Building Capability Through Employer Brand with Bryan Adams

But employer brand strategy is the tangible bridge. It's the story of we're here today, but that's where we're going. This is the journey we're going on and this is what it's going to take to get there so we can have an authentic conversation about the capabilities required to win and we can be clear about what it's like today. But more importantly, here's what we're going to be asking of you going forward. And this is what you can expect if you want to contribute to the future of organization. Now that's world class employer brand strategy.

Hi and welcome to another episode of the Hiring Excellence Podcast. I'm Johnny Campbell, CEO of Social Talent and we're joining you today from Villarosa in situ outside Barcelona, where we're bringing together a group of fantastic talent leaders to talk about the pressing issues of the day. One of those leaders I have joining Here is Mr. Brian Adams, good friend and someone I massively respect in this, in this industry. And we're going to be talking about an interesting topic, the combination of skills, capabilities and how it connects to edp, which I think Brian has a really, really unique insight on and really good argument to make. Brian, before we dig into it, would you mind introducing yourself? Tell us a little bit about Happy Dance, your business, your career, how you ended up in this world, what you do. And then maybe, if you don't mind, I might want to ask you a few questions about your own podcast, which I'm a massive fan of and you've done probably many more great episodes than we have. But tell us about yourself, Brian. Tell us about your background, explain your accent, talk to us about your non singing career as well, just to establish that as well. Yeah, and talk about Happy Dance.

Yeah. So I'm Brian Adams and I'm always met with great disappointment whenever I go to a hotel and a restaurant. Yeah, I'm not the Canadian rock star, but yeah, for the last 20 years I've been. I actually run a consultancy around employer branding and I wrote a book in 2020, give and get Employer Branding, which I think has contributed to the industry. We can dig into that a little bit later on because I think the sort of harsh realities and adversities of, of employee experience plays a big part in what we'll talk about. But last year, April, last year I sold the consultancy to Focus on the Technology bit, which is Happy Dance. It's a career website platform born out of frustration, actually, because I think in an industry that is obsessed with candid experience, There didn't seem to be one single platform standalone that focused solely on. On being able to leverage and showcase employer brand as it should be and optimize candidate experience. So that's what Happy Dance is. It's a SaaS platform with all the configurations and capability of being able to tailor the front end to really suit the employer brand, which is my passion and obsession in life. So candidate experience drives us forward, but the world of employer branding is still. Still my sort of love language.

You wrote another book called Getting Goosebumps. You had a Goosebumps podcast and you had some amazing episodes. And I really encourage any of our listeners to go find it there some amazing episodes. I remember you telling me particular story about a guest that you had the audacity to go after and how you secured that guest. Would you mind sharing that story?

Seth Godin.

Yeah. Hero of mine. Hero of yours.

Seth Godin is one of those gods of communication. Probably the most famous markets are on the planet. And I was starting a podcast, obviously from scratch. Nobody knew what the hell it was and all the rest of it. And I decided to reach out to Mr. Godin. But I thought, fresh from reading his books, I thought, what would Seth Godin do if he wanted to get Seth Godin on a podcast? So started by, I reached out to him and said, big fan, but everybody asks you for something. Is there anything I can do for you? You know, and it was a little bit longer than that, but that was the gist. And two minutes later, from hitting send emails, me back, no, thanks, Brian, I'm all good. But I appreciate the thought, Seth. I was just over the Mooney answer, you know what I mean? So the next day, a friend of mine in Japan, he's an illustrator, a bit of a quirky, off the wall sort of kind of character, sent me two little toy cars, and one of them was a truck with a hamburger on. On the back. And basically it was how Japan sees the culture of America. So I thought, I'm going to send this to Seth Godin. So I put it in the post with a little thing, a little note that said, you know, you. You bring so much joy to my life and everybody else and all the rest of it. I hope this just makes you smile. That's it, you know, Brian. So blow me. A week later, I get a little email from Seth Godin. It just, all it says is, brian, I got the truck. It made me smile, Seth. And I was like, awesome. Now what do I do? You know? But I just thought, this is the moment you know, so I emailed him back and said, you know what? No, what? Seth, I'm starting a new podcast. Nobody knows it, there's no audience, there's no reason for you to do this whatsoever. But you're my dream guest number one. Like, is there any chance. And he emailed me back within two minutes again and said, how's tomorrow at 10am and I went out of my mind because then obviously I stayed up all night rereading all of the books and all the rest of it. So anyway, long story short, the next day at 10am I had post it notes all over my computer and all the rest of it. And I interviewed him. And I remember thinking, wow, that went so well. You know, I was on really good form that day. But listening back, I asked average questions and he just gave world class answers. It was phenomenal. But at the end I said, Mr. Godin, can I ask you one more question after the podcast? Why did you say yes? Like, how many, how many people ask you? He said, I get asked 10,000 times a year, including five times on Christmas Day without fail. So why did, why did you say yes to me? And he's like, well, you followed the golden rule and the principle. You stood out and you did something quirky and different and all the rest of it, you know, and I took my shot. It landed. Probably never happened again, but, you know, there we go.

