December 11, 2023 • 22 mins
In what ways does a company's culture and employer brand impact its success? How effectively are organizations communicating culture to new hires? In this podcast episode, Dan Kessler, president of Energage, offers insights. He discusses the criticality of a company's culture and employer brand in attracting and retaining talent. Kessler posits the importance of an authentic communication about an organization's culture in the hiring process, as well as recognizing disparities between what the employer believes they are delivering versus what job seekers perceive.
Listen in to this episode to understand why communicating your company’s culture and employer brand effectively is not just an HR responsibility, but a necessity for the success of your business.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
William Tincup (00:33):
This is William Tincup, and you're listening to
the Recruiting Daily podcast.
Today, we have Dan on fromIntergage, and our topic is At
This Moment.
Your employer brand and, whichis bold, underlined, culture,
are mission critical.
So what we're going to betalking about today is not one
or the other, it's thecombination of the two and how
(00:55):
they've become, they'vetranscended into becoming
mission critical.
So why don't we do someintroductions?
Dan, would you introduceyourself and also what you do at
Intergage?
Dan Kessler (01:07):
Yeah, thanks, William.
I appreciate you taking the timeto have the conversation.
We've been, we've been lookingforward to it.
Uh, so I am Dan Kessler.
I'm the president at Energageand we are a purpose driven
business.
So we exist to make the world abetter place to work together.
Um, and we're really proud, uh,to say that we're actually one
of the first 20 B corporationsin the world.
(01:30):
There's thousands of B corpsaround the world that, um, have
purpose driven businesses aswell.
And what we do, uh,fundamentally is, is build and
brand top workplaces.
So, when you talk about themission criticality of employer
brand and, uh, agree with yourbold and underlying culture, um,
(01:52):
that is really at the heart ofwhat we do and what we think
about every day and, and we'rereally excited to, uh, to have
this conversation with youtoday.
Awesome.
William Tincup (02:02):
So prior to COVID, we, we would talk about
employer brand and the reasonsfor spending money in it, uh,
tied to alumni and the candidateexperience and employee
experience and all that stuff.
There's even conferences thatkind of came about and some of
that's kind of.
Mellowed out, died out, etc.
(02:22):
And, uh, culture has always kindof been there.
I've always had a problem withHR owning culture.
It's a personal bias of mine.
Um, so we've talked aboutculture, but I really think
there are, are, we've beenshocked through the, through
COVID that a lot of peoplethought and, and probably still
(02:44):
do think to some degree thatculture is the box.
The, the, the place.
And so I believe thatfundamentally people have like
really struggling with what,what is culture.
And so.
This is the conversation.
What I love about this is it'slike, okay, well, you can't have
one, not the other.
You can't have culture and nothave an employer brand, or you
(03:04):
shouldn't.
So technically you can, but youshouldn't.
So take us into these worlds.
Let's talk about employerbranding first.
What are you seeing when youlook at the wonderful world of
employer brand and branding?
What do you, what
Dan Kessler (03:17):
do you see?
Yeah, so a couple things.
Um, I think in general, when welook at the world of employer
brand, I think the, the, thesort of good news, if you will,
is that it seems that employershave figured out that It's
really important to talk aboutyour culture as part of your
employer brand strategy.
To your point, you know, we can,you know, all the words and the
(03:41):
jargon, whatever, um, you know,you have a culture, the, uh, the
employees, the candidates thatyou're talking to really care
about what that culture is.
And so, You need to becommunicating it, right?
What we've found, um, thecounter to that or the challenge
is that our research suggeststhat employers are really
(04:02):
struggling to do thateffectively.
And there's actually a, um, areal disconnect that we've seen
in our research between, um,what the employee, what the
employer perceives.
They're doing aroundcommunicating their culture
versus how the job seekerexperiences it.
And so just to make that realfor you and quantify that, we
actually asked, um, a set ofemployers and a set of
(04:24):
candidates, um, you know, towhat extent the company culture
is clearly communicated in thehiring process.
And I don't think you're goingto be surprised by the results,
which is that employers, right?
What employers say, 80 percentof them, absolutely right.
We are clearly, 100 percentright, exactly.
Clearly, can you be clearer?
Yeah.
What could you miss?
(04:44):
Um, whereas only 30 percent ofthe job seekers agree.
And so, um, and, and so amassive disconnect there.
And admittedly, well, you know,it's, it is tricky to, uh.
to communicate culture becauseit can be perceived as this, as
this esoteric, um, sort ofconcept, to your point, or it
can be very narrowly defined as,as, you know, the ping pong
(05:06):
table or whatever it is in theoffice, and I think our
perspective on this is, um, atleast one really important
vehicle to articulate thatculture is through the voice of
employee, right?
And allow your employees to tellthe story of your culture,
right?
Slapping some things on yourwebsite saying people are our
(05:27):
greatest asset, um, is virtuallymeaningless at this point in
time.
Um, and it's more about thatauthentic, raw, Um, unique,
quirky, uh, you know,perspective that's going to come
through voice of employeefeedback.
