Ep. 019- Employer brands under pressure
In this episode, you’ll meet Bryan Adams, Founder & CEO of PH. Creative based in the UK and US.
2020 has been the greatest stress test for employer brands. The difference between what organisations do and HOW they do it has never been more important during these challenging times. Whether you've been furloughed, chosen to continue working or made redundant. Regardless of the situation. HOW companies have acted during COVID will show the true colours of their employer brand. Fact or fiction. One thing is for sure. People won’t forget.
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https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryanadams1/
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Giveaway competition
http://ph-creative.hs-sites.com/en-gb/chance-to-win-a-free-copy-of-give-get-employer-branding
Experience Designers Ep 19
(I use a mix of automated transcript software and editing for readability )
Steve Usher 0:07
Brian, welcome to the experience designers.
Bryan 0:11
Hi, Steve. Thanks for having me.
Steve Usher 0:13
Very welcome. So, Brian, just for the audience, just a little bit about yourself and your background, a little bit more about pH creative as well.
Bryan 0:23
Yeah, sure. So, I'm Bryan Adams, the CEO and founder of pH creative. We've been going I think it's getting on for 16 years now. So we started out as a digital marketing agency for the first five years but then quickly specialized in the recruitment space. really honed in on employer brand, probably the last six or seven years, really. So I'm a reformed marketer. Big, big passion of mine is storytelling, and branding, you know, so it's, it's everything I love in one day. One space, you know, so we've got a great creative team, we'll focus on strategy. And I think ever since we've specialized, we've gone from strength to strength and been fortunate enough to work with some phenomenal people and clients, you know.
Steve Usher 1:15
Yeah. I mean, I've watched your journey. I mean I know. Dave Hazlehurst and yeah, so no, I'm very familiar with pH and the journey you guys been on? I've always been very, very envious and very respectful of what you guys have been doing. So it's very, very good stuff. And just tell me a little bit about what was that trigger Brian? In terms of the when you kind of start delving all kind of specialists specializing into the employer brand, what were you seeing in that at that moment in time, that kind of, you know, that saw the opportunity, and you pivoted towards that?
Bryan 1:49
Yeah, so it was it was more on luck than any sort of strategic genius or decision really, we we had a couple of clients in the recruitment space and we started To build up momentum without noticing rarely, but when we looked at it, we started to find opportunities to make real big strides. We saw the HR industry in a recruitment space as being sort of a few years behind marketing. So remember, in the days from used to say, recruiters need to think like marketers. And so, you know, we jumped in, and we felt like we had a lot of value to add, and we kind of didn't agree with some of the conventions and traditional approaches, so we thought we could disrupt make a difference. And, I guess, just from a practical perspective, overnight, we went from having 6,000,001 competitors in digital marketing to a handful of employer brand agencies that we would then compete against, so we felt it was a place where we could make our mark.
Steve Usher 2:52
Yeah, nice. Very good. Very good. Okay, so you'll be really well positioned then because I want to do for the audience is to create a bit of a journey, if that's all right? Delve a little bit into probably those last seven years, actually, just to give us a bit of a sense of from your perspective, like a high level overview around, how is employer branding evolved, perhaps in the last seven to 10 years, you know, aligning to your own journey, of course. How would you describe that kind of historical journey, and I won't get into COVID impact just yet, but let's get back up kind of seven to 10 years, how would you describe that kind of evolution of the employer brand?
Bryan 3:31
So I think right, in the beginning, it was very much internally focused and process driven. And, you know, I think the industry woke up to the fact that it needed to be audience focused and experience led rather than internal processes, which that sort of piqued our interest. And as I say, you know, it started out with a premise of recruiters need to take more like marketers and start marketing the idea of course, organizations as, as employers, and start to describe and articulate the employee experience a little bit differently. And I think, you know, as talent, as it became more competitive to attract talent that really sort of changed the focus of organizations and you know, like anything else that meant, you have to think differently and try new things. And with the introduction of social media and digital marketing, I think, you know, worlds collided, and that was that was the start of something. And I think only probably in the last four years, five years, we started to realize that we were doing it slightly differently to everybody else. Just from what we could see applying our sort of creative brains from different worlds. We started to sort of galvanize a framework that we believed in and we started to get success. So you know, we've we've started to forge our own path. But we're fortunate enough to events seen the employer brand, landscape start to mature and it become a thing. You know, and we've we've been a participant in the community ever since Really?