Brian, I love that story because I think it says a lot about you, right? I pointed three things and you're somebody who's advised brands like Apple and massive big organizations in terms of how do they stand out in a crowded market to attract talent and do wonderful stuff. And to me, you've illustrated in your story one, the fact that you are very good at getting inside people's heads and trying to understand the Persona of the person we're trying to go after. Right? It's, I think, what you have consulted on over the years. It's what your product helps organizations do from an EVP perspective. And it's so important to it. Two, you're a great storyteller. I think storytelling is so much part of that solution and so important for us with employer branding and evp. In terms of doing that, storytelling is really good. I've forgotten the third thing. Blockchain. Encourage me a second to go to that. It's gone out of my mind.

Brian.

We kicked off talking about skills and capabilities and we were chatting earlier this morning about this, and we're coming kind of off the back of if I can argue in 2025. Bit of a dropdown in terms of the amount of mentions of the word skills. I'm sure if we did a Google trend search on skills first hiring, we'd see that it peaked in 24 and it's probably coming down a little bit. But we've been talking about this for a couple of years. There's been a lot of technology around. We need to be skills first. We need to focus on skills. Hire for skill. Skills economy, skills learning, connect all the dots. AI was thrown in there for the crack as well to make it all work. Talk to me about your take on skills and how you compare the two things. Skills and capabilities, how you define them.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, you're right. We've seen the skills economy, we've seen the knowledge economy, and in my opinion, I think we're headed towards a capability economy for one very good reason ultimately. Skills, knowledge, experience, all of these things really important and not going away, but they are components ultimately. And I know this from working closely with leadership teams over the last 20 years. Leaders don't really care about talent. They care about what they can get from talent. You know, it's like you don't want the lamp, you want the light, you don't want the newspaper, you want the news. And there's one thing that we can all bet on from a constant perspective, and that is change. The world is changing constantly. And there's an argument to say that that change is getting faster and faster and faster. So people now need to be able to demonstrate a capability of adapting to change. Organizations need to understand the capability required to win, which I would argue most organizations don't. When you look at skills, those skills, like we don't know what skills are required in six months, never mind the next two years to drive an organization forward, you know, the, the roles that you'll be hiring for in 12, 18, 24 months might not have even been invented yet, or they're certainly going to go through a significant evolution, you know, and if it's a skill, it's. If it's a tangible scale, it can probably be replaced with technology. But if you look at, if you look at people, resources and tools and environment added together, you're now looking at this concept of what's the culture of your organization, what's high performance look like in your organization and what are you trying to get from performance? Well, you're trying to get a capability, you're trying to get a result. Um, you know, so if that is your North Star and you can reverse engineer what capability do we require to win in the, in the, in the environment, in the industry that we're in, then at least that's a constant that you can always be adjusting and refining towards. And if you think about, like, how Covid disrupted a lot of organizations and Suddenly everybody was 100% remote, think about the organizations that thrive on creativity and innovation, which requires people being in the same room and doing that thing you can't quite put your finger on, but brainstorming and coming up with creative ideas that you're going to bet your organization on in terms of product development, R and D and all that kind of stuff. I know a number of global brands that have seen a real dip in innovation and lost market share because of it. You could argue that actually if you could rewind five or six years and an organization focused on the capability required to win and never let go, regardless of the change in landscape, innovation and creativity, we must deliver as a capability, as an organization. The rest can be figured out. So, you know, I'm trying to look ahead at what we can bank on and what we know will always be of value that we can build strategy around. And I think that's a capability economy.