And so that, that's really whatwe've honed in on as, as we
think about what can be ourunique value add to this
(05:50):
challenge and opportunity thatwe see around employer brand.
Yeah.
A hundred
William Tincup (05:53):
years ago, uh, Glassdoor put together an
employer branding conference andI was on stage and, uh, someone
asked me, what is, what isemployer brand?
And I said, it's a fingerprint.
There's no two that should bethe same.
What works at Zappos doesn'twork at GM.
What works at GM doesn't work atTyco, et cetera.
(06:14):
Like it's gotta be that specificto you.
And so she pushed me, you know,the, the person else pushed me
like, well, first of all, that'sfantastic.
And I'm going to steal that B.
Um, yeah, but what is it?
I said, well, it's the thingsthat you'll allow and the things
that you'll accept and thethings that you won't accept.
(06:35):
And every team, I mean, there'smicrocultures and inside of a
big company, the sales team inNew York is a little bit
different than the sales team inTopeka.
So certain things are acceptedand certain things aren't
accepted and that's fluid.
And she, she loved that.
She like, she got it.
She's like, okay, I wanted likea black and white answer.
(06:55):
I still didn't, I still haven'tgotten the black and white
answer, but, but at least I'm atleast going down the path.
And so it's evolved since then.
And I think the pandemic, youknow, sped some things up.
And I also, I would like to getyour take on this.
The audience, i.
e.
candidates have changeddramatically in terms of like
their desires from a company.
(07:18):
They want, as you know, theywant speed.
They want things that are highlypersonalized.
They want companies that arefair, you know, they, they've
got a list of needs.
You know, don't negotiate withterrorists, but they've got a
list of needs.
And if you don't, you know,subscribe to their needs, then
they're just going to move on tosomething else.
Dan Kessler (07:39):
Well, and it, so yes, completely agree with all
that.
We see that in our data andwhat, what might be helpful just
to kind of articulate that andsort of keep this theme of, of
employer brand and culture islet me just briefly kind of walk
you through what, what wemeasure.
So you talk about, you know.
How you define culture being,you know, the things that you're
(08:01):
willing to tolerate, which,which, again, completely
resonate with that.
Um, at the same time, we canquantify the dimensions of
culture, um, through thefeedback we gather from
employees.
And, and we look at it Almost,like, similar to a, um, to a
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs,essentially, which is, you know,
the top of the pyramid is thisconcept of an, of an engaged
(08:23):
employee, right, which is, whichis truly more of a mindset
around, you know, I'm highlymotivated, I'm loyal, right, I'm
not, I'm not looking for anotherjob, I'm even, I love this place
so much that I'd bring in afriend, um, and so when you have
those things that, He's gettingthat discretionary effort that
everyone talks about and, youknow, our data and others proves
(08:43):
that when you've gotten moreengaged employees leads to
better business results.
Just, you know, period.
End of story.
Um, now the, the, the other sideof that is that notion of
engagement is really an output.
Right, it's hard to impact thosethings around motivation,
loyalty, referral, so, so whatare the drivers of that?
And I think this will get to,uh, where you were going, which
(09:07):
is what are, what is theemployee want out of a company?
And it's, what's interesting,William, is, is That answer
actually changes when you're acandidate to when you're on the
other side when you're in,right?
So, so the kind of base of, ofthat, of that pyramid is around,
um, what we, we consider kind ofa concept of almost are you
(09:29):
fairly valued?
Um, so a compensation, benefits,work life flexibility, those
kinds of dimensions.
Those are really, reallyimportant when I'm a candidate.
What's fascinating, um, is onceyou're on the other side, they
actually become less important.
Not unimportant, right?
But relatively less important interms of correlating to that
(09:50):
ultimate goal of engagement.
William Tincup (09:52):
What, what, what trades, uh, what takes this, uh,
place?
So what takes
Dan Kessler (09:57):
its place is, um, A number of things.
The first piece of it is reallyabout my relationship with my
manager.
And so what do I want from myfront line manager, right?
What I want is, I want to beappreciated, um, I want them to
listen to my ideas, I want themto care about me, and I want
them to be, um, Training me and,and thinking about my growth, my
(10:19):
potential, uh, and, and kind ofwhere, what I'm trying to
achieve.
So, so there's a lot that wemeasure and look at around that
manager employee relationship.
And, and we sort of, I'd say we,we somewhat agree with the fact
that, that companies, uh, thatpeople leave, you know, the, the
whole, you leave your manager,not the company, that's somewhat
true.
Um, and the reason I saysomewhat true is because the
(10:40):
other dimension that we look atis things that are really more,
um, In control of typically theexecutive leadership.
So that's kind of the nextdimension up, which is things
like, um, are we clear on ourdirection?
Do we have a set of core values?
Is there a sense of meaning inour work?
Right?
So that's kind of one dimension.
And then the other dimensionthat executive teams can really
(11:02):
impact is, Um, you know, howdoes, how do we communicate,
right?
