking for an impossible easy fix, so let’s not forget what it means to feel like a person “belongs” to the group. (h/t Recruiting Brainfood)
Okay, I’ll admit it: I’m thinking about my organization’s career site, which means that I am looking at a LOT of career sites. Which actually means that I am seeing a LOT OF CAREER SITES THAT LOOK EXACTLY THE SAME. It’s painful. Often times, they are the “best case scenario” career sites by recruitment marketing platform vendors hold out as examples of great design. At the same time, fads in web design are as long lasting at those in fashion. But here are some current design trends you should look at when you think about your site design.
Quick Hits
7 employer branding tips from Shakespeare
How brands can live out their values in the new normal
EB Tip Of The Week
What’s something you can stop doing? You can’t make room for new ideas if you don’t figure out what isn’t useful and get rid of it. So what’s one campaign, project or task you can get rid of today?
On The Talent Cast
This is the first Monday in more than two years I haven’t published an episode of The Talent Cast. But don’‘t worry: it isn’t dead. I’m reinventing it and pushing myself to make the best damn employer brand podcast you ever heard. More coming soon!
Thanks, everyone!
The mission of this whole thing is to help you get better at employer branding, so if you have questions or want me to consider other articles, just let me know (reply to this email and it comes straight to me).
Cheers!
-James Ellis (LinkedIn | Twitter | Podcast | Articles)
Today (Labor Day!), I am cutting the price of Talent Chooses You as low as I can. As of today, I won’t make a single penny on book sales, so this as close to giving it away as I can make it. Why would I do something so crazy? Because when I wrote it, I wasn’t trying to make a fortune, I was trying to change the conversation in recruiting, to help every single company and organization evolve their TA and recruiting thinking. So go buy this book!!!
By James Ellis, Employer Brand Nerd
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