Steve Usher 5:13
Yeah. I mean, I certainly there's been, you know, it's like the employee experience right now, I think it's going to go on a fairly similar trajectory in terms of it being a discipline and evolving. But like employer branding, you know, now we have Global Head of employee brands, we have whole teams and whole functions now that drive drive the strategy and obviously the application of it internally within companies. Do you think it really mature like at an absolute level or just still think, pre COVID you still think we had a lot still to go from an industry point of view in terms of working ideations, even developing an EVP adopting employer brand? Because it seems like the big players are doing it really well, or some of them, but I don't know, still got the sense that perhaps still wasn't really, you know, we weren't quite at that kind of top end of that kind of that maturity curve. Yeah.
Bryan 6:18
We're definitely nowhere near the top of any maturity curve. I think up until a couple of years ago, maybe even now, it's like, some people are still debating, you know, what is employer brand, you know, so just defining and agreeing as a as a community and as an industry, what it is, still seems to be a lack of certainty and clarity around that, you know, you you don't see people in marketing departments pontificating over what is brand, you know, something like that. I also think, you know, organizations are still unsure of where to put employer branding inside an organization who owns it. An interesting thing, probably just in the last couple of years Is and I sort of project into the future. Now a bit of a prediction. As you know, I think employer brand is starting to rise up the hierarchy and sort of seniority of organizations such that rather than it be owned by recruitment, talent, attraction, internal comms is definitely sort of starting to sort of forge its own path, even to the point where I can see a world where employer brand owns talent, attraction, talent, employee engagement, and talent experience across the board. And I personally believe that's the rightful place for it. And you know, we're certainly seeing C suite opinion and just awareness change such the employer brand is now you know, one of the biggest priorities in a lot of leadership's leadership organizations. I'm sorry, a lot of organizations leadership, so there's There's still a long way to go.
Steve Usher 8:01
Yeah, yeah. Just out of interest. What's the disparity between the opinions on what employer brand actually is? What's the different kind of descriptions that are coming out?
Bryan 8:14
I've seen some weird and wonderful descriptions even just like, well, people don't want to call it employer branding, call it talent brand and listen to us. We can't even agree on a title, nevermind the definition. But I think there's still a lot of confusion people perceive it as as recruitment marketing, and that thing that you do to attract people towards an organization, you know, whereas we very much see employer brand as something that resides inside an organization. You know, it's basically the perception and reality of the employee experience and how people articulate what it's like to be inside a company. You know, everybody, every organization has an employer brand, whether it's by design or not, is you know,
Steve Usher 9:00
Yeah, absolutely. whether they like it or not, it's there. So let's, um, let's, let's talk about the current situation. 2020. Actually, let's not focus too much on a virus. But undoubtedly, it's had an impact on every walk of life for sure. But my question to you, Brian, is what the hell just happened from an employer brand point of view? What has happened? What, what what some of the things that you've seen from this situation?
Bryan 9:34
So interesting times, to say the least. But you know, when you look at the downturn in 2008, and people are even comparing it to the Great Depression in 1920. We've just seen the world come to a halt in with such severity in 12 weeks that actually played out over 12 months in 2008, and so on. You know, we've seen a timeline compress. And what that's done is put organizations under great pressure. And there's been great disruption across the board in a very short space of time. So, and, you know, not surprisingly, there's been panic stations across the board for many, many different reasons. You know, some organizations have suddenly had to shrink down and they've had to let hundreds if not thousands of people go, and some organizations have had to scale up dramatically, like with with just a few minutes notice, you know, online. So, turbulent times, you know, has forced organisations to tactically have to react. And I think what's happened, you know, in the wake of the the initial sort of tsunami of change and disruption, is organizations are now starting to question like, how could we, how could we have handled this better? What have we learned? What's the strategic way of being able To manage our reputation, our ability to hire our ability to engage and retain people. And of course, the conversation is now quite rightly starting to tend to employ brand and know how to drive organizations forward and deal with all of those things in a little bit more of an organized way.