Do I, as a senior leader,understand what's actually going
on?
Do I, as a frontline employee,feel well informed about
important decisions that impactmy role?
And just, frankly, is it, is it,is it easy, how easy is it to
just get stuff done around here?
Um, how do our, how dodepartments work together?
And so, um, when you talk about,Uh, you know, that, that who
(11:27):
owns culture, right?
So, you know, ultimatelyeveryone should be responsible
for shaping the culture and theydo actually, right.
And for better or worse,everyone is responsible for
shaping the culture, butexecutive teams haven't.
outsized influence on thatculture.
And, and certainly HR plays arole in that, but I couldn't
(11:47):
agree with you more that, um,you know, the executive team
needs to be bought in and, andtruly aligned, um, on, on the
culture that they're willing totolerate and the environment
that they want to create for theteam.
And so, and the reason that, sojust kind of closing off on the,
on the manager thing, our kindof sort of corollary to that,
you leave a manager versus thecompany is in a really strong
(12:11):
culture.
That crappy manager isn't goingto make it because the culture
won't tolerate it.
You know, so, so you're, sure,you're leaving the manager, but
you're actually, what you'rereally doing is you're leaving a
company that didn't have astrong enough culture, um, to
get that manager out.
To jettison.
William Tincup (12:27):
Exactly.
Dan Kessler (12:28):
That's exactly it.
William Tincup (12:29):
That's exactly it.
When you look at employer brand,um, and let's say there's a
brand umbrella, and so there's aconsumer brand somewhere on the
other side.
Is there a Is there, is itderivative of, like, there's a
candidate brand, there's anemployer brand, and there's an
alumni brand?
So, uh, that's an awesome,awesome question.
(12:49):
There's elements that kind ofcross, uh, those things, yeah.
Dan Kessler (12:52):
So, so, um, uh, I guess, um, first, first
statement is that I do notfashion myself to be an overall
brand expert.
We are employer brand experts,and that's what we think a lot
about.
Right, right, right.
Our, our sort of point of viewon it is that.
I guess, ideally, or perhapseven aspirationally, there
(13:12):
should be some thread.
Um, to that, you know, consumermarket facing commercial brand,
the alumni brand, the employerbrand.
Yes.
I think where the world is atmaybe more realistic and where
employers are at morerealistically is, I think, step
one.
It's just putting that thoughtand energy into what that
authentic employer brand evenis.
(13:34):
Just living that.
Just living it.
Cause, cause we see too, there'stoo many companies who are still
either, either just not doinganything, frankly.
They're silent on it.
They're deferring to a glassdoor.
Um, and getting a flawedperspective on their employer
brand and allowing that to tellthe story for them.
Or.
You know, they're just puttingkind of generic buzzwords out
(13:56):
there, um, and, and statementsthat, that don't really have any
substance to them and thataren't unique to the company.
And so that to us is step one.
And then, and in theory, youknow, I guess, William, that
should, if that doesn't connectto your commercial brand, like
there's probably something, likeit's like, it should connect,
right?
Like the leg
William Tincup (14:15):
bone should connect to the hip bone,
somehow, some way.
Yeah.
It's.
It's, it's fascinating, um,because, you know, when, when
people think about culture andthey think about employer brand,
it's thinking about those, like,okay, like I think of it like a
DNA strand or a coin that youflip it over one's employer
brand, one's culture.
(14:36):
Great.
They've got to be aligned with aDNA strand kind of visualization
exercise.
These things have to be alignedand in lockstep with one another
and the discussions I have withrecruiters.
So I've.
I have three differentdiscussions with vendors and
with HR with recruiters.
The discussion I have withrecruiters is like, if
(14:56):
something's aspirational, uh, beit your employer brand or your
culture or something in, in themix, then tell the candidate
it's
Dan Kessler (15:06):
aspirational.
Oh my gosh.
Yes.
Yes.
It's okay.
Which is okay.
It's totally okay.
Yes.
William Tincup (15:11):
We're not, we aspire.
To be here, that's, I mean, youjust add a couple of words in
front of it and you tell thecandidate, make sure you
understand, we're not there yet.
So when you get the job andyou're in, you're working, I
don't want you to get frustratedbecause we're not there yet with
your help.
With all the help of a lot ofother folks, we can push this
boulder.
(15:32):
We can, you
Dan Kessler (15:33):
know, it's get, I love it.
I love it.
Because, you know, some of that,we, we actually think about that
internally for us, right?
This is our business, right?
Yeah.
Well, like we are in thebusiness of culture and employer
brand and so sometimes whenfolks interview with us.
They, you know, have this sortof like, you know, mythical or
utopian version of our culture.
And we're always like, I hateto, I hate to break the news to
(15:53):
you, friend, but you know,unfortunately, we're just a
bunch of human beings trying tofigure things out as well.
And, and therefore there arethese elements of our culture
that are more aspirational.
But by the way, we're going totell you what we're aspiring
for.
You know, we're going to beworking on that every single day
as a team.
And we want you to be a part ofthat.
