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    Building a Flexible Employer Brand for a Multinational Media Company

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    NBCUniversal is a media company with more than twenty businesses in thirty countries, including theme parks, television stations, motion pictures, and premium streaming services. With so many diverse brands and localities, creating an EVP (Employer Value Proposition) that works for all of them is a significant challenge. Anne Hurley, Director of Talent Branding at NBCUniversal, discusses the process of executing an EVP refresh for one of the world’s largest multinational media companies and building the flexibility to activate it across a wide variety of brands and countries in an interview with the Employer Branding Podcast.
    Setting Objectives for Employer Brand
    To articulate an EVP that works for all the different brands, NBCUniversal started by laying out the Talent Acquisition organization’s goals as a whole. They decided on setting objectives around brand awareness and engagement, employee experience, DEI, and recruiting excellence. These objectives helped steer the process and defined what they were trying to get out of their new EVP and how they should measure success across all brands.
    EVP Built on Flexibility
    NBCUniversal is a decentralized company, with properties operating independently. Hurley says, “our job is to influence them at each point of the candidate lifecycle.” They needed to create an EVP that brought everything together and was flexible enough to work equally for NBC News and Peacock streaming.
    They began with a research phase by hosting employee roundtables, looking at internal data collection, and engaging with external vendors. They then took those findings and got together with other internal groups like Corporate Creative and Corporate Communications to distill everything into the tagline: “Here you can.”
    “It’s simple, right? But that’s why it works,” Hurley says, “it acts as a ‘fill in the blank’ where we can insert language at the end of the phrase based on personas, skillsets, or interests. It doesn’t need to compete with our consumer brands—it’s simply complimentary.” For example, for E! News, it might be articulated as “Here you can be Pop Cultured,” or if they wanted to speak to their DEI initiatives, it might become “Here you can be authentically you.” Their EVP is powerful because it can be articulated differently to different personas.
    Activating EVP Globally
    Hurley’s Talent Branding organization has been working to make localization a priority. “Our brand does not resonate with people in the UK or Germany or France in the way it resonates with people in the US,” Hurley says, so they set to work creating a global toolkit to bring everything together.
    Hurley and her team started with focus groups to more clearly identify needs in each global territory and used that information to create localized assets that would align with the organization’s EVP while sharing the same look and feel across all languages. They worked closely with local brand champions to develop these resources, which in turn gives them everything they needed to create their own localized, inclusive content.
    Connect with Other EB Pros
    Hurley advises you to be clear about your internal goals before starting the EVP refresh process, do the research to get a complete picture of your organization and make sure to bring everyone to the table when the time comes to take the following steps. Large organizations come with unique challenges, but best practices exist for developing and activating an EVP. Additionally, don’t hesitate to reach out to other professionals working in the employer branding space. “I’ve made a lot of connections by simply pinging the guests on this podcast,” Hurley says. This podcast includes a way to get in touch with all of the guests, so don’t be afraid to make a connection.

    To follow Anne Hurley’s work in employer brand, connect with her on LinkedIn. To identify the values and culture you want to create in your own company, get in touch.
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      Building an Effective EVP: The Journey of a Bangalore Tech Company

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      India’s startup ecosystem has been experiencing a rapid growth rate, with the country emerging as the third-largest startup hub globally, posting record revenue of $227 billion in 2022, according to Mint. This growth has led to a highly competitive market for talent, making it essential for companies to have strong employer branding and an attractive Employer Value Proposition (EVP) to remain competitive.
      To gain insights into creating an effective EVP in such a fast-paced environment, we caught up with Malliga Rajkumar, the Senior Director of HR and Talent Branding Lead at Flipkart, one of the largest e-commerce platforms in India based in Bangalore, which began as a startup 15 years ago with a team of 200 people.
      As a 30,000-strong organization serving 150 million customers across all of India, Flipkart is known as the “startup of startups,” with alums going on to found their successful tech enterprises. Despite its size, the startup ethos of risk and innovation remains near and dear to Flipkart’s heart.
      However, with the tech sector’s growth came fierce competition for key talent, prompting Rajkumar and her team to build and implement an employer branding strategy to ensure Flipkart could compete. Rajkumar’s approach was to ask two simple questions: “What is it about our culture that we want to absolutely retain and rebuild where it may have atrophied? And what are the elements that we want to add on?”
      Developing EVP
      The journey to Flipkart’s EVP was months of extensive primary and secondary research. Rajkumar and her team interviewed people at all levels within the organization, spoke to headhunters, and did market benchmarking with accredited organizations like the Great Place to Work Institute and Mercer.
      In the end, they had a list of all the things Flipkart wanted to be known for and a list of the things talent cares about. The challenge was to find a balance between the two to stake out an EVP that encapsulated what Flipkart stands for while appealing to the talent they wanted to attract.
      They settled on a simple EVP that stitched together all of the concepts they wanted to include in one phrase:
      “Together, We Dare to Maximize.”
      Together spoke to everything they hope to foster in terms of community and collaboration. Dare represents their startup heart by celebrating audacity and breaking boundaries. And maximize represents their ambition to be the best they possibly can be and continuously improve.
      Activating EVP
      Articulating an EVP is only half the battle; Rajkumar and her team still needed to activate it for both employees and candidates. “Together we dare to maximize” is displayed in every Flipkart office. More importantly, that concept and the four pillars that support it are woven into all internal communications, awards, employee forums, and events throughout the year.
      They also measure its resonance each year in their annual employee engagement survey. A team of over 250 employee advocates helps get the word out and shares an honest look at what life at Flipkart is like.
      Aspirational EVP
      Flipkart sees its EVP as aspirational, and they want to ensure that they live up to its promise. Therefore, they used their mission statement to build a 3-year maturity model that articulates every process’s intent, design, experience, and measurement. The goal is to look at everything they do and take the time to align it with their EVP incrementally.
      As always, it is crucial to measure the impact of employer branding to demonstrate its value to key organizational stakeholders. At Flipkart, they compare their engagement statistics to a benchmark list of other companies to assess their performance and identify areas for improvement. Additionally, they have specific metrics for individual campaigns and regularly conduct internal surveys to assess the level of awareness within the organization regarding employer brand themes.
      According to Rajkumar, “Employer brand is not about who you are today; it’s about who you aspire to be.” A good EVP should reflect the organization’s current state and set higher standards for what it can become. Good employer branding presents an opportunity for an organization to improve and live its values, which in turn attracts top talent.

