Demonstrating the connection between terms like business strategy, Employer Branding, Employee Engagement, and Employee Experience.

Learn about how Sephora built a global Employee Value Proposition (EVP) and strengthened their culture.

When, why, and how do consumers cope with a status threat by choosing to “pivot” to alternative domains?

It has become popular to talk about brand in terms of a story. Let’s be as clear as possible with this, a brand is not a story. If it is then it’s created It has become popular to talk about brand in terms of a story. Let’s be as clear as possible with this, a brand is not a story.

I'm helping a friend walk her employer brand project through leadership, so I'm super sensitive to how hard is it to get leadership buy-in. Then I see this article on how to get leadership to buy into consumer branding, and I realize we aren't quite the proverbial red-headed step-child we often think we are. Even marketing has to work hard to get buy-in, so why not steal some good ideas from them?

Because employer branding as a function is so incredibly complex, it seems like the people who do it each have their own "process" for development. Some people are copy-writers, some people approach it more visually. Some people leverage their tech stack. And others work the internal politics side to develop something that will have immediate buy-in. Those are all possible ways to do it. But what if you had something stronger, something that yo could build creative on top of, something that was tech agnostic, or could shut down petty squabbles internally quickly? Because such a thing might exist? What is your employer brand built on?

What's the hardest part of getting your employer brand ideas off the ground? Building a business case. Very few of us were taught this skill, so my friend Mezjan wrote up his own process for business case development perfect for EB pros.

Taking an entire company, hundreds and thousands individuals' hopes, dreams and passion, and distilling it into something that might fit inside a fortune cookie without sounding... like a fortune cookie, is an art. So if the time has come to try your hand, here are some great value proposition templates to help you focus your thinking.

I was really impressed by this employer branding manifesto from Spotify (While I'm a customer, I have no other relationship to Spotify). Why? While it is effectively selecting pillars you'd see in many other companies, the way it expresses and things about those pillars says more about what it's like to work at that company as the pillars themselves. Like Tony Bennett or Aretha Franklin, it's the singer, not the song. While I get to talk/think about EB data all day, people are sometimes troubled by the fact that company EVPs are often little more than carbon copies of other companies. But this is when creativity, based on a platform of solid data, can really sing. Like two houses with the same floor-plans, it is the upkeep, location and decoration that makes one house feel sterile and cold while another can feel cozy. The data creating the pillars doesn't make creativity, but they provide certainty on which bold creative decisions can be made.

Branding Mag (rightly) calls "shenanigans" on what feels like every company embracing the concept of "purpose" as a driver in their marketing. To the author's eyes, it is obviously self-serving and has been used to the point of uselessness. That's not good news for us employer brander folks, many of whom rely seriously on the concept of "inspiring purpose" in their EVPs (I mean, now many times in one newsletter am I allowed to use the term 'over-indexed' before this thing gets silly?). But there's some good, news, especially for brands who aren't just slapping a fresh of coat of "purpose" in the brand as the solution d'jour. Defining and proving how your company is trying to create a change in the world is the first step. Get it right, make it real, or just don't both.

Speaking of over-indexing, I'm going to call it right now: we as an industry are over-indexing on employee happiness. So many articles and presentations that assume we all want to attract candidates who will be happy in our roles, and I think we've overshot the mark. You can't offer happiness any more than you can offer someone joy. Those are emotions people make themselves. So I was thrilled to see this piece suggesting we focus on offering professional fulfillment rather than happiness.

In a lot of ways, an EVP is like home improvement: you start watching enough HGTV shows from your couch and you start to think, "how card could that be? Maybe I should tackle my own EVP project..." Which are some of my favorite famous last words. Now, I'm not saying you can't build your own EVP all by yourself, but watching the process from the outside misses the complex and messy things that go on during the commercial breaks where everyone's screaming at each other and that suddenly load-bearing wall has been demoed. Oops. So if you're thinking about taking the job yourself, here is a great article at ERE on some common ways that companies who try to to DIY their EVP get into trouble.