You know, so it's, it's been very interesting to say the least.
Steve Usher 11:27
I saw some early examples. This is before the government announcement in the UK, with obviously, furlough support, etc. And there was some organizations who there was an estate agency firm who kind of pulled the trigger really quickly and the stories that were kind of emanating out from some of the staff in terms of just how badly it was managed and how brutal actually it was, how unhuman in many instances. My immediate reaction was like, boy, you're gonna struggle when things improve, because every you know, we've been around long enough, Brian, we can see the cycles. When this comes back, you're gonna struggle. I think right now people are not going to forget how they're being made to feel whether that's good or bad through this situation how those organizations have handled this situation?
Bryan 12:21
Yeah, absolutely, I think the legacy of how organizations are treated that people will stay around for a very long time, I think the COVID bubble of you know, how did you treat your people during that period? You know, and I've said this a lot lately, but it's true. You know, they say, true character is revealed on the pressure. And what we're seeing is what organizations really made off what they believe in, you know, what and how they value their people. And that the Sorry, sorry, state of affairs is, you know, the assumption is there's a tension between doing what's right financially for an organization and doing what's right for the well being of the people. And you know, and I say that, I don't say that lightly. But the unfortunate thing is if you overlap those things, the financial well being of an organization and the well being of people, if you overlap them and see where see where there is an overlap, that is the opportunity to galvanize an internal employer brand, galvanize the culture, you know, show leadership and for the organizations getting it, right. We're finding even though everybody's working alone in isolation, people have never felt more together, you know, the sense of belonging has got better. Yeah. When organizations have shown leadership and communicated with great certainty and clarity, then the opportunity to feel that sense of impact that you can make as an employee to the contribution of the well being of your organization has never been better. And, and also feeling that sense of purpose that what you're doing matters and it's the right thing. So, you know, leadership and communication is essential now to communicate current reality and also demonstrate where the organization's going and needs to get to as the future reality. And this isn't the time to switch your people off and have them feeling disenfranchised. This is where you need your people to pull together, especially if there's only 50% of your left or worse in some cases. And, you know, there's never been a more socially acceptable time to be vulnerable right now, as organizations, there's a lot of opportunity there to show empathy and compassion and make big expectations and demands of your people. And in the face of adversity. People are capable of wonderful things, you know. So it's, it's not necessarily the circumstance. It's how you communicate and how you demonstrate the mindset and compassion for your people right now that's going to make or break organizations. I think there's going to be some very big lessons learned after this, there's going to be some case studies that are dissected for many years for holiness. And you know, yeah, organizations are either going to be on the right side or the wrong side of this. Yeah.
Steve Usher 15:16
It's gonna be interesting is I have to say one of the ones that stood out for me I know it's been well documented in recent weeks is the was the Airbnb example. And that that that quite frankly, that beautifully crafted communication, which was Yeah, very, very transparent, very open, very supportive. really spoke to the people. And yeah, really, I was just a lesson in my mind is a master lesson of of dealing with this kind of, obviously tragic and very challenging situation, but in a way that's very humble and very, but also commercial as well, you know, in the data. They are a business and they have to make those very difficult decisions but in the right way.
