How to communicate company culture through employer brand | with Charu Malhotra

Foreign. Welcome. It's episode 122 of the Shortlist. I'm your host, Johnny Campbell, CEO and co founder of Social Talent. And you're very welcome to today's episode where we're going to be talking about how to communicate company culture through your employer brand. We've all heard about the war for talent and it wages on. Despite the crazy inflation that we're seeing and signs of recession, organizations are still struggling to find talent and therefore they're still struggling to stand out and rise above all the noise of everyone else who's hiring out there. But as the landscape of work has changed dramatically over the last few years, particularly post pandemic, so too have candidate needs. So if you're struggling to attract, hire, retain the talent in your business, the talent your business requires to succeed, it's worth asking the question, has my employer brand and my company culture, more to the point, altered to reflect the evolution and changes over the last number of years? Joining us here today in the show is Charu Malhotra. Charu is a leading HR expert who's led employer marketing, brand building, transformation and diversity at Unilever, BP McKinsey & Co. Premark and many other fantastic big brand organizations. She's got a lot of experiences, if you know what I mean. Together we'll discuss, you know, practical advice on how organizations can optimize this thing called employer brand to reflect the needs of today's candidates. And really importantly, look at how you communicate your company culture. Charu, it's great to have you on the show. Thanks so much for joining us. Can you maybe share a little bit with our audience about where are you joining us from? What? Why this topic is so important to you, how you got into this game in the first place.

Absolutely. Hey, Johnny. So I'm Charu Malhotra. I'm joining this call from Surrey, my home office where I kind of work four days a week. I've moved into employee branding about a decade ago. As Johnny said, I've worked at many big brands globally, worked across many regions and geographies. And I've really loved in the sort of intersection of employer branding, communications and talent. Really kind of almost weaving that sort of story, if you will, to candidates and more increasingly employees. So I fell into it like most people who do employer branding. Started off in recruitment, really kind of had a passion for communications. I'm a word nerd. And that's where I saw the magic of the emotion happening and moved into some employer branding which, you know, some people call talent marketing. Some people, recruitment, communications, it's telling a story. So yeah, I'm looking forward to this conversation.

So the name may have changed to your point, right? Folks talk about different things now. They might use fancier names. Tell me about what has and hasn't changed in the last decade or so. Like where were we 10 years ago, where are we today? What's different between now and then? And what's different if anything, between now and, and perhaps just before the pandemic.

So I think what has changed from a candidate perspective and an employer branding perspective is this increasing and rightly so view on. You can't talk about things externally that aren't accurate internally. I would say a decade ago, and I was working in this space a decade ago we were so interested and focused on attraction, be it content creation for attraction campaigns, being on campus that we lost sight that actually those candidates that we were busily attracting and spending money attracting would become employees. So I think these days, and I'd say in the last five, six years, people in roles like myself are very much linked to the employee experience as well as external experience. And that's, and that's the right change. I mean why set yourself up to be saying things that are inaccurate or inauthentic when within a microsecond of someone joining the business they realize that no, this is just not for me, the DNA rejects me. So I think that external internal alignment and the closer working relationships with branding and communications and employee experience is a relatively new thing I would say in the last five years. And it's a really positive thing and long should it continue because when these two don't work together, that's when horror stories happen where candidates come in, become employees and leave after six months because the organizational DNA rejects them. What hasn't changed in the last 10 years I think is just this recognition that candidates expectations are always higher, higher and higher and higher. Ten years ago we spoke about candidates behaving like consumers and wanting an Amazon like experience in terms of personalization. We're saying it now still. You know, I want a personalized experience. Talk to me like I am Charu, not like I am 100 other people. So that hasn't changed and I don't think it ever will. You know, I was talking to a, a very well known job board yesterday and they have a, an empty chair in all their meeting rooms that represents the candidate, the job seeker if you will. And now call that notional, call that a bit of a fad. I really liked it because I think as I Sit there. I'm always, I'm the voice of the candidate. I don't, I'm not here to serve the company. Course I want to be in a situation where I'm employed. But if it doesn't ring true for a candidate, an employee, what am I doing? What am I creating? It's just a story, it's not authentic. So I think those are the kind of two what's changed and what's not changed.

