The Shortlist with Bryan Adams

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you're tuning in from. My name is Johnny campbell. I'm the CEO and co founder of SocialTalent and your host for today's shortlist. I am a year older since I was last with you. Yes, you can see it in my eyes, you can see it in my hair and my balding. This which is all over. For those of you watching, those of you who are listening on our podcast, don't forget we're now on podcasts and any podcast medium you choose to go for. Spotify, Apple, whatever your your favorite is. Yeah, I'm a year older. It was my birthday a couple of days ago. Feels, don't feel much older, definitely don't feel wiser. And I think this has been the year that for most of us, we've changed the most. I think more has happened in the first six, seven, eight months of this year for all of us. This then happens in your average year of your life. So yes, transitioning to 43 was a big deal, but nothing to do with me. More to do what's going on in the world. And today we're going to be talking about some of those changes and revisiting a theme that we talked about three months ago, the theme of employer branding. And three months down the line, seeing how it's evolved again and is continuing to iterate and we're continuing to see companies get it wrong, get it right and try and fail and try and succeed. I'm going to have introduce our great guest today in just a few moments to drive that conversation. But a quick reminder for those of you who are new to the shortlist, if you'd like to catch up on any previous shows, please go to socialtalent.com the shortlist, where you can also find a list of our upcoming shows. And I'll be telling you a little bit more about next week's guest in about 40 minutes or so. Don't forget, for those of you listening live like Vivian. Hey Vivian, thanks for the hi on LinkedIn. We'd love to hear your questions and we really want to hear what you want to hear about employer branding. What's on your mind, what you'd like to discuss, what you'd like to comment upon, what you're seeing out there. So please do throw them into the comments either on LinkedIn or YouTube if you're listening live. And we'll absolutely address those. And my guest who's joining me today is no stranger to the shortlist and no stranger to difficult questions. I'm Delighted to welcome back Brian Adams, founder of PH Creative. Brian has been a guest on the show before. He appeared three months ago with our good friend Graham Johnson, talking about employer branding and its changes in the pandemic world. And back to join us again. Brian wants to give us an update on what he's seeing and we're going to dive into some themes and articles that Brian's been looking at over the last three months. But Brian, before we get into that, you might just remind the world of your own background, who you are, the fact that you don't sing Summer 69 at every wedding you go to. And I'm going to keep annoying about that every time we do this. Brian, over to you.

Well, first of all, Johnny, you don't look a day over 42 and 3/4, but hello and welcome, everybody. I'm Brian Adams, the chief Delegating Officer at PH Creative. We're a specialist employer brand agency. I'm coming to you live from Cornwall. I haven't been here, sir, for 25 years, since my parents brought me. And so I've caught a holiday show to be with you today, just to see Johnny's smiling face and I'm glad it did. Three months has absolutely flown by and the intro music, hasn't that got jazzy. It's got me in the mood for a great conversation. So looking forward to diving in with.

Johnny and it's hopefully got you in the mood for a beer because I know you're nursing one right beside off.

Camera there, so nice thing about this one.

So if you're listening, join us, grab a glass of beer, a wine, a coffee, depending on what time of the day it is for you and do share your questions and comments for Brian on the chat. But before we do, and if you're into jazzy music, Brian, we're going to start with the news. Our news today, there's a job, a job post went live last week that did not go unnoticed by our own marketing team. And that is for ASOs or ASOs or for those you remember them in the original days as seen on screen, the Fashion E Tailor that are now in nine countries, servicing 30 different countries around the world. And ASOs are advertising for an employer branding advisor. Big deal, one might say. But ASOs have gone through a bit of a difficult time over the last few months with regard to their employer brand, would you say, Brian?

Well, yeah, you know, they've hit the news in a number of ways, you know, for not too sort of positive aspects and, you know, some might say this is too little, too late. Some might say, well, you know, great, they're going to do something about it. And it's interesting, isn't it? Because, you know, all this does for me is point out that people don't know the difference between your employer brand reputation and your consumer brand reputation. The lines are bled, they're shattered. I think we touched on this slightly last time. You know, it's risen in people's consciousness, you know, how you treat your people or how you're reported on for any aspect of, of your behavior in the news can affect people's consumer, some buying decisions, you know, so this is something they need to get a grip of. I guess it's good that they're taking positive steps. But you know, is it a little bit, is it a little bit too late? You know, because I think the reputation organizations are carving out now are going to stay, stay around for many years to come, you know, and there's, there's a lot of news out there that's not going to do them the best of good when people do look back and reflect on how ASOs have behavior have behaved over the last few months.