Bryan 15:58
Well, it's a very good example because Clearly they're vulnerable financially right now. And that's very obvious to the world. But how they've just treated their people people have been talking about, and they will remember and it's probably altered the sentiment of their brand in a very positive way significantly. And and I was chatting about Airbnb the other day to too few people. And two people have said to me independently, you know what I never thought about booking Airbnb in the past. But as a result of that, I've recently booked an Airbnb in and it just shows you the power of employer brand knows no boundaries between influencing somebody as a candidate or employee or a consumer and seeing now his employer brand stories in the media, people don't know it's an employer brand story, but it's changing public perception from a consumer perspective as well. So it's very profit, I would say the same for Microsoft, and how they've offered 12 weeks additional parental leave for their for their employees purely because they understand the situation of dealing with a household as well as getting worked on when working from home. And it's the greatest marketing campaign an organization could possibly have right now, right
Steve Usher 17:20
now, I totally agree. Totally. That's why I just, I just scratched my head sometimes because it's, this is absolutely one of the greatest opportunities that you'll know. It's, I know, it's a bad situation. But if you do this, play this right in a really, really good positive way. It could really, you know, pay dividends in the future, even if you look at it just purely from a financial reputational point of view, you know, obviously, the biggest element is the human aspect. But if you just got that bit right, boy, you know, could really take advantage of that and certainly escalate your own branding in a competitive marketplace once things start to kind of come back. So yeah, it's interesting. Yeah.
Bryan 18:01
It shows the power of employer brand for sure.
Steve Usher 18:03
Yeah, I mean, I said it as soon as this happened. I was like, This is the biggest stress test right now. This is in the moment right now the biggest stress test for employer brand. So I think it's a, and one thing I would say is, I think, I think we're in for a bit of a Renaissance, I think it's going to really, you know, if we thought there was kind of some interesting kind of, you know, events and evolution of employer brand in the last 5 to 10 years, I think the next five is going to be super interesting. Which brings me really nicely on to this interesting, talk about timing here, Brian. So. So there's this interesting kind of, the universe was obviously listening to you at some level. So it was interesting convergence of this, you know, hugely impactful period and the release of a book that you co authored with Charlotte Marshall.
Bryan 18:55
Yeah, I mean, it's funny, isn't it? Because I agree with you. I think this is the employer brand. I think this is the stake in the ground. But it's probably going to take 12 months, a lot of people sort of looking back with hindsight, you know, for all of that story. play out, you know, and we've read the book, and it's, we plan the launch. It was March 17. And I think the world stopped on March 15. And we ended up delaying the launch of the book, basically the worst time ever to launch to launch a book. But, you know, what, with with everything that was happening, you know, we will feel philosophical about it. And it was like, you know, because nobody cares. No, nobody's, you know, it just paled into significance in terms of priority. But it was it was interesting, though, you know, possibly the worst time ever to launch to launch a book book. Well, there you go. You know, we got out there and it's done pretty well and it continues to do so I feel pretty lucky to be honest.
Steve Usher 19:55
Yeah, definitely. So it was just just out of interest. What was the what was the I know you've written But before was it getting goosebumps? I think I remember it was one of those right? That's right. Yeah. Um, and what prompted you to write this one? Just give me a sense of what was Yeah.
Bryan 20:12
So, essentially all it is is I mentioned earlier before, our approach to employ a brand is different to conventional traditional approach, which essentially is it's a lift and shift from the world of marketing and branding. So that's, that's typically the typical approach to employ branding. Probably I've naivety more than anything else, we have a completely different approach. Now framework and philosophies is different and we call it the give and get of employer brand, which, essentially, rather than employer brand, being there, like a magnet to attract talents, we see it more as a Smart Filter to be used to actually determine people, you know, to repel more people than it compels towards your brand. So I'm faced with a few options to try and sort of get our message out in a sort of burning ambition to that we believe this was the right way to tackle employer brand versus what was out there. We had a few a few choices, really. And we opted for the idea of writing it down and sort of giving it away to the well, because we believe this is this is the way the industry should approach employer brand. And hopefully, we can achieve that, you know, because by taking people through argument, get employer branding framework, we've made massive differences to huge multibillion dollar organizations as well as you know, mid sized startups and so on so forth. And we yet it sounds counterintuitive, the approach that we take, but yet to talk to a head of an employer brand or talent attraction, or anyone who's read the book, everybody tends to agree. It's like, Oh, my God, of course, that makes so much sense. So we want to get out there and explain how to do it. Yeah.
