By: Sara Balaban, Drift Employer Brand Content Creator
Great storytelling can inspire and persuade prospective candidates to consider joining a company, and it might even make the featured employees feel shiny and bright.
With the holiday season upon us, sharing meaningful employer brand content is a fantastic way to wrap up the year, remind employees how much they’re appreciated, prep for the year ahead, and continue talent attraction efforts while taking that holiday break.
In today’s job market, candidates are digging deeper into prospective employers. They want to know the personality and soul behind those photos and the values posted on a website. How and what is said to your audience is crucial to talent acquisition efforts, building and maintaining a solid employer brand presence, and ensuring your employees are also along for the (sleigh) ride.
So, in the spirit of the holiday season, here are five simple content tips to spread that holiday cheer that employees and candidates want to hear.
Assess if spirits are bright
Employer brand content will only go so far unless it resonates with an organization's people. Before developing and executing content about employee experiences or culture, engage your employee population first.
Seek to understand how people feel about their workplace culture and experiences before sharing these stories with the masses. This is an excellent opportunity to partner with your HR team, conduct a pulse check from your review sites (like, Glassdoor or Comparably), and ensure that employees will generally support the content you share.
If employee engagement and satisfaction are high, the likelihood of that shining through in your content and influencing candidates to apply to your company is also high. However, if spirits aren’t as bright as you thought, view this challenge as an opportunity to engage your people further and get raw feedback on where the gaps might exist.
Anonymous employee experience surveys or focus groups can be great ways to make people feel like they are a part of the conversation to help your company evolve and will help you produce honest content in the future.
A (gingerbread) house for all
Think about your organization as a gingerbread house. Every employee at your organization has a role to play in decorating the house and making it special. Your content should reflect all the exciting, diverse ways your employees create a unique workplace culture.
Where and how do your employees work? What communities exist within your organization? How does your organization support inclusion and belonging? As you develop the structure of your stories, remember that amplifying your organization's diversity gives employees a feeling of support, recognition, and belonging. Showcasing the diversity within your organization will help your employees feel appreciated and proud to work there, and this will likely shine through to potential candidates evaluating your company as an employer of choice.
As you’re strategizing on positioning your employer brand content, think about how your organization's people helped build those ordinary gingerbread squares into the colorful, decorated gingerbread house that stands today.
Get to know your employees on a human level and focus on how those stories impact your organization’s culture. Take advantage of new hire orientations to survey new hires about why they joined or pull inspiration from worldwide acknowledgment days. Check out how global beverage brand Diageo echoes their wellness values and creates a comfortable environment for people to share their experiences on tough, sometimes taboo, issues. Read how Diageo builds belonging and empowers its employees by acknowledging World Menopause Day.
Focus on the present(s)
Staying present, relevant, and true to your organization's culture and the world around us is a sure way to produce quality content that employees and candidates will tune into.
It’s vital to keep your messaging honest and true to your brand and the current events of your organization. Not only is this the best way to create authentic content, but employees will be more inclined to share these stories with their networks and act as brand ambassadors of your organization, even during tough times.
For example, take Stripe, the online payment start-up recently added to the list of companies with workforce reductions. While layoffs are not typically a happy moment for a company or its people, we can learn something from the example they set and how they delivered a difficult message by leading with humility and taking accountability for the decision. With a humanistic approach, Stripe stayed honest about the present and didn’t sugarcoat the realities brought onto the business by the pandemic or their subsequent decisions and how they’ll course-correct moving forward. Read the full memo from Stripe's CEO.
It’s important to remember that staying present with your employer brand content means being authentic and transparent about the reality of your organization. Even when things are challenging, taking a human approach and practicing radical candour in your content strategy will speak volumes to potential talent.
Celebrate traditions
Every company is unique, from the culture to the people, career paths, and traditions. Company traditions are a huge part of shaping workplace culture rooted in belonging (as long as everyone is included!) Consider the traditions you celebrate at your organization and how they make your workplace special.
Hone in on that angle for some feel-good content that may reinforce why your employees have grown their careers with you and why prospective candidates should consider joining. If your company has been around for decades, revisit your origins and how they have influenced where you are now.
Consider conducting interviews with employees who have had significant milestones with the company to understand their experiences throughout the years and why they stay. Regardless of how long your company has been around or if you are in start-up mode keep your values top of mind to build or create new traditions that align with what you stand for as an organization.
Take REI with their “Yay Days” program, which allows employees two paid days each year to try something new and challenge themselves or work on an outdoor stewardship project. This tradition keeps employees incentivized and involved and helps them stay connected to the business to provide even more first-hand knowledge and service to their customers.
Employees are the gift that keeps on giving
Instead of sharing the uniform “happy holidays” statements on your company's social media pages and newsletter, consider wrapping up those seasons' greetings with extra shiny wrapping paper.
Use this festive time as an opportunity to showcase the gift that always keeps on giving; your employees. Reflect on the employee or team successes from the year, exciting milestones, or even new resource groups that might have launched.
Consider talent personas throughout the different lifecycle stages that will help make each of your messages even more targeted. Doing so is a great opportunity to create depth in your messaging and can help improve employee belonging. With so many stages of an employee's lifecycle, this angle won’t get stale. Sometimes giving gifts of recognition and engagement are the best gift of all.
For the stocking stuffer, these tips can extend far beyond the holiday season, so it’s always a good time to consistently share messaging that echoes your employer brand and highlights the people that work hard daily to support it.
To learn more about the Drift approach to employer brand and culture strategy, visit our site or book a call to learn more about how we can guide you toward a powerful employer brand strategy that delivers results for your business.