So if we look back to you mentioned 10 years ago, you're right. What I remember of it is that we were producing a lot of content to tell everyone that we were what they want. So we were just trying to figure out what do people want? And then how do we produce lovely content and branding that basically says, hey, we have that. And then maybe to your point, it evolved into actually what are we? Because maybe we're not what candidates want. Maybe we've been focusing on marketing something that isn't true, truthful and authenticity and being inauthentic became the rage and the buzzwords. And we've begun to do more listening. You know, we looked at EVPs, etc. And we began to really understand what we actually were, why people came to work. And then we tried to adjust our marketing towards that. Are we in a third phase though, Charu, where rather than just accepting what we find out when we do this, listening, when we research the EVP that we're looking and saying, ah, that's not good enough and that won't work. And then we're trying to push back to change it, knowing that it's no point in going to market with the truth because the truth won't be good enough. Yeah, we can't lie, we can't make it up anymore, but we need to actually influence this so the truth is genuinely better. Is that maybe a third evolution of that? Are you seeing that? How does it work? What's the role of the recruitment marketer?

Yeah, so I think the first thing around the EVP is really interesting place that we're all in. So I've done six global EVPs in my career and yeah, actually if someone said do, do one tomorrow, I would probably challenge it. So I think when you're working in a big global organization or often the EVP can take, you know, six to 12 months and you lose sight of actually what the active, what you're trying to achieve, which is then communication, it's activation. So I'm actually, I think an EVP has its place, but we have to be much more Nimble and agile and much more clever around the segmentation. So that's thinking about the value proposition pillars and the messaging becomes important as long as you can activate it. So I think gone are the days where you go, right, I work for, let's say, at Unilever, I did evp. I think that segmentation becomes really, really key now. You don't. Companies don't have one evp, they don't have one culture, they'll have one set of values. But I'm sitting in Indonesia, I'm sitting in India, I'm sitting in Poland. How I experience that brand and the experience of me as an employee can change and be very, very different. So there's that EVP conversation that I think we should come back to. I do think maybe it's a third or fourth evolution where employer branding has to have a voice and a seat at the table, if you will. So when we're evaluating the culture, you know, cultural audit, you know, what is it like to work here, Johnny? What is it like to work here? What, you know, what does it feel like? What's your, your duvet flip? Is a question I ask, you know. You know, not what brings you joy. What. Why do you get up in the morning and log on. Why'd you get up in the morning? And why do you work here? What's your duvet flip? I think it's that, you know, if you're hearing challenges or stories around DNI or you're hearing stories. Actually, I probably don't anticipate being here for more than three years because I don't see any progression. Or if you're hearing stories that tell you, actually, I won't stay here very long because actually, paternity pay or maternity pay here isn't very good. So I see my, you know, my tenure going somewhere else. We should have. And I'm very lucky that where I've worked, you know, I've built that voice. Where I've worked, I am allowed to have an opinion. And I think we all need to. Is okay, we need to be change agents. We. We need to really be a litmus test for this isn't good enough. And I'm hearing this because we are in a space of luxury to do listening groups, to do social listening, to meet so many employees and recruiters and stakeholders. The things that aren't working, people share with us really candidly and really frankly, if we're not doing something with it, then shame on us. And in that same vein, nobody wants perfection. You don't. I Wouldn't believe a company that said they were perfect. I would just think it's disingenuous and it's just appetizing. But I'm much more likely to believe a company that says we are looking to fix this. And these are the five or six things we're doing. So to answer your question, absolutely we are in this third or fourth evolution, but only if we, people like myself and I've got a lot of peer groups are having those conversations about we've heard this, it's not good enough. How do we fix it? It's not over to you hr, go and fix it. We're part of the problem solving.

Before we went on air, I mentioned an analogy of a product marketer in marketing, which for those of you who don't work in marketing, a product marketer sometimes actually works in product and sometimes works in the tech part of the organization. Not marketing is somebody whose job isn't just to, isn't actually to brand what we have so much as they are there to understand what should we be making, what does the market want and then influences the product roadmap to have that and then communicates that matching the customer needs with what we actually deliver to market. So they, they sit in the middle between actually trying to market what, what our product is and then trying to influence what our product is. Do you think that's kind of where recruitment marketing, employer branding is today? Sitting in the middle of trying to promote it and create audience and generate interest, but also influence the product being the culture, let's say in this analogy.

