employer brand Archives - Page 2 of 3

Make Technology Compliance Sexy: Embrace The Culture

February 19, 2016/Archives /by Meghan M. Biro

Technology compliance is a necessity. But it isn’t sexy — yet. Certainly, innovating ways to approach compliance has contributed to a greatly transformed world of work. It’s underscored the need for the power and scope (Cloud) and for agile processes and insights (talent analytics). It’s leavened a sense of mission with an edict for ethical conduct (I’m speaking generally here), and that’s certainly a trend given the trending values of a changing workforce population.

And the topic elicits sighs among most of those not charged with its administration. It’s not sexy because it’s complicated, and it’s required. It’s like the buttoned-up older brother who insists we eat our vegetables at the picnic. HR wants to focus on talent acquisition across all the shiny platforms; to forge new paths for talent management; to help create amazing employer brands that practically vacuum eager talent our way; to futurecast. But we can’t ignore compliance. And given the profound global shift in our workforces, whether Fortune 500 or SME, it’s an even larger challenge given the need to address not just state and national, but international regulations.

But we need to love it. We need to make it sexy. How?

Make a clear part of the employer brand. As the future brightens, though not necessarily as bright as before — I’m thinking of the jobs report out Friday from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which showed that the U.S. added a modest 173,000 payroll jobs in August, and that unemployment was at 5.1 percent (down from 5.3 percent in July). Given the pervasive concern with successful recruitment, make compliance clear not only at the level of hire, but as part of candidate experience.

Dovetail it into the company culture. This is different than the employer brand: this is about what happens in the workplace — and certainly has an effect on engagement and retention. There are countless compelling arguments for this. Again, the majority of the workforce (yes, millennials) has made it clear that values , transparency and accountability are key. Compliance is part of that: a functional reflection of positive integrity and deeper ethics.

Make it functional. In its Predictions for 2015: Redesigning the Organization for a Rapidly Changing World, Deloitte reports that HR technology is now an industry in excess of $15 million, and that organizations are “scrambling” to replace their existing HR technology. Despite the incredible growth — the LMS market and talent management software markets each grew by about 24 percent, the capabilities are not improving as fast. Less that 14 percent of those surveyed stated they had made significant programs in terms of talent analytics and workforce planning. As we evolve to the next phase of HR tech, it needs to embrace all requirements, including compliance. To leave compliance out of a revamp is to have to revamp the revamp.

Make it work for us. Leverage compliance as a structure for increasing diversity by adopting compliance software that addresses diversity and other workplace issues. Dismal statistics noone was surprised by showed that Silicon Valley has a long road ahead, and there’s a stunning lack of minorities and women in STEM pipelines. Google, for instance, reported that its tech workforce is 60 percent white and 1 percent black. Yet it’s been made abundantly clear that without reaching into these population we’ll never be able to fill the rise in STEM jobs coming up — which prevents our ability to compete in science and tech moving forward.

The legacy of HR meets Technology is that we’re endlessly bringing talent and organizations together and aiming for the best; tech and trends aside, sometimes, the marriages work; sometimes they don’t. By including compliance in the equation from the onset, we may not only increase the chance of employee engagement, we may also decrease the risk of external complications. And everyone’s happy, right? Well, maybe.

Photo Credit: Big Stock Images

A version of this post was first posted on Forbes on 9/5/2015

The 2 Things Brands Must Do to Edge Out the Competition

December 15, 2015/Archives /by Meghan M. Biro

We all choose to trust someone: our recruiter, our employer, our friends and family and the loosely connected peer groups we have built online. Besides these closely held and trusted relationships, we also look to online influencers – everything from shopping sites and corporate websites to journalists and columnists to sites like Yelp, Angie’s List and Care.com – as credible and reliable sources.

But do we trust these new influencers or do they merely exist to replace the role of advertisers, recruiters and newspapers?

“Influencer” is a role, a responsibility and a form of advocacy — both from an individual’s and an employer’s perspective. And for companies looking to stand out and gain a competitive edge, influence, along with trust, is essential. These two capabilities allow employers and employees new tools for navigating the new world of loosely-connected friendships and relationships. If done correctly, this sort of influence can be a powerful way to connect to individuals and grow faith in a brand. But if executed poorly, people may take you as not an influencer but a scammer.

For instance, employer websites, meant to stand in for brochures, have been expanded to include job sites and blogs, intended to serve as a first point of contact for potential employees. This can provide a great opportunity to stand out as an influencer for the demographic you hope to target.

But get the corporate site wrong — like failing to include material that engages the viewer and creates interaction with your brand — and prospects are less likely to trust your job site. This effect will be exacerbated if, in fact, your workplace is less than ideal and a disgruntled employee posts a less-than-glowing review on Glassdoor.com, a site of some influence in the recruiting community.

How to break down the barriers and establish trust

I’ve written before about the importance for employers of “brand humanization.” This is a mix of culture, community and corporation that leverages the power of social networks to attract a community of employees and prospects (brand advocates if you will) who believe in and trust the brand’s mission. “Humanized” brands encourage the creation of communities that engage in social interaction, which in turn creates greater engagement with employees and prospects and widens the net to attract new participants.

Brand humanization used to establish trust requires some investment on the part of brands, which must ensure their corporate persona engages at a human level. Sometimes corporate persona can derive from a leader. For instance, Virgin’s Richard Branson is the face and persona of the company.

Beyond persona, brands must create communities of interest in which employees, influencers, brand advocates and others who believe in (and trust) the brand can interact. Look at Red Hat’s Opensource.com for an example. It reflects the interests of the brand’s communities — developers, shareholders, open source communities, employees and even those interested in renewable resources.

Trust in a humanized brand also requires that interactions are relevant, timely and appropriate in frequency and duration. Too many brands blanket the social airwaves with self-serving messages on multiple channels. Be restrained, target each interaction to the right channel and make sure you and the community share expectations about frequency of contact and interaction.

Where influence begins

Once trust is in place, or at least a work in progress, it’s possible to begin to create influence.

Influence is a form of currency (See MindTool’s post on The Influence Model for more information). It requires reciprocity: I give you something of value, and you reciprocate. Of course this works best when both parties share a nation of value. In the social world, for example, influence can be acknowledgment in another’s blog post of an idea you had, a hat tip on Twitter, a link to one of your posts in an article and so on.

Finally, we must realize we live in a trust-based economy and adjust not only our behaviors but also our expectations. For instance, companies must be prepared to deal with employees and applicants who withhold trust, create initiatives to humanize their brands and connect with communities (such as being ever-vigilant for comments, attempts to engage and to participate in interactions where appropriate). Building trust creates a new value equation for your brand, and its employees, employee prospects and consumers.

Influence and trust in your brand — whether you’re a recruiter, an employer brand, or another category of influence — is an asset with incredible value. Guard it carefully.

A version of this post was first published on Entrepreneur on 5/29/14.

Photo Credit: EirikB via Compfight cc

The Evidence Of The Whole Makes The Employer Brand

July 20, 2015/Archives /by Kevin W. Grossman

“You can twist perceptions
Reality won’t budge
You can raise objections
I will be the judge
And the jury…”

—Neil Peart (Rush, “Show Don’t Tell”)

He held his right hand out toward prosecutor, defense attorney and the defendant first.

“They are evidence.”

Then he put his hand on his chest.

“I represent the law.”

And then he held his hand out toward the jury box where 18 prospective jurors sat.

“And you ultimately will be the verdict.”

The judge articulated the jury selection process clearly and methodically. For me, it was the first time I had gone through one where I actually had to report to the courtroom and witness the jury questioning, waiting in the wings in case my name was called to the jury box.

In the end I was released, the jury selected before the court assistant called my name. As jurors were dismissed and new jurors called up for questioning, the judge emphasized over and over again how the jury must only evaluate the evidence presented and decide on a verdict in accordance with the law. Period. Everything else including beliefs, biases and backgrounds needed to be left at the door if at all possible.

Easier said than done of course, but this is how the U.S. criminal justice system works and it moved me to hear how objectively passionate the judge felt about the jury process and the trial itself. He also had a sense of humor about the selection process.

“I understand you good people sitting out there are really pulling for thirteen of these eighteen up here to get selected for this trial so you can be released. That’s very supportive of you. Thank you for your service.”

It struck me that this is how we deal with the world of work and our brands, but in a much more skewed way. We being leadership – the law as judge and jury – and we want business decisions made via a very filtered data set, one that includes our personal beliefs, biases and backgrounds but not the entire workforce’s, not the whole workforce.

And we keep holding court through those filters, especially when we’re an established company trying desperately, or not so, to rethink culture and rebrand the business. In doing so, are we bleeding out the good folk that work and make cultures that rock?

It’s tough to resolve the brand debt, those rehashed value propositions that haven’t meant much to the greater workforce since the company was an entrepreneurial gleam in the founder’s eye. We aren’t willing or unaware how to look at more data than how others perceive the business and the brand. All too often within our workplace we’re making important people decisions based on assumptions of the leaders, instead of the employees, which includes:

What we think the culture is
What was valuable to us at a previous age or stage in our careers
What matters to us in a workplace

This according to TalentCulture #TChat Show guest Susan LaMotte, SPHR, founder of exaqueo, a workforce consultancy. Susan emphasizes how important it is not to assume, and not just because of the colloquial reason and of what it makes us all when we do ass-u-me.

We should gather new data regularly from our employees through surveys, interviews, focus groups and ethnographic studies and not base business brand and culture decisions based on data from years ago or what we think it should be. Not only that we should let someone else gather the data, an objective third party if possible, so we can set our beliefs, biases and backgrounds aside while gleaning the whole of everyone else.

Because whether our business was a terrible place to work for or not, how do we tell the story now? How do we get rid of our brand debt and tell the realistic story now? Because you can bet the majority of your employees and candidates are already telling it, good or bad, and the Talent Board Candidate Experience Awards data verifies this.

A recent PeopleFluent Millennial Survey shows revealed that over one-third of the respondents value culture as the biggest factor when recommending their place of work to a friend. And over 40 percent value culture as the most important factor when choosing a job.

Asking our current employees about what our company does and doesn’t do well as an employer helps us to tell that realistic story now, and HR can and should drive this initiative. Then we can build a real employer brand foundation to better extend that brand in the market.

The jury has spoken and the verdict is in. It’s the evidence of the whole that makes the employer brand.

#TChat Preview: How To Build And Market Your Employer Brand

July 10, 2015/Archives /by TalentCulture Team + Guests

The TalentCulture #TChat Show is back live on Wednesday, July 15, 2015, from 1-2 pm ET (10-11 am PT).

Last week we talked about how to create a culture that rocks, and this week we’re going to talk about how to build and market your employer brand.

No matter how you slice it, it’s really a lesson on research and positioning and how you end up marketing your company as the place to work.

However, you can’t be everything to everyone and too many companies are trying to be just that. No matter how “great” you think your company is, the “greatness” message won’t weed out the people who aren’t a great fit for your company.

So first you should ask your current employees about what your company does well as an employer, and all of the things that it doesn’t do well. Then build a real employer brand foundation so you can better extend that brand in the market.

Sneak Peek:

#TChat Events: How To Build And Market Your Employer Brand

#TChat Radio — Wed, July 15 — 1 pm ET / 10 am PT

Join TalentCulture #TChat Show co-founders and co-hosts Meghan M. Biro and Kevin W. Grossman as they talk about how to build and market your employer brand with this week’s guest: Susan LaMotte, SPHR, founder of exaqueo, a workforce consultancy.

Tune in LIVE online Wednesday, July 15th

#TChat Twitter Chat — Wed, July 15 — 1:30 pm ET /10:30 am PT Immediately following the radio show, Meghan, Kevin, and Jim will move to the #TChat Twitter stream, where we’ll continue the discussion with the entire TalentCulture community. Everyone with a Twitter account is invited to participate, as we gather for a dynamic live chat, focused on these related questions:

Q1: What common misconceptions do companies have about an employer brand? #TChat (Tweet this Question)

Q2: What steps can be taken to build and market an employer brand? #TChat (Tweet this Question)

Q3: How can organizations easily maintain their employer brand? #TChat (Tweet this Question)

Until then, we’ll keep the discussion going on the #TChat Twitter feed, our TalentCulture World of Work Community LinkedIn group, and in our TalentCulture G+ community. So feel free to drop by anytime and share your questions, ideas and opinions. See you there!!!