Steve Usher 21:59
So let's talk about this. Beacuse I love the it's it's one of those things so I think thank you for the for the copy by the way and I I haven't finished it all yet in terms of its focus but obviously got through a fair chunk. The thing about it is it is actually really simple but yet yeah, I can imagine so many organizations because it's when you're in a room probably designing, you know, the employer brand and the whole attraction, the magnet, the moat, we need more talent. And I think in the last since the 2008 financial crisis and we've been in this period of, you know, everyone's looking for the top talent and everyone's looking for for it. So this kind of top of the funnel is just been just stuff as many as you can at the top. Let's just get as many in and then we'll, we'll select the few. But what's really interesting is I think that in my mind has driven the dissatisfaction in candidate experience, because just getting too many people coming in and knocking on the door and you're not repelling it, you're not repelling enough. And so I just thought it was really, really brilliant opening when you kind of explained it, because I was like, that's absolutely amazing. So just give us a sense of like the construct of the the idea and the whole giving get peace philosophy.
Bryan 23:11
Yeah, sure. So, I mean, to be honest, to start to articulate it really well, probably better than me, but employer brand is sort of traditionally existed to attract more talent to organizations. You know, and the consequence of that is recruiters are overwhelmed. It's difficult to offer a positive candidate experience at scale. And, you know, when it boils down to it, Steve, you just waste a lot of people's time, you know, so what is seen as an indicator of success, volume and attractiveness of a brand. And, you know, before application is seen as an absolute nightmare afterwards. And, you know, next to having children and getting married, it's probably one of the biggest decisions in life as well, isn't it? So You know, I think organizations owe it to candidates to lay out the facts of the demands and expectations of the employee experience. So, so they had the opportunity to self select out and find an organization that they love, where they can find belonging, impact and on purpose, you know, because they're better culturally matched. So the concept really is, rather than than a magnet, it's more of a Smart Filter, and being bold and brave enough to be up front with the harsh realities of the employee experience, what it really takes to thrive because that's what candidates want to know. And it's also what employees want to be acknowledged and appreciated for as well. And, you know, so it's a it's a two way value exchange of as the strengths, benefits and opportunities on offer. But these are the demands and expectations that we have as a an employer, you know, are you prepared to take to give us that in order to To get what we're what we're offering?
Steve Usher 25:01
Yeah, I think it's a really, I could only imagine being, you know, maybe some kind of workshop and same, right. So it talks about how we're going to attract, how are we now going to design the repel part? How are we going to create that? And I'm sure there's not many that have actually thought about that very kind of implicitly like, how do we repel people? Just as much as we attract? I mean, that's quite just just asking people to think, how would you repel people from your business then or from, you know, applying to business? I'm absolutely certain not many have kind of thought of it from that angle.
Bryan 25:32
No, but you know, it's funny, because it's always a good icebreaker in workshops, or when I talk on stage about this, you know, I say, if it was your job to dissuade somebody from joining your organization, and you couldn't lie, what would you say? What's the number one reason not to join an organization? And once people warm up to the idea, you can't show them off, like oh my god, well, this, this, this, this, this and this. And then when you speak to recruiters, if they're in the room as well, it's like well, it How liberating would it be to have that laid out there. And people don't apply for roles. Despite those things, they, they apply because of them. Because you know, what one person sees as an uphill struggle that they're not willing to take on, somebody else sees as a really worthwhile challenge where they can find some sense of achievement and pride, you know, and, you know, an opportunity to progress. You know, that's the mindset. And that's the type of person that you want in that seat, you know, and if you could fill an organization filled with that type of person that embraces the employee experience for exactly what it is for all the realities, including the harsh reality, then, you know, the workforce would be better for it. So that's, that's the idea. Yeah, brilliant.
Steve Usher 26:47
Okay, so some of the bits for me was one of the questions that I had here was around how do you do that on scale? So how do you kind of build that scalability for this kind of filtering system. Because I saw in the book you had an example around the kind of the old EVP model and then the given get EVP model and I just when I looked at that, and I just thought it was brilliant because it just felt for me. It was like a progressive model beyond the traditional EVP model it just it just looked and felt that way definitely. But I went I was also looking at it the given get on the EVP pillar, but you haven't perhaps you can give a simple explanation for the audience is just how practically how that works because I looked at I thought, yes, it Yes, but I had some questions around how does that really work practically in the in a big organization or medium organization?