In the first place, I do, I think on one hand we have the curse of knowledge. So we think everyone knows what we know because we're sitting in the organization. So we often only present things not superficially, but not deep enough. But absolutely, I think not recruitment marketing as such, but employer branding, talent marketing, we are able to go. This is where we want to be in three years time. Whether it's thinking about retention, whether it's thinking about organizational design. This is what we're hearing about the workplace in the next two, three years. Career returners, thinking about how many people have left the workforce in the last two years. How, how do we get this back if we want to get here in three years time? These are things that we need to build and programs change of culture. You know, these things happen slowly. They don't happen overnight. But absolutely we could be very much a vehicle for that change if we're in the, in the right environment for that to happen. Not everywhere has that a lot of organizations don't. It's quite streamlined. You know, you're, you're a recruitment marketer, just Transact on those 20, 30, 50 jobs that are hard to fill and support the TA team. I see my role and as sort of being very lucky in most organizations I've worked in, it's been much, much broader and working very closely with HR and the business and marketing and brand to think about the employee experience and the candidate experience. So yeah, I think it's very much product marketing if we think about product as the culture. But I have an allergic reaction to this culture being this sort of one, one element and my experience being the same as someone else, especially as we all work very well. A lot of people work remotely now. My experience could be vastly different to someone else's. Let's not, let's not have this sort of hypos going on.

Let me pull that thread for a second. You mentioned a lot of us working remotely. That wasn't the case before, before early 2020 and the pandemic arguably changed a lot. Kind of expectations change, the dynamics of the labor market changed, organizations changed the way they worked. Many organizations changed, but they worked how they looked at their role in, in someone's life. Know this the idea of the balances in its one hour, the other work or life began to, to fall away in a lot of situations. What's been the impact for employer branding from the pandemic and from those changes from, you know, do you have to start again and rebrand? You know, what does it look like on the ground for someone who's responsible for employer branding, who's seen this radical change in way that their organization is run potentially they've moved to remote or distributed as a business. They've changed the way that they lead. The values of their, of their employees have fundamentally changed. New employees want a different evp. What do you do if you're in your job and you're living through the pandemic the last two and a half years? What has happened on the ground for organizations because of this?

Yeah, and I think one of the lenses and the pieces I always bring to the table is I've worked remotely for the last eight years. So I don't think everyone has suddenly had this massive change. A lot of organizations, you're quite right, have gone in the last few years now. We, we need to change the way we've worked. But an awful lot of organizations still were doing this. They, they haven't had this massive knee jerk reaction. And I Think sometimes we lose sight of that. The world obviously changed. We've got a lot of scars from the pandemic, but not everyone had to suddenly think about, oh my gosh, Remote, obviously, you know, and I think that's key to remember. It's something I think we sort of sometimes lose sight of when we do. Broad strokes around this conversation from an employer branding perspective and a recruitment perspective. Absolutely. Candidates are consistently asking, demanding, you know, searching for, what are the opportunities to work? How will I work? And, you know, Hybrid is now being probed in a way that perhaps wasn't six months ago. What do you mean by Hybrid? When you put Hybrid on a job advert, what do. What are you talking about? If it's come into work on this specific day a week, if it's coming, that's not flexible working. So I think the demand and the awareness and the level of forensic questioning that we're, you know, I've seen talking to my peer group of candidates is quite immense and it's definitely changed in the last six months. So this sort of acceptance that just by putting Hybrid on a job advert or we might accept remote working as an option, it's just not good enough anymore. So how has it impacted my role and roles like mine? I think we've had to really kind of work on leadership styles because it was okay perhaps a year ago or a year and a half ago for leaders to be able to go. Actually, I don't know how to create a team morale or manage remotely because everyone was going through this really extreme, extraordinarily hard circumstance together. But I think that forgiveness has gone now. So it's harder because how do you communicate and transmit culture? How do you build a gluey, sticky company culture, team culture, when a lot of people aren't in the office all the time and if they are, they're in there doing zoom calls, as that recent Slack survey told us. So I think it's. It's harder because we're trying to communicate something when we're all working like this a lot of the time. And there's only so many times having screenshots of this is interesting or remotely exciting. And then secondly, I think that sort of, that leadership sense, you know, as employer branding individuals, when you think, when you're thinking about showcasing your leaders, their ability to talk about how they build a compelling, you know, well, gelled team is something that's of interest to candidates and they've got to come up with a story, you know, how. How do I promote people that I Don't see all the time. How do I make sure that proximity isn't something that I go to my default? And the reason I bring it up as employer branding is candidates are asking those questions and they want to see visible evidence, little touchstones of this coming through on the, on the content journey. So yeah, it's interesting times.

