Imagine You’re Not You.
Jul 20, 2010 Consulting, Digital, Employee Engagement, Employer Branding, Internal Communications, Millennials, Recruitment, Research, Social Media/Social Recruiting, Strategy
How did you get here?
Maybe you followed a link from a tweet. Or someone sent you the link via e-mail. Or you subscribe to the RSS feed of this blog.
The point is, in our multi-linked world people arrive at the same destination via very different paths. So when you design communications one of the first considerations must be to understand those paths and make sure your communications strategy takes each of them into account.
This is the philosophy behind the use of “personas” in communications design. Personas (or “personae” if you had Latin beaten into you by the Jesuits as I did) have been used in marketing research for roughly twenty years, mostly by packaged goods makers. Each persona is an amalgam of a set of prospective customers for the product under consideration; a product may have from a handful to a couple of dozen personas depending on the complexity and variety of the potential audience.
What the Dog Whisperer Can Teach Us About Employer Branding
Jun 15, 2010 Corporate Culture, Employee Engagement, Employer Branding, Internal Communications, Millennials, Social Media/Social Recruiting, Uncategorized
Earlier this month, the New York Times published an interesting article, “What Pets Can Teach Us About Marriage.” It recaps a journal article written by a clinical psychologist which proposed that if we treated our spouses or partners the way we treat our pets, a lot of relationships would be much happier.
Photo: Photo8.com | Used by Creative Commons license.
This got me thinking about the other important relationship in most people’s lives, i.e., the one they have with their employers. What if employers treated their employees the way pet owners treat their pets?
How often, for example, have you heard a manager complain that employees aren’t following instructions and then end in frustration by saying, “I sent them a MEMO.” Now, if you own a pet, think back to house-training: there were repeated lessons, a few accidents, and then eventually Fido or Mittens “got it.”
How to Avoid Cynicism When Trying to Engage Your Workforce.
Apr 12, 2010 Consulting, Corporate Culture, Employee Engagement, Employer Branding, Uncategorized
We have all had our share of bad experiences with tradespeople. You hire someone to repair your drain, install new lighting on your deck or diagnose the “Check Engine” light on your dash. They treat you like dirt: they don’t return calls; they don’t arrive when they agreed to; or your car wasn’t ready when it was promised. Worse, they may do shoddy work.
After such an experience, you chalk them off your list. You may even go out of your way to warn your friends and neighbors never to use the services of these people.
Have you ever had one of these tradespeople call or e-mail you a few months or even years later, pretending like nothing happened, cheerily asking for your business? You immediately begin to laugh, thinking, “As if! It’ll be a frosty day in Hades when I call YOU again.”
The Engagement Lifecycle
Apr 1, 2010 Employee Engagement
Engagement has long been thought of exclusively in the arena of new hires (training and on-boarding programs) and established employees (career development, recognition and awards), but those are only two parts of the talent lifecycle, and engagement touches them all.
As part of Hodes’ recent Engagement Study, HR and Communications professionals were interviewed about engagement programs they had in place; six of the nine mentioned some program or practice that addressed the candidate and potential candidate experience. One organization’s on-boarding survey sought first to assess problems in the hiring process before examining more traditional measures of engagement. Another interviewee discussed a manager training program that taught interviewing skills focused on hiring for fit within the company. Field recruiters, career sites, and diversity initiatives were all cited as programs in place to build engagement.
Paul Austermuehle Engagement Follow Up
Feb 12, 2010 Employee Engagement
Some organizations count 2009 as a success…but who?
If you took a man on the street poll and asked if people would be willing to relive 2009, you would probably hear an overwhelming number of “no” answers.
But that’s not the case for everyone. Bernard Hodes Group conducted a research study about employee engagement trends, and what we found out is that more than 30% of those participants experienced either flat revenue or growth.
That’s right, I said growth. And what’s more interesting, those companies with revenue that stayed flat or grew were also more likely to invest more in employee attraction, engagement and messaging.
Coincidence? Read more about this trend in an ERE blog post by Hodes’ Paul Austermuehle.
