Meghan M. Biro and Iain Moffat of MHR International on how to foster a culture of belonging at work — no matter where employees are — now and long-term.

This chestnut of the business world overlooks the importance of, and the challenge of creating, a clear strategy.

In Noise, a professorial supergroup explains the causes and consequences of the inherent variability in professional judgment.

When attracting talent, a collective mission is more important than job descriptions and compensation packages.

From climate change to voting rights, Patagonia has been willing to risk backlash by taking positions on contentious social issues. It's a risk that has paid off.

Turnover: it’s an important metric for any organization’s health and one that executives across the business often scrutinize. At Culture Amp, we undertook our largest study on employee turnover to date, aiming to provide some much-needed context.

CMOs are increasingly recognizing that human issues are political issues.

New research shows that people of all ranks look to low-level peers for information about organizational social norms.

Engagement can have a huge impact on your business's success. Learn how to boost productivity, retention rates, and satisfaction by focusing on employee engagement.

As news comes of the Royal family's desire to hire a Diversity and Inclusion consultant, Kim Tran explores how the industry is at a crossroads and if it could find its roots again.

Company executives should be as systematic and intentional about corporate culture as you are about every other important aspect of our business. Learn how to build a more purposeful culture.

It’s time to test whether cultures that are better aligned to strategy execution are helping companies respond to COVID-19.

A top-down approach doesn’t work anymore.

From screenplay writing inspiration, to how storytelling training is part of their onboarding, CEO David Cancel shares how they drive narrative internally at Drift.

This week's long read comes to us from strategy+business. This is a great primer on what you can do to create culture change in your organization. Sure, as employer brand people, you may grapple with the business of when you need to accept an aspect of the culture and when you should try to change it (especially when you likely have no formal power to do so), but this article may help you see ways to nudge the change into occurring.

I really wish we could all get away from talking about "culture" as if there's some platonic ideal of culture we should all be shooting for. What I like is not what you like and that's completely fine. And while there are some good points here about fostering a stronger and more obvious culture, don't get sucked into the position that there's only one measure of quality culture.

When I talk about how to build an employer brand in a company with diverse microcultures, I usually reference a company's legal team and sales teams as the most disparate groups. One is driven by taking risks and the other is driven by negating them. But the trick is, I really don't know much about how corporate legal teams work, do you? Which is why I'm pointing to this article entitled "Does your legal team spark joy?" To me, it was an interesting perspective that even the dry and boring legal team can have and develop their culture. As they support the business, you can be supporting them by telling a more interesting and intimate story about them.

I know I'm in the minority when I say that I don't know that "day in the life" videos are not how I would want to learn about a company (my quibble: they can be as staged and fake as any other marketing device, and frankly, what your office looks like and what meetings look like don't tell me much). But they are obviously a part of many company's employer brands, so if you're going to build them, maybe build them well. William Tincup says the secret to a good video is a focus on hypertransparency and radical candor.

If you've got the time (and the outrage), here is the big article on the internal comms and culture of Away. Why is this worth your time? It is an amazing example of how tools and processes (Slack! Value-driven culture!) that were launched to help us change work, can still be used to badger, belittle and abuse staff (someone in a forum called it "weaponizing values" and I can't get that out of my head). There's are a million quotes I could use, but I suggest you watch to see how "open communication" can be used to instill fear, how "embracing values" can be corrupted to build a cult of personality.

Some days you just need to get into the weeds to help a hiring manager or recruiter "get" how employer branding can help. Big ideas and concepts just won't fly, and will likely push them away from what you're trying to say. Instead, here's a guide that I see as kind of a bridge to employer brand thinking. Using a DiSC framework (which I generally dig anyway), you can show someone how a "one size fits all" approach to messaging won't work. Once they see how tailoring their messaging to some basic personas can make an improvement, you've opened their eyes and they will be more likely to hear how they can tailor the message further to integrate the brand. How to put the perfect job ad in front of a candidate

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.

It's a little "let's all hold hands!" for my taste, but this article talks about how you build a sense of team spirit when your team is remote and you only get together once or twice a year. But the points raised remind us that the macro trend of remote work is increasing (and unlikely to change), so you need to re-think what your culture and brand might be when your people don't sit next to each other all day.

The assumption is that culture creates the brand, and I think that's true to an extent. Your brand is the intentional and judicious selection of traits and ideas that highlight your culture. But can you go the other way? That is, can you use the brand to change the culture? Great article on the chicken/egg situation and some great ideas on how you can make an impact on the culture.

How can you start to spark a stronger brand culture (that you will eventually learn to tap into and take advantage of)? Here are some tips from the brand side.

It feels reasonable to me that in a time of virtual/remote everything, the thing that will help bring people together and build connection and increase productivity is shared learning. What we learn together is what keeps us together. That holiday zoom class where everyone learned to make gnocchi in their own kitchens was the highlight of your Q4? Keep that in mind and start supporting shared learning experiences at work as a means of developing culture.

Anyone who has ever worked with sales and marketing teams knows how embedded data is in everything they do: how to collect it, how to make decisions with it, etc. And yet, data isn't really a core part of TA/Recruiting culture. Sure, we know our pipeline and TTF numbers, but that's just simple outcomes. I'm always thrown by how hard it is to get TA teams to think with data, but that's because the industry doesn't have a culture of using it. And if no one else in TA is using it, it's a great excuse to not use it. So if you're ready to change that culture, HBR has some good ideas.

Prediction: we've reached "peak inspiration" with our brand messaging. We needed that sense of hope to get through the initial freak-out, and some companies did a great job with it. But leaning too much on inspiration can feel like eating too much of that chocolate bunny. Beyond peak-inspiration? Getting the work done. Where we get back to the pleasures of doing good work.

Over at TalentCulture, there was a nice interview about how important data is going to become to all of HR (yes, it was sponsored by SAS, who deal exclusively data, but the interview was solid). I was struck by the idea that rather than focus on "here's how data will help you!" kind of conversation, it was really about how once everyone is trained and versed in seeing and thinking with data, the solution doesn't change, the whole question changes.

Lately, I've been talking about the four drivers of your employer brand (See article on ERE): Culture, Leadership, Options and Policies. Since we're all working from home, you might be realizing how distracted we all are: kids, pets, life in general, etc. So what if you suggest making a formal policy to help employees feel more comfortable working like this (I still hear people apologizing about their kid in the background asking for a snack: dude, that's all of us!).