And to clarify for those who aren't familiar with the story, how they have allegedly behaved is it's reported in the press over the last few months that several, several things happened that got them, got them bad publicity. One was an incident over the laying off of staff that they then didn't lay off, that they then relayed off and how they allegedly treated those staff and around their benefits and rights, which was sloppy to say the least. The true story behind these things, who knows. But certainly it didn't go well in the press and it got a bad reaction and got certainly banned by consumer image for them, but certainly also wouldn't work well if you're a growing E tailor because they're a company who actually grew through Covid. Apparently their sales are up 10% year on year as most E tailers were when the department stores were closed. So I imagine a company who would have been hiring through that period and hiring against people like Amazon and Tesco and others that perhaps maybe did have problems as well with their employer brand. But there's plenty of them out. I think there was plenty of choice if you were in retailer delivery for etailing companies during that time. And the, you know, the, the, the other issue they had was around some of their suppliers and questions around where they source their clothing or where they employ people to, to make that clothing as well. And you know, not obeying kind of fair trade list and stuff as well. And like when it, when a, when a brand like this has gone through a negative period, Brian. Right. And they're trying to hire someone to fix it. And we're not, by the way, certain that's what the hire's about. Maybe it's just filling the shoes of somebody who was doing this poorly before and they just want to keep it business as usual, you know. Can you recover, Brian, from a poor employer brand and consumer brand period like this?

Yeah, I mean, of course you can recover, but it depends how you go about it. Right? You know, if you employ somebody to just communicate better, then you might move the needle a little bit. But actually the only way to do this rather than storytelling is story doing. You need to start doing the right things. If you start doing the right things and people want to see that you do source your products and services ethically, you do treat your supply chain with dignity and respect and just abide by the law is a good start, obviously. But then how you treat your people, this is all a rich tapestry that adds up to one reputation. And what's important right now for asos particularly is to make some fundamental changes to how they go about the business because otherwise the consumer revenue may continue to be affected. But at the moment, people are being laid off left. Right. But let's not make the fatal assumption that it's a buyer's market and you're going to be able to hire the best people out there. So if you want to grow sustainably, make a difference, find the best talent out there. Organizations like this have to make some big changes and then it's actually quite easy to recover because from a very well publicized position of weakness, of course, you can tell the story of growth and strength and learning and moving in the right direction and enticed great people to work for you because clearly there's an impact on the world that's there to be made. So it really does depend. We've got to remember, employer brand is the how, not the what and the why. So the organization is probably a crossroads moment right now.

I want to bring in our next news article, Brian, to kind of further this point. And this is from Forbes, where Kim Whitler, who is a former CMO who went back to academia, was a general manager as well in CMO, sorry, in GM Motors. And she writes that CEOs need to involve marketeers in employer branding. And this is something that I know is dear to your heart about who does this and not only which function, which background you hire someone from, but also who's responsible for leading this. And I got two things out of this, Brian. Maybe you got the same or got different ones or got more from it. One is that, you know, she makes a strong argument as to why you should hire a marketing professional to do this within your HR organization, not a HR slash recruiting professional to try and be a marketeer. Get a marketeer to try and understand HR and recruitment. And the second was that, you know, this is a CEO challenge. You know, she didn't write this directed at Chros or recruiters or CMOs. She wrote this for CEOs saying, hey, you're a CEO of a big company, you need to take employer branding seriously. So I think that was the second point I got from this, which is that this isn't something you can just hire an employer branding assistant and go, hey, fix this for me. This is very much about an organizational thing from the top. If you're going to do this right, someone like ASOS isn't going to be able to just ask the new employer brand person to fix it. The, the CEO and her colleagues or whoever they are are going to have to really get into this as well. What do you think about that or what do you get from this article?