Can you give an example of an organization who have done this, who you think have locked into that understanding of the capability needed to succeed over a longer period of time? And I've held firm on that capability and therefore had the results from that, or maybe, maybe make an example of somebody who strayed from that for the counter argument.

So I've worked with a global sports brand who struggled to maintain creativity and innovation. Like that's who I was thinking of when I was, when I was talking a moment again ago. And they have now introduced a mandate to bring everybody back to headquarters and just get back to basics and focus on the heartbeat of the organization again, which is innovation and creativity, which has been lost by not having people in the same room. You know, but there's probably countless organizations who have lost their competitive edge because of that same disruption. And then similarly, you know, you look at the competer brands in several marketplaces who have been smaller, with more agility and more adaptability, who have actually thrived in that same period because of the same conditions.

And a brand that came to mind for me, I mentioned Apple in terms of. A lot of people these days believe they've lost that innovation. In terms of the most recent innovation was this crazy headset that hasn't sold any units. And that's it. As a, you know, from the organization that 1020 years ago was seen as the most innovative. And perhaps for some reason they've, they're not doing that, certainly not seeing that anymore. And I guess your, your thesis is that for companies like that, it's down to not the skills you're hiring because the tech will change, et cetera. It's down to what's the, you know, you called it capability, which maybe is the value or, you know, some people call them maybe might, might use values and might use, you know, ways of working mindsets that you're hiring for, know and saying the skills will change. But what's the mindset? What's the focus? Do we build innovation, for example? Is it hard work? Is that kind of what you're saying?

It, it kind of. But, you know, you, if you focus on mindset rather than values, mindset will deliver sustainable behavior. Sustainable behavior will give you a, a culture. But actually, I think capability goes beyond that because capability starts to tangibly talk about the end result of all of the other things. And a CEO whose job depends on the share price constantly going up would probably argue vigorously they care about the capability required to win getting the right capability out of the organization. You know, and if you think about, you know, we talked about earlier this morning about business strategy in very simple terms. And, you know, if you think about business strategy and the value of brand, that conversation is usually at the consumer end. Where it is the value of the brand is the willingness to pay. How much can Nike get for a pair of sneakers versus Adidas? And it's all based on brand. There's some innovation and some comfort and there's some this, that and the other and all the rest of it, but most of it is brand. Let's look at the other end of the scale. Now. When you look at employer brand, which I think should be held equally accountable for share price and be equally prioritized from, from a leadership perspective, it's not willingness to pay from a consumer, it's willingness to serve. Because if you've got the, if you're a leader of an organization, you've got the same resources and exactly the same set of skills and people and tools and technology and all the rest of it. Your ability to get more out of that jigsaw puzzle than your counterpart, that's what it's all about. And that's why you get paid the big bucks, you know, as a leader. Well, actually, what you're trying to do at this end is increase willingness to serve, because if you can galvanize people and you can align them efficiently and effectively such that you can get more capability out of the same number of people with the same environment and the same tools, then you're winning. And that's employer brand strategy.

So I love this idea because it's quite unique, right? The willingness to pay concept I was introduced to a few years ago, for those not familiar with it, is the concept of you have a price that you charge and you have a WTP and they shouldn't be the same because if you have willingness to pay meeting price, your customer is pretty pissed off and they're going to be sensitive to any price change and they'll move to a competitor where whereas the difference between what you charge and their willingness to pay is value delivered. Right? So you know, every business optimizes that to go, let's not take too much value away, but let's not give too much margin away. And you try and optimize that and you make the profit. This willingness to serve concept is interesting and I might take the Nike example and Adidas. I'd probably argue that, and most people maybe might agree with this, that both have a similar willingness to pay modeled with consumers. So the average high end Nike shoe versus Adidas is probably the same price and you'll have a preference of brand, but you'll pay roughly the same amount of, call it overpriced area because obviously you can buy a generic sneaker that's, you know, pretty okay, but you'll pay one quarter the price because they don't have the brand so very much the brand drives that willingness to pay for both those brands. I think what you're saying is that from a strategic perspective you might have, okay, we have the same wtp, so we're looking at now our cost base because we can drive more margin out of that. Of course, we can operate, operationalize our manufacturing processes, etc, but if one of our biggest costs is labor, if we have a lower labor cost or we have the same labor cost but we get higher innovation, higher productivity, either way you want to look at it, that that is a strategic way of looking at employer brand as the driver. So your consumer brand drives WTP up, but your WTS drives down and that creates more margin in between. I guess your argument is that we're not positioning EVP at that strategic level where really ta have an opportunity to go. We can be a massive driver of extra margin by driving down the, you know, the wts, by attracting talent to work for us where they have to overpaying them. You can pay at the 70th percentile, 75th percentile, and beat the company at the 95th percentile. Because our employer brand is so strong.