I've heard evidence that again, not to jump on the generational bandwagon, but let's say folks earlier in their career are spending an increasing amount of time when they research an employer. Let's say when they have an interview, they're going for an interview, trying to find interviews with the leadership that they're going to meet with our leadership that represent that company on YouTube or different places. Not visiting traditional perhaps employer branding channel channels like Glassdoor or LinkedIn, but literally going out to just media channels saying I want to know what this customer's company is like, I want to understand what their CEO's position is on ESG, I want to know what etc. Etc. I want to hear from her directly when I want to see if she's spoken at any conferences and that the absence of that can be a real negative. And even C minus 1 minus 2 minus 3, even other execs are feeling the pressure to have a presence because people want to know about them, who they are, rather than just read the values and the principles on a website. Is that a thing you're seeing? Is it real?

Absolutely is real. And I think that vacuum, the fact that if it's not visible, that in itself will create an understanding and a conclusion in the candidate's mind. So we don't want employer blanding, we don't want beige tepid content just because, oh, I've been told I need to post and I'm a, a senior leader because that it just sort of backfires. But absolutely that's of natural sense of I am a visible face of my organization and I when I say thought leadership, you know, it's about what is your thinking, not what the company thinking is not using the same buzzwords. So I think to answer, yeah, absolutely, seeing evidence of that and I think it's absolutely the right thing to do. I'm interested the other, other area that we're seeing a lot of, you know, when I again talk to my peer group in the employee running, is that reluctance to actually reach out to Senior individuals via LinkedIn way before they've met them at interview stage, even if they aren't in the interview process. I've seen and heard where the CEOs been sent a note in terms of I'm coming along for interview with xyz. What is your take on climate change? And again, neither of us want to over index on, on generational differences. That's, that's not what we're here to do. But I do like that boldness. I think it's right, you know, if you have a CEO that has a wonderful grandiose statement about IND or CSR on the website, which a lot of CEOs do, then actually having the challenge of what, what does it actually mean to you? You know, I, I think is anywhere a good thing? So I do think that advocacy and the, and the visibility across the business becomes really key. But I think the distinction, distinguishment, distinction, sorry, gosh, from about five, six years ago is, and I'm really quite interested in this is it's not enough just to sort of have the company message. You know, we've all seen those organizations where everyone's LinkedIn says the same thing and they've got, you know, you know, they've obviously got a smart or you know, some kind of tool advocacy tool where everyone then posts the same thing at the same time. Of course there's an option for personalization, but people are time poor, too busy, so they all post the same, it's a turn off. So I think, you know, that boldness and having an opinion sometimes can be polarizing and candidates might read it and go, actually no, this isn't the place for me. But that's what good informal branding is. It should give you as much insight into this is the place for me or this isn't the place for me.

I remember there was an article a couple of months ago in Harvard Business Review that talked about this change in expectations of leadership. And if you look at the three main stakeholders of any organization being investors, shareholders, their people, which includes potential new talent and their customers, 20 years ago, people cared about, did the product do what it's meant to do? And employees and investors cared about is there a strong financial performance and the role of a CEO or leadership was to deliver those things. But that something 80 or 85% of people in all three of those camps say that they want to understand the leader's position on things. Now this is now the role and you need to have calling celebrities in the business, not just at the C level but all across the business, people who stand for stuff, people can, who people can rally behind, to your point, have an opinion that may not be the same as the consensus leadership opinion, but they're willing to put themselves out there. It's a new bar that a lot of people are really uncomfortable with though. But you're right, you know, people expected, they want to go, who am I working with? What do they stand for? I can read your four values on your website. Ignore that. What do you stand for? I need to work for you. You're the person. But let me go back to something you said earlier on about kind of consumerization of employer branding. And you mentioned back in the whenever the early days was five, 10 years ago, we talked about consumerizing the application procedure. I read or heard two weeks ago at LinkedIn Talent Connect about as an example, the Goldman Sachs have a career site that allows candidates rather than search for jobs, which I'm sure they can do as well. You enter your skills and it tells you what roles could be suitable for you. So moving towards this, this is me. Tell me what you've got versus having to interrogate a system. You know, do you see that kind of thing happening more? And what else do you see happening that is akin to more consumerization from a positive perspective? Sharu, that. That's kind of like making it super easy for, for candidates. That's giving the candidates the experience that they actually want.