So it's a really interesting article and when you read it, it makes a lot of sense. I agree with the sentiment and I'm very pleased to see the conversation elevated to CEO because I think that's where it needs to be. But I think we're in a very interesting time. I've said this for a while, that people are the only true competitive advantage left in business. And so it' number one priority in any organization that really needs those marginal gains to win the best people, what makes the biggest difference. But I don't think you can neglect to involve the Chro. And I think where we've seen the last 200 years of the industrial revolution, we've seen CEOs and what is their second in command, the COO. I think we're seeing a fundamental shift where the Chro is taking that mantle and I think that partnership is very important. So whilst I agree with the sentiment and rising the priorities CEO, I think the Chro is absolutely essential into this mix. And then when you look at the marketer, it sort of warms my heart from one respect and I completely disagree for another one. First of all, employer brand isn't something that can be done in isolation. It's kind of like diversity, equity and inclusion shouldn't be its own Initiative, you know, this is something that needs to be homogenously delivered across the organization. So I would say the marketing organization, when we've worked with many organizations, from global multi billion largest organizations in the world to mid sized startups, if there's ever going to be a clash, any politics, any challenges, any fork in a road where it derails a project, it's where brand and marketing disagrees or has a challenge with employer brand. In our experience, there's a clear education gap because you cannot take the marketing principles and just pivot them to employ a brand. It doesn't work. It works to a point, but then it lets you down in a whole host of ways. And I think to assume that you can do that could be detrimental to the organization. And it's certainly not paying the most respects to, to employer brand specialists and chros who are working really hard to really understand the nuances of an employer brand. Because it's not all about attraction. I like the idea of involving marketing. I like the idea of them driving it for the simple reason is they've got all the budget, they've got money they can spend. And I really think employer brand complements marketing. The stories, the human stories of people behind a brand can influence across the board. So I think there's a lot of power in coupling them together. But I would say buyer beware if you know, if you're hiring a marketer to fix your employer brand because unfortunately it's just not that easy.

I want to thank Peter Fitzpatrick, who's Listening live on LinkedIn at the moment for sharing the article on the chat on LinkedIn. Those who want to dig it out and we're keen to hear your thoughts and comments on perhaps other companies you're seeing doing it right, doing it wrong, or stories you have your own organization. Please do share on the on the comments. I did appreciate there was one line in that article which you don't see in many articles with employer branding and that was and the author wasn't trying to make a big deal out of it, but she was straight out saying, you know, employer branding is about, about like I'll paraphrase this about what your current and future staff think of your organization. And she nailed it there. You know, she most people aren't that insightful to realize it's about your current staff know they just think it's all about the attraction piece. And she led with that, which I think is really, really important. And that's, that's something that again if you're going to and you mentioned. I think you phrased it really well there, Brian. It's worth just reiterating that it is very similar to De and I, where diversity, equity, inclusion isn't a step in the process. Did you take and move on? It's a layer that permeates everything. An employer brand is a layer that permeates everything because I think it's very, very, very, very closely aligned to employee engagement. And it's a complicated thing. Certainly, in my opinion, it's complex, it touches different areas. And certainly someone, you know, someone who's owning, if you like, employer brand, they're not really owning it, the business owns it.

Right.

They're the sponsor or the person whose job is to project, manage it through all its iterations and help the organization work with it. It's not just a functional task. And I think you can read a lot of job specs around employer branding that start with, and unfortunately end with things like managing our Facebook, LinkedIn, Glassdoor, responding to inquiries, responsible for copy that goes out about the organization and reviewing job ads. And you're going like, really? Is that it? Is that what you think it is? Yeah, you know, we go back to this regularly, Brian, but, you know, in the last three months since we spoke, can you maybe share some examples? Because we've looked at a bad example maybe of, of, of. Of. Of what happened with asos. What are you seeing that's good? You know what, what else? People talked about Airbnb as being, you know, as leading in a really good way and it was CEO driven. And then that's that. That created a whole movement around, around, you know, list sharing for staff and stuff. Right. What else have you seen that's that really inspired you to say, I love what they have done with, with. With perhaps a negative situation or maybe a positive situation. Can you share any stories there?

Yeah. So, yeah, I think the Airbnb one is like, you know, it's well talked about and all the rest of it. But what I like about that is their brand sentiment is as gained in positivity because of a moment of weakness and vulnerability. And it was how it was handled, you know, so what that shows me is authenticity and transparency, honesty and empathy and compassion are valued or more equitable over being strong in a marketplace like ASOS. For example, quite early on, Microsoft announced 12 weeks extra leave, parental leave for employees who needed to homeschool their kids. And it was interesting because I was having a conversation at the time saying, you know, there's never been a better time to spend your marketing Dollars in employer, brand. Because this is where the magic is happening right now in a smart organization, instead of saying we're great, buy from us, tell the stories of your people and this, that and the other. And Microsoft did that phenomenally well because they announced this and it was the greatest marketing of the week because everybody thought wow, what an incredible organization. And there have been many examples like that. And it just goes to show you do something of value in the employee space and it translates very well because people just see reputation, brand reputation and organizations doing the right thing and it doesn't matter where they're doing it in the organization. So that was one that stood out to me.