      To follow Malliga Rajkumar’s work in employer brand, connect with her on LinkedIn. For help identifying the values and culture you want to create in your company, get in touch.
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      Attracting Tech Talent in a New Location

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      When reaching out to a new talent market, your existing recruitment marketing strategy may not cut it. New markets bring new competitors, new biases, and new questions to answer with your messaging. How can leaders in recruitment marketing and employer branding do it? That’s what Appian and its Recruitment Marketing Strategist, Chris Fitzner, are figuring out.
      Appian, a US-based tech brand that offers an automation platform to businesses, recently acquired a small company in Seville, Spain. Rather than simply absorb the Seville team, Appian decided to grow its presence in Seville—“to capture that spirit there, and capture that culture,” as Fitzner puts it.
      Research Your New Talent Market
      Fitzner’s team started with the facts: They researched tech professionals in the Seville area to build data-centered profiles of who they needed to reach. Using LinkedIn’s Talent Insights platform, Appian identified the market’s main hitters, broken out by title, industry, and experience.
      Learn What You’re Up Against in Your New Market
      Appian’s approach to sketching out its growth challenges provides a useful framework for other teams hoping to enter new talent markets. First, using the list of major players they’d built when researching their new talent market, Fitzner’s team categorized their competitors: home-grown Seville companies, companies (like Appian) that had recently acquired Seville companies, and large consultancies that hire remote talent from Seville.
      Then, to understand their biggest recruitment hurdles, Fitzner’s team returned to their data, specifically location data. Their website analytics revealed almost no visits from local talent, and Appian’s only Seville-based LinkedIn engagement was from the local employees they’d just acquired.
      Build Your Recruitment Marketing Strategy
      When entering a new talent market, posting a job listing to Glassdoor or Indeed isn’t enough. “You have to get into where they’re actively looking,” Fitzner advises, which means devoting more attention to local job boards.
      “Who is Appian?” was still an obstacle for Appian’s recruiters on LinkedIn, so they began serving ads to targeted audiences in advance of reaching out via InMail, which earned them higher open rates.
      Adapt What You Already Know About Good Marketing
      When building a recruitment marketing strategy, innovation is great, but Fitzner cautions against reinventing the wheel, especially for those coming from a recruiting background. “There are already a lot of existing resources out there,” he says. “Look at existing marketing principles. Learn email marketing. Learn content marketing. Learn the basics of SEO. Learn how to establish a good PR/media program.”

      To follow Chris Fitzner’s work in employer branding, connect with him on LinkedIn. For more strategies and data-driven insights that you can act on to improve your company, get in touch.