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Cooking Up A Better Company Culture

May 27, 2015/Archives /by Amanda Shore

What is your company’s purpose? What are its values? What is it’s vision? Can all employees articulate the organization’s values and practices? If you need help answering these questions, follow this recipe for creating a successful company culture:

3-Step Recipe For Company Culture

Serves small, medium and large sized companies

Ingredients:

Organizational values and practices
Communication and adoption
Employee Value Proposition (EVP)

Instructions:

Step 1: Define And Communicate The Values And Practices Of The Organization

Values are the operational beliefs shared by those with a vested interest in the organization. They are what drive the company’s priorities and form the basis for the company’s culture. Values structure how a company makes decisions and manages its operations. For example if an organization identifies one of its values as innovation, it may structure its efforts to promote and reward innovation among its employees and produce innovative services or products for its clients.

Step 2: Create A Framework For Employee Adoption Of Company Values And Practices

Encourage the adoption of organizational values and practices by company employees with these simple tips:

Practice what you preach. It’s a cliché saying, but when it comes to getting employees to embrace organizational values and make them a part of their performance, it’s a crucial mantra.
Be transparent. The more information that a company shares the more employees will feel like they are part of a team and have a sense of shared responsibility.
Celebrate success. Recognize everyone’s efforts in company achievements, especially employees who were primarily responsible.
Be open about mistakes. Failures teach us how to be better the next time. It is important that mistakes be talked about, rather than covered up. Don’t place blame but do educate.
Integrate questions in employee surveys that emphasize and gauge employee familiarity with company values, practices, and vision.
Include a line of sight agenda item in all organizational meetings that emphasize organizational values etc. in relation to the company’s business results.

And don’t forget to communicate and promote organizational values and practices so employees understand what’s expected of them.

Step 3: Devise An EVP That Employees Are Happy With And That Sends A Positive Message About The Company’s Employment Brand

On the outside EVPs detail compensation and health and wellness benefits. Internally, however, an EVP is the subjective reasons why employees choose to work with and stay with a particular company. If you can define the subjective reasoning for why people choose your company you can get a better idea of the existing culture and determine whether the EVP needs to be tweaked.

Start by identifying high-performing employees.
Define what behaviors and characteristics make these employees high-performers.
Interview these employees and ask them why they work here and what makes them stay.
Using their answers, determine what makes your company unique and defines the culture.
Analyze whether the existing EVP can be changed to encourage low-performing employees to be more engaged.

“A culture is the values and practices share by members of the group. Company culture is therefore the shared values and practices of the company’s employees” – F. John Reh, management and leadership expert, About.com.

If you follow this recipe you will be well on your way to achieving your goals. However the ideal company culture isn’t grown overnight—it’s a process that requires continuous improvement each year.

Image credit: pixabay.com

Igniting Your Candidate Experience

February 25, 2015/Archives /by Gabrielle Garon

Interviews are the the moment when your employer brand sparks to life.

From the moment your candidate connects with you in real life—and we’ll include telephone, Skype, and Google Hangouts as real life because it’s 2015—you’re humanizing your employer brand and making a human connection. In this pivotal employer branding moment, the question to ask yourself is this: does your interview ignite your employer brand and energize your candidate? Or, does it extinguish it like a candle snuffer?

A friend of mine was recently interviewed by a local government institution. The interview was, as she mildly put it, “boring.” Their questions were predictable, systematic, and inauthentic. The interviewers followed their interview guides precisely, reading each question verbatim, and never once showed an ounce of personality.

Does this sound like the interviews you’re conducting?

Up until this point, your employer brand is a bit of a mixed bag. It’s your direct HR marketing efforts, such as your careers website, social media, and your intentional candidate experience efforts. But it’s also the indirect stuff like word on the street (aka Glassdoor, word of mouth, etc.) So, how do you balance your inherent HR need for structure and make your employer brand come to life in a positive, warm kind of way? How do you give candidates an interview that feels authentic?

Have Fun. “Fun” is entirely contextual based on the corporate climate, but it can start with smiling and attempting to make an honest connection with your candidate. If your candidate is comfortable, he or she will interview to his or her best ability, so why not be cordial and inviting to set the stage for a successful interview?

Be Flexible. I once worked with a manager who said that he liked to “give candidates enough rope to see if they’d hang themselves.” While it’s a dark analogy to apply, I like the concept. Be flexible enough to adapt on the fly to what a candidate may (or may not) be saying.

Mirror the Brand. Whatever those adjectives are that your marketing department uses to humanize your business brand — be them. How a candidate perceives the company should be the same whether he or she read your latest news release, applied for a job, or met a hiring manager. There should be harmony among the messaging.

Keep it Real. Talk about the struggles the candidate will be facing, explain the culture with balanced humility and pride, and be honest. Setting up honest and reasonable job realities is essential to job satisfaction and it starts in the interview. Candidates are craving authenticity and transparency, so give it to them. Look for candidates who connect to your transparency and those who ask the hard questions back at you.

Interviewing should be a positive experience for candidates and interviewers alike, and when you can humanize a brand you believe in, it elevates the interview to what it should be: a great conversation.

About the Author: Writer, connector, collaborator – Gabrielle Garon is an enthusiastic HR pro on a simple mission to be a person of value, not of success. Gabrielle got into HR because she really liked helping others and soon found an overwhelming curiosity for behavior, motivation, and how it all intersects with business.

photo credit: Sparks via photopin (license)

Does Your Corporate Culture Need A Tune-Up?

February 24, 2015/Archives /by Meghan M. Biro

What makes a great leader? Maybe it depends. Sure, the capacity to inspire loyalty, the ability to articulate a vision, emotional intelligence and persuasiveness is valuable. But does a company need a leader whose values are culture-based, or one whose values are aligned with the needs of shareholders and the marketplace?

As a result, job seekers and future employees need to do a bit of digging to ensure the companies they’re interviewing with hold values compatible with their own. Often this boils down to trust. Plain and simple. And yet oh so complex.

For leaders, it means taking a critical look at your company culture, as it’s more important than ever for recruiting and retaining talent.

In my discussions with clients and candidates, I hear often that we are in the middle of a sea change – a generational shift in values. As Millennials make deeper inroads into the workplace, they’re bringing a new set of values, a need for a collaborative culture and a lack of interest in existing workplace structures that is creating tension among workers of other generations. People dance around this a lot, but it needs to be said: things are changing, and fast. Business leaders must be ready to accept that workers’ value systems are in flux, and be prepared to manage through complexity and change.

This topic came up when I was talking with a client about a talent retention challenge he was facing. His office is populated by workers of three generations: Millennials, Gen X, and Boomers. Friction in the office was disrupting productivity, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on the real issue. He runs an analyst firm with a fairly flat management structure. Leaders in this workplace with 20+ years of business experience do most of the strategy and management. These people tend to be Boomers in this culture. They’re used to hierarchical management – in other words, they’re accustomed to giving and taking direction, acting independently but consulting with top management, mentoring a lot (we hope), and collaborating in a formal way. They value independence, loyalty and the free exchange of ideas (we hope). A middle layer of GenXers does most of the day-to-day client management – the tactical work – while learning the ropes of strategic counseling. This group is, not surprisingly, a skeptical but hard-working bunch very focused on upward mobility. They, like the Boomers, are comfortable with limited hierarchy. Skilled client relationship managers, they expect everyone to pitch in and pull their weight. They value self-reliance, don’t always follow the rules, are loyal to themselves, and demand work-life flexibility.

The youngest group, the Millennials, supports the client managers. They prefer to work collaboratively but with people of their peer group. They have no problem questioning authority, love to brainstorm, and don’t always understand why their ideas aren’t implemented. They expect to progress quickly in their careers but aren’t always in agreement with senior management on the path. They value innovation, are loyal within their peer group, value social interaction and see work as a means to an end.

When we mapped out the different value systems of employees, my client began to see the problem: his values, which the company was built around, were accepted by the senior team, questioned by middle management and viewed as out of date by the junior team. The generational misalignment in values had created a culture of distrust. Client work was suffering. What could he do? We came up with an exercise along with HR: employees were asked via a blind survey to list the top five things they liked about working in the company, the five least desirable factors, and encouraged to share their ideas for improving the work culture. After analyzing the responses here’s what my client and I realized was needed:

A shared purpose: Mission, vision, and values – everyone had to understand the value system, the purpose, the mission. Even if everyone viewed with their own unique lens. My client assumed everyone was on the same page: his page. This was not the case. He was surprised by this result but immediately put a blended team together to tackle presenting a single, coherent story together. This was the first step to a more clear employer brand.

Training to ensure skill levels and competency: Necessary to ensure all employees trusted the skill levels of their colleagues.

More, and better, communication: The client thought communication cross-teams was working, and he thought he communicated well, but the different values of the age groups made it obvious this area needed work.

Clear reward system and growth path: The path to upper management had to be articulated, expectations set, and reward systems demystified. And be social. Yes, I mean social media.Yes, I mean HR technology if it fits.

Acknowledging and celebrating differences: To rebuild trust, the client needed to be clear that he was aware of different styles and willing to honor the diversity of the group.

It wasn’t an overnight fix, of course. A values and culture misalignment happens over time, and requires an investment of time, trust, open communication and shared sense of commitment to repair. As the workplace continues to change, as Boomers retire and Gen X and Gen Y moves up, this scenario may be more common. Leaders need to be prepared to take alternative routes of thinking into account to build and motivate winning teams and values. You will not keep your top talent by sitting on the sidelines and hoping. Taking action matters.

Oh and btw … I am hoping soon we can move way from generational stereotyping but it’s still alive and well in my conversations. Only when I was able to point out to him generational “facts” was he able to really give me a buy-in for these ideas to implement. See the irony here? The truth is we are more similar than we give ourselves credit for. Sometimes it’s as simple as communication. Often this is the missing link. Here’s to hoping.

This post was adapted from “Dear Leaders: Please Revisit Your Corporate Culture,” which originally appeared on Forbes.com.

About the Author: Meghan M. Biro is a globally-recognized talent management leader and social business and community catalyst. As founder and CEO of TalentCulture Consulting Group, she has worked with hundreds of companies, from early-stage ventures to global brands like Microsoft and Google, helping them recruit and empower stellar talent.

photo credit: Wrenched DOF via photopin (license)

Purple Recruit: Applying Seth Godin’s Branding Ideas To HR

February 18, 2015/Archives /by Mark Lukens

Brand marketing is a field that contains many innovators and sharp thinkers. Nowhere is this more visible than in the work of Seth Godin, author of books such as Linchpin and Purple Cow, has turned old mass marketing practices upside down, showing a more personal, more human and vastly more effective way of marketing.

But his insights, like so many from marketing, can also be applied in other areas. Godin’s ideas give us some great material to apply in HR.

The Employment Brand

Godin has talked about all sorts of fascinating aspects of the human brand — how we can turn ourselves into brands, making ourselves invaluable to employers through the unique combination of qualities we provide.

But this is true of employers as well as employees, and can be a way to draw in the best workers.

This is partly a matter of vision. Godin has shown that, in the modern world, it’s not enough to just provide the same thing everyone else does. You have to be the purple cow of his book title, the example that stands out from the crowd. When considering the vision for your HR department, and particularly for recruitment, you should be thinking about what that vision is, what makes you special to employees.

But some of it is also about specific tactics. Godin’s emphasis is on marketing as a matter of building up relationships rather than just scattering the news about yourself over a wide area. This is the key to how the best modern marketers engage with their audience, and it should also be used by recruiters. Narrow in on the parts of the recruitment pool most likely to be a good fit for you and then build up relationships with them. Reach out rather than waiting for them to come to you. Listen for what they want from an employer rather than telling them why they should want you.

Brand Benefits

This might sound like a lot of effort — any change to our familiar patterns does. But it’s really just a matter of re-focusing your existing efforts, and the rewards can easily outweigh the costs.

In going through the process of recruitment, a little extra effort building in-depth relationships with the best recruitment pools can increase the reliability of your recruitment process and reduce the cost per hire. After all, good recruitment is not about getting dozens of candidates through your recruitment process; it’s about getting the right one. If you already have a relationship with the talent pool, then you won’t need to cast your net as wide for interviewees, and you may even be able to hunt out the person whom you want.