I didn't know that one actually. That's new to me Brian. And it's interesting because anyone listening who hears that may be cynical to go, oh, they wanted to get rid of staff. I had good friends at Microsoft. Microsoft were flat out during the pandemic, still are. They couldn't get hardware out fast enough to customers. They were literally having to make decisions to be given to our customers, to government employees, et cetera, et cetera, to help professionals worldwide. They've been moving to a kind of a virtual type experience for their customers for years. So all their cloud products went crazy fast. This is a company who needed their staff more than ever and they issued an option to take 12 weeks off to look after your parents. That's understanding. It doesn't surprise me. Satya Nadella, since he took over as CEO has been that compassionate people led CEO that his predecessors, balmer and stuff just really weren't or didn't come across as. And it's reflected, you look at the business reasons why Microsoft's share price the at the end of February was about $170 and it's up about 210 at the moment. Like they're booking the trend. They're doing really well in the world of tech, right against the, the stock market. And yeah, they got great products, great stuff, but it does come from an attitude and it does come from the top down. I don't think that would have come under bomber back in the day. I think that's the, the, the tone that Satya has set which has, has permeated because the products, you know, products maybe these days are less consumer and less relevant for the average employee. Microsoft's reputation as an organization, as an employer more to the point has really, really come full circle because they're a mature tech employer. They're hiring grownups, right? Let's be honest and grown UPS as in people with more responsibilities, whether it be mortgages or, you know, parental responsibilities are childcare responsibilities. You need, you need people to kind of work with you on those issues. When you're maybe starting out in your career, don't have those, those responsibilities. Maybe you have different values and different things you're looking for. I think they've really successfully done that. Anyone else that's kind of come. Come at you maybe from the negative side? Brian, who surprised you in the last three months? I don't want to focus on negative stuff, but, you know, only there's something that jumps out at you.

Well, there was the story of Baird, wasn't there? I think that's been well covered as well. They asked a number of employees in a very inhumane. Was it over email or text message? You know, and there's been a number of stories like that. And, you know, that was just a shocking decision of, you know, organizations making very naive, very naive mistakes that they will regret for a long time to come. Because, you know, that's not an organization that needed that sort of press. It's a very easy decision to, you know, if you're going to use their product or the one next to you. You know, people are making those decisions now and yeah, that one stood out and I think that will be talked about for a long time as well.

So can you remind us, Brian, you know, if you're looking at employer brand and you are perhaps the candidate who takes that job or applies for that job, or you're in a role where you have employer branding responsibilities, are you just being given it? You know, I know we talked before the show about how unfortunately some organizations are letting go of their employer, brand, specialist or person responsible. So I assume it's going to be dumped on somebody else. Right. But if you're in that position or, you know, you, you just are passionate about employer branding, what are some of the core principles that you would advise people to think of in, in those roles? People who can make change for employer branding? What are the kind of shining principles that you've seen in all the companies you successfully work with that help?

So, yeah, I mean, I can give you a couple of points here, but probably one of the biggest that I've been talking about very recently because of the current situation is, you know, obviously it needs to be evidence based because it needs to be authentic and transparent. But right now what's really important is to do the research to find out the current reality, like from an employee view. But you really need to get your the story straight in terms of what is the leadership view. Typically, the leadership view will give you a more aspirational view of the future. And that's good to know where the organization is going right now. Doubling down on really understanding where the organization is going or has to go or how it has to change is incredibly important in these times where organizations are changing rapidly. Because this is the difference between authentically representing what the organization looks and feels like right now and how it has to feel and how it has to look and how it has to act and behave tomorrow in order to stay relevant and to stay aligned with the business strategy. This is, this is a most effective, probably the most powerful tool to bring your people along with transformation. So for organizations going through a lot of change, you know, having that employer brand with the balance right of this is enough to wear now because it feels authentic and it's real. And then having a very honest conversation about and this is how we need to change. You know, we've done a lot of work recently around aspirational EVP pillars and articulating them externally and internally, explaining the why and the how and having people buy into. Yeah, we must change, we must embrace, we must move in that direction. You know, so it's not just a one and done. And this is how we want our culture to be. It's the most powerful tool to bring your people along with an organization that's going through change. So understanding the business strategy and pushing and pushing to understand what changes are coming, reflecting back. This is the culture, these are the behaviors that we're seeing across the organization. These are the common themes. What's perception versus reality, first of all, because sometimes, like, it's a communication issue. It's, you know, it's like actually everyone thinks that, but it's not the case. There's an opportunity for a quick win. But even in great companies, you have to change. So understanding what that is and building a framework to enable change right now, that's the most powerful tool in arsenal.

