Let Your People Speak

Let Your People Speak

[tl:dr]
The identity of your company is exemplified by your employees. Your employer brand is an important expression of your company’s identity.

The most powerful way to find out what it is like to work at an organization is by speaking to someone who works there.

Companies should create a framework that encourages and enables their employees to have conversations with potential recruits about their work and what drives them. There are few better ways to position your company as an employer of choice in the market.

Employer branding is about identity. It is about how the people who work for a company think about it as an employer. And it is about how the people the company would like to recruit view the company as a potential employer.

In contrast to classic corporate branding, employer branding isn’t primarily about positioning the company or its products and services. A lot of companies produce impressive products and deliver great services. And yes, this matters. Highlighting your products and services can help attract talent, for sure. But today, people have many ways of finding out about a company’s portfolio: through ads, business news, events, and many other channels. What they are more interested in is to know what it would be like to work there.

Because even with platforms like glassdoor or kununu, which make it easier for talent to discover what people inside an organization have to say about their employer, deeper questions are still often not addressed adequately. Questions like: What does it feel like to be part of a team in this company? What did it take to develop those products? How did they work together and what were the challenges along the way? Answers to these questions often provide the best insight into whether an interested prospect would fit into an organization or not.

The most powerful way to find out what it is like to work at an organization is by speaking to someone who works there. And we know that the more our world digitalizes, the more a personal conversation with a friend from college or with a former colleague will stick out from a message carefully curated by corporate communications. This is why companies should take a leap of faith and encourage their employees to have conversations about what it’s like to work there.

This conversation principle is powerful and requires trust between management and their teams. But if the trust is there, these conversations are the most authentic, efficient and convincing tool you’ll have for generating interest and a real desire for people to work at your company. Because they give people a good idea of the kind of atmosphere, culture, and type of work that would await a new recruit when they join you.

If your company manages the switch from a vertical, headquarters-led program to a horizontal, employee-driven one, you’ll be able to create a strong, contemporary approach for your employer brand. This doesn’t mean that there is no structure. You should create a solid framework for your employer brand that provides guidance for practitioners on the ground. But if you manage to do this, you will have established an intuitive process of collaboration and co-creation that will shine inwards and outwards.

Photo by Matt Koffel on Unsplash