This also increases the reliability of your hiring process and reduces the time to bring someone on board by removing the cumbersome mechanisms of mass advertising and mass interviewing.

But it has consequences beyond this, for the whole time that an employee is with you. If they know and understand your brand in advance, if they are not just accepting of it but passionate about it from an established relationship, then they will be more engaged with their work. This will lead to them working harder. It will improve morale and so increase retention, once again saving costs to you from recruitment.

Learning from others can be a humbling experience, as it involves acknowledging the limits of our own knowledge. But there is no shame in accepting that we know less than a best-selling leader in his field like Seth Godin, and in applying his lessons to our own field.

About the Author: Mark Lukens is a Founding Partner of Method3, a global management consulting firm and Tack3, a mid-market and not-for-profit focused consultancy. Most of Mark’s writing involves theoretical considerations and practical application, academics, change leadership, and other topics at the intersection of business, society, and humanity.

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Connecting Your Employer Brand And Candidate Experience

February 17, 2015/Archives /by Fisher VIsta

Look around you, managers, and what do you see? My guess: disengaged employees with Zombie stares, some with the sour look of the disappointed, a few with the overly positive, can-do smile, trying desperately to make things work. Why is this happening? A lot of this is the fault of a poor connection between managers and line-of-business employees. Worse, it inevitably trickles into a broken recruitment and communication process with potential candidates. The good news? We can turn this around. It’s in your power to take control of your recruiting process and employer brand. The truth is most job seekers are looking for more than salary when they decide to apply to work at your company.

Can employee disengagement and bad branding be prevented? Can HR and leaders learn to bring people back to productivity? Absolutely. Will it be tough? You know it. Will it be worth it? Yes, a thousand times. How do you start? Let’s take a closer look at employer brand. Are you true to it in your hiring and recruiting process? How your employees represent the company’s mission and brand is as important as anything leaders or HR say in the hiring process. Make sure the stories align well and accurately reflect your current brand and the overall mission.

Then look at the employee experience – What employees do every day, the actions they take, and how they perceive the actions of their managers and top management. As Blue Ocean Strategy Institute co-directors W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne suggested in Harvard Business Review, focusing on the acts and activities of management and employees is critical to understanding how a company operates. Actions, as our moms have told us, do speak louder than words, and in the world of work they separate good managers, and great companies and truthful branding, from the mediocre. Plus, as my piece on Dice.com shows, technology is changing in the world of work for leaders and hiring practitioners around the globe.

Then look at how you’re hiring: think candidate experience. Do you force job seekers through a maze-like microsite for career opportunities, then fail to acknowledge their applications with an email or letter (spoiler alert: approximately 70% of hiring companies are in this camp)? Do you put people through tests and five phone screens, then never follow up? If so, you’re doing damage to your brand. Smart companies know better: they’ve begun to adopt new technologies to streamline the hiring process: video, digital interviews, social recruiting and more.

A few more things can make or break employer brand and candidate experience:

Communicate throughout the process. If you do a phone screen, give feedback. If a candidate comes to your career site, acknowledge the visit with an email explaining your hiring process. Technology is available now to make these steps easy; there’s no reason not to do it, unless you want to damage your brand.

Think like a candidate. Another timeless reminder: treat others as you’d like to be treated. This Golden Rule is especially important if you want to ensure good candidate experience. And why wouldn’t you?

Be a person first, an HR manager second. People want to deal with people. Make your hiring process as personal as you can. You’re not dealing with robots (just yet at least).

Set expectations. This is part of the communications process but it deserves a call-out. Don’t leave people hanging; let them know what your process is, when they can expect to hear back, how quickly you’re planning to make a decision.

Candidate experience is a two-way street. Make sure yours is good and true to your brand, or you are setting the brand up for damage both upfront in the recruiting process and to your internal employees and stakeholders. It’s easier to maintain a good reputation than it is to rebuild it. Employer brand and candidate experience are linked, and they matter greatly to recruit and retain your talent.

This post was adapted from “Your Employer Brand Owns The Candidate Experience,” which originally appeared on Forbes.com.

About the Author: Meghan M. Biro is a globally-recognized talent management leader and social business and community catalyst. As founder and CEO of TalentCulture Consulting Group, she has worked with hundreds of companies, from early-stage ventures to global brands like Microsoft and Google, helping them recruit and empower stellar talent.

photo credit: via gratisography

#TChat Recap: Brand Ingredients: Are You Fascinating?

February 12, 2015/Archives /by Meghan M. Biro

Brand Ingredients: Are You Fascinating?

I’ll admit it. I’m a little jaded about the topic of branding. Does it still matter?

For successful branding, how you see the world used to be enough. Today, a thriving “Brand You” requires knowing how the world sees you: a fascinating new perspective.

Knowing what makes your brand fascinating helps us stand out and show others our unique value proposition. I see this topic from two unique POVS – personal and employer brand. Cowbell, anyone?

This week, our community was joined by Sally Hogshead, creator of The Fascination Advantage™, and expert on personality assessments & branding. Sally helped our community understand what makes branding a fascinating skill for winning talent management strategies.

We must shift our focus from talent skills and experience, to their unique values:

To get a good read on screening personality types, don’t look at skill or experience — find their natural “specialty” @TalentCulture #Tchat

— Sally Hogshead (@SallyHogshead) February 12, 2015

Discovering what someone does best is how you’ll find their passion. So why not take a similar approach with job ads?

A2 Job ads should be exciting and employer brands should answer the question “why should I work at your company?” #tchat

— Emilie Mecklenborg (@EmilieMeck) February 12, 2015

Instead of writing a boring job description, why not answer one of the most important questions a candidate has to ask? After all…

A3: Knowing what makes your brand fascinating empowers you to grow your company in the right direction. @TalentCulture @SallyHogshead #TChat

— D.S. Webster (@dswebsme) February 12, 2015

If you know your brand is fascinating, you must communicate it to others. Tell people about your mission and goals. Show candidates inspiration is on the menu and it’s there if they want to have it. Don’t forget…

A3 Working for a fascinating brand give employees a stronger sense of personal satisfaction. It wouldn’t feel like any old office job!#tchat

— Perqy (@PerqyHQ) February 12, 2015

We’re all working to achieve personal and professional goals, but that doesn’t mean we can’t bridge the two together and create a fascinating workplace.

Maybe branding matters after all.

See What #TChat-ters Said About Branding

What’s Up Next? #TChat Returns Next Wed., Feb. 18th!

#TChat Radio Kicks Off at 7pm ET / 4pm PT — Our weekly radio show runs 30 minutes. Usually, our social community joins us on Twitter as well. The topic: This Year We’re Gonna Recruit Like It’s 1999.

#TChat Twitter Kicks Off at 7:30pm ET / 4:30pm PT — Our halfway point begins with our highly engaging Twitter discussion. We take a social inside look at our weekly topic. Everyone is welcome to share their social insights #TChat.

Join Our Social Community & Stay Up-to-Date!

The TalentCulture conversation continues daily on Twitter, in our LinkedIn group, and on our Google+ community. Engage with us anytime on our social networks or stay current with trending World of Work topics through our weekly email newsletter. Signing up is just a click away!

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Employer Brand Doesn’t Depend On One Candidate Experience

January 7, 2015/1 Comment/Archives /by Greg Rokos

A candidate’s perception during the application and hiring processes remains and will stay a major topic of conversation in the field of HR and recruiting. As most perpetually popular discussions go, the ideas fluctuate, mature, and change with the demographic that populates the workforce. Unfortunately, we’ve been talking about it all wrong. The candidate experience focuses on the applicant. While that’s certainly not a bad thing to do, what’s wrong with relating it to the employer brand? You can’t devise an entire brand off of one candidate experience. Your employer brand is formulated by all of your candidates’ experiences.

There Is Something To Be Said…

There is something to be said for how candidates as a whole see your branding. Nike isn’t famous for selling shoes to one person – yes, Michael Jordan promotes Air Jordans, but that’s not what I mean. Just the same, Apple isn’t famous for selling a single all-in-one computer system. These two companies are so well known because millions of people know and love the brand. Their customers have a positive experience with their brand. The customers of your employer brand are your candidates. If candidates are displeased with the employer brand, they aren’t going to want to work for you – i.e., buy your product.

So, evaluate the employer brand as a whole. The candidate might have a wonderful time during the interview, but what about the application process? How did they finally find your career page? Out of the roughly 7 billion people on this planet, there are 1.75 billion smartphone users. You cannot afford a non-responsive website anymore; at least create a career page. In the long run, 65% of job seekers who apply for new employment from their phone leave if the site is not responsive. Forty percent leave with a negative opinion of the employer brand. Take a look at the traffic on the career page. How many visitors? How long do they stay? These questions can give insight to what needs to be changed.

Then The Question Is…

Who are the employers that are nailing their branding efforts? Those organizations that take the time to develop relationships with candidates and communicate. The businesses that don’t take candidate applications for granted and not respond. The companies that take the time and energy to develop a career site that represents what applicants want from the organization. And it’s not just the big companies. They may have the big-brand name, but smaller businesses often offer more flexibility in schedules and the work-life balance new talent desires. Sometimes it’s even the smaller details that attract coveted talent. Many employees would rather work at a company between six and 100 people, 46% to be exact.

It doesn’t take an expensive budget to create a strong employer brand, either. Most of the employer brand doesn’t cost a dime. These following suggestions from Monster.com give a good starting point to restructuring or developing your employer brand:

Clarify what you’re all about – define company culture before you experiment with it in the recruiting department.
Leverage employees – your employees are your best ambassadors. Treat them well, and they will spread the word.
Perfect your hiring process – clear and concise communication will help keep your hiring process painless.
Make the most of social media – most platforms are free, so with a little time and dedication, it is a way to not only promote the employer brand but also to encourage employees to do so as well.
Aim small, spend small – there is nothing wrong with targeting your job openings to niche job boards; in fact, they are less expensive and the candidates will likely have more specialized training.

Employer branding is critical to attaining top talent. That candidate experience is what has the most say in developing the brand. Invest the time and energy into creating a social media profile (and keep it relevantly updated), communicate with candidates, and update your career site. The tech-savvy candidates sending in applications to dozens of businesses will exit your website as soon as they realize it isn’t responsive.

Your candidates’ experiences say a lot about you… do you know what they are saying?

About the Author: A 20-year veteran of the recruiting industry, Greg Rokos provides strategic direction for GreenJobInterview® and is responsible for marketing its virtual interviewing solutions through client meetings, conferences, speaking engagements, key channel partnerships and other activities. Alongside fellow co-founder, Theo Rokos, Greg is one of the pioneers of cloud-based virtual interviewing.

photo credit: Julie70 thanks for 9 million hits via photopin cc

The Great Rated! Interview: EY’s Larry Nash On The Transparency Trend

September 25, 2014/Archives /by Great Rated!™

When Larry Nash looks into his crystal ball about the future of the workplace, one thing is clear to him: workplace transparency itself. Larry, Americas Director of Experienced and Executive Recruiting at professional services giant EY, is confident that job seekers and the public will have more visibility into what it’s like to work at organizations. “Transparency will only grow as technology evolves and different social media platforms continue to grow and expand,” he says. “We’re just always increasingly connected.”

Nash and EY aren’t waiting for this interconnected, transparent future to arrive. They are embracing it now, showcasing their culture through their own website and taking advantage of sites, including Great Rated!, to show the world what EY is all about. Revealing EY’s essence to job candidates is central to Larry’s work—in the 12 months ending in June 2014, he oversaw the recruitment for nearly 6,000 experienced positions in the U.S. alone. And that number represents a more than 37 percent increase from the previous year. We recently talked with Larry about topics including the workplace transparency trend, its link to employer brand and EY’s overall mission of “Building a Better Working World.”

Ed Frauenheim: What’s the importance of company transparency in recruiting these days?

Larry Nash: At EY, we have a very simple principle—our employer brand—which is whenever you join, however long you stay, the exceptional EY experience lasts a lifetime. Being transparent is critical to our brand. Individuals looking to start their career, or change their career, want to know what working at EY is really like and what’s in it for them if they decide to join the organization. Ultimately, we know what candidates want and we know what we want.

