How can you use the power of the whole communication toolkit - also known as proper strategic communication - effectively? We talk a lot in the world of internal communication about working strategically. In fact episode one of season two of my Candid Comms podcast address this exact topic. It will be published tomorrow, Sunday 6 June 2021, via your favourite podcast player.

Three trends — and how to prepare for them.

Tech platforms give conferences and events the opportunity to reshape networking. Why aimlessly network when you can take part in collaborative learning?

Gallagher's 2021 State of the Sector report paints a picture of a rapidly changing workplace—and the value of internal communications in navigating those changes.

Shared with Dropbox

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

Just about every consulting firm, CEO, hiring manager, and recruiter believes there is a significant shortage of qualified people, especially for positions requiring artificial intelligence experts, machine learning gurus, data scientists, and some engineering categories.

Presentations by Benedict Evans: The Great Unbundling

Accenture's Fjord Trends 2021 provides insights into emerging trends in business, technology & design focused on meeting human needs. Read more.

These surprising marketing facts will have you rethinking your recruitment marketing strategy! How many of these little-known marketing facts do you know?

Last year taught us that the future is difficult to predict, but that didn't stop the plethora of webinars, articles, social posts and emails suggesting what to expect in 2021 from popping up at the end of last year. I find trends valuable to a degree, they suggest progress to be made and ways of do

Volume hiring will never be the same, get ready for 2021 and beyond with this list of trends backed up with real data from tens of millions of candidate interactions. What the hell just happened? I think we’re all ready to say goodbye to 2020.

No one saw 2020 coming. At the close of 2019, economists in the US talked about the prospect of full employment, we expected Brexit to dominate headlines in Europe and Japan was poised to open its doors to the world as host to the Summer Olympics.

This week's big read is Boston Consulting Group's article on how the changing world of work is a confluence of changing tech, changing talent needs, and the value of purpose in the next decade. It's very mega-trendy, but there are great notes. For example, how will you understand and communicate your EB internally as teams get smaller and more virtual? Does your EB change for someone working from home? How do you change your strategy of turning them into advocates?

LinkedIn says 2020 is the year recruiting completely changes. New skills, new tools, new approaches to recruiting. So... you mean like employer branding?

The top 8 recruitment marketing trends for 2020 (oh look, employer brand as the core of all messages is #1).

I am fully aware of my bias towards content marketing, but I think EB pros can learn a lot from them. So here are top thought leaders in the content space giving their predictions for 2020. Things to note: Trust as a social process, deeper investment in video AND AUDIO (you mean like podcasts?), leveraging data into the content planning process, and email newsletter making a comeback.

As a bonus, here are predictions for social media for the coming year. What’s next for Facebook, TikTok, Slack, and more

Lots of great data points on Vox's wrap up of 2019 tech trends. The most interesting one is how tech talent is continuing to cluster around a handful of cities. This blows my mind. We all know how expensive it is to hire in the obvious cities, so you'd assume companies would look beyond those cities for talent (and a steep discount), but that's not happening. Might be a good chart to show the hiring manager who asks why it's so hard to hire in Boston, SF and Seattle

This one came out too late for my summery of brand trends, but here are five emerging brand trends for 2020. I heartily endorse their first trend that as more and more "authentic reviews" turn out to be fake, candidates will stop relying on review sites as much. At the very least, candidates will change how they interpret those reviews, which should impact your own review site strategy. (And here's early examples from the Washington Post: companies that sell fake people.) Also see the fifth prediction: People will pay more for brands with a human side. As the de facto owner of the human side of your corporate brand, this is where you can make a real impact.

LinkedIn looked at its own user data and discovered some trends for 2020 and beyond. The most interesting? They think that data and analytics have reached a kind of "inflection point" at which is it no longer a "one day" thing but more of a "we're falling behind" thing. Also, they are seeing trends that their next new hire is likely to be found internally than in recent years.

Have you wondered why your "talent community" (quotes intentional) isn't working? More to the point, have you had to explain it to your boss? I think the first issue for most of us is that we call it a community without understanding what a community really is. Here's a quick checklist to see if you really have a community or just a pretty mailing list.

Here's a nice write-up on what to expect in the next decade of marketing.

I had a fun conversation over at Chad & Cheese on employer branding in a post-COVID world that got some surprisingly positive mentions.

NYTimes has a bunch of data on how people's internet use has changed since their lockdowns. This might be useful as you plan how you reach out to people in a COVID world. My big takeaway is that where phone-driven apps had been growing steadily, the fact that we're all locked at home with our laptops and TV means that they are taking up a LOT more of our screen time.

We all know how COVID is changing work, but it is time to stop thinking about "work" in terms of a "job." Our jobs are going to be more fluid and driven less by tasks and much more by outcomes. Add to that disconnection from a core office, and technology that allows anyone to tap into more remote systems and we're entering a time when the very concept of a job will be re-thought.

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.

Predictions on how content marketing will likely change in the near term is a guidebook for all your employer brand tactics (what, did you not know you're a content marketer? Oh indeed you are). Example: social and video look to continue their rise, but now that most google searches are mobile, how are you going to react?

There's always a contingent looking "ahead" at cool marketing tactics. For them, I ask: are you thinking about interactive marketing yet? Be they games, AR/VR, even "choose your own adventure"-type story-telling, getting people to make choices within your marketing makes your messages more engaging and memorable. Okay, I scared you with the AR/VR thing, sorry. But quizzes count (sorta). And what if instead of "a day in the life" video, you let people choose what the employee was going to do? Get coffee or prep for the meeting? Research a client via Google or other channel? Make a series of options that people can choose and see the impact those choices make in their day. Maybe double down and work with your instruction-design people (assuming you have one of those) to show how each choice suggests that the candidate is or isn't a likely fit with your brand (without being ham-fisted about it).