Yeah. So I think, I think a recognition, a recognition by organizations about the squiggly career. So it's a book that's been out a couple of years. We haven't read it. I definitely recommend it and it talks a lot about actually careers aren't linear. So often when you go to a website and you see those wonderful kind of articles, you know, they paint a very kind of traditional portrait. Most people's careers are squiggly and they will become increasingly squiggly as the kind of the. That as life goes on and organizations design change. So I think there's that recognition. So therefore organizations are. And it's good when they're thinking about content. Certainly it's not just about their organization. So if I can give you something that will give you insight into, let's just say into engineering or into, you know, whatever cyber security, you may not find it relevant and insightful for the job application that you are doing with my company, but actually it's given you something back that you'll remember for your next application. And I think that sort of that circle of okay, if we are going to be creating great stuff, let's not just think about that one job. How can we be thinking about what it gives the candidate back? Now companies aren't Stupid. They're not doing it because they all want to join forces together. There is that talent shortage which again I'm dubious about. Are we doing enough to think about all the talent segments we've ignored for so long? But I think that I have seen that change. So if you're coming to a website, coming to a webex, coming to a, an event or conference, not just honing into my organization, but actually thinking about the skills that you might be able to transport and take away in all your kind of job seeking experiences. Because again, companies aren't doing it for the good of their heart. It's, you'll remember or you know, prep for an interview and I got some really great insight. I got a job over there, but I remember that company gave me something back and I think that kind of portableness is, is something that companies are doing increasingly of. And you see it a lot on, you know, the BP website does it in terms of, along with its candidate charter. Put in your skills, you know how BP are you. So it's about giving something back. The other thing that I think is quite useful, that candidate, you know, wasn't at the LinkedIn conference, that there is that sense of the why so. Not the why, this big grandiose purpose statement that takes a year to create and lots of money and so on, but the why. So I think, you know, companies are recognizing that my why and your why are increasingly important to get articulated in the process and much earlier on in that sort of dreaded job funnel. So, you know, understanding what the why is for you will help me then think about, okay, how do I make this job right for you? And again, a recognition that everyone's going to have a very different experience of their why and their wants. So I am seeing that companies that want to have a great employee experience and retain talent. So it wasn't at the LinkedIn conference, but I saw enough data that retention, internal mobility, visible career paths, articulated visible career paths are very much where we need to be focusing our energy and time. And I think that's me key. It's about retention of the people we've got in employer branding as much as attraction.

Let me shift gears to some of the more operational aspects, the plumbing or mechanics of employer branding, so to speak. Right. I was at a conference last week and was stunned to hear, maybe I'm the last person who's heard this right, but at the conference they were talking about an article in the Guardian, the uk, I think a couple of years ago that was again substantiated by a further news publication around Programmatic Advertising char, which we've heard a lot of in recruiting, maybe like everything becomes later to recruiting than traditional marketing where, you know, we've gone into a world where we've all these tools that can spend our marketing budget and optimize whether we spend money on indeed our website or different places. And it just does all the magic behind us. And this Guardian article uncovered that more than half of the sites in the experiment that they did, that a Programmatic advertising tool placed their ads, the websites were broken or did not exist and actually they could only trace the ad spend back to something like 15% of the actual sites that the Programmatic tools are meant to go to. So kind of calling bullshit on Programmatic. Maybe it's been fixed since then, but certainly this was, this was a big topic of conversation amongst the economists in advertising and the chair of Ogilvy was, was on the panel talking about this as well. You know, have, have some of the tools like Programmatic lived up to their hype. When you get down to the operationalization of spending a budget to try and drive demand at the top of a funnel, do those things work? Do they not work? What's your experience been?

Well, my experience has been a very positive one, so. But I think it is very much around managing the Programmatic and working really closely. When I've done Programmatic Media, I've worked directly with our employer branding agency, our media agency, if you will, and like all these things, if you're not tracking backwards from the website, corporate website, careers, webpage, ats, whatever the ATS is, success factors, you know, smart recruiters, whatever. If you're not working backwards and working really closely with that sort of a vendor, with your agency and a Programmatic Media buyer, then of course you're wasting your money. But my experience is why would we not optimize and use this? It's given me. Well, I've seen really good results when I've used it well. But again, if you're not working really closely with your supplier on this and watching it and having conversations around the narrative and the spend on a regular basis, then, you know, yes, you might be sending people to dead links and so on. I think if you have it at harm's length and it's, you know, expecting it to do its wizardry in the background, I'm a bit of a control freak. I kind of need to know all these things. But I'm, I'm not just a fan. I've seen it work. I think, you know, it's, it's effective but like all these things, if you're not managing these things well, it just doesn't work. It doesn't work for you. But yeah, I think that how managing optimize our spend and with increasing eyes on our budget, all our budgets, we've got to really optimize constantly, haven't we?