We also know that any relationship, be it personal or professional, is built on openness and trust. That’s why we provide potential candidates with an authentic and transparent view into the organization. Then they can evaluate the potential of an EY career and determine whether EY is the right choice for them.

Ed: What is the connection between transparency and employer brand at EY?

Larry: We have a great story to tell about our brand and culture. We’re on many best-places-to-work lists, including those compiled by FORTUNE, Diversity Inc., Working Mother, and Universum, to name a few. These are organizations and publications saying that EY is a great place. So we’re confident that we can offer a lot to people and that’s why we are transparent about the specifics, too.

Ed: How does your employment brand tie into EY’s broader purpose of “Building a Better Working World”? It seems the overall company brand should make your job as a recruiter easier.

Larry: This purpose of building a better working world relates to our people, our communities, and the investing public—given how they rely on what we’re doing for our clients—and on and on. We’re completely focused on building a better working world in these different ways.

Ed: Some experts say transparency about the workplace is smart because it helps you efficiently find people that are right for your organization. Do you agree?

Larry: Yes. Our interview process—whether you’re coming from campus, have experience, or are an executive at another organization— is a two-way dialog. There are a number of interviews that take place, so candidates can get to see what we’re like, and what we can offer to fulfill their aspirations. And then we have a dialog to understand what they offer and what they’re interested in. Hopefully, over the course of the interviews, we see a match. And part of that match is a feeling that they’re coming to a culture that can enable them to achieve their goals.

It goes back to building a relationship. If we want candidates to work here, they should know what it’s like. We’re proud of what it’s like here. So, we’re comfortable sharing the culture, and what we can offer and what we can’t offer. If that is a fit for people, that’s great. And if people don’t think we can give them what they want, that’s fine as well. We want people to feel like they can have a meaningful career here, whether they stay three years, five years or the rest of their career.

(About the Author: Ed Frauenheim is editor at workplace research site Great Rated!™, where he produces content and reviews companies.)

(About Larry Nash: Larry Nash is Americas Director of Experienced and Executive Recruiting at professional services firm EY (formerly Ernst & Young). Larry is a member of EY’s Americas Recruiting Leadership team and is responsible for the strategic execution of experienced and executive recruiting efforts for the Americas. Previously, Larry served as EY’s Americas Director for Recruiting and Mobility.)

photo credit: marcomagrini via photopin cc

The Great Rated! Interview: Employer Brand, Transparency and Job Candidates

September 15, 2014/Archives /by Meghan M. Biro

I had the recent pleasure of speaking with Great Rated! CEO Kim Peters. Kim’s leadership at Great Rated! is evident in her desire to help job seekers and organizations to be better candidates and better employers. Using proprietary survey and evaluation tools, Great Rated! can help employers identify strengths, thus reinforcing or forging the employer brand. For job seekers, Great Rated! helps them to compare and contrast the work cultures of different employers with the use of a “company compare” assessment tool. There’s also a short questionnaire that helps job seekers better identify what company culture is right for them by targeting the attributes that matter most to them individually and that are a good culture match based on their preferences.

Q1 – Cyndy: What types of attributes are job candidates and employees looking for when they say, “I want to work for a company that has a transparent culture?”

Kim: I think that they mean they want a workplace where there’s a free and open exchange of information. That starts with leadership—so there would be especially good communication and discussion about strategy, goals, financials, ideally at all levels—company-wide, departmental and for individuals—and it resonates—so things ring true and make sense. In my opinion, in a transparent culture, the majority of people know what’s going on and how they fit into it.

Cyndy: Agree Kim. When too many conversations are taking place behind closed doors, transparency goes out the window.

Q2 – Cyndy: Great Rated! has a wealth of information from some of the best companies in existence. What are a few of the more common attributes that make a Great Rated! company stand out as an employer of choice?

Kim: There are great things about all workplaces. And any company can be Great Rated! There’s no threshold, or anything. The company just has to be willing to survey their employees using our Great Place to Work® Trust Index© employee survey so we can understand what they like about their workplace, and provide some information about their business including their programs and practices. Then our experts analyze the results and write a workplace review, highlighting the best practices and cultural strengths identified by the employees. Having a Great Rated! Review shows people that the organization is serious about creating a great workplace, comfortable with transparency, and that its employees treasure the unique aspects of their culture.

Because we include Reviews of our Great Place to Work Best Companies List winners—the FORTUNE 100 Best Companies to Work For® and the Best Small & Medium Workplaces—we do many companies who score very high in ALL categories. But not all great workplaces appeal to everyone. Some people like small companies, some large, some thrive in an exuberant culture like Zappos, some want to be in a much quieter culture. Great Rated! reviews offer insight into what workplace cultures are all about, so that the job seeker can better understand if that culture is a fit for them.

Cyndy: Well said. Company culture is very important to candidates and employers, alike, and both want a good match so the fit feels right.

Q3 – Cyndy: Kim, why do some companies struggle with providing a great job candidate experience and where does transparency and employer branding come into play here?

Kim: Top talent has lots of choices, and they want a workplace where they’ll be comfortable. It’s the company’s willingness to be open about their workplace that lets people understand if they’ll be a fit, and ultimately decide to join the company. We all know people who thought they’d found the right fit, and then discovered the experience wasn’t what they thought. Social media and the internet has given people the ability to research and find out before they buy…. and so they search to better understand the company’s workplace reputation and employee experience—and that is the employer brand.

Cyndy: Wonderful information Kim. Thank you for sharing your keen insight and experience with us.

(About Kim Peters: Kim Peters is CEO of Great Rated!™, at Great Place to Work®, where she is focused on helping job seekers understand companies’ workplace cultures and find their best fit. Kim has over 15 years’ leadership experience in the online recruitment industry, and has launched and led a number of successful businesses including Workopolis.com, Canada’s leading job board, where she was founder and President, and Canwest Mediaworks where she served as Vice President Online Classifieds. Kim most recently was CEO of Eluta.ca, a Canadian job search engine combining reviews and job listings.)

(About Cynthia Trivella: Cyndy began her career in advertising and Human Resource Marketing Communications on Madison Avenue in New York City over 15 years ago. Prior to that, she worked in corporate human resources as a recruiter and as a training and development coordinator. In addition, Cyndy has multiple years of media planning, employment branding and human resource communications strategy experience at a management level from both the media and agency sides.

Cyndy maintains a strong presence in the digital space and has been awarded the distinction of being named to the lists: “Top 25 Online Influencers in Recruiting” and “HR Marketer Top 25 Digital Media Influencers.” In addition, she volunteers as co-host and moderator of the Twitter chat #OMCchat for assisting job hunters, and serves as #TChat events director for TalentCulture World of Work.

The Great Rated!™ Interview: Todd Wheatland On The Brand Connection

July 17, 2014/Archives /by Great Rated!™

Todd Wheatland straddles the boundary between employer brand and overall company brand. And to hear him tell it, that line is blurring. The face companies put forward to job seekers is increasingly just part of the overall brand message—making the employer brand more important than ever, says Wheatland, who has a background in both the talent world and the marketing arena. He currently serves as head of strategy at content marketing firm King Content, but spent eight years as global head of thought leadership for staffing giant Kelly Services. A sought-after speaker and one of LinkedIn’s Top 25 Social Media Experts, we were keen to get Wheatland’s take on the shifting landscape of employer brand.

In a recent interview, he shared his insight on brands and their importance in all aspects of today’s business.

Ed: You talk about the need for “convergence” when it comes to the overall company brand and the employer brand. Can you say more about that?

Todd: I’m a big proponent of content marketing, or basically companies acting as publishers. That model has proven so successful in terms of business-to-business and business-to-consumer marketing. But there’s been this big gulf between what companies were doing to the outside world with those things, and what companies were still doing around the way they viewed talent, and brought talent on board, and managed talent. You’ve got different parts of the company responsible for different ways of dealing with the outside world. Increasingly, no one outside of your company cares about your silos.

Ed: Can you give an example?

Todd: Starbucks is a great example. Something like 80 percent of all job applicants to Starbucks are already Starbucks customers. So what kind of business impact is there when someone who’s applying to Starbucks has a negative experience? When they start sharing that negative experience with their networks, and you start multiplying that by the hundreds of thousands of people who take that step to apply each year.

Many companies now are starting to realize there’s something to this, and we’ve got to start acting more holistically. A company brand, the employer brand and the personal brands of our employees—these are all somehow strongly connected. And we’ve got to start thinking about them in a holistic way, because any one of them can have a negative impact on the other.

Ed: What’s the best way to promote an employer brand today?

Todd: Don’t fake it. Again, there’s been a huge change in the way companies market in the past five years. Instead of “pushing” a message out to the marketplace, you’re actually drawing people in through genuine exchanges. You’re not trying to shove a sales message down people’s throats. You’re trying to basically just talk about and help people solve their challenges. Rather than thinking, “Gee, what does our audience want to hear, and let’s give them that,” with employer branding, you’ve really got to start by looking within.

Put aside the external perception of what your employer brand is for the moment, and really focus on what the internal reality or culture of working for the organization is.

Ed: What if it stinks at the moment? How do you deal with a crummy culture on route to developing a better one?

Todd: People love stories of challenge and change. Companies are typically really bad at telling stories. A good story involves challenges and overcoming obstacles and mistakes. Companies don’t like to talk about mistakes. But if you try to tell a story that’s too removed from reality, you’re going to get found out. In this environment, that’s just not a sustainable way.

You need to lead with, “This is the reality now,” and paint a vision of the future: “This is how we see it, and you are part of the new guard and we’re going to work together to steer this ship in a new direction.” It’s a way of telling a story that’s a reflection of the reality.

Ed: What’s the role of employee voices in the kind of employer brand you’re talking about?

Todd: If people are genuinely empowered and allowed to share their positive experience of working in an organization, that has a net loyalty impact on the employee, as well as ticking those boxes, if you will, of what the external market is looking for in terms of communication these days. That is to say, genuine, lower-level employees telling true stories.

It helps to attract like-minded people to an organization. People who are more likely to fit in. Recruiters spend so much of their day just wading through hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of applicants for a job, many of which are totally inappropriate. It’s a bad experience for everyone, and a huge time waste for recruiters.

Ed: You’re suggesting a high level of transparency.

Todd: Tell the stories. If you have a culture where you have Friday night drinks every week, that would be fantastic or an absolute deal breaker, depending on the candidate looking at it. Am I going to have to work late, do an all-nighter because a project comes in on a Tuesday that no one was expecting? Tell that stuff. Historically, no one wants to tell that story. We think it is better to get the applicants than not to get the applicants.

But what the “culture branding” mindset leads to is that you can have the most impact by helping people deselect in the first place. So rather than having 100 applicants for a job why not have 10 who actually could be a good culture fit.

(About the Author: Ed Frauenheim is editor at workplace research site Great Rated!™, where he produces content and reviews companies.)

(About Todd Wheatland: Todd Wheatland is head of strategy at King Content, a content marketing agency in the Asia-Pacific region. Prior to this role, he spent eight years as global head of thought leadership for Kelly Services. Todd has been recognized as one of top 25 Social Media Experts by LinkedIn, a top 50 Social Media Expert by Stryde, and as one of the 15 B2B Chief Marketing Officers to Watch by FierceCMO. This year alone, Todd plans to speak at events in more than 10 countries around the globe. His new book is The Marketer’s Guide to SlideShare (www.slide-guidebook.com).

photo credit: Aurimas Adomavicius via photopin cc

The Great Rated!™ Interview: Kim Peters on Employer Brand

June 30, 2014/7 Comments/Archives /by Great Rated!™

The CEO of Great Rated! talks about the central role of employee surveys in employer brands, how Great Rated! works, and about the growing importance of employer brands in the era of the “naked” corporation.

Ed Frauenheim: What is an employer brand?

Kim Peters: Quite simply, it is how people feel about working at an organization. You already have an employer brand, even if you’ve done nothing about it.

Some people think that you can create a brand in the market that is independent of what your actual employees think – but that isn’t true. Social media has made the internal workings of any company very transparent – we are in an age of “naked” corporations. So it’s critical you understand the true brand you have in your current employees’ eyes and work with that to compete for new talent and retain existing top talent. In many instances, your employer brand will even help you with your consumer brand — Zappos is a classic example.