Absolutely, absolutely. You know, if you are so competitive in a marketplace and, you know, talent now with technology and AI, making technological innovation, a utility like gas, electric and water, people now are revealed to be the only competitive advantage left arguably in business. You know, so at the sharp end there you've got willingness to serve that might just be put more hours in and that kind of stuff. Absolutely. But also it could just be the difference between getting the very best people over your competitors and instead of having a great idea, but being quite sort of apathetic about contributing to the organization, you're high energy and you bought in and you believe in the purpose and you, you know, you're actually feeling great about the sense of impact that you make and your contribution makes a difference and you feel like you belong, you're going to get an extra 10, 20, 30% of that person, you know, and just think about that for a second and then try and play the skills argument into that. Same skills, different mindset, completely different value, completely different willingness to serve in two different environments. Now, I've worked for Microsoft, I've worked for Apple, on paper, same organization. In practice, I can tell you they are completely different environments. One is very organized, hierarchical, authority, authoritative. The other is very organic and based on relationships and this and the other and all the rest of it. The culture couldn't be more different. You know, one person thriving over here would barely survive over here, you know, so ultimately they both work and actually they're both very successful because I think from the top down they understand the capability required to drive their organization forward. You know, but you're right about the headset and this, that and the other and all the rest of it. And I think they're like Apple particularly are falling foul of. They've got a cash volcano in what they're currently doing and it's very difficult to change. Google arguably invented AI and could have brought it to the marketplace 10 years ago with DeepMind, but they've got a PPC model, a paid advertising model which just makes so much money that like they didn't want to put themselves out of business. And now you could argue ChatGPT is doing that for them.

And meta probably the same in terms.

Exactly, exactly. So I think organizations now, with a newfound focus and priority on talent and what it can add up to and the difference it can make to share price, starting to get business strategy attention at the very highest level for Those exact reasons.

So obviously at a high level, if we buy into the concept of willingness to serve as a strategic enabler, it's a conversation we can begin having with our C level and our executive team and reposition talent and its role there. But connect that back to capability for me, because obviously just having a really good brand and attracting lots of talent isn't enough. Is one of your arguments that this capability piece and understanding that capability need is really important. How does that connect them back to traditional ideas like EVP and employer brand?

So a simple concept that I've been talking about for a number of years, as you know with give and get, is leaning into the harsh realities and adversities of an employee experience. You know, because you can take a challenge of any employee experience that might turn somebody on and it's the challenge they've been looking for, to fight, to find a sense of passion and pride, achievement and all that, all, you know, packages, purpose, impact and belonging. Others might be drastically put off by that same challenge. Good, that's, that's my argument. And actually the harsh realities and adversities, the challenges, the sacrifices and commitments that those are the very ingredients that we should be more upfront with and really proud to talk about because that's where candidates make smarter decisions. That's not a place for me. This is the place I've been looking for. And actually what we're talking about here is just expectations. Because in order to get the capabilities required to move an organization forward, we need to meet what talent want with what the company needs. And controversially, in a world where it's very human centric and we're trying to sort of be attractive to people, the strategy needs to start with what does the organization need to win? What is the capability we're trying to now? Those are the things that we need to take to people so they can make great career decisions. You know, like Apple. Are you willing to put up with zero work life balance? Some people are not. Some people are fine with it because the payoff of working with the smartest people they've ever met and looking back in 12 months time, not being able to believe how far they've come themselves in an environment that demands the best relentlessly and all the rest of it, some people thrive in that condition, some people don't. If we start hiring based on the reality and setting expectations such that people don't join an organization despite the challenges they're going to find, but because of them now, the leadership has a greater certainty and a confidence that those Skills that talent in this environment with these tools are going to add up to what we can take to the bank, which is capability, which is results, which is competitive advantage, which is an increase in share price.

