#1 - working out if this is a goer

Hello and welcome to a newsletter about employer branding and creative ideas. This is the first of what I hope to be many of these. Obviously, I’m not promising anything because that would be RIDICULOUS! But, if all goes well, this will be at least a monthly occasion. And what joy you shall have when it plops into your inbox.

By way of a short introduction, I’m Will Jeffreys, and have worked in employer branding for around 20 years. Copywriting, creative directoring, chief creative officering and now brand strategizing.

I come across lots of interesting tidbits around employer branding and creativity. I would very much like to share them and give my tuppenceworth as to why they should be interesting for you if you work in employer branding and, sometimes, how you can use them too. I’ll try and split it into articles to read and things to have a look at for inspiration or interest. All clear so far?

Things I’ve read:

1.     The value of employer branding
This is an oldie but stumbled across this again this week. This is the thing to turn to when you are justifying why employer branding matters to a business (well if it’s done properly and it’s for employees as well as candidates anyway).

“We found that each one-star improvement in a company’s Glassdoor rating corresponds to a 1.3-point out of 100 improvement in customer satisfaction scores”.

2.     What measures, matters
I Imagine this is going to be all over employer brand newsletters (beware that it’s also behind a paywall). It’s the NY times report on employee tracking. For those that haven’t seen it, the gist is the rise of productivity metrics related to work. Now obviously, that can be very beneficial to a business, and can give employees clear goals. But from an employee perspective the result is an experience that is demeaning, dehumanising and pointless - especially when productivity is measured in terms of movements of a mouse.
For more context on this, I recommend listening to the Guardian long version of this essay on our desire to measure everything and Ezra Klein’s conversation with C Thi Nguyen about the desire to play games and win (and how goals are set up for this)

It also brought to mind a story that Rory Sutherland likes to use of Henry Ford’s reaction to a consultant who questioned why he paid $50,000 a year to someone who spent most of his time with his feet on his desk. “Because a few years ago that man came up with something that saved me $2,000,000,” he replied. “And when he had that idea, his feet were exactly where they are now.”

3.     I chat, you chat, we all chat together
Used this to gain a bit more of an understanding of WeChat and the whole world it weaves for people who use it.

4.     T’other side of gig work.
This is interesting as it gives the positive side to the gig economy (sort of…there are massive caveats within the piece) but showing how Uber can prise open opportunities in different cultures was a new perspective for me.

Things I’ve seen:

In all my years (and I do realise I sound proper old), I have never realised that PR Week do brand video awards – and there’s an internal section (also a corporate and PR section relevant for us EB people dontcha know). So, I must admit I went down a rabbit hole. In it I found quite a few small brown circular deposits but, in amongst, some nuggets from 2021 and 2022. And here they are.

1.     EY

I don’t speak Spanish very well but from what I can gather, this is a 25 minute doc about when people in EY in Spain got sent home during the pandemic. It seems nice that they’ve documented it but also a bit strange. Good on ‘em though.

2.     DRPG
This is another one that I didn’t quite get. Shot like a sports doc it exhorts those working at DRPG to “own the moment” and essentially work like an athlete. Nice looking stuff but not sure that “we need a video that gets people to work harder” was the original brief.

3.     Unilever
There is a lot that we’ve all seen before with this – stirring string music, pieces to camera, stock footage of people putting stuff on post-its on a wall to denote innovation etc. But the choice of people to interview, what they were saying and how they came across was really quite lovely. Casting good people in videos that showcase your employees, as it shows here, can make a huge difference.

And finally…

A man in Chile was paid 330x his salary. On discovering the mistake, he said that he’d give it back. Unsurprisingly that doesn’t look like it happened.

That’s it for now. Hopefully you’ve enjoyed this stroll around my garden of employer brand experience sniffing the fragrance of insight and…oh whatever…thanks for reading and catch you in September, unless I get really really excited about something and it simply cannot wait.
Ta ra.