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.
Lessons from LeBron
Jul 12, 2010 Corporate Culture, Employer Branding, Millennials, Recruitment
LeBron leaves Cleveland for South Beach.
Many sports fan were glued to their televisions last week for what was hyped as “The Decision.” LeBron James, star of the Cleveland Cavaliers, was going to announce on national TV his choice of where he plans to play next season.
I was one of those who tried to ignore the hoopla. Basketball is a team sport, after all— what about the other players on the Cavaliers? What are they: chopped liver?
As much as I decried the hype, however, I have to admit that the episode had its teaching moment: LeBron is the new poster child for employer branding.
Consider the situation. James was admittedly one of the most naturally gifted players in the history of the game. He skipped college and was drafted by his local franchise, the Cleveland Cavaliers. The team had never been a power in basketball. Now, with LeBron, they were a force to be reckoned with.
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.”
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.
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!!!
Human Resources’ Future Leaders
Sep 24, 2009 Hodes Happenings, Millennials, Social Media/Social Recruiting
The Tampa offices of Bernard Hodes Group recently hosted the HR Tampa Student Chapter Meeting – these are students that are currently enrolled in an HR field of study and want to pursue and/or make a career change to an area within Human Resources.
It was a great opportunity to reach these forward thinking folks and Mike VanDervort, author of the blog, The Human Race Horses, kicked off the meeting by sharing his experience in using social media. He talked about how he has been able to gain expertise, engage in conversations with leading HR professionals who have an influential voice in the HR field, share articles, ideas and networking events specifically catering to human resources. He touched on Twitter, Facebook, and various Blogs as well as discussed the importance of being part of the conversation that is happening with the thought leaders in HR.
Tags: Millennials, social media