But I, you know, you've, I'msure you're probably familiar
(16:15):
with.
Um, you know, the concept of, ofa core value is truly core when
it can actually do harm.
And one of the things for us,one of our core values is
helpfulness and, um, you know,we'll be so helpful, uh, that
we'll lose money on a customer.
We'll be so helpful, um, thatwe'll, uh, You know, not allow
(16:40):
someone to figure something outfor themselves, say, right?
And so that's how we know thathelpfulness is truly core for
us.
Whereas you can define anaspirational value.
Um, for us, it's, we want to bemore and more innovative.
Right.
And so we feel we're prettyinnovative, but we, we have more
(17:01):
room to, to, um, to go there.
And so we talk about that.
And, and so I think it's just,to your point, it's just
critical to.
Um, and that gets back to thatauthenticity, that if you can be
authentic about the employeeexperience and what's actually
going on, people are going totrust you more.
And frankly, they're going to bea better Um, employee, when they
come in, because they know whatthey're getting themselves into,
(17:23):
right?
There's no surprises.
William Tincup (17:25):
There should be no surprises.
Exactly.
Two things.
One, when I talk to recruitersabout that, they kind of get it,
right?
When I talk to HR, they're like,yeah, we can't do that.
Like, I, there's, there is awall that I know that
recruiters, corporate recruitersin particular, they hate, they
face, and I'm not blaming HR,I'm just saying, they don't want
(17:46):
to talk about it as anaspirational.
They want to talk about it as itis.
That, that, that even if they'renot that way, like say Fairness,
they're not there.
They want to be there.
They want to say they're there.
And so the rub sometimesinternally is that recruiters
want to tell candidates thetruth, if you will.
(18:08):
Yeah.
And talk about aspirationalversus, versus, uh, you know,
life at this company, et cetera.
HR doesn't, doesn't like that.
By and large, I'm just paintingwith the big dry brush now.
Yeah,
Dan Kessler (18:19):
no, of course, of course.
And go ahead, keep going.
No, the, the,
William Tincup (18:23):
the thing that I've done in hiring for a long
time is I start off with all thebad news.
So mine's kind of a shock andawe type of strategy when, when
we're, when I'm hiring someone,it's like, let me tell you all
the things that we failed atjust in the last week.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I'm going to purposely, I'mgoing to try to scare you out of
(18:47):
taking this job because I'mgoing to lay it all out there.
Hey, listen, here's the deal,blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
blah.
Let it all out.
I mean, all I'm going to try torepel you.
You've gotten to this place.
I'm going to try and repel you.
And if you then can understandall that and, and it's okay, and
you understand where we're onour journey and you want to be a
(19:09):
part of it, okay.
Then there's no surprises, likethat's the worst thing that can
happen to a freshly mintedemployee is that it's not what
they were sold.
Dan Kessler (19:20):
So, what's so interesting about that is one
thing that surprised us, becauseone of the things that we do
with companies is we take,again, that voice of employee
feedback and we help them sharethat with, with, um, with the
candidates, right?
And so our assumption, um, was,well, they'll really want, you
know, we capture positive,constructive, everything in
between, right?
Right.
And so our assumption was,though, most companies will want
(19:43):
to, um, really just focus on thepositive, right?
They won't want to.
Do the shock and awe approachand share the things they're
working on.
And what has pleasantlysurprised us is that more
companies than you might think,again, and this, maybe it's a,
it's a selection bias for theones we're talking to, are
saying, yes, of course we wantto say positive, share the
positive things, but we'rewilling to say, you know, here's
(20:04):
some things that we're workingon.
Um, and we just thought thatwas, that, that, that was really
cool because it's, it's exactlywhere you're going, which is,
yes, let's celebrate thepositive, um, because by the
way, every culture, everyorganization that we talk to,
there's good stuff going on,right?
People aren't sitting in a roomthinking, how can we make our
(20:24):
employees lives miserable today?
Um.
You know, like let's figure thatout.
It's like, no people, you know,for in the most, I'm sure maybe
there's a couple of cases wherethat's happening, but in the
vast, vast majority oforganizations out there, people
are trying to do right.
Um, you know, by the team and,uh, and it's just kind of,
again, how do you articulatethat in a way that is authentic
(20:46):
to your organization and yourculture and your business and
your goals?
So as
William Tincup (20:50):
people listen to this podcast, the nuggets that
they need to get out of it.
But one thing that, you know,will come up is how, how do, how
do they know where they're at ontheir journey of putting these
two things together?
Like how do they figure thatout?
Like, okay, we're better than wethought we are, or actually it's
worse than we thought.
Dan Kessler (21:11):
So, so for us, that is really at the heart of what
we do and obviously starts withmeasurement.
Um, so, so what we do is, youknow, through our data, we're
able to give every company asingle number, a workplace
experience score thatarticulates where they stand,
and we give them the opportunityto earn recognition based on how
they stack up.
So, we recognize top workplacesall over the country.