EF: What does it take to manage an employer brand in the era of the naked corporation—of growing transparency into companies?

KP: Today, most people turn to the Internet when they’re going to research a major purchase or investment or decision. People are doing their research, essentially. And so employer brand is no different. People’s experiences from a product perspective or workplace culture perspective are being talked about online. Typically people share the extremes—the highs and the lows. So if you’re doing any kind of research into a company at all, you’re going to find that type of information.

Organizations may be tempted to counter negative opinions on the Internet with positive content on their careers page or advertorial placed elsewhere. But distorting your brand in a positive direction is risky in an ever-more transparent world. You don’t want to be in a position where you are telling your workforce and prospective new hires that your brand offers one thing, while employees are telling the world that it offers something else. You won’t be credible and new hires won’t be a good fit.The best approach is to be honest about what your employer brand is, even if you are working to improve it.

EF: How can companies understand what their actual employer brand is?

KP: If you’ve never done any employer branding work before, the best place to start is by surveying your employees about a variety of topics that reflect workplace culture. It’s not something you can guess at. And certainly one individual or a small group of individuals is not going to give you a holistic picture. You have do a representative, anonymous survey of your whole employee population.

EF: How does Great Rated!’s approach to presenting and publishing an employer brand work?

KP: We start by asking the employees in an organization a set of questions about their workplace using the Great Place to Work® Trust Index©. This is an employee survey that measures the extent to which a company is a great workplace, focusing predominantly on workplace trust, and is a very strong research tool to assess companies’ overall workplace culture. (This is the tool we’ve used for over 15 years to select the companies that appear on FORTUNE’s 100 Best Companies to Work For® list.)

We anonymously survey a statistically relevant random sample of employees. We take those results and write a review of the company that accurately reflects what employees say are the best attributes of working for their organization.

Companies also provide us with details about many of their best programs and benefits, so that if employees say they really appreciate their workplace flexibility, for example, we can explain their telecommuting or compressed workweek programs. We include pictures, infographics and employee quotes that really round the review out.

And because the reviews are written by workplace culture experts (Great Rated! is part of Great Place to Work®–authors of the FORTUNE 100 Best Companies to Work For® list), people can trust that they truly reflect what the employees tell us.

EF: Where is employer brand heading?

KP: Employer brand is becoming more and more important, simply because companies need the best talent they can attract in order to achieve their goals. That’s going to be harder and harder to do. We know that because we look at the changing demographics. Hiring is increasingly competitive. And so companies look to employer branding to help candidates choose.

This trend to transparency, this thirst for knowledge, this desire to live a life where you feel like you’re making a positive contribution and that you’re working in a positive working environment—all of these things are coming together today. And they mean that companies are going to simply have to be focused on their employer brands and creating great workplace experiences. It’s just essential. And it’s fundamental that people want to understand what workplaces are like before they join them. It’s just part of the same movement.

(About the Author: Ed Frauenheim is editor at workplace research site Great Rated!™, where he produces content and reviews companies.)

(About Kim Peters: Kim Peters is CEO of Great Rated!™, at Great Place to Work®, where she is focused on helping job seekers understand companies’ workplace cultures and find their best fit. Kim has over 15 years’ leadership experience in the online recruitment industry, and has launched and led a number of successful businesses including Workopolis.com, Canada’s leading job board, where she was founder and President, and Canwest Mediaworks where she served as Vice President Online Classifieds. Kim most recently was CEO of Eluta.ca, a Canadian job search engine combining reviews and job listings.)

Stand Out From Competitors With Benefits Like These

June 23, 2014/Archives /by Maren Hogan

Recruitment is a constant battle for HR. It’s a persistently nagging requirement, it never goes away. Just as soon as you think you’ve got enough stellar team members on board, someone else hands in their notice and you’re back to square one.

Locating talent takes a lot of time. It’s expensive, and excruciatingly difficult to get right. And even when you’ve spent time, money and resources finding the perfect fit – how do you get that person to stay?

Half the battle is retention.

As an HR and benefits professional, you know the key is making your business an attractive place to work. You want to be an employer of choice, and you understand that offering a comprehensive benefits package is important. But how do you stand out from the crowd when you’ve got a limited budget to play with?

The solution is making it relevant, and to do that you need to know your workforce inside out. In order to hook the best talent, you need to understand which benefits matter to your people, on a human and personal level.

Sometimes this requires a little thinking outside the box. If you’ve got a very young workforce, you need to excite them. If you’ve got employees with low income, your focus needs to be on stretching their salary further. It’s not always about money either – sometimes the simplest gestures, like flexible working – so that parents can pick their children up from school, can make your people feel most valued.

If you are going to spend money then you need a benefit that impacts everyone, in order to generate maximum return. You need to offer something that’s measurable, so you can map ROI and prove it’s working. And you need to go above and beyond your bread and butter benefits if you want anyone to take notice.

The truth is, you might not need to invest much money to get an engaged workforce. Success in terms of benefits strategy is getting your employees to draw a higher value from the benefits you offer than it costs you as an employer to provide. Salary is the most expensive way to reward staff, so you want to offer lots of additional exciting benefits as part of a well-rounded total compensation package.

In some cases, educational benefits can have a bigger impact on cementing an employee’s longevity at your company. In the first place you need to make sure you communicate your existing benefits expertly so that your employees are well informed about what’s available to them. Building on that, your employees will love you if you provide useful educational advice such as health or financial wellness initiatives.

By demonstrating that you care about employee wellbeing you may spark their reciprocal buy-in to the business. As a result you’ll decrease turnover, and in turn, impact your bottom line.

(About the Author: The ability to work for a fast growing employee benefits and engagement company called Reward Gateway is never boring. I saw this company grow from 70 employees to 190 in just one year. With brands like IBM, Yahoo, McDonalds and much more under our belt we can say for sure that we are the heavy weight champion in our industry. My position in the company is SMM (Social Media Marketer) which means my priority is to grow our social presence and eventually bring more happy clients that will learn how to engage their employees and see their business grow as a result of the happy employees.)

To discuss World of Work topics like this with the TalentCulture community, join our online #TChat Events each Wednesday, from 6:30-8pm ET. Everyone is welcome at events, or join our ongoing Twitter and G+ conversation anytime. Learn more…

TalentCulture World of Work was created for HR professionals, leadership executives, and the global workforce. Our community delves into subjects like HR technology, leadership, employee engagement, and corporate culture everyday. To get more World of Work goodness, please sign up for our newsletter, listen to our #TChat Radio Channel or sign up for our RSS feed.

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Social Influence and Your Brand: Connecting the Dots [Webinar]

February 24, 2014/Archives /by Maren Hogan

“Don’t try to invent a tribe. Show up to lead one that exists.”
—Seth Godin

Today’s hyper-connected digital world has opened the door to a whole new era in brand development.

Employers, HR professionals and job hunters, alike, are rapidly embracing digital channels to elevate their market presence and amplify their share of voice.

With proactive players setting a torrid pace, no one can afford to stay on the social media sidelines. But social networking doesn’t guarantee influence — and activity without strategy can put a brand at risk.

Join the Experts

So how do you create a digital brand roadmap that makes the most sense for your goals? What’s the best way to ignite your social agenda? And how do you measure its impact?

If you’re looking for expert guidance, you won’t want to miss this very special webinar event:

“Using Social Insights to Build Your Brand”
February 27, at 2pm Eastern Time / 11am Pacific Time.

TalentCulture founder, Meghan M. Biro will join forces with the social marketing and insights specialists at Leadtail to talk about how top HR and recruiting influencers are driving market awareness and engagement through social channels.

You’ll learn how social media best practices can move your brand forward and how data-based insights can inform your strategy.

For example, the session will focus on questions like these:

• What elements define a personal brand?
• Why are social channels ideal for brand building?
• Who influences the HR and recruiting community today — and how?
• How can you successfully apply these social techniques?

In addition, Meghan will reveal how she has leveraged social media to become one of the most recognized experts in the HR and recruiting space.

“Social channels have created a phenomenal opportunity to reach, engage and influence all the constituents a brand must touch — business allies, customers, prospects and employees,” Meghan says. “I’m excited to team-up with Leadtail, as we empower brands to expand their connections and strengthen their business relationships.”

Throughout the webinar, attendees are invited to join members of the TalentCulture community on Twitter, as we share ideas and questions using the #TChat hashtag.

Don’t miss this dynamic informative event! Register now, and join us February 27th.

Participating Organizations

Learn more about Leadtail, and connect with @Leadtail on Twitter.
Learn more about TalentCulture, and connect with @TalentCulture on Twitter.

Register now for this webinar: Using Social Insights to Build Your Brand.

Image Credit: Pixabay

Hiring: A Winner Every Time #TChat Recap

February 20, 2014/Archives /by Kevin W. Grossman

(Editor’s Note: Want details from the week’s #TChat Events? See the Storify slideshow and resource links at the end of this post.)

“You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em,
Know when to fold ‘em,
Know when to walk away,
And know when to run…”
–Kenny Rogers, “The Gambler”

I knew something was wrong the moment the two men sat in front us on the bus. I was only a freshman in college, but I knew that feeling in my gut — the pinch of danger.

One asked, “You want to play a game? You’re a winner every time.” The other acted like he didn’t know the guy, but I had seen them laughing together at the bus stop before they got on.

I didn’t respond, but my friend did. “Sure, I’ll play,” he said.

“Eric,” I muttered, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

The instigator persisted, “C’mon man, he’ll be a winner for sure. I promise.”

The other man chimed in. “Oh, I’ve played this before. You can win. I’ll help you,” he said.

Eric ignored me and unsuspectingly dove into a round of three-card Monte, a classic street con in which victims think they’re teaming-up with a stranger to cheat the dealer — when the stranger is actually conspiring with the dealer to cheat the victim.

In less than 15 minutes, Eric lost $80. I kept telling him to stop, but between his own belief that he could win, and the dealer’s encouragement, he kept right on losing.

Hiring Decision or Jedi Mind Trick?

Time and time again throughout life, we all learn that our gut isn’t a very accurate decision maker. Yet we tend to think we can beat the odds — even when it comes to hiring the best candidate for a job. Of course, applicants don’t think of their job search as three-card Monte, but many hiring managers and recruiters assume we can pick the best candidate in a heartbeat.

In reality, recruiting and hiring data reveal a different story — the gut actually steers us wrong most of the time. Maybe empathic, balanced decision makers have a better track record (when guided by reliable data), but recruiters really can’t predict the future.

Trusting More Than Your Gut

There are better bets than soothsayers. For example, consider the Challenger sales model, from a powerful new book by CEB. Based on a survey of more than 6,000 individuals, The Challenger Sale explains how sales professionals tend to fit one of five profiles:

• Hard Worker
• Problem Solver
• Challenger
• Relationship Builder
• Lone Wolf

If you’ve been responsible for sales or marketing, you know that most of us focus on building customer relationships. It makes sense to assume that the best salespeople are relationship builders, right?

The CEB study suggests otherwise. In fact, “Challengers” are sales rock stars — they’re the only ones who consistently outperform in complex selling environments. They push customer thinking, they introduce new solutions, and they illuminate problems customers overlook.

Lessons From #TChat: Hiring Guts and Glory

This insight supports what we learned this week at #TChat events with our guests, Chris Mursau VP at Topgrading, and Jean Lynn, VP of HR at Home Instead Senior Care. Recruiting success depends on both:

1) Guts: We all bring intuition to the hiring table. But the real guts of recruiting comes from valid, reliable data and methods that inform our human nature. The more we know about the skills, competencies and characteristics that lead to stellar job performance, the better our decisions will be — for recruiting, hiring and retention.

2) And Glory: Hiring top performers is a process. It demands continuous review and adjustment, based on performance and retention data. It takes rigor to understand who to hire next — whether candidates are external or internal. Ultimately, that’s the critical challenge: the more you know about employees who “go all in” — those who consistently elevate their performance for your organization — the better prepared you’ll be to find a winner in your next hire.

Want to know what the TalentCulture community recommends about how to improve hiring decisions? Check the #TChat Storify highlights and resource links below. Thanks to everyone who contributed ideas — let’s keep the conversation going on Twitter and Google+.