Tell me about employee advocacy. Does that have a place? If so, where is it? I've heard a lot of folks talking about dumping their creative spend and moving more towards employee advocacy efforts and training and promotion, etc. Where does it fit in within the mix?

So I am a massive fan of employee advocates, of ambassadors, employee brand ambassadors, whatever we'd like to call them. I've been hearing increasingly over the last couple of weeks people want to get rid of the word advocates. But for the sake of this conversation, encouraging our employees to share content on their own channels with their own tone of voice for me is what advocacy is to become champions of the brand, in this case the talent brand. Not just a massive fan. I'm an advocate, I think it's the right thing to do. But where I see the rub, the friction is where you often have, let's say the banking sector or certainly some tightly controlled sectors, the pharma industry, where almost that pr, governance and the reluctance to allow employees to share becomes such a computer says no scenario. Or if you share, you have to go through so many layers of approval. You go, I'm going to go back to doing my day job, which is being a scientist, I can't be bothered. So it sits very much in that circle of how do you activate a great employer brand where it doesn't work. And I said, you know, that's where the things have changed in the last few years is I think candidates are smarter and recognize when it's the same piece of content again and again and again. I don't, I'm not a fan of that. I'll actively tell people to use their own tone of voice and I think that's where part of our jobs come in. We have to make it easy and we have to explain why it works. But nothing is more off putting if 100 people on LinkedIn sharing the same piece of copy with the same buzzwords. I've read thought leadership articles from people and gone this doesn't even sound like them because I know that person. So that to me is just as a very beige tepid type of content and I'm just not a fan. What's the point? Content creation takes time and energy. And if you're not passionate about what you're producing, then just don't bother. So I would rather not push an advocacy program if the end result then is everyone pumping out the same. And I keep going back to that employer bland piece. It's just, you know, James Ellis shared something yesterday which I reshared because I thought it was so. It was just. It made me laugh. But it's true. What's distinctive is when everyone has their freak on in terms of. If I'm able to show myself in. In the content I share. And I think I do, I believe I do. I try to. That, to me, is interesting. You. You follow me and you can see what I'm interested in, what I'm passionate about. If you're following 20 people in the same company and they say they share the same thing, where's the distinction? There's. There's no distinction. You just look like company clones.

But in a large enterprise, Charo, how do you resolve that tension between. We want to make it. Sure, it's authentic, personal, real, but we want scale. Like, where is the happy medium between the two of those?

Yeah. So I, when I was at Unilever, and I think for me that's always like the environment I go back to because that's where for me, it was a learning factory. We had some amazing marketeers. So I worked very closely with and learned so much there. And I think a they. They. I would. There's a wonderful phrase, elegant tension. So I think they recognize there's an elegant tension between what they would want you to say. Can you still hear me?

Yep. Yeah. Sorry.

What. You know, what the employee wants to say. So for me, the elegant tension is giving employees the freedom and the guardrails. And by that I mean please share. And this is why you should share enough times again and again and again, some hints and tips. So again, I don't want you to feel nervous when you come to share because what can I share? Giving you ideas and so on, but not giving you a script. So I think, how do you do that at scale? You start like everything you pilot and you see what works. And what I've really, I learned at Unilever and then at BP was, my God, it doesn't need to appeal to me. If a subsea engineer is writing a. An article about this amazing drill that he's created, if it appeals to me, there's something horribly wrong. If it appeals to his peer group externally at Shell or at sub C7, then, you know, that's the magic and the emotion. So let people talk about the things that they're passionate about. That's the key. Not here's the brand pillars, go off and talk about those. I mean, it's that, that just doesn't work. So I think, you know, of course there's lots of tools and technologies that we can talk about about how you scale this up. But I think where the, the tension of that though is you end up having kind of factory output which, going back to that personalization conversation we were having 20 minutes ago almost has a bit of a rub. You know, it's, it's that contradiction, isn't it?

Last but really important topic I want to dig into with you, Char. Talk to me about the, the efforts in, through employer branding that companies have made to try and gloss over their diversity, inclusion and equity efforts or lack of efforts and where that, where DIE or DEI meets employer branding and where it goes wrong. And then please talk to me about where it goes right. When it goes right.