So one of the biggest issues since we last spoke that maybe has impacted employer brand, which who'd have thought to be a bigger issue that could impact employer brand than the pandemic and the company's response to it has been the social justice movement driven out of the US and you know, I'm always careful being, you know, and conscious of the fact that right now we've got two white guys talking about this issue. Right. Which is. Which is never a great situation for diverse thought. But, you know, we. This has been a Big challenge for organizations. Right. I've had calls from leaders who called me and we've been talking about, you know, what their response is. And, and you've had a CEO say, we want to go ahead of this and we're going to tell the world we're doing this and everything else. And you've had smart, perhaps leaders in their team go, ooh, hang on a second. We don't want to maybe raise our head up right now. I know you want to try and tell the world you're on this and you've got it, but we're not so proud of our board, of our hiring policies, of our practices. We've maybe dropped the ball. We maybe haven't taken this seriously enough. And, you know, for those organizations to go, hang on a second, to your point, we've got to look at our harsh reality first and we're not ready to talk about this. We're just not, you know, we got to do a lot of work about it. We can talk internally about it. And there's been issues and I don't know if you read about it again, issues where, you know, I believe this became an issue in LinkedIn. Why you would have thought always had a really positive employer brand, but again, how they address this in a company, all hands backfired on them by all accounts, in terms of their employees going, hang on a second, not that they did anything different, it's just that there was an attempt to create a narrative that just misfired or was misunderstood internally. And so there was a very strong backlash perhaps by a small minority against that which, you know, got out there and has, I think whether it's temporary or long term or medium term, has reflected negatively on their employer brand. They weren't there in that way before. So, like that social justice piece which is so important to all of us. Right. I think we're seeing organizations in a new light because maybe we didn't ask three, four months ago, where do you stand on this? And we perhaps didn't look deep enough as to where they stood. How are you seeing that play into the employer branding picture and how are you seeing organizations address that? Because I think it is very much slap bang in the middle of this employer branding space.

Yeah, I think people in general are much more aware, sensitive and vocal because of, you know, recent events. You know, so it's, it's on everybody's mind and I think, you know, some organizations have probably jumped the gun a little bit, but, you know, we've got to, we've got to remember a couple of things here. A lot of organizations have jumped the gun with positive intent, you know, and sometimes misplaced, and people are very sensitive and, you know, and there's been sort of several examples of backlash there, which is unfortunate. But the smartest organizations have held back and assessed where they are. The positive aspect that we're seeing is, first of all, there's never been a more socially acceptable time to be vulnerable and to say, hey, we're not where we need to be. The most important thing is for organizations to be judged on their commitment to improve their intent to change. And I think that's really where we've got to shift the conversation towards. Otherwise, we're still going to see organizations be in this paralysis of. If we say we're not proud of where we are actually, so we just can't join the conversation and do anything right now. But I do think, you know, as I say, there's never been a more socially acceptable time to say, look, we're not where we are. And the most important thing is to put a plan in place and take a step forward. It's interesting as an employer, brand, specialist, agency, we slowed down and we've talked a lot for many years about purpose, impact and belonging, belonging being the outcome. And we've talked to diversity, equity, inclusion experts and specialists or partners. And we've done a lot of listening and learning because we are set. Felt we needed to slow down. And what's really clear is there's an appetite across the board to have an integrated approach, you know, so, you know, if there is something to come out of this that's positive, I think there's an appetite for change. There's an acceptance that most organizations have to change. And we're seeing a more. More of a willingness to be open and transparent and honest about where people are and then focus the conversation on where they want to go.

Yeah, I think you're right there in terms of it's, embrace the vulnerability. It's, you know, don't hide it, embrace it and do something about it. Cathy Iverson's commented in Social justice companies need diversity plans and transparency. I think you're dead right there, Kathy. I think it's, you know, you have to have a plan and you have to actually have that transparency and that commitment to it. It's great when a CEO gets up there and commits to it, because I think these days they get up there and commit to it, they're going to be held to that, you know, which means you've got to make it work. You know, I'm hearing people contact us saying, Our CEOs gone out and said this. We have no idea how to implement it, but we have to do it now because it's said, we're a publicly quoted company. There's no way back. I love that. I love that those companies have, whether they intended to or not, but they put it out there, which means it's going to happen and change is going to happen because the markets won't let them, won't let them backtrack or forget about it. At least I hope not. Which means stuff actually might get done.