#TChat Week-In-Review: How to Make Better Hiring Decisions

Watch the #TChat sneak peek hangout now

SAT 2/15:
#TChat Preview: TalentCulture Community Manager, Tim McDonald, framed the week’s topic in a post featuring a brief G+ hangout, where he and Chris Mursau discussed why it’s so tough for companies to choose talent. See the #TChat Preview: “Hiring Great Talent: How Do You Decide?”

SUN 2/16:
Forbes.com Post: In her weekly Forbes column, TalentCulture CEO, Meghan M. Biro, discussed why and how recruitment should rely on more than instinct: “Hiring Success: Beyond the Gut Check.”

WED 2/19:

Listen to the #TChat Radio show replay

#TChat Radio: Our hosts Meghan M. Biro and Kevin W. Grossman talked with Chris Mursau, and Jean Lynn, about effective job candidate evaluation methods. Listen to the #TChat Radio replay now…

#TChat Twitter: Immediately following the radio show, Meghan, Kevin, Chris and Jean moved over to the #TChat Twitter stream, where Dr. Nancy Rubin lead our entire TalentCulture community in a dynamic open discussion focused on 5 key questions about candidate evaluation practices in today’s workplace.

See highlights from the Twitter stream the Storify slideshow below:

#TChat Insights: Hiring Great Talent: How Do You Decide?

[javascript src=”//storify.com/TalentCulture/hiring-great-talent-how-do-you-decide.js?template=slideshow”]

Closing Notes & What’s Ahead

GRATITUDE: Thanks again to Chris Mursau VP at Topgrading, and Jean Lynn, VP of HR at Home Instead Senior Care for sharing your perspectives on improving hiring quality. Your expertise and guidance brought depth and dimension to the #TChat discussion!

#TCHAT TOPGRADING DISCOUNT: Interested in trying Topgrading? #TChat participants receive a discount of 10%, on a 2-day Topgrading Workshop. Just use Code TC213 on checkout by 2/28/2014.

NOTE TO BLOGGERS: Did this week’s events prompt you to write about candidate selection methods? We welcome your thoughts. Post a link on Twitter (include #TChat or @TalentCulture), or insert a comment below, and we’ll pass it along.

WHAT’S AHEAD: Next week at #TChat Events, we’ll take a very special look at 2014 “The Year of the Employee” with Josh Bersin, Founder and Principal of Bersin by Deloitte. See more information at #TChat Radio, and save the date: Wednesday, February 26!

Meanwhile, the TalentCulture conversation continues daily on #TChat Twitter, in our LinkedIn group, and on our NEW Google+ community. So join us anytime on your favorite social channels.

We’ll see you on the stream!

(Editor’s Note: CONGRATS to Paul Thoresen — winner of the recent Pebble smartwatch giveaway from Dice! And thanks to all the #TChat contributors who shared tech recruiting ideas and questions with Dice and #FutureofTech.)

Image Credit: Stock.xchng

Job Auditions: Secret to Successful Hires?

February 18, 2014/Archives /by Maren Hogan

By Matt Mullenweg, Founder, Automattic.

Hiring potential employees on a trial basis can help you quickly discover things about them that you can’t learn from resumes, interviews or reference checks. Here’s how it works in our organization.

Automattic (the fuel behind WordPress.com) employs more than 225 people who live all over the world, in 190 different cities. Our headquarters office is in San Francisco, and it operates similar to a coworking space. Employees who live in the Bay Area can choose to work from that location if they wish. However, most of our employees choose to work from other sites.

For us, this arrangement makes sense — our business is based on open source software, which is a decentralized product. However, outsiders have been skeptical as we’ve moved forward with our distributed work model.

At the outset they said, “That works great when you have 10 or 15 employees, but when you reach a team of 30, it falls apart.” Eventually we passed 30 employees, and we started hearing that the magic number is 100. Then people said Dunbar’s number — 150 — would be the point at which it didn’t work. Yet we keep blowing past these thresholds. We hired more than 100 people in 2013.

What’s special about us? We don’t hire the way most companies do — both in our mindset and our actions.

Mindset: We Think Differently About Work

In many businesses, if someone shows up in the morning and he isn’t drunk, he doesn’t sleep at his desk and he’s dressed nicely, it’s assumed that he’s working. But none of that takes into account what he’s actually creating during the day — and that’s really what matters.

Many people create great things without having to follow established workplace norms. Our organization measures work based on outputs. I don’t care what hours you work. I don’t care if you sleep late, or if you pick a child up from school in the afternoon. It’s all about what you produce.

This arrangement isn’t for everyone. But a lot of people like the autonomy we offer, and that’s important. So we’ve arrived at an unorthodox hiring system that serves our needs perfectly.

Behavior: We Hire by Audition

Before we hire anyone, they go through a trial process first, on contract. They can do the work at night or over the weekend, so they don’t have to leave their current job in the meantime. We pay a standard rate of $25 an hour, regardless of whether a job candidate wants to be an engineer or the chief financial officer.

During the trials, applicants perform actual work. If you’re applying to work in customer support, you’ll answer trouble tickets. If you’re an engineer, you’ll address engineering problems. If you’re a designer, you’ll design.

Seeing Is Believing

There’s nothing like being in the trenches with someone — working with them day by day. It tells you something you can’t learn from resumes, interviews or reference checks.

At the end of the trial, everyone involved has a great sense of whether they want to work together going forward. And, yes, that means everyone — it’s a mutual tryout. Some candidates decide we’re not the right fit for them. For others, the experience solidifies their commitment.

The Payoffs of Careful Hiring

Overall, we end up hiring about 40% of the people who try out with us. It’s a huge time commitment — coordinating the short-term work our applicants perform — but it leads to extremely low turnover. In the past eight years, only about 10 people have left the company, and we’ve let go of another 25 or 30. Those are great numbers in today’s work environment, so it’s a system we plan to keep utilizing.

Today, I spend at least a third of my time on hiring. And even though it’s a small part of our process, I still look at every resume the company receives, and I conduct the final interview with everyone who joins us.

It’s worth the effort. Nothing has the impact of putting the right people around the table. The aphorism is true: You can’t manage your way out of a bad team. We’ve done experiments to find the best way to hire based on our unique organizational structure. I encourage your business to do the same.

(About the Author: Matt Mullenweg is the founder of Automattic, the company behind the open-source blogging platform, WordPress.com, as well as Akismet, Gravatar, VaultPress, IntenseDebate, Polldaddy and more. Additionally, Matt is a principal and founder of Audrey Capital, an investment and research company. Connect with him on Facebook or on Twitter.

(Editor’s Note: This post was adapted from a post at Brazen Life, with permission. It is based on a talk by the author at the December 2013 Lean Startup Conference. It originally appeared on Harvard Business Review. For more information, visit the Insight Center on Talent and the New World of Hiring. Brazen Life is a lifestyle and career blog for ambitious young professionals. Hosted by Brazen Careerist, it offers edgy and fun ideas for navigating the changing world of work. Be Brazen!)

(Also Note: To discuss World of Work topics like this with the TalentCulture community, join our online #TChat Events each Wednesday, from 6:30-8pm ET. Everyone is welcome at events, or join our ongoing Twitter and G+ conversation anytime. Learn more…)

Image Credits: Wikipedia (feature) and Kevin Abosch (author)

Hiring Great Talent: How Do You Decide? #TChat Preview

February 15, 2014/Archives /by Tim McDonald

(Editor’s Note: Want details from this week’s #TChat Events? See the Storify slideshow and resource links and more in the #TChat Recap: “Hiring: A Winner Every Time.”)

Think back for a moment.

What factors tend to drive your organization’s hiring decisions? Impressive candidate credentials? Hiring manager preference? Behavioral interviews? Gut instinct?

Now tell me — how successful has that method been?

Studies indicate that hiring by intuition fails as much as 75% of the time — so clearly there’s no easy answer. However, a more deliberate, structured approach can significantly improve the odds of finding a long-term fit.

What approach works best? That’s the focus of our conversation this week at #TChat Events. Leading the way are two HR professionals who understand the value of a solid hiring methodology: Chris Mursau, Vice President at Topgrading, and Jean Lynn, VP of HR at Home Instead Senior Care.

Sneak Peek: Smart Ways to Hire Better Talent

To frame this week’s discussion, I briefly spoke with Chris in a G+ hangout — where we talked about why it’s so tough for companies to find and keep the talent they need…

This topic touches all of us in the world of work, so we hope you’ll join the #TChat crowd this week and add your perspective to the conversation!

#TChat Events: Smart Ways to Hire Better Talent

Tune-in to the #TChat Radio show

#TChat Radio — Wed, Feb 19 — 6:30pmET / 3:30pmPT Tune-in to the #TChat Radio show Our hosts, Meghan M. Biro and Kevin W. Grossman talk with Chris Mursau and Jean Lynn about how companies can be more effective at hiring top performers. Tune-in LIVE online this Wednesday!

#TChat Twitter — Wed, Feb 19 — 7pmET / 4pmPT Immediately following the radio show, Meghan, Kevin and our guests will move to the #TChat Twitter stream, where we’ll continue the discussion with the entire TalentCulture community.

Everyone with a Twitter account is invited to participate, as Dr. Nancy Rubin moderates a dynamic live chat focused on these related questions:

Q1: How do we identify and attract high-performing employees?
Q2: What processes and technologies impact quality of hire?
Q3: Hiring via “gut” feel alone usually fails, so why do we keep doing it?
Q4: Do reference checks really influence a candidate’s viability?
Q5: How should employers communicate their culture to candidates?

Throughout the week, we’ll keep the discussion going on the #TChat Twitter feed, and in our new TalentCulture G+ community. So feel free to drop by anytime and share your questions, ideas and opinions.

We’ll see you on the stream!

Leaders: Is Your "Work" Self the Real Deal?

February 10, 2014/Archives /by Meghan M. Biro

(Editor’s Note: This thought-provoking post was originally published by our valued content partners at SwitchandShift. We are republishing it for the TalentCulture community, with permission. Why? Not because we’re seeking more attention from Google — but because Ted’s message is important. It bears repeating.)

For years now, I have devoted my waking hours to interacting with leaders from all walks of life.

From bootstrapped young ventures to huge business conglomerates. Middle management newbies to C-suite veterans. Non-profits and for-profits, alike. You name it — if it’s about leadership, I’m there. Understanding what makes leaders tick is literally what I’ve been doing for a living for as long as I can remember.

A Troubling Trend

Along the way, I’ve seen a few patterns — and this is one issue that comes up again and again. Sooner or later, at some point in a conversation, a leader will say something like this to me: “I’m one person at home, but another at work.”

Sound familiar? Try this scenario on for size…

• At home, I’m generous and giving.
• At home, I trust the good intentions of those around me.
• At home, with my friends, we let loose and simply enjoy one another’s company, typically with no agenda.
• At home, when I volunteer, I get lost in my work. When I’m done, I feel good for hours afterward. It’s the highlight of my week!
• At home, I’m joyful.
• At home, I’m the real me.
• I wish I could be the real me all the time. If only!

On the other hand…

• At work, I’m analytical and objective. If it can’t be measured, it doesn’t count.
• At work, if you can’t prove it with hard data, don’t bring it up!
• At work, I’m guarded. You have to watch your back.
• At work, I make the tough decisions. It’s simply part of being a leader.
• At work, I only give to my peers in strategic ways, if it’ll benefit me, too. I don’t want to be taken advantage of!
• At work, a lot of my time is spent on pointless tasks. That’s why they call it work, isn’t it?
• At work, I work my tail off. It’s draining. That’s why they pay me, right?
• At work, I’m a stripped down version of the real me.

Does any of this ring a bell? Maybe a little too close to home?

The fact is, we’ve all felt it. Actually, many of us have felt nothing but these feelings throughout our careers. Many of us (especially those who cut our business teeth in the 20th century) have internalized the Industrial Age management philosophy still prevalent today. Many of us who are in this boat don’t yet realize there’s a better way — and we don’t even recognize that some leaders are actually living this better way, right now.