(21:34):
We're really excited, William,that we have a new partnership
with USA Today.
So, we're going to be publishingtop workplaces USA, um, in, uh,
the spring of 2024 and everyyear, um, moving forward.
And so, for us, it's abouttaking that assessment,
understanding where you stand,you know, If there's something
(21:55):
to celebrate, shout it from therooftop, um, and if there's not
something to celebrate, we'regoing to help you figure out,
you know, one, how to find somepositive things to articulate
about your culture, and forevery company, we're going to
help you continue on that pathto improvement, um, and to be in
the, you know, be in the cultureand having the brand that you
want, but for us, it all startswith that voice of employee and
(22:18):
employee feedback being thethread that ties it all
together.
William Tincup (22:21):
Drops mic, walks off stage.
Dan, thank you so much.
This has been absolutelywonderful conversation.
Thanks for educating ouraudience.
Dan Kessler (22:30):
Thank you so much, William.
Really enjoyed it.
William Tincup (22:32):
Absolutely.
Thanks everybody for listening.
Until next time.
This is William Tincup, and you're listening to
the Recruiting Daily podcast.
Today, we have Dan on fromIntergage, and our topic is At
This Moment.
Your employer brand and, whichis bold, underlined, culture,
are mission critical.
So what we're going to betalking about today is not one
or the other, it's thecombination of the two and how
(00:55):
they've become, they'vetranscended into becoming
mission critical.
So why don't we do someintroductions?
Dan, would you introduceyourself and also what you do at
Intergage?
Dan Kessler (01:07):
Yeah, thanks, William.
I appreciate you taking the timeto have the conversation.
We've been, we've been lookingforward to it.
Uh, so I am Dan Kessler.
I'm the president at Energageand we are a purpose driven
business.
So we exist to make the world abetter place to work together.
Um, and we're really proud, uh,to say that we're actually one
of the first 20 B corporationsin the world.
(01:30):
There's thousands of B corpsaround the world that, um, have
purpose driven businesses aswell.
And what we do, uh,fundamentally is, is build and
brand top workplaces.
So, when you talk about themission criticality of employer
brand and, uh, agree with yourbold and underlying culture, um,
(01:52):
that is really at the heart ofwhat we do and what we think
about every day and, and we'rereally excited to, uh, to have
this conversation with youtoday.
Awesome.
William Tincup (02:02):
So prior to COVID, we, we would talk about
employer brand and the reasonsfor spending money in it, uh,
tied to alumni and the candidateexperience and employee
experience and all that stuff.
There's even conferences thatkind of came about and some of
that's kind of.
Mellowed out, died out, etc.
(02:22):
And, uh, culture has always kindof been there.
I've always had a problem withHR owning culture.
It's a personal bias of mine.
Um, so we've talked aboutculture, but I really think
there are, are, we've beenshocked through the, through
COVID that a lot of peoplethought and, and probably still
(02:44):
do think to some degree thatculture is the box.
The, the, the place.
And so I believe thatfundamentally people have like
really struggling with what,what is culture.
And so.
This is the conversation.
What I love about this is it'slike, okay, well, you can't have
one, not the other.
You can't have culture and nothave an employer brand, or you
(03:04):
shouldn't.
So technically you can, but youshouldn't.
So take us into these worlds.
Let's talk about employerbranding first.
What are you seeing when youlook at the wonderful world of
employer brand and branding?
What do you, what
Dan Kessler (03:17):
do you see?
Yeah, so a couple things.
Um, I think in general, when welook at the world of employer
brand, I think the, the, thesort of good news, if you will,
is that it seems that employershave figured out that It's
really important to talk aboutyour culture as part of your
employer brand strategy.
To your point, you know, we can,you know, all the words and the
(03:41):
jargon, whatever, um, you know,you have a culture, the, uh, the
employees, the candidates thatyou're talking to really care
about what that culture is.
And so, You need to becommunicating it, right?
What we've found, um, thecounter to that or the challenge
is that our research suggeststhat employers are really
(04:02):
struggling to do thateffectively.
And there's actually a, um, areal disconnect that we've seen
in our research between, um,what the employee, what the
employer perceives.
They're doing aroundcommunicating their culture
versus how the job seekerexperiences it.
And so just to make that realfor you and quantify that, we
actually asked, um, a set ofemployers and a set of
(04:24):
candidates, um, you know, towhat extent the company culture
is clearly communicated in thehiring process.
And I don't think you're goingto be surprised by the results,
which is that employers, right?
What employers say, 80 percentof them, absolutely right.
We are clearly, 100 percentright, exactly.
Clearly, can you be clearer?
Yeah.
What could you miss?
(04:44):
Um, whereas only 30 percent ofthe job seekers agree.
And so, um, and, and so amassive disconnect there.
And admittedly, well, you know,it's, it is tricky to, uh.
to communicate culture becauseit can be perceived as this, as
this esoteric, um, sort ofconcept, to your point, or it
can be very narrowly defined as,as, you know, the ping pong
(05:06):
table or whatever it is in theoffice, and I think our
perspective on this is, um, atleast one really important
vehicle to articulate thatculture is through the voice of
employee, right?
