Employer Brand Headlines Newsletter

To clarify their strategy and communication around strategy, executives should create a simple document called a strategy spine. They should begin by imagining, as if they were an independent reporter, their company about five years into successful future. What would that success look like? What choices made it possible? Then, based on this imagined future, they can fill out the six elements of their strategy spine: planned sources of revenue, key operating assumptions, key goals, revenue implications of those goals and assumptions, investments needed, and additional infrastructure needs. The strategy spine should never be regarded as a completed work, but rather a living document to be modified as conditions change.

Many companies get started on strategy-making too late because of a lack of awareness or sense of urgency that there is a challenge to be addressed. When they do get started they rush too quickly into articulating solutions that may not be appropriate for the challenges they actually face. These traps can be avoided by carefully considering two questions before starting on any strategy-making or strategic review process: Is there a problem to solve and what sort of problem is it?

An Holistic Approach to Changing Recruitment

Read our employer brand professionals' top recommendations on creating job postings to boost your company's employer branding.

Why curiosity is a strategist superpower.

A differentiated employee value proposition is important because it impacts recruitment and retention, making it an essential tool for recruiting talent.

Three out of every five companies rate their organization as weak on strategy execution. When you dig into the potential barriers to implementation, there is a general lack of understanding of the various factors at play, resulting in the inevitable managerial justifications — “poor leadership,” “inadequate talent,” “lack of process excellence,” etc. This article suggests three key steps to build the right execution system: 1) a good strategy, 2) the right organization, and 3) effective management. With these three ingredients in place, human ingenuity can be unleashed, and employees can collectively deliver on the company’s strategic goals.

Too many “strategies” produced by companies and national governments are weak, lacking astute diagnosis and actions with any bite. To counter this phenomenon, we must recognize what a strategy actually is. The essence of a strategy is a design for actions required to meet an important challenge or opportunity. Whether in chess, war, business, or politics, the basic idea is to focus energy and resources where they will do the most good — on the enemy or opponent’s weakness, or where the opportunity for gain is the greatest. A strategy is not a list of aspirations or ambitions, nor is it a list of all the things the committee members think are good ideas. Whether on the chessboard, the battlefield, a political campaign, or in a business, effective strategies are designs of coordinated action aimed at overcoming specific challenges. Effective strategy is about what is critically important, not about everything that everybody does or wants to do.

"Our brain doesn’t react, it predicts. And it predicts based on past experiences."

". . . for some companies, crafting an identity that blends in with the crowd can prove the key to success."

"Securing funding involves convincing investors of your vision and persuading them to buy into it – literally. This surely is a job for great branding."

"Purpose shouldn’t just live in the marketing department. Instead, it should be an internal and external cultural imperative for everyone."

"While many organizations value their employees, not enough have committed to treating them the same as customers."

It’s a really interesting point in time for those embarking on EVP refreshes. Since the pandemic hit, I’ve been in a fortunate position to have run a number of employee research projects, across a number of industries.

Fostering a sense of belonging among employees can help organizations improve retention and performance.

We chat with founder of Notepad Naeem Alvi-Assinder to find out more about the ethos of his brand strategy and design agency.

Discover high-quality examples of content to post on TikTok to generate engagement and connect with your audience.

Musk’s critics get sharp rebuke

The following is adapted from Give & Get Employer Branding. As an industry, employer branding is still in its infancy, but despite how young the profession may seem, you can find examples of employer brand and employee value propositions (EVPs) dating back hundreds of years, all the way to the Frenc

The letter calls on ways for SpaceX to fix its reputation and culture.

How the Internet Influenced a Generation's Worldview

"I don’t gain anything besides a commute."

If you look for arguments to have/update your #EVP here is some #data from WTW and McLean & Company #attraction #attrition #engagement...

What is important for talent nowadays, and how do companies position themselves with regard to these aspects. In this article, you will learn about three challenges companies are facing and three pieces of advice on how to tackle them.

The debt that’s crippling your company isn’t on your balance sheet. Here’s what to do about it.

Good strategy has traditionally been seen as the key to business success. More recently, purpose has become an essential element of doing business. But something else is missing: culture, or the essential elements of how an organization and its employees behave, as well as its governing beliefs and principles. And yet, culture often receives less attention than purpose and strategy. The author thinks of purpose, strategy, and culture as a triangle: Each angle connects with and shapes the other two, and if one changes, the other two must evolve and adjust to maintain balance and shape, or the triangle breaks and falls apart. He presents three types of levers companies can use to profoundly shape an effective culture and allow their strategy to come to fruition.

We are experiencing three over-arching colliding forces: increased globalization, increased localization, and increased personalization… all happening

What are brand values, why are they critical to any brand strategy, and how you can define them for your brand? Let's dive in!

A new framework helps companies implement a corporate purpose that engages employees and drives their daily actions.