Yeah. And R Chro Share Mephi said the other day, finally, change is happening and we're not using the business case as a driver. Change is happening because the conversation is around this is the right thing to do. And that's a massive positive as far as I'm concerned. That's a massive shift in the conversation towards a place where things might actually change.

Yeah, I think it's, you know, it's, it's part of this, you know, strange time the last six, seven months where I think it really is. We've just become, for all good reasons, much more, much more attuned to the values that we hold dear and that organizations hold dear. And I ponder this to see. I think it's correlated with the anxiety a lot of people feel when you're more anxious in general, I think your senses are heightened and you're just not willing to tolerate stuff as much. You're not going to tolerate a bad candid experience. You're not going to tolerate your employer acting inequitably. You're not going to tolerate any of these things. You're going to get more excited about good stuff, though, as well. You know, that is probably a consequence of the pandemic and then the social justice movement coming just as we were beginning to kind of, you know, get out of lockdown. But we're still very heightened and still sensitive about these issues because, you know, unfortunately, this was nothing new. It's really unfortunate. The news wasn't new. It was news that the world had seen before. But the world's reaction to the news is very different. It's, it's. Our sensitivity is up in a good way, and we've reacted, I think, in a very positive way to it. And I think that's what you're seeing with employers, not only on the social justice issue, Brian. Right. I think that that's the thing, you know, it's, it's all the different ways that we feel about an organization where we're, we've got heightened sensitivity right now, and I don't know that's going to go away anytime soon. And employers, therefore, can't get away with just doing what we did and hope it doesn't get noticed in any shape or form.

Yeah, and you know, the other thing is, you said, you know, we're having a diversity conversation as two white guys. Do you know what? Actually, I think if Torren Ellis was joining us right now, he'd say, do you know what? That is a good thing. It's a great thing, actually. You know, because you're right, there's a more, there's a greater sensitivity around this. And, you know, more white guys and women need to have these conversations. And what I'm saying is there's champions inside organizations demanding changes, and that includes a lot of white people, you know, and that's got to be, that's got to be positive in our organization. We slowed down, we listened. And a number of things that we're doing to drive us forward has come from our people. We've spoken to our clients at length, and a lot of positive change and the plans that the CEO ultimately talked about publicly with conviction has come from the voice of the employee. And all of these are social signals that, you know, this isn't just a period of compassion or of a spike in awareness. This feels like something that, you know, is going to drive sustainable change for the better.

Yeah, like, it's, it's. I think you got to, you got to have, you know, in all these issues, you got to have empathy and understanding across all the different issues around employer branding. I think, you know, we're looking for more empathetic, understanding organizations, more, more real organizations, organizations that are more reflective of, of the society they live in, of the employee base they have. And it's kind of, it's, it's, it's, it's more democratized. You know, you have CEOs having to resign because of, of scandals around how they've acted, what they've done. And that's, that's massive. You know, and it is back to the employer branding piece. It's, it's really, it's really important that when we look at employer brand, you are genuinely saying that employer brand, to the point I mentioned earlier from the Forbes article, is about how your employees feel about you, and it's about how the rest of the world feels about you as an organization. The personality that you ascribe to that. And I think, you know, you mentioned it before on our last show. It starts with your current employees. Right. You know, how are they feeling? And you got to get that right in terms of making sure employer brand sits in its heart as a people who work for us today. And it's in getting that right that we deliver on attracting the right people to the organization and seeing employer branding not as a marketing function of recruiting, not as a recruiting aspect of marketing, but as a theme across the organization. Just like employee engagement that we're all responsible for, we all have to contribute to, and you have to have a really clear plan. But the great thing is that doing it right, whether it's, you know, doing employer brand. Right. Yeah, there is. There is a. There is a. There is a lot of companies who've gone before you who've done this Right. And that's okay. You know what I mean? It's okay to follow what they've done. It isn't actually a terribly difficult thing to solve for, as in, the principles aren't difficult. Getting it done is difficult because it's organizational. Why? It's about people getting people to change the way they think, the way they act, the way organizations act in enterprises as well, have to act differently. So I think, you know, if I go back five years and I think about the early days of employer branding, Brian, I think it would have been just a case of how do we make this look good? You know, and the job of employer branding was like, okay, things are like this. What do we need to look like this?

Great.

Can we. Can we just make it look like that? Tomorrow, let's hire a creative agency, let's bring them in, make some cool videos and posters, and let's make it all cool. You know, I think when you get. When you do an audit of employer branding, what's wrong? It's going to drive strategy for the whole organization. Big issues around people and culture for everyone from the sea level down. It isn't just a thing you can make a nice video about. I think that's probably the evolution. It's become just more involved and it should be because you can't gloss over this stuff. Right? The world doesn't allow us to do that.