Well, where it goes wrong, you know, is the most topical thing today, isn't it? If you've. Or yesterday was Brewdog. So this is an organization that, you know, UK organization that has been very grandly talking in the last 24 hours about their anti football World cup stance because of where the World cup is being held and has been very, very branded and loud and amplified. It starts from a DNI equity perspective and within 24 hours has been called out for its hypocrisy. And I think that's really interesting because it's not just being called out by consumers, by other, other brands and you know, some really prominent journalists. So I think for me that's a brilliant example, a really good example of perhaps a company trying to be an activist and, and they've done it a few times. So they've got sort of a, they've got game in this. Trying desperately to be an activist and to have a, a stance on DNI and then failing miserably because actually their talk doesn't match what they're doing internally. So for me that's a, a really good example of a bad example, if that makes sense. I think a great example of De and I working is organizations where they are on the journey. So there's a lot of tech organizations, not the big ones. I'm not talking about the, the metas of this world where they're smaller enterprises and they've been forced to release their D and I stats. Pinterest is quite an interesting example where five years ago they were in an awful lot of trouble and quite rightly so, where there was a lot of quite public claims from people, women of color talking about their experiences. And they have very been very prominent and very vocal and very evident, visibly evident on the journey that they're on. You know, what are they trying to fix? What are the roadblocks, how are they getting there, what are they doing, what's changing? And for me that's quite a nice example of they've gone, we've really messed up here. How do we get accredited? How do we change? How do we listen? We, we're no, we are no, we're not going to say we're going to be absolutely brilliant in five years time. But let's take you on the steps that we are taking. And I think that for me is like a really good way of describing companies where they are going. I'm a bit scared to talk about DNI because you know, we've got a all male, all whiteboard. Well, don't not talk about it because candidates are going to see that and they'll be making their own mind. But talk about what you're doing to change that and how you're doing it. Embrace that because as you know, that whole candidates are making their own mind anyway and they're filling out the vacuum. So those are my two sort of two points on the DNI piece which I can talk about for hours because it's an area I'm very passionate about.

Likewise. I'm going to ask you a little bit further for just a minute. Is it okay for an organization who are on that journey, as you mentioned, who aren't quite where they want to be, but they're making progress from where they used to be in how they represent themselves online to lean towards the future, less on the present. So for example, in how they represent them on themselves online, in photographs, images, videos, perhaps they have a over dimension on underrepresentative individuals. Not lying, not making up people, but kind of, you know, show a little bit of what they want to be in the future rather than, than having to show what they are today, which may be very white, very male as an example.

And with your question, is it okay.

Is it okay to push to more towards where we want to be and how you present yourself in images and videos or is it like just. No, that's not exactly what you look like today. So you have to only show what you have today.

I think it depends on what the messaging is. So I'll give an example. If you have very, very Few people of color in your business and your recruitment marketing videos are, you know, are heavily, heavily kind of populated by people of color. To me, that feels very disingenuous and inaccurate. And anyone that's joining the business based on that content or seeing that content is going to have a bit of a, an adverse reaction. So I feel, to me, that feels like the completely wrong thing to do and I wouldn't want to be producing a piece of content like that. However, if you are creating a piece of content, again, a video where the messaging is, you know, we are looking to bring in more people like this, you know, more women like this, you know, more individuals that have got this skill set and meet three or four of individuals who've got different 10 years. I think again, you know, that's a different message. So I think it depends on what the message is. If this is a big corporate video, Johnny, and every office shot looks very, very diverse and that's actually been done instrumentally, then I think that's kind of false advertising. So I think it's. There is a balance there. As I said that the first example is where I personally. And that's where it comes back to having. To the voice of having a voice. I'm not going to just take instructions. I will be creating content that I feel is kind of accurate and that if that is an accurate depiction, then I wouldn't be creating it. But there is a balance. Nor do you want a piece of content with nobody in it. It's about having some representation and having the message. I don't want being clear because actually I think we all struggle with this.

But tell me if I'm hearing this, it's okay to put your best dress on or one of your best dresses on, but not okay to steal someone else's wardrobe entirely. As in, you know, this is, this is how we look some of the time. Not all the time, but, you know, definitely look like this some of the time. It's not like extremely different though. It's not like a complete misrepresentation, but it is probably, it is a little bit of our best off. Like, I guess, you know, marketing isn't showing everything, warts and all. It's not showing the absolute horribleness of some things. It's trying to represent something that's, that's true, but erring on the nice side of true. Is that fair?