Give Your “Work Self” Permission to Be Fully Human

It’s time to give yourself permission to be fully present at work. Why do I say “permission”? Because we need it. Many of us crave permission to be our whole selves, our real selves. We crave permission to be generous, trusting, giving, and joyful — at work, at home, wherever we are. Some people will always doubt and detract from your efforts, no matter what you say or do to show them that there’s a better way. Forget about them. It hurts me to say that, but it’s important to say. No one can help those who refuse to be helped — those who would rather be “right” than be happy.

Some people are already on board with this whole-self-all-the-time concept. They’re ahead of the curve. If you are, too, then there’s your chorus. Focus on them. It’s important to gain new insights from their experience and let them recharge your batteries.

Your Reality Is Your Story

The vast middle? Those are what I like to call the “willing skeptics.” They aren’t sold on your message, but they’re open to being convinced, if you can back your claims with examples. Gather those examples! Share them early and often! It’s what every compelling author and speaker and teacher and leader does. Be a storyteller. Statistics won’t get you where you need to go. Examples of thriving companies running on modern, human principles? That’s what the willing skeptics are looking for. Put your willing skeptics in the position to think, “If they can do it, and they’re like us, then I bet we can do it, too.” Then show them how, or find someone who can.

People are hungry for positive, uplifting change. The 70% of workers who are disengaged and disaffected? They know there must be a better way, and they’re on the lookout for companies that are living it. They’re polishing their resumes so they can make the leap. This is an existential crisis for the companies who refuse to modernize how they lead — the corporate equivalent of the dinosaur die-off 65 million years ago.

The thing that doesn’t show up in surveys (but should) is this: It isn’t just workers who are unhappy. Even leaders yearn for a better way. They yearn to bring their whole selves to work – to bring their souls with them when they walk through the company doors each morning.

Is that you? Would you like to be a complete you — the trusting, generous, moral, joyful you — all day, every day — and not just when you’re at home?

Here Is Your Permission

Bring your soul to work. It’s essential to your happiness.

If you don’t want to take it from me, take it from the story of Yvon Chouinard, founder and owner of the $500M+ clothing company, Patagonia. Chouinard is the author of Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman. It’s one of the best business books I’ve ever read (and I’ve read hundreds). It’s a blueprint for how a company can grow to incredible success by embracing the “whole” of everyone in the organization — rather than just their backs, hands and left-brains.

Chouinard founded a company where bringing your soul to work is baked right in as an essential ingredient of the organization. It has served them well. Perhaps that is the permission you need.

And so I repeat — bring your soul to work. It’s essential to your happiness. It’s also essential to the success of your company, as we tread ever deeper into this more “human” century.

(Note: To discuss World of Work topics like this with the TalentCulture community, join our online #TChat Events each Wednesday, from 6:30-8pm ET. Everyone is welcome at events, or join our ongoing Twitter and G+ conversation anytime. Learn more…)

Image Credit: Stock.xchng

Leaders: Is Your “Work” Self the Real Deal?

February 10, 2014/4 Comments/Archives /by Ted Coine

(Editor’s Note: This thought-provoking post was originally published by our valued content partners at SwitchandShift. We are republishing it for the TalentCulture community, with permission. Why? Not because we’re seeking more attention from Google — but because Ted’s message is important. It bears repeating.)

For years now, I have devoted my waking hours to interacting with leaders from all walks of life.

From bootstrapped young ventures to huge business conglomerates. Middle management newbies to C-suite veterans. Non-profits and for-profits, alike. You name it — if it’s about leadership, I’m there. Understanding what makes leaders tick is literally what I’ve been doing for a living for as long as I can remember.

A Troubling Trend

Along the way, I’ve seen a few patterns — and this is one issue that comes up again and again. Sooner or later, at some point in a conversation, a leader will say something like this to me: “I’m one person at home, but another at work.”

Sound familiar? Try this scenario on for size…

• At home, I’m generous and giving.
• At home, I trust the good intentions of those around me.
• At home, with my friends, we let loose and simply enjoy one another’s company, typically with no agenda.
• At home, when I volunteer, I get lost in my work. When I’m done, I feel good for hours afterward. It’s the highlight of my week!
• At home, I’m joyful.
• At home, I’m the real me.
• I wish I could be the real me all the time. If only!

On the other hand…

• At work, I’m analytical and objective. If it can’t be measured, it doesn’t count.
• At work, if you can’t prove it with hard data, don’t bring it up!
• At work, I’m guarded. You have to watch your back.
• At work, I make the tough decisions. It’s simply part of being a leader.
• At work, I only give to my peers in strategic ways, if it’ll benefit me, too. I don’t want to be taken advantage of!
• At work, a lot of my time is spent on pointless tasks. That’s why they call it work, isn’t it?
• At work, I work my tail off. It’s draining. That’s why they pay me, right?
• At work, I’m a stripped down version of the real me.

Does any of this ring a bell? Maybe a little too close to home?

The fact is, we’ve all felt it. Actually, many of us have felt nothing but these feelings throughout our careers. Many of us (especially those who cut our business teeth in the 20th century) have internalized the Industrial Age management philosophy still prevalent today. Many of us who are in this boat don’t yet realize there’s a better way — and we don’t even recognize that some leaders are actually living this better way, right now.

Give Your “Work Self” Permission to Be Fully Human

It’s time to give yourself permission to be fully present at work. Why do I say “permission”? Because we need it. Many of us crave permission to be our whole selves, our real selves. We crave permission to be generous, trusting, giving, and joyful — at work, at home, wherever we are. Some people will always doubt and detract from your efforts, no matter what you say or do to show them that there’s a better way. Forget about them. It hurts me to say that, but it’s important to say. No one can help those who refuse to be helped — those who would rather be “right” than be happy.

Some people are already on board with this whole-self-all-the-time concept. They’re ahead of the curve. If you are, too, then there’s your chorus. Focus on them. It’s important to gain new insights from their experience and let them recharge your batteries.

Your Reality Is Your Story

The vast middle? Those are what I like to call the “willing skeptics.” They aren’t sold on your message, but they’re open to being convinced, if you can back your claims with examples. Gather those examples! Share them early and often! It’s what every compelling author and speaker and teacher and leader does. Be a storyteller. Statistics won’t get you where you need to go. Examples of thriving companies running on modern, human principles? That’s what the willing skeptics are looking for. Put your willing skeptics in the position to think, “If they can do it, and they’re like us, then I bet we can do it, too.” Then show them how, or find someone who can.

People are hungry for positive, uplifting change. The 70% of workers who are disengaged and disaffected? They know there must be a better way, and they’re on the lookout for companies that are living it. They’re polishing their resumes so they can make the leap. This is an existential crisis for the companies who refuse to modernize how they lead — the corporate equivalent of the dinosaur die-off 65 million years ago.

The thing that doesn’t show up in surveys (but should) is this: It isn’t just workers who are unhappy. Even leaders yearn for a better way. They yearn to bring their whole selves to work – to bring their souls with them when they walk through the company doors each morning.

Is that you? Would you like to be a complete you — the trusting, generous, moral, joyful you — all day, every day — and not just when you’re at home?

Here Is Your Permission

Bring your soul to work. It’s essential to your happiness.

If you don’t want to take it from me, take it from the story of Yvon Chouinard, founder and owner of the $500M+ clothing company, Patagonia. Chouinard is the author of Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman. It’s one of the best business books I’ve ever read (and I’ve read hundreds). It’s a blueprint for how a company can grow to incredible success by embracing the “whole” of everyone in the organization — rather than just their backs, hands and left-brains.

Chouinard founded a company where bringing your soul to work is baked right in as an essential ingredient of the organization. It has served them well. Perhaps that is the permission you need.

And so I repeat — bring your soul to work. It’s essential to your happiness. It’s also essential to the success of your company, as we tread ever deeper into this more “human” century.

(Note: To discuss World of Work topics like this with the TalentCulture community, join our online #TChat Events each Wednesday, from 6:30-8pm ET. Everyone is welcome at events, or join our ongoing Twitter and G+ conversation anytime. Learn more…)

Image Credit: Stock.xchng

What Makes Tech Talent Tick?

January 29, 2014/Archives /by Maren Hogan

The problem is crystal clear. But the solution is not as obvious.

In today’s digitally driven world, skilled IT professionals are in short supply. It’s tougher than ever for employers to build the tech teams they need for successful innovation. But just how tough is it?

Tech Hiring By The Numbers

According to research by Microsoft, the IT labor shortage is alarming. A 2012 survey on the state of U.S. technical talent estimates that the number of new jobs requiring a bachelor’s degree in computer science grows each year by 122,300 openings.

In a tough economic climate, that kind of healthy job growth seems like good news. But here’s the rest of the story: The average number of computer science graduates each year is only 59,731. That’s less than half of new job demand.

See infographic at Dice.com

The survey also uncovered discrepancies between what employers think engineers find attractive in a job, and what engineers actually want. For example:

• 89% of software engineers said they applied for 2 jobs or less in the 5 years prior to the survey. This relatively low turnover rate helps explain why it’s so difficult to find and engage experienced software engineers. (Although, in 2014, the picture is no longer as stable. According to a recent Dice.com survey, more than 40% of companies say they’ve lost tech staff in the past 6 months, compared to 30% a year ago.)

• 64% of recruiters believe that the opportunity to work with interesting technology is the primary reason software engineers are motivated to consider a new job. But engineers disagree. In fact, less than 10% of those surveyed say cutting-edge technology is a key reason to accept a new position.

• Top reasons engineers respond to recruiter outreach:
45% — Position is relevant to their background;
13% — Interest in the company;
10% — Competitive compensation.
(These priorities also seem to be shifting in 2014. According to Dice.com research, 75% of tech workers who changed jobs recently were motivated primarily by higher compensation.)

To learn more about what motivates technology professionals, consider this snapshot from a Dice survey conducted in 2011:

Motives Matter For Acquisition and Retention

Knowing what matters to technical professionals is vital to the recruitment process. But it’s just as important for successful workforce retention.

Building Tech Teams That Last

What’s the best approach to finding, hiring and retaining a technical team that will help your business scale? Chris Lea outlined a time-tested 3-step path at the 2011 Future of Web Apps Conference:

Step 1: Find Talent

• Determine the skills you need
• Spend time on social media to see who shares advice and insights. Build relationships
• Review email lists and attend tech meetups to locate and connect with attractive candidates
• Maintain a dedicated ‘tech blog,” separate from your company’s primary blog

Step 2: Hire Talent

• Can they do the job?
• Are they the right fit for the company?

Step 3: Keep Talent

• Commit to a trial period, so both parties have a chance to determine the fit
• Make sure people take vacation periodically — preferably away from a computer

Chris Lea’s retention “must haves” are echoed by other tech recruiting experts in 5 Smart Ways to Retain Top Tech Talent:

• The more closely your job requirements match the employee’s skills, goals and values, the more likely employees will want to stay. Hire for fit, and retention will follow.
• Start strong. Retention efforts should begin during onboarding.
• Avoid burnout. Evaluate project workflows and organizational structure. Set clear expectations about duties and develop equitable workloads. Actively encourage work-life balance.
• Regularly assess employee engagement and motivation. Gather insight to guide development paths and workforce strategies.
• Commit to sustainability at a corporate level. The connection between innovation, community and the environment is very important to many technology professionals.

What Works For You?

As the hiring landscape grows increasingly competitive, creative acquisition and retention strategies can give your organization an advantage.

Is your company struggling to hire new tech talent? Are you losing IT employees you want to retain? Have you tried new approaches? What works for you? Share your comments below.

(Editor’s Note: To discuss World of Work topics like this with the TalentCulture community, join our online #TChat Events each Wednesday, from 6:30-8pm ET. Everyone is welcome at events, or join our ongoing Twitter conversation anytime. Learn more…)

Image Credit: Pixabay

Finding Tech Talent to Fuel the Future #TChat Preview

January 25, 2014/Archives /by Tim McDonald

(Editor’s Note: Looking for full highlights and resource links from this week’s #TChat Events? Read the #TChat Recap: “Tech Recruiting: Skilling Up to Fill the Middle.“)

Recently, we’ve seen the rise of the “digital detox” — when individuals temporarily go “off the grid” to reconnect with life apart from technology.

But of course, it’s impossible to escape fully anymore. Technology is now deeply embedded in daily life — its pervasiveness reaches far and wide. And not surprisingly, as innovation continues at full speed, competition for skilled technical talent is more fierce than ever.