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, to quote our good friend Bill Borman, I've heard him talk about employer brand for many years, so his opinion has probably changed since. But he talked about it very early on as putting lipstick on a pig, which always stuck me, you know, and possibly, you know, the origin of employer brand, you know, there's some value in that. There's some truth in that. But right now the superpower of an organization is leaning into the reasons why people should choose not to work at that organization as much as should choose to join. You know, it's about resonating with the right people and about culture match and about culture. Add, you know, a place where you can find real purpose in what you do. Believing in the purpose of the organization, believing in the impact the organization makes, finding an impact that you can make yourself and then looking around and feeling like you can bring your whole self to work and feel like it's somewhere you can belong. That's not easy. And because an organization looks attractive, sounds great and treats you well through a candidate experience, it doesn't mean that you're going to find fulfillment in all of those three things. So organizations owe it to candidates and owe it to themselves to work harder to find people who are better matched or can add to their unique culture. And therein lies the specialist challenge. So this is why, you know, earlier I was talking about sort of buy beware, you know, if you just apply marketing principles and become the most attractive organization on the planet, you're creating a lot more problems than you might actually want.

So I want to go back 180 or full circle, I should say full circle to our original example of asos. I want to contrast that against another company who. You know, I really love this story. I came across it many years ago. You probably know it yourself, Brian, and that's of GoDaddy, the domain registration company in the US and I wasn't familiar with this part firsthand, but a decade ago GoDaddy were known for their super bowl ads and they had a great kind of consumer brand that was, you know, in your face and they'd attack you and surprise you. But their super bowl ads were just sexist, right? And they, they kind of took a hard look at themselves in organization, say we're just not happy with this. And rather than saying let's sack our creative company and make new ads, which I'm sure they did as well, right? They went back and said how do we become a better, more diverse, gender wise organization? And their, the case study was written up and they did well while they were doing it, they were quiet enough about it, right? They weren't trying to make a speak song and dance about it. They just got busy doing things that could fix the challenge. And they went through a period by all accounts where they tried to bring in external speakers, they tried to push the dial towards more female representation amongst speakers. Amongst executives, amongst issues, because this was engineering wise, a largely male organization. And they wanted to create the feeling that there was a lot more women in the business until the point where there actually were more women in the business. And they felt more included and felt like they really were able to participate and you know, they were able to, you know, several years later come out and say we have transformed as an organization. I think to your point around like let's say a vasos are hiring for an employer brand person. The lesson might be that there was a company who were facing a similar issue maybe a decade ago and they went and said we need to transform organization to fix our employer brand new problem, not just hire an agency or hire an employer brand specialist. We actually need to take a hard look at ourselves. But actually then maybe towards the end of that you hire the employer brand specialist or the agency to go help us tell the story. Because that's the second they did. They told the story well once they got there.

Yeah. Well, I believe bringing in the employer brand specialist very early is a smart thing to do because you can document that story and that story of transition from a position of weakness or vulnerability or position of less than strength. Documenting that and starting with simple questions like what are you committed to? What is your conviction to change? What is the higher purpose in this organization that we're working towards? Now, if you don't get the satisfactory answers to those questions as you're interviewing for that employer brand advisor role at asos, then possibly don't take the job because it's very difficult to help an organization that isn't willing to change. However, if an organization is willing to change and they will commit to a higher purpose and there's a transformation on the horizon, then that's a very exciting time for an employer brand specialist to join the organization, document the story and it's actually really easy to be authentic about it and galvanize your employees and then use that to polarize your external candidate audience to find people who are ideally matched to continue the journey on with you.

Yeah, I think that's great advice for anyone who's maybe considering applying, has applied, is going to apply, encourage, maybe any of you eligible apply, see what happens. I'm going to say I'm going to be optimistic here and hope that anyone applying who gets into stage is going to find that there's genuine commitment for change behind that, that there's an authentic realization that we didn't handle that well and we don't want to be that kind of a company. We don't want to be known for that. Hey, we're not just doing it when doing it to make more money. We just want to do better. And would you help us? And I'd hope that anyone interviewing for that job or applying for that job gets that sense. And if you do go for it, if you don't walk away, there's other jobs, there's better opportunities, there's better causes to fight for. Brian, we're coming to the close of our 45 minutes. It's flown in as usual. Whilst I see there's any last questions from our audience, by the way, we've got lots of shoutouts saying hi. We've got Ambrosia, good friend of ours, saying hello, John, thanks for the birthday wishes. John happened as well, which is great, which is awesome. And some great other comments that I didn't get a chance to mention, which is great. But Brian, you added to our first season of the shortlist with some advice. I want to see if you can give us some updated advice for our listeners that either you've heard or you want to share with our audience that can make our shortlist for season two.