To me, this ties to a concept I was introduced to years ago. I was. Five years ago, I was shown Dave Ulrich's model of culture. And, and you know, people talk about a negative culture, a positive culture, maybe a culture in the middle, but his idea was that you have a strategically aligned culture. You know, people call we have a great culture in our organization. He's like, that means nothing. Like, oh, great. People like working there. So what his point was being is it designed that way for business reasons. To your point of business goal, and Ulbricht's idea is, and was that you should have or you should try and build a strategically aligned culture, which is, you understand, to your point that the capabilities that drive your success, what's your strategy? What capabilities would be necessary to win? And then how do we make sure we have a culture that fosters those capabilities, those values, and then we measure ourselves against that? So to your point, it will be our culture is we work all day and all night. We do that because we believe that doing that will win. Our culture is we strive for excellence and we only hire amazing people, we only promote amazing people. And good is not good enough when we get them out. Not for everyone, but it gives us a competitive advantage. Netflix are famous for this. In terms of obviously talking about a very strategically aligned culture, a culture I personally wouldn't work in. But that's the point, I think is what you're saying is like, it's designed to repel people who won't be good for that culture.

Exactly.

But it's not an accidental culture. It's very deliberate because they've chosen attributes or capabilities that drive that success.

Yep. And it's not an accidental culture. That's the, that's the thing. You know how many organizations are built on values, and those values were born out of the personality of the founder over 100 years ago. And it is what it is. And then a new CEO comes in, you do an employer brand project, and you reflect back the research that says this is the employee experience and this is your employer brand. And the first thing the CEO says is, well, that's not what I want the message to be like, knowing that that's not what we need to take us forward. And it's this idea that exists like a bad smell in the world of employer branding. And it's authenticity. There is A misconception that your employer brand has to authentically represent a snapshot of today's reality where an actual fact that it doesn't add up to a hill of beans. It's just not a business strategy that's going to add any value. It's. It's important for one thing to know where you are today so you can draw a tangible line between where you are today and where you have to get to tomorrow to survive or win. So it's important to know where you're starting from. But employer brand strategy is the tang tangible bridge. It's the story of we're here today, but that's where we're going. This is the journey we're going on and this is what it's going to take to get there so we can have an authentic conversation about the capabilities required to win and we can be clear about what it's like today. But more importantly, here's what we're going to be asking of you going forward. This is what you can expect if you want to contribute to the future of our organization. Now that's world class employer brand strategy.

So I love this. I think this is the problem that we do a survey, we get the feedback, this is who we are. Go brand that on the website. Right. And, and if you do that, all you'll ever get is what you have. Whereas in your point is every business is trying to get somewhere or get back to somewhere and they have a plan and I guess the success is going. We actually don't quite have that because if we have that we'd be at our plan.

Absolutely.

So we need to get their talent, to your point is arguably the only differentiator left. So what do we need to be like to get the people that will get us there and maybe some of the people we have now won't be that won't be there at the end of this because they don't like where we're going. And that is, that is, that is not popular. People don't actually implement employer brands that way at all. That's right. If they do have a. I, I was at a roundtable talk about employer brand last week in New York with some folks and we were talking about what is your evp and you know, how are you doing all this kind of stuff. And I was trying to, you know, understand from a TA leader who was in a 20,000 person organization, I said why do people join you? Why should they join you? I said you're in a competitive space in financial services. There's loads of people like you. To me, you're all the same. Why should people join you? And to be fair, she said security. I said, she said, we've been around whatever amount of time we offer security. I was like, oh, that's interesting. And that their whole employer brand was safety, security, but it's not strategically aligned.

Well, I mean, that's a red flag to me straight away because if somebody is joining you for the security, I mean, that just fills me with dread. And if you're elite, you're thinking, oh my God, really?