How can employers stay ahead of that curve? And what should recruiters do to help lead the way in attracting technology rockstars?

That’s the topic we’re tackling at #TChat Events this week, with Shravan Goli, President of Dice, The Career Hub For Tech, and Sara Fleischman, Senior Technical Recruiter at Concur.

Sneak Peeks: Facing Tech Recruiting Challenges

To frame this week’s events, I spoke briefly with both Shravan and Sara about how businesses can recruit effectively in today’s environment. Shravan suggested three success factors in an audio hangout:

And Sara added her perspective as a technology recruiter:

Is your organization feeling the impact of the tech talent shortage? How are you addressing this? What does this trend mean for business innovation, overall? Join us this week to discuss your ideas and opinions with the #TChat crowd.

Share Your Insights, Win a Smartwatch!

As extra incentive to submit your best ideas, everyone who participates in #TChat Events this week will be eligible to win a cool Pebble Smartwatch from Dice! After the the #TChat Radio Show and #TChat Twitter Dice shared details about how to enter before the Feb 7th deadline. See details now!

#TChat Events: Tech Recruiting In a World of Pervasive Technology

#TChat Radio — Wed, Jan 29 — 6:30pmET / 3:30pmPT

Tune-in to the #TChat Radio show

Our hosts, Meghan M. Biro and Kevin W. Grossman talk with Shravan Goli and Sara Fleischman about critical tech recruiting issues and trends. Tune-in LIVE online this Wednesday!

#TChat Twitter — Wed, Jan 29 — 7pmET / 4pmPT

Immediately following the radio show, Meghan, Kevin and our guests will move to the #TChat Twitter stream, for a live discussion with the entire TalentCulture community.

Everyone with a Twitter account is invited to participate, as we address these 5 related questions:

Q1: How do tech recruiters stay skilled up and “in the know”?
Q2: Why is finding tech talent so difficult?
Q3: How do recruiters tap into high-tech hot spots to find tech talent?
Q4: How do employers create a culture that attracts skilled tech talent?
Q5: What recruiting technologies appeal to high-tech professionals?

We look forward to hearing your ideas and opinions, as talent-minded professionals who care about recruiting issues and trends.

Throughout the week, we’ll keep the discussion going on the #TChat Twitter feed, and on our LinkedIn Discussion Group. So feel free to drop by anytime and share your questions, ideas and opinions.

We’ll see you on the stream!

Community: A Brand's Most Powerful Friend

January 19, 2014/Archives /by Meghan M. Biro

Perhaps nothing drives a brand forward more than its community.

An estimated 55% of consumers are willing to recommend companies that deliver great experiences, and 85% are willing to pay a premium for great services. But who are the “people” making those recommendations and purchasing decisions?

They’re members of your community, right?

I’m certain that if I asked every CMO and marketing leader I know to describe their brand community, I would get a different answer from each. “Community” is a subjective concept, with wide varying definitions.

There are also wide variations in how brands are seen, heard and felt by their respective communities. How deeply does a community feel connected to a brand?

For instance, think about Apple and its community. Apple gets attention because its brand recognition is extraordinary. But have you considered the powerful impact that Apple’s community has had on the success of the brand?

To demonstrate my point, think of the last conversation you’ve had with an “Apple fan” about the company, its products or its competitors. What did that conversation sound like?

If your experience is anything like mine, the conversation was probably wonderful, as long as you agreed about how wonderful Apple and its products are. However, if you dared to question the quality of Apple’s products, ideas or ability to innovate, you no doubt soon realized that you had crossed into enemy territory.

Those kind of conversations are a lot like telling your child that Santa isn’t real — only worse. But it speaks highly of the Apple community.

What is the catalyst for Apple’s insanely powerful connection with its community?

By-in-large, Apple doesn’t behave like a “nouveau” social company, so they’re not building their brand army through Facebook and Twitter. But it has brought together a passionate, global community by creating a sense of “belonging” that customers feel deeply when they use Apple products.

The iconic Apple slogan, “Think Different” epitomizes its cult-like following. On any given day at Starbucks around the world, people who want to be seen as broad-minded, creative thinkers are often found hovering over a Macbook — almost as if the presence of an Apple product is synonymous with their identity.

For Apple, this works. Through a customer experience focused on the idea that being different and innovative is “cool,” Apple has built one of the tightest brand communities on and off the web. But of course, Apple is a huge, established company, with a massive budget for community development. It leads me to wonder — how can other brands, smaller brands, newer brands tap into the power of community?

Not Just Community — A Close Community

Think about the neighborhood where you grew up. What was it like? Was it urban or rural? Were there many houses or just a few? Did you know your neighbors, or were they merely passing strangers?

Regardless of their shape, size and geography, most neighborhoods provide some sense of community. However, all neighborhoods aren’t the same. In my hometown, there was a “Community Center” — a place where folks from the neighborhood would congregate, connect and discuss issues affecting the area.

In that kind of environment, as citizens drew closer, the more they worked together to get things done — for example installing a stop sign where kids played in the street, and passing a referendum to build a new school. Over the years, as traditional urban settings gave way to modern models, subdivisions often created a community “on purpose,” with a Neighborhood Watch, a Board of Directors, and sometimes even a pool and recreation center.

This intentional approach to community brings stakeholders closer, by making neighborhood issues and events more visible, and helping community participants see the impact of their involvement.

Building a Brand Community Like a Neighborhood

When you boil it down to its simplest form, a community is the sum total of your brand stakeholders. I say stakeholder (rather than customer) because many people can participate in a brand community, beyond those who purchase a company’s products and services.

First, there are obvious extensions, such as employees and friends. Also, there are less obvious community players, such as those who are interested in learning more about your products and services, but may not have an immediate need to buy.

Let’s use automobiles as an example.

In 1995, when I was 14, my favorite car in the whole world was the new Pontiac Grand Prix. It had just been redesigned as a “wide track” model, and as a 14 year old, I thought it was one bad machine. However, at 14, I wasn’t legally or financially able to buy a car.

Four years later, I had scraped together all the loose change from under the sofa cushions, and I was ready to buy a car. Guess what I bought? The Grand Prix! That’s because I had emotionally tied myself to the brand, the car, and the community. When I was ready to purchase, it wasn’t even a question who would earn my business.

While my story is just one example, this type of brand loyalty exists with everything from the food we eat to the blue jeans we wear, and beyond. When people become a part of something, their purchasing sentiment changes. And guess what? So does the way they evangelize for your product. You think someone that likes your product is a good ambassador. Just think of someone who recently bought your product and likes it! That is another great frontier for brand building.

Which takes us back to building a close-knit community. It requires a setting for cultivation and nurturing. Much like a neighborhood — only different — to suit the needs of the brand and its community.

Community in the Connected World

If you think about the neighborhood example, you’ll likely think that a good community is small, tight knit, and somewhat directionally aligned.

But in the new world — the connected world where we manage communities on our blog, Facebook, Twitter and what seems like a million other places — the idea of community can become overwhelming. That’s because the “massiveness” of the online sphere is hard for many marketers to imagine in meaningful terms.

This can lead marketers to make some key community-building mistakes:

1) They aim too large: Mere numbers (pageviews, visits, likes, followers) aren’t relationships;
2) They don’t engage: Communicating with a “faceless” digital community can seem like a daunting task;
3) They miss out: Online communities are a powerful way to build influential brand advocates, but sometimes inaction takes over when brands don’t know where to start.

While these mistakes are typical, they can be avoided with a few common-sense tactics:

1) Aim for relevance: Rather than shooting for a large community, start by aiming for those that are most likely to buy your product/service now or in the near future. Also, with online networks (especially social networks), research where your target audience invests its time, and go there first!

2) Engage more than you promote: Share your stories, ideas and information, but make sure you allow the community to become part of the conversation. Ask more questions. Build more testimonials and case studies. Invite participation.

3) Start: Even if your “start” is small, don’t miss the opportunity to build a community by putting your head in the sand.

Remember: Building A Community Can Take Time

Apple has an amazing community of insanely loyal brand advocates. It also nearly crashed and burned on multiple occasions, and was saved by innovation that focused on consumption of music on a tiny MP3 player. For other companies, community takes time and work to build.

This starts at the core — building products and services that your customers can love. It also may include places for customers to congregate and talk about how they put your products to use.

On the flip side, community building also requires brands to acknowledge shortcomings and respond transparently when things go poorly. Think about what Target and Snap Chat will need to invest in rebuilding brand confidence after recent security breaches. Neither of these incidents was intentional, but trust was lost, and recovery will take time and monumental effort.

However, there is a certain beauty in community. When you build it, nurture it and engage with it, your community will tend to stand by your brand in good times and in bad. While never perfect — like your family, your neighborhood or your city — your brand community is one of the most powerful tools in the connected world.

Whatever you do, don’t ignore or underestimate the power of your community!

(Editor’s Note: Republished from Millennial CEO, with permission, this is an excerpt from “The New Rules of Customer Engagement,” a new ebook by Dan Newman, available Spring 2014. )

(Also Note: To discuss World of Work topics like this with the TalentCulture community, join our online #TChat Events each Wednesday, from 6:30-8pm ET. Everyone is welcome at events, or join our ongoing Twitter conversation anytime. Learn more…)

Image Credit: Texas A&M

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The Employment Brand

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There Is Something To Be Said…

Then The Question Is…

Ed Frauenheim: What’s the importance of company transparency in recruiting these days?

Ed: What is the connection between transparency and employer brand at EY?

Ed: How does your employment brand tie into EY’s broader purpose of “Building a Better Working World”? It seems the overall company brand should make your job as a recruiter easier.

Ed: Some experts say transparency about the workplace is smart because it helps you efficiently find people that are right for your organization. Do you agree?

Q1 – Cyndy: What types of attributes are job candidates and employees looking for when they say, “I want to work for a company that has a transparent culture?”

Q2 – Cyndy: Great Rated! has a wealth of information from some of the best companies in existence. What are a few of the more common attributes that make a Great Rated! company stand out as an employer of choice?

Q3 – Cyndy: Kim, why do some companies struggle with providing a great job candidate experience and where does transparency and employer branding come into play here?

Ed: You talk about the need for “convergence” when it comes to the overall company brand and the employer brand. Can you say more about that?

Ed: Can you give an example?

Ed: What’s the best way to promote an employer brand today?

Ed: What if it stinks at the moment? How do you deal with a crummy culture on route to developing a better one?

Ed: What’s the role of employee voices in the kind of employer brand you’re talking about?

Ed: You’re suggesting a high level of transparency.

The CEO of Great Rated! talks about the central role of employee surveys in employer brands, how Great Rated! works, and about the growing importance of employer brands in the era of the “naked” corporation.

Ed Frauenheim: What is an employer brand?

EF: What does it take to manage an employer brand in the era of the naked corporation—of growing transparency into companies?

EF: How can companies understand what their actual employer brand is?

EF: How does Great Rated!’s approach to presenting and publishing an employer brand work?

EF: Where is employer brand heading?

Half the battle is retention.

Join the Experts

Participating Organizations

Hiring Decision or Jedi Mind Trick?

Trusting More Than Your Gut

Lessons From #TChat: Hiring Guts and Glory

#TChat Week-In-Review: How to Make Better Hiring Decisions

#TChat Insights: Hiring Great Talent: How Do You Decide?

Closing Notes & What’s Ahead

Mindset: We Think Differently About Work

Behavior: We Hire by Audition

Seeing Is Believing

The Payoffs of Careful Hiring

Sneak Peek: Smart Ways to Hire Better Talent

#TChat Events: Smart Ways to Hire Better Talent

A Troubling Trend

Give Your “Work Self” Permission to Be Fully Human

Your Reality Is Your Story

Here Is Your Permission

A Troubling Trend

Give Your “Work Self” Permission to Be Fully Human

Your Reality Is Your Story

Here Is Your Permission

Tech Hiring By The Numbers

Motives Matter For Acquisition and Retention

Building Tech Teams That Last

What Works For You?

Sneak Peeks: Facing Tech Recruiting Challenges

#TChat Events: Tech Recruiting In a World of Pervasive Technology

Not Just Community — A Close Community

Building a Brand Community Like a Neighborhood

Community in the Connected World

Remember: Building A Community Can Take Time

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