Bryan 27:43
Yeah. So the first thing is, this isn't just be upfront with negatives, and be open about weakness. That's not that's not what this is about. And, you know, the employer brand, you know, can still be very much positive Serve and aspirational and you know, can get people's attention and should be designed to create an affinity. But if you imagine a marketing funnel, the big difference here is the middle bit instead of the job of that bit of the funnel trying to qualify people and carry on that journey, this is the bit where it's okay for people to say this isn't for me. So, the employer brand can attract somebody to your organization. But when they lean in and they have questions, the the to wave value exchange, clearly explicitly setting out you know, if you want all of the upside, you have to be willing to invest this you know, these are the these are the values and behaviors that we hold dear to us and you know, that it takes to thrive inside our organization. These are some of the environment or harsh realities that you need to be comfortable with in order to progress or be or find happy Business Insider organization. That's the bit where it's completely different to a marketing funnel where your job is, you know, not to lose anybody through the floor and get everybody to convert this member actually, you know, the Smart Filter takes place. And you know, and the funny thing is, Steve is this isn't just unbeknown to candidates, and it's a refreshing way to sort of get what you want from your audience without them knowing, you know, candidates are just people. And you know, we're not daft. We know when we're being sold to. And, you know, if you just give somebody the sunshine truth, no. Why does Why is Glassdoor worth a billion dollars? You know, could it be that they're not finding the whole truth that they're looking for on your career site? Could it be they're skeptical, or could it be that they have questions answered? You know, and but the danger of relying on Glassdoor to get some sense of balances. Usually it's schizophrenia or the love The company or you hate the company, you know, man, I don't know anyone who's ever been to glass door left at three?
You know. So, you know, you may as well own the full conversation and be up front, even with the vulnerabilities. Because what a great way to demonstrate. If you join our organization, you can you can make an immediate impact if you're open about the fact that we're not where we need to be or, you know, we've got some work to do in this area. Even diversity that some organization with the West diversity figures don't make much progress because they're in a state of paralysis because they feel like they can't be vulnerable enough to reveal where they're at and where they want to get to is a huge gap. Yeah. Whereas, you know, if you if you then market to those to a diverse audience, and let's just say ethnic minority, for example. There's the answer. It's littered with data showing an ethnic minorities who join an organization who didn't realize just how bad the diversity numbers were the the attrition rate is far higher, you know. And it's a massive signal that this is why I was sold. This isn't expecting. Yeah. So that's another great waste of time in terms of setting expectations ahead of, but if you if you say, look, this is the aspiration, yeah, you talk about inclusivity of the culture. And your call to arms is for people to join to help you improve the numbers and you're up front, like it's not going to be easy. And you know, you're not going to find a rich, culturally diverse organization, but with your help, who will and our appetite to improve is such that you're going to make a big impact. Now. That's a much more honest proposition to put on the table and people are going to have their expectations met when they Join and be more compelled to contribute to help you get where you need to be, does not just make sense.
Steve Usher 32:05
It does it does. I mean, just that, you know, the ethnic minority here. And if you just open say, look, we recognize our numbers, you know, on on where they want to be, we have an aspiration to be, but we want you as part of that first but first group to help us accelerate, you know, diversity in our business. And we want you to we want those kind of characters who can really yeah, who can really bring that to life in our organization. So because each Yeah, it's not difficult, I think goes back with what you've used. But I think what's interesting, you've used this interesting word, which is a number of times, and I really because I'm a big, I'm a massive fan of Bernie Brown. And I think you had a quote from Verona actually, in the book, which was centered around vulnerability. I think what makes you vulnerable Makes You Beautiful, actually, was the quote used. what's the what's the, how do we how do we bring that to life in an organization? How can organizations use this kind of this vulnerable ability to their to their benefit in also perhaps connecting into some of the one of your passions, which is around storytelling. What can businesses do to kind of learn from that?