It was our whole strategy.

Oh my God. Like that's the, that's the, that's the one thing we don't want you to join for. You know, maybe, maybe you feel good once you've joined because of that, but my God, that's not why you want people to join. And you know, I think for the Next, for next 10 years, if you're not asking questions and looking for stories about adaptability, resilience, tell me a time when you found yourself in a situation where it wasn't what you were expecting and you still had to deliver under pressure and find a way. You know, those stories in Interview and also on your careers site should be reflecting. This is a place where you need to adapt and all the rest of it. Because every organization is going through this and probably will be for a number of years. We're literally at the infancy of a new technology like we've never seen since the industrial revolution, which took 50 years start to finish to implement. And by today's standards, we're being asked to do the same thing in the equivalent of minutes. You know, so to hire on skills that might be redundant in six months, I just think is ridiculous.

The third thing I'd forgotten at the top of the hour was that you are living embodiment of give and get. You give an awful lot. And you started with that and I think with set go and you demonstrated two gives, an offer, a gift before you asked for the get. I can ask you to finish with some gives. If you're listening to this and you're the TA leader, an employer branding leader, or just a recruiter thinking, I buy into this and we don't do this today, but I'm interested in changing. What are some of your top tips? Where do you start as a leader, as an employee brand leader or a TA leader to basically move towards this more strategically aligned EVP that drives down this willingness to serve and creates this business value and aligns you to where you're going in your strategy, where do you start? What do you do?

So I've literally seen lightning strike by doing this one thing and you have to get the leaders of the organization in a room and you need to get your head around what they really want and need. What they see is the requirement to win and traverse the landscape in the next sort of 2, 5, 10 years. And if you can use that as your North Star to reverse engineer how we need to start building a culture that delivers that capability, then every strategy and every tactical plan and every decision that you make after that, as long as it aligns and it's justified and you can demonstrate impact at that level, it's going to serve you well. And if you can, you know, because there's tough, tough conversations, there's politics you've got to navigate, there's lean budgets and all sorts of, you know, it's difficult to produce an employer brand that's sustainable in this day and age when the landscape is changing so much. You need that North Star and it needs to be aligned with the priorities of the organization. And if you can put your finger on those core capabilities and use that as a, as a place to start, then, you know, you will get the buy in. Which, you know, if you don't get buy in, forget about it. You'll get the buy in and you know, you'll get that seat at the table that, you know, we've, we talk about so often. You have to talk the language of the business. 99% of success comes from aligning with, with the leaders of the organization.

Elliot Smgento was on the podcast and he was talking about his experience in business partnering and he was talking about how you make your recruiters become business partners. But I think there's an important lesson in terms of how the TA leader and leadership become business partners, which is the same advice, which is you need to basically demonstrate value. He talks about the concept of currency, which I think is give and get. He used a different analogy, different book, but same concept in terms of you got to show up and show you want to engage in business strategy, you want to understand it and you're going to be aligned to it. That's how you start getting that so called seat of the table. Hate that expression by the way. Keep using it. I know, but you, where is this table? Can we just buy new tables? And then we all, we are all solved for. But I think it's a good lesson in terms of you need to be, start operating at the right level and actually we're going to kick off today in our talks today, talking about how TA sees itself and that strategic alignment. It all starts there and being aligned to that strategy. Brian, thank you so much for giving so much today. I hope you get something back from this as well. I hope our I know our audience will have gotten a lot from this as well. Are you bringing back a podcast anytime soon? I do miss your podcast. I love hearing you and your interviews. Do we have something to look forward to in the future?

Well, I'm working on my next book that'll be out in the next six months and then I'll probably launch something around around that.

Let's have you back on to talk about the book when it's ready if you don't mind later this year and share some insights from that story with us.

Will do.

Thanks a lot and thank you for listening this week. I hope you've really enjoyed Brian's conversation and insights, willingness to serve and some of the concepts tied to core strategy and how you as a leader perhaps can elevate your TA thinking and team there as well. Don't forget to check us out weekly. We'll be back next week with another podcast on the show. You can find us on LinkedIn and YouTube, subscribe on Apple, Spotify, wherever you find your podcasts. Thanks for joining. See you next week.