Yes and no. So I, if I was creating that piece of content, and I have done in the past, is actually having, and we'll use women as an example Talking about what it's like to work that the warts and all because I think actually, you know, candidates respect that. You know, it is been a challenge being the only woman on a, on a call or actually often I'm in meetings and I'm the only woman and this is how I experience it. I don't think there's anything wrong with sharing the warts and all if it's done in a way that is not slamming but actually being quite. But this is why we want to change. So to go back to the dress example, it's. Yeah, absolutely. You know, showing the woman in the, you know, the Prada dress that I have one part addresses but not making out. I've got 12 because I've rented 11. So it's, it's, it's, it's that. But I, it's very much a balance and I think it's how, how you use that content and also, and Adam Grant talks about this a lot in his podcast about work is we cannot put the emotional attacks on the unrepresented group. So I'm a woman of color and if I'm called into every single video just to depict a woman of color, then I'm going to start that. That's not my job. Right. So again, it will be careful about the emotional tax that we put on the unrepresented groups just to help us build more in, more into the organization.

Particularly when those folks are often, you know, asked to head up ergs, get involved to try and attract talent into the business, jump on calls and do this all in addition to their day job. I get no extra payment for that. You're right. There's a heavy tax for the folks who perhaps do the most to make the difference. They're asked to do it over and over again. And the more successful you are at it, the more, the more you'll be asked to do it perhaps with, with less reward and less compensation, less, you know, even just, just removing parts of your job away. Yeah, I totally agree with you on that. So, so, so that that applies I imagine again, we're talking about a diversity here, but it's also issues. So for example, over dimensioning on, on the issues you support. Like we do all this for the environment type thing, the brew dog, brewdog example. Look at all these things that we, that, that we do. If it's disingenuous, it's completely wrong. But you know, you're okay to promote some stuff that's good because I think there's a fear that it's it's, it's, it's not cool to say good things about yourself anymore as an organization. I guess that's not true, is it? Like it's, it's okay to say good things about yourself as long as to your point, you're also being honest about the stuff that isn't true, but you can talk about what you're doing to improve it. Would that be fair?

Yeah. And I think it's about being humble. Not humble bragging, isn't it? So why would you not say you've won this award? But isn't it that just more beautifully done if the employee is explaining why that award means something to them versus it being on the corporate channel? So you know, we all lean into the edible index, you know, whether it's true or not anymore. I'm not sure about employees content being much more credible, but I know I will say this all the time, you know, CEO saying, you know, I've won this, this, this, this. And actually an employee posting about why it means something to them is just that, that much more credible, that much more readable. It's just seen as more palatable, isn't it?

I love that and agree with that. And it's a nice way to perhaps end is just to bring it back down to the brass tacks of that, that, that visceral reality which is who do you believe more and then can you build your strategy around that? Char, you've given us tons of advice tips from your career, from different roles, you've had different journeys in the employer branding funnel, etc, but I'm wondering if I could steal one more. We ask every guest on the show to leave us with one tip to add to our short list of tips for our listeners. Whether it be something that you have gathered yourself from your own experience or was passed on to you from a colleague up here during your career. What can you leave us leave our audience with today?

So my tip is more of a saying which I heard about eight years ago at a conference and I loved it and I truly believe it is. Constant consensus can lead to a collective coma. So don't always go for the default. Especially in my and my type of role, it's okay to be polarizing when you're thinking about content and messaging. Don't always go for the consensus. So constant consensus can lead to a collective coma. Remember that.

I love that. That's a tongue twister indeed. Jared, thanks so much for taking the time out to join us today. The light is fading behind you and in front of me as the sun sets so early in winter in this part of the world. But thank you so much for joining us. We look forward to having you on again.

Thank you. Bye.

And thank you all for joining us as well. Hopefully, hopefully you'll come back next week. We've got another great show lined up for you. We're going to be broadcasting live Wednesday, November 16th. My great colleague Folly Horset will be joining and taking this chair to interview Lee McQueen. And he's an entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of of an organization called Phoenix51. And he'd be talking about practical employee retention tactics to reduce what he calls talent waste. Tune in next week. We'll be live at 4pm UK Irish time. It's 11am in the east coast, 8am the west coast of the US we'll drop that in your podcast app by nighttime, certainly by morning on Thursday for you to listen to on your run or walk as well. We're on Apple Podcasts wherever you find our Apple Spotify, wherever you find your podcast. And you can find out more about the show, our previous 120, 21 episodes, our upcoming episodes, or you can ask to be on the show by going to socialtown.com the shortlist. See you next week.