And allow your employees to tellthe story of your culture,
right?
Slapping some things on yourwebsite saying people are our
(05:27):
greatest asset, um, is virtuallymeaningless at this point in
time.
Um, and it's more about thatauthentic, raw, Um, unique,
quirky, uh, you know,perspective that's going to come
through voice of employeefeedback.
And so that, that's really whatwe've honed in on as, as we
think about what can be ourunique value add to this
(05:50):
challenge and opportunity thatwe see around employer brand.
Yeah.
A hundred
William Tincup (05:53):
years ago, uh, Glassdoor put together an
employer branding conference andI was on stage and, uh, someone
asked me, what is, what isemployer brand?
And I said, it's a fingerprint.
There's no two that should bethe same.
What works at Zappos doesn'twork at GM.
What works at GM doesn't work atTyco, et cetera.
(06:14):
Like it's gotta be that specificto you.
And so she pushed me, you know,the, the person else pushed me
like, well, first of all, that'sfantastic.
And I'm going to steal that B.
Um, yeah, but what is it?
I said, well, it's the thingsthat you'll allow and the things
that you'll accept and thethings that you won't accept.
(06:35):
And every team, I mean, there'smicrocultures and inside of a
big company, the sales team inNew York is a little bit
different than the sales team inTopeka.
So certain things are acceptedand certain things aren't
accepted and that's fluid.
And she, she loved that.
She like, she got it.
She's like, okay, I wanted likea black and white answer.
(06:55):
I still didn't, I still haven'tgotten the black and white
answer, but, but at least I'm atleast going down the path.
And so it's evolved since then.
And I think the pandemic, youknow, sped some things up.
And I also, I would like to getyour take on this.
The audience, i.
e.
candidates have changeddramatically in terms of like
their desires from a company.
(07:18):
They want, as you know, theywant speed.
They want things that are highlypersonalized.
They want companies that arefair, you know, they, they've
got a list of needs.
You know, don't negotiate withterrorists, but they've got a
list of needs.
And if you don't, you know,subscribe to their needs, then
they're just going to move on tosomething else.
Dan Kessler (07:39):
Well, and it, so yes, completely agree with all
that.
We see that in our data andwhat, what might be helpful just
to kind of articulate that andsort of keep this theme of, of
employer brand and culture islet me just briefly kind of walk
you through what, what wemeasure.
So you talk about, you know.
How you define culture being,you know, the things that you're
(08:01):
willing to tolerate, which,which, again, completely
resonate with that.
Um, at the same time, we canquantify the dimensions of
culture, um, through thefeedback we gather from
employees.
And, and we look at it Almost,like, similar to a, um, to a
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs,essentially, which is, you know,
the top of the pyramid is thisconcept of an, of an engaged
(08:23):
employee, right, which is, whichis truly more of a mindset
around, you know, I'm highlymotivated, I'm loyal, right, I'm
not, I'm not looking for anotherjob, I'm even, I love this place
so much that I'd bring in afriend, um, and so when you have
those things that, He's gettingthat discretionary effort that
everyone talks about and, youknow, our data and others proves
(08:43):
that when you've gotten moreengaged employees leads to
better business results.
Just, you know, period.
End of story.
Um, now the, the, the other sideof that is that notion of
engagement is really an output.
Right, it's hard to impact thosethings around motivation,
loyalty, referral, so, so whatare the drivers of that?
And I think this will get to,uh, where you were going, which
(09:07):
is what are, what is theemployee want out of a company?
And it's, what's interesting,William, is, is That answer
actually changes when you're acandidate to when you're on the
other side when you're in,right?
So, so the kind of base of, ofthat, of that pyramid is around,
um, what we, we consider kind ofa concept of almost are you
(09:29):
fairly valued?
Um, so a compensation, benefits,work life flexibility, those
kinds of dimensions.
Those are really, reallyimportant when I'm a candidate.
What's fascinating, um, is onceyou're on the other side, they
actually become less important.
Not unimportant, right?
But relatively less important interms of correlating to that
(09:50):
ultimate goal of engagement.
William Tincup (09:52):
What, what, what trades, uh, what takes this, uh,
place?
So what takes
Dan Kessler (09:57):
its place is, um, A number of things.
The first piece of it is reallyabout my relationship with my
manager.
And so what do I want from myfront line manager, right?
What I want is, I want to beappreciated, um, I want them to
listen to my ideas, I want themto care about me, and I want
them to be, um, Training me and,and thinking about my growth, my
(10:19):
potential, uh, and, and kind ofwhere, what I'm trying to
achieve.
So, so there's a lot that wemeasure and look at around that
manager employee relationship.
And, and we sort of, I'd say we,we somewhat agree with the fact
that, that companies, uh, thatpeople leave, you know, the, the
whole, you leave your manager,not the company, that's somewhat
true.