Social Media – “Hand-to-Hand Combat” for Recruiters
Feb 8, 2010 Corporate Culture, Employee Engagement, Employer Branding, Internal Communications, Millennials, Recruitment, Social Media/Social Recruiting
An odd social media recruiting primer.
Read the HR blogs or follow HR pundits on Twitter and most of the conversation revolves around social media. Which tools work best for what, how various approaches work, and gossip about the vendors and their stars fill the screen daily.
And, while I am a big believer— and contributor— to this cacophony, I believe it’s time to review our social media practices more carefully.
Start with the latest Edelman Trust Barometer. This annual global survey tracks the credibility of various sources of information, from government agencies and the media to “people like me.” For the past several years, the latter category has risen rapidly as a trusted source, while business and government cred have been falling. The recently-released 2010 Trust Barometer, however, shows a slight reversal of that trend. The percentage of people who trust “a person like yourself” fell from 45% to 25%, while the percentages of those who trust CEOs or government officials rose 9% and 6% respectively.
Engaging Diverse Talent
Jan 29, 2010 Diversity & Inclusion, Employee Engagement, Research
The latest Conference Board figures show the lowest level of job satisfaction (45%) since 1987 (when the organization began tracking it). The decades-long decline is reason enough not to lay the blame entirely at the feet of the Great Recession, but layoffs, salary freezes, muddled corporate communications, and the other symptoms that compose Survivor Syndrome can certainly account for some of the recent drop in workplace happiness. But does a gradually reviving job market mean employees are going to become more satisfied in their jobs again or will their bad experiences lead them to look for new employers?
Tags: Diversity Matters
What’s the story? (Part 1)
Jan 15, 2010 Employee Engagement, Employer Branding, Internal Communications, Uncategorized
Witty. Droll. Insightful. Alain de Botton’s new book, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, is a true pleasure for those of us who do our work in the world of employer branding. It’s knee-slapping funny and wicked smart.
And, as things turn out, it’s also helpful in analyzing the recent Conference Board finding that 55% of today’s workers are “dissatisfied” with their jobs.
In a moment of serious reflection, de Botton poses and answers a key question for Employer Branding enthusiasts.
“When does a job feel meaningful? Whenever it allows us to generate delight or reduce suffering in others.”
He follows with this:
“An endeavor endowed with meaning may appear meaningful only when…particular workers can make an imaginative connection between what they have done with their working days and their impact upon others.”
What’s the story? (Part 2)
Jan 15, 2010 Employee Engagement, Employer Branding, Internal Communications, Millennials, Uncategorized
“We’ve been conditioned to think that the best way to motivate ourselves and others is through external rewards like money (the-carrot-and-the-stick approach.) That’s a mistake, Daniel H. Pink says in his transformative new book. The key to high performance and satisfaction is intrinsic, internal motivation: the desire to follow your own interests and understand the benefits in them for you.”
So says the book blurb for Daniel Pink’s new Drive.
It’s timely for sure. First, because Pink’s emphasis on intrinsic rewards is spot-on with Hodes’ approach to employer brand discovery and expression. But more importantly, because it helps explain this startling development…
Fidelity has published a new research report on GEN Y that finds a full 25% of Gen Y workers plan to stay with their current employers until retirement!!!
Social Media Goes to War
Jan 11, 2010 Employee Engagement, Employer Branding, Social Media/Social Recruiting, Uncategorized
MQ-1 Predator drone Photo: JimNtexas on flickr.com
The New York Times reports that the Air Force uses social media to direct ground forces battling in Afghanistan.
“ ‘It’s mostly through the chat rooms — that’s how we’re fighting these days,’ said Col. Daniel R. Johnson, who runs the intelligence centers.
“He said other analysts, mostly enlisted men and women in their early 20s, studied the hundreds of still images and phone calls captured each day by U-2s and other planes and sent out follow-up reports melding all the data.
“Mr. Bigham, a Raytheon executive (they designed the system – Ed.), said the new system would help speed that process. He said it would also tag basic data, like the geographic coordinates and the chat room discussions, and alert officials throughout the military who might want to call up the videos for further study.”