Bryan 33:34
So I guess the first thing Steve is vulnerabilities, weaknesses and gaps in organizations with an elevated sense of reality of transparency now people can easily find out where the gaps are in organizations. I think, I think people are comforted when it's discussed by by an organization, you know, so there's an opportunity to lead the narrative, not just have it talked about elsewhere. So, you know, I think with transparency vulnerability is inevitable to be revealed online. But from a story structure perspective, you know, without adversity, without friction, without challenge, there is no story, you know, and to make human connections, you know, essentially that's, that's what employer brand is there to provide. You need to be able you need to have that element of vulnerability or challenge, you know, otherwise, that there's there's nothing to talk about. You know, and so it's an essential part of, of the story of story structure. And what you know, it gives you an opportunity to create a scenario where people can imagine how they can find a sense of purpose, a sense of contribution, and make impact in an organization as well. So there's so many benefits. It's Feels like you've got to be brave. But actually, it's just a smart thing to do in this day and age.
Steve Usher 36:06
I agree. I think there is a lot of organizations that need to be braver with this, you know, we go back to the kind of the give and get philosophy is, you know, it's kind of saying here that let's not KPI out kind of the numbers here, because it's always the numbers that kind of drive the behavior in certain talent acquisition teams is like, you know, number of applications per job, or these types of kind of metrics are widely used. It's actually like, how about we just get less candidates coming through our door? fewer, and I think some organizations would really struggle with that. Just that on its own in its own sense.
Bryan 36:39
Well, yeah, I mean, the key there is if your percentage of valued applicants goes up, you know, it doesn't necessarily need to impact the volume of qualified candidates. It just needs to reduce the amount of noise it takes to find them. You know, So, I mean, I would worry if we built an employer brand and we we designed an EDP, such that volume went down across the board to the such that nobody was applying for a role. You know, we've probably talked about trauma, you know, but the point is the the percentage of of valued applicants coming in, you should go up. And that allows, like you said earlier, recruiters and hiring managers to spend more time with people that are better culturally matched, no candidate experience can benefit from from that as a result, and everybody wins.
Steve Usher 37:35
Just got one question. One more question because I think I haven't gotten to on the book yet. But I saw it was laying on the chapters because one of the big things is always business cases, measurement, return on investment, I mean, ultimate that pays that pays for the for the initiative and the focus so what what advice would you give to people out there, Bryan is kind of, you know, looking to either raise budget or to reevaluate budget etc. Is there any got any, any kind of good practice that used to organizations or approaches to this kind of this element?
Bryan 38:04
Yeah. So luckily, we were talking about maturity earlier. I mean, there's a number of publicly accessible case studies online now that link employer brand organizations that invest in employee brands with a direct correlation with the stock price. And I think there's 15 indicators on Bloomberg, that are playground related, you know, so so business cases are getting much stronger as time goes on. You know, but if you look at any priority on the CEOs desk, very quickly, you probably find the derivative of a people issue underneath you know, if there's anything around performance or you know, culture or anything, really usually it's a derivative of the people inside your organization. I don't think many people would argue with the fact that people are the only true competitive advantage left in business, you know, to make sense to have the best people organization if you want to succeed or dominate, you know, we're getting a little bit more sort of practical. If you look at all of the metrics, the traditional metrics of talent attraction and talent engagement, and you know, cost, time to hire, and attrition levels, retention, all of those things can be directly impacted and affected with with a better employer brand. You know, and when you look at the cost per vacant seat inside an organization, which is quite easy to calculate, that's that calculations in the book. And, you know, it can be astonishing, just how much money it's costing a business to not have the right people in the right seats on a daily basis. So yeah, the business the business case argument gets stronger and stronger by the day. Yeah, absolutely.
Steve Usher 39:55
Absolutely. So, so let's um, don't look back on it, you know, history here, and now So what's uh, let's, let's put on mystic meg hats on what's the what's some of the kind of future state kind of worse? Yeah, what's kind of important right now going forward, you think some of the kind of key topics or areas that you think people should be thinking about or considering?
