Tom's got a new book. https://geni.us/uTtyCYr and this is a great chance to talk to the original and still champ... Tom's ranting about empathy and work…

And how to motivate them to stay.

But there is a dark side to being committed to being data-driven. What happens when you collect enough data on your employees to spot non-productive staff automatically? And if the data can spot them... what happens when automation fires them? Sound crazy? It's happening right now. This isn't a "this is bad!" post, but these are the changes that are happening that directly impact how people perceive your employer brand.

If it's time to switch your focus from Milliennials to Gen Z, here's a solid guide on how to reach, connect with and engage them.

One company's story in trying to solve their retention problem. For them, the solution to keeping people from leaving was to embrace reality and support those leaving. Also, this kind of tactic has massive implications on your employer brand.

Further evidence of companies embracing that the world really has changed? Chevron managed a virtual summer camp for its employees' kids. If your company cares about you, is there anything you care about as much as your kids??? So while this kind of thing will be common in the future, I love seeing companies pivot to embrace stuff like this.

COVID-19’s impact on the world of work is without question. The big question employer brand leaders need to ask themselves is: How will our organization show up in the labor market?

Have you heard that joke that every item in an employee manual should be named for the person who necessitated that rule? The drinking at work social engagements is the Chad Rule, for example (he knows what he did)? Yeah. Employee manuals are kind of the worst. Don't take my work for it. Fistful of Talent agrees with me, calling it the "worst HR document ever." I bring this up because anything that sucks that people see is an opportunity to support your employer brand.

And if you're looking to fine-tune your storytelling content strategy, Narrative Science has a nice ebook called Let Your People Be People I can recommend.

Usually, when we wonder, "why did someone apply and interview only to walk away from the offer?" we think about the question on an individual level. What was the issue with that person or interaction? But when you look more systemically, you might see that things like messaging, branding, and candidate experience timeline have just as much of an impact. CNBC asks why 50% of offers end up being rejected.

I have yet to find a professionally satisfying "talent community." Why? Because "community" speaks to two-way conversation and most talent communities are email blasting tools with new labels on the tin. But I have to imagine that we must (by now) be on the precipice of actually getting talent communities right. Why? Because companies around the world are finding the value of building communities of customers and prospects, so that thinking will trickle down to us at some point. Right?

If you are being forced to re-think your candidate experience (because you can't just have them show up to the office at the moment), here are some suggestions on leveraging human-centered design to re-invent the entire experience.

How to run a grassroots marketing campaign. Good EB is very much a grassroots marketing problem.

I love talking about rejection letters (sorry... disposition messaging ...rolls eyes...) because they are deeply impactful messaging opportunities we tend to phone in. Which is why I loved this article about how Intel re-designed its rejection experience (and it is an "experience," is it not?).

I have mixed feeling about this article on why every company should make professional development a core element of their brand promise. One, yes, many many many candidates and employees want development, but even when they want it, they don't want/value it the same way. Some want classrooms and certifications. Some want mentoring and coaching. Some want the freedom to experiment and fail. And yes, there are some great talents who don't look to their employer as a source for development. Over at the day job, we have lots of data that lots of people want development, but it is by no means universal. Development is popular among some talent, but to say that every brand should define their brand around it is a little myopic. That said, it's an area where many companies ignore to their detriment.

More and more businesses are looking to their own brand purpose to create a stronger brand foundation as everything seems to change every second around it. If your company is thinking about purpose (or you’re starting to spark those conversations), it might help to understand how purpose works and how businesses can leverage purpose strategically (also, companies don’t have purpose, people have purpose, and you’re in the people business, remember?).

I’m not pointing fingers, but let’s be honest: its easy to define an employer brand when we treat work as a place to go and not as a thing you do. (This article on the future of working kind of made me realize how much we define the issues we solve to make the answers easier to accomplish. Turns out people are messy, and when you can’t just focus on the place, it gets messy to try and explain why people do what they do.)

Brands are things humans build feelings around. Are you thinking about what emotions you want to encourage and when?

Here’s some good thinking on how to think as deeply around your employee experience as one might for their consumer experience.

The researchers show that even though chitchat is superficial, “it’s about building culture and collaboration.”

We’ve been telling candidates to develop their personal brand to make it easier for recruiters to understand who they are and what they bring to the table. The problem is, personal brands seem to be the domain of the loudmouth (hi, how are you!). What about introverts? And if we flip the concept around, does your employer brand only cater to the boisterous, obvious extroverts? How can you make sure you’re not repelling introverts in order to stand out in the crowd?

My feeling on over-indexing on candidate experience are well known (your CX should reflect your brand and work reality, not just “white glove”), but there are still great online ways to engage talent online outside of tests and (god help us all) the ATS. Here are some examples from the consumer world we could all steal ideas from.

Pop quiz: what’s the one thing that adds authenticity to your brand claims? When actual employers align to those claims. Even more so when they can internalize those ideas and even talk about the less-attractive aspects of the brand (all traits have good and bad features, and every strength becomes a weakness if taken too far). Charlotte Marshal breaks it down.

Oh, hey. Here’s Marketing Week making a clear case for how your employer brand supports your customer brand. Trust me, they don’t care about recruiting or niceties like candidate experience. They only can about making and keeping customers. Slip this under your CMO’s door.

Oof. When HBR is arguing against “talent management optimization,” you gotta ask: why aren’t we treating each and every employee like an artist? How is it that Taylorism is still alive and well?

Look, this is something I am grappling with because I really want employer branders to think… deeper. It’s not just putting out little videos and polishing up career sites, but helping leadership think better about their brand. One of the ideas I haven’t gotten my arms around but think is special is the concept of cognitive dissonance. We want what we want, but what we want might not align with our stated values. A company who can help its customers overcome that cognitive dissonance is one who can win a long time customer. Like i said, I’m not sure how we can use this idea, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot.

In the similar vein, you can be helping your people not just “survive” things, but finding ways to get better because of the crisis.

For my money (and I’m no expert), the litmus test for doing useful D&I work with your employer brand, isn’t to solve for the easiest cases (women make less than men, but they still tend to get hired, albeit at a lower rate), but to solve for the toughest. As one of the least “accepted” groups, perhaps if you solve for trans people, you end us solving for a lot more audiences. And Google’s got some ideas on how to do exactly that.

According to Gallup's most recent data, employee engagement is at an all-time high. Huh?

Long-time readers of this newsletter will know about my love/hate relationship I have with HBR. When they aren’t mis-representing what EB is, or clinging to a fairly outmoded sense of who is in charge of an individual’s career, they occasionally drop an article like this one around how “feel good” messages don’t always motivate your employees. Personally, I would have re-written around how not all employees respond to feel-good messages (or any one kind of message, frankly), but good for them to at least consider that employees aren’t interchangeable cogs…