Employer Branding In Layoffs 🫀 EBH
Hide? Run? Cower? Pretend you never had a brand in the first place?
There’s been a lot of talk about “how to use your employer brand when the company is laying people off.”
If your brand is based purely on positivity (We're great! We're growing! People here succeed! We’re hiring a million people an hour! Look at this amazing campus for all these new people!), bad news is going to hurt your brand. A downturn is going to wound your brand. Layoffs will crush your brand.
A brand built like that is fragile. One lawsuit or story in the press will fracture the entire foundation of what you’re building on.
At that stage, you’re right. Using your overly-positive brand when things are positive feels wrong. Because reality just proved that it is.
But if your brand is more complete, if it is built around the salty and the sweet, the easy and the hard, the good and the bad, if it talks not just about the successes, but about the effort and sacrifice needed to make those wins happen, if it talks about the chaos on the other side of autonomy, or the ruthlessness behind the performance-driven culture, what’s to be scared of?
A downturn doesn't change your brand, it is your chance to PROVE your brand. It is how your brand is tested. It is simply a chapter in a larger book of how your company grows, evolves, and thrives.
Raw positivity is the sugar of employer branding: Tastes great, makes you feel good, but sets you up for a crash (and diabetes) in the future.
Embracing a complete story is like eating your veggies: they don’t always taste as good as cookies but lead to a longer and stronger life.
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Or your HRBP. Or your TA leader. Or your social media manager.
Except it’s not crazy. And I have the proof. Over the last six months, I have helped dozens of HRBPs, recruiters, comms managers, TA leaders, marketers (and even a few employer brand specialists) build their company’s employer brand.
The next class starts May 3rd, so register soon.
***This Newsletter Contains No ChatGPT***
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