Bryan
Yeah. It's an interesting time, isn't it certainly coming off the back of COVID, we’re still kind of in it, but people are already starting to look at, we're calling it the next normal. What does that look like? And I think now, our chairman said something the other day, which made me laugh, which was, it's okay to swim naked until the tide goes out. Finding out right now who's been swimming naked. I think that renaissance you're talking about is certainly set up nicely. I think organizations are going to be looking at their employer brand, how that translates into a more, honest, authentic and valuable value exchange. That EVP side of things I think organizations are looking at, okay, how do we, prepare to scale back up? How do we tell our COVID story? I think one of the things interview questions the next six to nine months was how did you handle the employee experience during COVID and what's changed as a result? when you talk about vulnerability, I think a big win for organizations would be vulnerable enough to say, this is what we learned about ourselves. This is what we noticed we had to improve on, or these are the opportunities to improve that we've embraced. I think we'll see that as a narrative and it's something organizations would be crazy not to embrace, and then going forward, more tactically. I think it's been very difficult for organizations to scale down and let people go. It's going to be incredibly difficult to start to scale back up, especially with the legacy of, a brand reputation of how you're treated people.
Bryan
I think we'll start to see a seismic shift of great talent, join those organizations with great reputation and of course leaving those other organizations, even if they're financially more secure right now, if they've got a poor reputation, they're going to suffer for many years to come with a lesson caliber of talent who have seen that the priorities shift in recent months, people are more interested in wellbeing, flexibility, and compassion, and working for organizations with integrity that can offer them the security of doing right by them when, things get solved.
Steve Usher
Yeah definitely. I did see, well actually, I've spoken to quite a few people who, it was just one of those things where you hear it enough times to go, wow, that's actually a bit of a trend. It was just basically people saying, do what? I was actually had one eye on the market before this happened, but now I'm absolutely staying where I am. I've got absolutely no intention of going anywhere because the way in which they handled and the way they supported them through this process. I think that in itself just speaks volumes for sure. Well yeah. I think, there's a danger of making some assumptions, as we come out of this. I think, if you're faced with scaling back open hiring people, I think assuming that the people you've got are going to stay, is, could potentially be a, a big mistake, especially if you haven't got the greatest reputation.
Bryan
I have to say, I think there is potentially a Gulf coming where organizations, even if they've been vulnerable or there's obvious weakness there, where the factor scale down like Airbnb, when they opened the flood Gates to hire people again, they probably there'll be no shortage of applicants because, they've made an impression on the world and they haven't, they have, I think one of the things most companies are gonna need to get really quickly is the a is the give and get filter in my mind. Because as you say, once you start thinking about that whole filter, it's like, well, and they're going to have to move pretty quick on their EVP. They're going to have to really move. I think those that move quick now on re-evaluating that before then the market picks up and they start bringing in new talent into the organization. I think that's going to be an interesting one, those that pivots quick enough to then create a new filter that then takes them forward.
Steve Usher
So yeah, no really interesting. Really interesting. Brian we've got a giveaway as well. I think we have a free copy or win a free copy of the Give and Get book, which I'll have a link in all of the bio and the website and everywhere. I'll put it out on social media and LinkedIn as well. Also there's a give and get site as well if people are interested in buying the book and, obviously connecting as always Brian with yourself on LinkedIn and you've got Twitter as well, pretty active on Twitter.
Bryan
Bryan_PHC Twitter handle and LinkedIn is probably the best place to get hold of me and it's www.giveandget.net, but yeah, happy to, give away, a couple of books. What I was thinking is I'd be really interested for people to share what they think that given guests proposition is, or if people can give a really good example of a harsh reality, that's, there are actually proud to be able to cope with and thrive within that. I think if we can get some examples that we can definitely give away some books for the best examples.
Steve Usher
Awesome. Awesome. That's, and that would be a way for people to share that would be in the, on the website or the type form that we've created for this session.
Well Brian, thank you so much for your time, buddy. Great to see you that you're back in the UK now and, stay safe and healthy. Again, thanks so much for your time. Really appreciate it,
Bryan
Steve it's been a pleasure talking to you. Thanks a lot. Cheers buddy.