Um, and the reason I saysomewhat true is because the
(10:40):
other dimension that we look atis things that are really more,
um, In control of typically theexecutive leadership.
So that's kind of the nextdimension up, which is things
like, um, are we clear on ourdirection?
Do we have a set of core values?
Is there a sense of meaning inour work?
Right?
So that's kind of one dimension.
And then the other dimensionthat executive teams can really
(11:02):
impact is, Um, you know, howdoes, how do we communicate,
right?
Do I, as a senior leader,understand what's actually going
on?
Do I, as a frontline employee,feel well informed about
important decisions that impactmy role?
And just, frankly, is it, is it,is it easy, how easy is it to
just get stuff done around here?
Um, how do our, how dodepartments work together?
And so, um, when you talk about,Uh, you know, that, that who
(11:27):
owns culture, right?
So, you know, ultimatelyeveryone should be responsible
for shaping the culture and theydo actually, right.
And for better or worse,everyone is responsible for
shaping the culture, butexecutive teams haven't.
outsized influence on thatculture.
And, and certainly HR plays arole in that, but I couldn't
(11:47):
agree with you more that, um,you know, the executive team
needs to be bought in and, andtruly aligned, um, on, on the
culture that they're willing totolerate and the environment
that they want to create for theteam.
And so, and the reason that, sojust kind of closing off on the,
on the manager thing, our kindof sort of corollary to that,
you leave a manager versus thecompany is in a really strong
(12:11):
culture.
That crappy manager isn't goingto make it because the culture
won't tolerate it.
You know, so, so you're, sure,you're leaving the manager, but
you're actually, what you'rereally doing is you're leaving a
company that didn't have astrong enough culture, um, to
get that manager out.
To jettison.
William Tincup (12:27):
Exactly.
Dan Kessler (12:28):
That's exactly it.
William Tincup (12:29):
That's exactly it.
When you look at employer brand,um, and let's say there's a
brand umbrella, and so there's aconsumer brand somewhere on the
other side.
Is there a Is there, is itderivative of, like, there's a
candidate brand, there's anemployer brand, and there's an
alumni brand?
So, uh, that's an awesome,awesome question.
(12:49):
There's elements that kind ofcross, uh, those things, yeah.
Dan Kessler (12:52):
So, so, um, uh, I guess, um, first, first
statement is that I do notfashion myself to be an overall
brand expert.
We are employer brand experts,and that's what we think a lot
about.
Right, right, right.
Our, our sort of point of viewon it is that.
I guess, ideally, or perhapseven aspirationally, there
(13:12):
should be some thread.
Um, to that, you know, consumermarket facing commercial brand,
the alumni brand, the employerbrand.
Yes.
I think where the world is atmaybe more realistic and where
employers are at morerealistically is, I think, step
one.
It's just putting that thoughtand energy into what that
authentic employer brand evenis.
(13:34):
Just living that.
Just living it.
Cause, cause we see too, there'stoo many companies who are still
either, either just not doinganything, frankly.
They're silent on it.
They're deferring to a glassdoor.
Um, and getting a flawedperspective on their employer
brand and allowing that to tellthe story for them.
Or.
You know, they're just puttingkind of generic buzzwords out
(13:56):
there, um, and, and statementsthat, that don't really have any
substance to them and thataren't unique to the company.
And so that to us is step one.
And then, and in theory, youknow, I guess, William, that
should, if that doesn't connectto your commercial brand, like
there's probably something, likeit's like, it should connect,
right?
Like the leg
William Tincup (14:15):
bone should connect to the hip bone,
somehow, some way.
Yeah.
It's.
It's, it's fascinating, um,because, you know, when, when
people think about culture andthey think about employer brand,
it's thinking about those, like,okay, like I think of it like a
DNA strand or a coin that youflip it over one's employer
brand, one's culture.
(14:36):
Great.
They've got to be aligned with aDNA strand kind of visualization
exercise.
These things have to be alignedand in lockstep with one another
and the discussions I have withrecruiters.
So I've.
I have three differentdiscussions with vendors and
with HR with recruiters.
The discussion I have withrecruiters is like, if
(14:56):
something's aspirational, uh, beit your employer brand or your
culture or something in, in themix, then tell the candidate
it's
Dan Kessler (15:06):
aspirational.
Oh my gosh.
Yes.
Yes.
It's okay.
Which is okay.
It's totally okay.
Yes.
William Tincup (15:11):
We're not, we aspire.
To be here, that's, I mean, youjust add a couple of words in
front of it and you tell thecandidate, make sure you
understand, we're not there yet.
So when you get the job andyou're in, you're working, I
don't want you to get frustratedbecause we're not there yet with
your help.
With all the help of a lot ofother folks, we can push this
boulder.
(15:32):
We can, you
Dan Kessler (15:33):
know, it's get, I love it.
I love it.
Because, you know, some of that,we, we actually think about that
internally for us, right?
This is our business, right?
Yeah.
Well, like we are in thebusiness of culture and employer
brand and so sometimes whenfolks interview with us.
