What happens when your employees get politically active? This week, more than 360 Amazon employees signed a public petition demanding the corporation take action on climate change. The company responded by threatening to fire them. Last year, Google saw a mass walkout. Between Greta, a US presidential election and Brexit, the political and social landscape is getting very tricky. And yes, your employer brand plays a role. If you've established values and pillars around being green or being socially responsible, what happens when staff act on that? And do you know how leadership will respond?

Let's talk about trust. In a podcast last year, I predicted that salary information was crucial to candidates not just because candidates seek to optimize total compensation above all else, but because it is the only data point they can trust. Recruiters, employer branders and hiring managers are incentivized to paint rosy pictures of the opportunity, pictures candidates are not always able to validate until inside the company. Thus, they hold the salary number to be the best data point because it isn't subject to perspective or spin. Why bring up trust? Well, Edelman's 2020 Trust Barometer came out two weeks ago and it is stunning. Across the board and almost universally, trust of government agencies, companies, technology and media has fallen. People are worried about losing their job as the gig economy, automation and a lack of skills creates more and more chance of being left behind. A majority of Americans don't trust the news they get and worry about being manipulated. No major institutions are seen as being both ethical and competent. Businesses are seen as having little to no commitment for their people in the face of creating profits. Like I said, it's a stunner. And into this world goes your little recruitment marketing ad or a career site that simple suggests that yours is a company for open-minded folks looking to make an impact. How believable is that message when people don't trust the company producing it? Or when they don't feel like they have reputable third-party sources with which to validate the claim?

Here's a nice short article reminding us that employer brand folks are there to help manage perceptions in other people's minds. It seems obvious, but it feels like we forget very quickly when things get busy.

Branding Magazine says people see brands as people. For use, our brands ARE people. Which means that we need to be thinking psychologically about how our prospects see us.

There are a lot of little tidbits of concepts in this article around brand perception (neuron mirroring, framing, cognition, etc), so don't expect a deep dive. But taken together, it felt like there were a lot of good ideas around identifying your brand perception issues might be, and how you might be able to solve for them.

Universum’s Employer Branding NOW 2020 survey, now in its fifth year, shows best-in-class talent leaders are quickly adapting to the new-normal of Covid-19. STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN, July 2, 2020 – Universum’s much-anticipated Employer Branding NOW 2020 study, conducted during the pandemic’s surge months in early 2020, shows the World’s Most Attractive Employers do not expect a hiring …

The danger of building your brand around your stated values is that what you say your values are and how you live them are often very different. Proof? MIT Sloan’s study of 700 large companies found ZERO correlation between what a company says its values are and what it’s work culture actually is.