Yeah. So I've seen some organizations let employer brand managers go recently. And my advice to organizations looking if they have to make cuts is protect those roles as much as possible because they're more valuable than you think. Those who are in those positions, the moving target that is employer, brand and EVP at the moment, it's vital that you spend a lot of time listening, getting close to what it's really like so you can be the authentic voice of your organization and get closer to the business, business strategy so you can be a very effective tool to effect change. If you do find that you're asking those questions and you are privy to what that change is, then there is an incredible opportunity to change the lives of hundreds of thousands of people to help them find a purposeful position in your organization to affect that change, document it, tell the stories, but ask and demand for the conviction for change and, and think about the concept of story doing rather than storytelling, you know, because I think that will stand you in great stead to be having brilliant conversations internally that then can be used as a superpower externally to find more great people to help you grow. I like that.

Story doing rather than storytelling. I like that. We've one last question. You're not going to get time to answer these right, but maybe if you wouldn't mind commenting and then maybe if you have a resource that you on the ph creative site or elsewhere that you might be able to suggest that could help these listeners. Two questions. I think they're quite related. What steps can we take to measure employer brand success and what steps can we take? Sorry, how will we measure employer brand success and what steps can we take to create a proactive employer brand? What would you recommend any resources for someone to research that fully? Because I think it's a probably a much longer answer than you can give in the next 60 seconds.

So unfortunately there isn't a very short answer to this. But I would encourage anybody to not just tolerate or do with the default vanilla employer brand metrics work harder than that. So look at the talent flow of where your talent is coming from. Think about how to measure that. If you're measuring glassdoor, measure it in relevance to your talent competitors measure the percentage of valued applicants that you're receiving as a really good indicator to the calibre of talent that is ideally matched or a culture add to your organization rather than just the volume of applicants. So there's just a few. But of course Jonny, of course there's a lot more smart metrics in the book Give and get employee branding that's available in all good bookshops on Amazon.com.

So I had a pre read of that before you guys published that. It's an awesome book. Genuinely, it's worth the investment. It's a really good book, I'm sure Brian. Maybe it might give you a discount code. You reach out to him. Put it in there. And one last comment from Peter Fitzpatrick. Peter's been great in the comments. Thanks Peter. His key takeaway is do what you need to do on employer branding to polarize the external candidate tone. He said. Thanks. I think it's a great, great piece of advice Brian. We hope to have you again on a future season. Thanks again for joining us. Sorry for interrupting your vacation but go back to it. Look after your wee one and mate, enjoy that beer. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you again. And we'll see you again next week where we've another great guest. Joining us next week we have Mark Coleman who is the founder and CEO of Unleash. Unleash is arguably the largest and you know, most well attended by senior executives, HR conference and event in the world today and on normal years operating in the us, Europe, the uk. And Mark is an Irishman from Waterford and he as the CEO of Unleash really is at the forefront of understanding what's happening amongst some of the best thought leaders in the world. Thanks to Mark. I've been introduced and met some of the many, many brilliant people who've inspired me and hr, like Erin Meyer, who was the keynote speaker in Paris on the second last day last year. I got to hear her thoughts on culture and the culture map. But Mark's obviously running an events company. It's hard to run events these days, but Mark's been busy serving leaders and talking to the HR community and he's going to join us next week on Wednesday, August 19th to talk about the unexpected, the challenges, the uncertainty and the change that has come about from the pandemic. And asking is all this change actually a good thing? And delving into the research from one of their recent surveys, an in depth survey that they've run. Mark has the research and he wants to share that with us to see what the world thinks. So that's August 19, that's at 4pm UK time. That's going to be 11am on the east coast of the US, 8am on the west coast, 11pm in Singapore. Do join us and you can register for that and find out more on socialtown.com the shortlist, where you'll find out about all our shows, our previous shows and our future upcoming shows. We've got a great line of speakers all the way up to October, November at this stage, but if you'd like to join us on the show, if you've got a voice that you'd like to share, please do reach out to us and you can do so on the forum on the shortlist page. I've overran. It just happens when you get to my age. But I hope you've enjoyed the conversation, the chat. Do join us again next week. I hope to see you then from me. Goodbye. I hope you enjoy the show.