Paging Captain Obvious: HBR finally has decided that job postings are a good way to attract better talent. Hey, who's snitchin?! Anyway, I just did a webinar on how to write better job postings faster, so if you want to see the recording, you'll have to ask me nicely. Just reply to this email.

I loved this article on how "combinatorics" (that term had to have been invented by an MBA with a math background) can help find tune your value proposition. If you ignore the jargon, there's a heck of pitch here: because you don't really understand what your talent prospects want (because you haven't tightened your focus enough), you can't differentiate.

Last week I had some crazy technical issues. which is why the newsletter went out a day and a half late. In all the chaos, I didn't link to an article on how you can use the four drivers of your employer brand to better respond to the pandemic.

And if you'd like to understand how data can underpin a stronger, more resilient employer brand, I wrote something up to try and put it all together and create a string business case for data investment, even when everything seems "up in the air."

Make the best of bad reviews. Perfect for your review sites.

HBR makes a solid case that the best way to keep your entry and younger talent is to focus on professional development and emotional intelligence. (That's pretty much what the data at Universum has been showing for a few years now).

I know you want to make BFFs with your marketing team, but a lot of you are having trouble making making it work. The culprit? It's that marketing doesn't understand you. They still see your team as a funnel-filler or Glassdoor review watcher. They treat your team as untested and untrained dilettantes "playing at marketing." Which is why I wrote this for you (to give to them): The CMO's Guide to Employer Branding. It's a long read, I'll grant you, but it should speak their language about your value.

I’m a big fan of a modular employer brand (multiple pillars and a single EVP that you can choose from to speak to a given audience), so I have things to quibble with in Gabriela Torres’ approach to think about an EVP as having multiple personalities (usually when you have multiple, you end up seeing a doctor). But the underlying reasoning is sound: monolithic brands aren’t as agile and can’t connect with enough talent. You need to connect the brand to the person.

Case study: Cisco reinvents its employer brand around the concept of trust.

Tim Sackett asks a pretty controversial question over on his blog: Should companies disclose their political leanings? Tim makes good points that just because a business might lean liberal or conservative, that doesn’t mean everyone does, or even that it’s a critical component to the employer brand. My take is simple: if it matters to leadership and staff what the political identify of an organization is, and it’s not exclusive of talent from other perspectives, there’s no reason not to talk about it. But in this day and age, where “wearing a mask” is seen as somehow “political,” the return from such a position is likely very very weak (if not completely counter-productive).

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Bryan Adams kicks his article off by saying, “talent acquisition professionals and employer brand leaders can often fall victim to an over-reliance on conventional thinking” so you knew I was going to mention this one. His call is to go beyond “typical employer branding” is music to my ears. It’s a call to stop being passive, to stop just focusing on polishing up and providing the “nicest” face on the company and taking a more active role in shaping the brand. Don’t tell stories, make stories. Love it.

It’s nice to see an article admit that everyone offers a competitive salary, benefits, opportunities for growth and flexible working conditions. So what happens next? What happens you have to build an employer brand beyond that?

If you see employer brand as crafting the rosiest picture possible around a company, the safest play is to write great stories to paint that picture. Done right, using text primarily to talk about your brand can hide a multitude of sins, effectively letting a brander put lipstick on the proverbial pig. But a brand isn’t just (or even) the words you use. It is found in the actions of your company.

As mentioned earlier, it does feel like so many companies have the same pillars and recruitment messaging. To be fair, so many companies are structured the same and have the exact same perks and org chart, so it probably shouldn’t be surprising. Which is why I loved this article equating a company’s branding elements to ingredients in a basket on TV cooking show Chopped. The chefs get the same ingredients, so the skill is in how you bring them together and build something far bigger/better than its components.

How is your employer brand? This post will help you evaluate your employer brand, consider important factors and ways to improve company culture and reputation.

Complete case study on how Mondelez built its global employer brand (video)