The key to true employer branding

Rachel Mendelovich
Aug 8, 2017 · 3 min read

Imagine a family sending out a charismas family photo. The white background, everyone is nicely dressed, the red santa’s hats, a family dog. The entire picture projects the all-American family — a perfect family, to be sure. When you look at this photo, all you want is to be a part of that family, and you can actually imagine yourself there with them. But what if, this family is living next door and on a day to day basis you can hear the screams coming out of their house; when inviting them to barbecue you see the way husband and wife are cynical and disrespectful to one another; their kids are misbehaving at school and more often than not are involved in fights. Not the perfect family after all, right? despite the lovely photo, this is probably the last family you’d like to be part of.

The same goes for companies. Corporations that invest so much money in employer branding campaigns that supposed to make us feel like this is a great company to work for are missing the point. Just because your PR firm made some nicely designed ads, or the offices are decorated with great taste does not make you a great company to work for.

Great companies do not need to invest so much in employer branding, their employees will do that for them.

This is how it actually works: focus on your employees, create an employee-centered culture. Allow employees to bring their whole selves to work, provide the means for them to share their experience and let the magic begin. Employees are more than happy to share information about their workplace — good or bad. If they’re happy, they will spread the word and will make whatever they can to bring their friends to work along side them. If the workplace is somewhere they want to escape from — why would you assume they’ll trap their friends in it?

As CEO of Hoop, our main focus is creating the culture that invokes loyalty and engagement, I see many companies around the Bay Area. The offices are always superb, the logos and flashy and in most cases there are campuses to envy; but almost all companies reveal a hard time to recruit top talent, a very hard time to get this talent to be involved and committed, and at the end of the day to stay. To learn more of their culture I made it a habit to arrive to meetings with HR managers, about 15 minutes earlier. I take that time to sit at the waiting area and observe. Am I being offered something to drink? Are people stopping by to check on me? Are people talking, can I hear people laughing? It takes about 5 minutes to feel the vibe — from companies that make you want to stay to companies that make you want to run for it. The meeting with the HR executives are almost always a depiction of what I observed at the lobby. When talking about our platform that enables employees to bring their whole selves to work I can either be faced with responses like : “but when will they work?” or “how do I make sure they don’t spend all their time there” (bad bad bad in so many ways) or on the other end of the spectrum “how will we make them engaged over time” (yes! That’s the spirit). It is the way you think of your employees and the core values you set that defines if you’re a great company to work for — not the amount of money you spend on PR campaigns.

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