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      How to Let Employees Generate Your Employer Brand Content

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      Employee-generated content may not be as strategically crafted as something straight from your marketing department. Its messaging may be more candid than what your company usually posts to LinkedIn.
      But these markers of authenticity are exactly what make employee-generated content (EGC) such an effective advertising tool, and they’re also what makes it so impactful for your employer branding.
      This couldn’t be more true at PetSmart, a pet supply company that offers candidates an employee experience unlike many others—how many places let you cuddle with kittens on-the-job? By showcasing the uniqueness of a career at PetSmart through employee-generated content, the company has attracted better candidates, along with a host of other benefits.
      Here’s what other brands (even those of the puppy-less variety) stand to gain with EGC.
      1. Employee-Generated Content Builds Unity
      Employer brand leaders might assume that the DIY nature of employee-generated content leads to a less unified social feed or inconsistent brand voice. However, PetSmart’s Manager of Employer Brand and Recruitment Marketing, Dani Kaufman, sees a different story.
      2. EGC Attracts the Best Fits
      Kaufman’s team tracks common metrics like application conversions, hires, and retention to gauge the health of its employer brand. Higher applicant volume, however, isn’t a high-priority figure.
      Employee-generated content has been instrumental in attracting those best-fit candidates. After infusing PetSmart’s social timelines with more employee stories, Kaufman says, “People are able to see themselves in the role and make a more personal connection.” The employer brand team’s next project is a Careers website update, due to launch at the end of 2020, that foregrounds even more of those personal testimonies.
      3. Employee Stories Make Your Brand Unique
      Kaufman has observed that the things that make a career at PetSmart unlike a role anywhere else are the very things that attract their best hires. Walking dogs, caring for young animals, and assisting first-time pet parents are part of the job, but the employer brand team knows to frame these as strengths: “You can work at a place that you love. You can love the job, and you can also love the environment,” Kaufman says.
      4. EGC Keeps You Curious
      Kaufman strives to answer “Why here?” through PetSmart’s employer branding, and nowhere are the answers to that “why” on clearer display than in employee storytelling. Staying attuned to the culture in this way keeps Kaufman curious, an attitude she says is essential to successful employer brand leadership.
      Embracing EGC has helped PetSmart fine-tune its employer brand and attract candidates that share the company’s passion for animals, and the ripple effects have been obvious to Kaufman: “It brings our culture to life!”

      To follow Dani Kaufman’s work in employer brand, connect with her on LinkedIn. For more strategies and data-driven insights that you can act on to improve your company, get in touch.

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      How to Grow Awareness of Your Employer Brand

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      Ashley Cheretes faces a challenge familiar to many employer brand leaders: Her company isn’t top-of-mind for many candidates, despite touching millions of lives. “Cigna is the most well-known unknown company,” jokes Cheretes, Cigna’s Head of Marketing, Talent Acquisition. “When you throw in the fact that we are technically an insurance company, we are often not…
      How to Grow Awareness of Your Employer Brand Undercover Recruiter – More

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      An Employer Brand Expert’s Post-Pandemic Forecast

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      Regardless of the extent to which your business has been disrupted by COVID-19, we’ll all re-emerge from varying degrees of lockdown into a changing world. What does this mean for employer brand and its leaders?
      Simon Barrow, creator of employer brand, explores employer brand’s relevancy to a world in the midst of a crisis and massive change, including what employer brand managers must prioritize now in order to thrive.

      Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or Soundcloud.
      Barrow was a brand manager and advertising CEO before he got the idea to adapt brand management to the more people-centered work of HR. Today, his work in employer brand has had a profound effect on business around the globe. Here’s what lies ahead, in his view, for employer brand managers.
      Your Company Will Be Judged for Its Crisis Response: When asked about the employer brand’s importance right now, Barrow’s answer is blunt: “It’s in times of trouble that it matters most.”
      Transparency Remains Key: Are members of senior management still earning what they were pre-COVID? Are employees being let go at all levels of an organization, or just those lower on the ladder?
      How and Where We Work Will Change: Post-Pandemic: The forced transition to working from home awakened many businesses to the feasibility (and, in some cases, benefits) of a remote workforce, as well as its limits.
      Purpose Will Become All-Important to Employer Brand: Company purpose, Barrow reminds us, is impossible to “spin” when it comes to the employer brand.
      For more from Simon Barrow, listen to his previous appearance on the Employer Branding Podcast and follow his work on LinkedIn. For more help identifying the values and culture you want to create in your company and refining your employer value proposition, reach out to us.

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      How COVID-19 Has Influenced Employer Brand Sentiment

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      New data reveals just how much the COVID-19 pandemic has already impacted employer brand. Learn the key themes emerging in feedback from talent around the world. During this pandemic, we decided to do research using the Employer Brand Index methodology and understanding what really matters to talent during this time. Following the commentary, we could […] More

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      Why Purpose-Driven Employers Succeed

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      Serving society and turning a profit aren’t mutually exclusive. As this professor of finance uncovered, focusing on purpose helps companies succeed. Alex Edmans is Professor of Finance at London Business School and the author of Grow the Pie: How Great Companies Deliver Both Purpose and Profit. Have a listen to the episode below, keep reading […] More

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      How Employer Brand Teams Can Respond to a Crisis

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      What happens to employer branding in a time of crisis? In this special episode responding to the global crisis surrounding COVID-19, Jörgen Sundberg and Andy Partridge connect on how employer brand teams can respond and what Link Humans is doing to help clients. Have a listen to the episode below, keep reading for a summary […] More