They, you know, have this sortof like, you know, mythical or
utopian version of our culture.
And we're always like, I hateto, I hate to break the news to
(15:53):
you, friend, but you know,unfortunately, we're just a
bunch of human beings trying tofigure things out as well.
And, and therefore there arethese elements of our culture
that are more aspirational.
But by the way, we're going totell you what we're aspiring
for.
You know, we're going to beworking on that every single day
as a team.
And we want you to be a part ofthat.
But I, you know, you've, I'msure you're probably familiar
(16:15):
with.
Um, you know, the concept of, ofa core value is truly core when
it can actually do harm.
And one of the things for us,one of our core values is
helpfulness and, um, you know,we'll be so helpful, uh, that
we'll lose money on a customer.
We'll be so helpful, um, thatwe'll, uh, You know, not allow
(16:40):
someone to figure something outfor themselves, say, right?
And so that's how we know thathelpfulness is truly core for
us.
Whereas you can define anaspirational value.
Um, for us, it's, we want to bemore and more innovative.
Right.
And so we feel we're prettyinnovative, but we, we have more
(17:01):
room to, to, um, to go there.
And so we talk about that.
And, and so I think it's just,to your point, it's just
critical to.
Um, and that gets back to thatauthenticity, that if you can be
authentic about the employeeexperience and what's actually
going on, people are going totrust you more.
And frankly, they're going to bea better Um, employee, when they
come in, because they know whatthey're getting themselves into,
(17:23):
right?
There's no surprises.
William Tincup (17:25):
There should be no surprises.
Exactly.
Two things.
One, when I talk to recruitersabout that, they kind of get it,
right?
When I talk to HR, they're like,yeah, we can't do that.
Like, I, there's, there is awall that I know that
recruiters, corporate recruitersin particular, they hate, they
face, and I'm not blaming HR,I'm just saying, they don't want
(17:46):
to talk about it as anaspirational.
They want to talk about it as itis.
That, that, that even if they'renot that way, like say Fairness,
they're not there.
They want to be there.
They want to say they're there.
And so the rub sometimesinternally is that recruiters
want to tell candidates thetruth, if you will.
(18:08):
Yeah.
And talk about aspirationalversus, versus, uh, you know,
life at this company, et cetera.
HR doesn't, doesn't like that.
By and large, I'm just paintingwith the big dry brush now.
Yeah,
Dan Kessler (18:19):
no, of course, of course.
And go ahead, keep going.
No, the, the,
William Tincup (18:23):
the thing that I've done in hiring for a long
time is I start off with all thebad news.
So mine's kind of a shock andawe type of strategy when, when
we're, when I'm hiring someone,it's like, let me tell you all
the things that we failed atjust in the last week.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I'm going to purposely, I'mgoing to try to scare you out of
(18:47):
taking this job because I'mgoing to lay it all out there.
Hey, listen, here's the deal,blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
blah.
Let it all out.
I mean, all I'm going to try torepel you.
You've gotten to this place.
I'm going to try and repel you.
And if you then can understandall that and, and it's okay, and
you understand where we're onour journey and you want to be a
(19:09):
part of it, okay.
Then there's no surprises, likethat's the worst thing that can
happen to a freshly mintedemployee is that it's not what
they were sold.
Dan Kessler (19:20):
So, what's so interesting about that is one
thing that surprised us, becauseone of the things that we do
with companies is we take,again, that voice of employee
feedback and we help them sharethat with, with, um, with the
candidates, right?
And so our assumption, um, was,well, they'll really want, you
know, we capture positive,constructive, everything in
between, right?
Right.
And so our assumption was,though, most companies will want
(19:43):
to, um, really just focus on thepositive, right?
They won't want to.
Do the shock and awe approachand share the things they're
working on.
And what has pleasantlysurprised us is that more
companies than you might think,again, and this, maybe it's a,
it's a selection bias for theones we're talking to, are
saying, yes, of course we wantto say positive, share the
positive things, but we'rewilling to say, you know, here's
(20:04):
some things that we're workingon.
Um, and we just thought thatwas, that, that, that was really
cool because it's, it's exactlywhere you're going, which is,
yes, let's celebrate thepositive, um, because by the
way, every culture, everyorganization that we talk to,
there's good stuff going on,right?
People aren't sitting in a roomthinking, how can we make our
(20:24):
employees lives miserable today?
Um.
You know, like let's figure thatout.
It's like, no people, you know,for in the most, I'm sure maybe
there's a couple of cases wherethat's happening, but in the
vast, vast majority oforganizations out there, people
are trying to do right.
Um, you know, by the team and,uh, and it's just kind of,
again, how do you articulatethat in a way that is authentic
(20:46):
to your organization and yourculture and your business and
your goals?
So as
William Tincup (20:50):
people listen to this podcast, the nuggets that
they need to get out of it.
But one thing that, you know,will come up is how, how do, how
do they know where they're at ontheir journey of putting these
two things together?
Like how do they figure thatout?
Like, okay, we're better than wethought we are, or actually it's
worse than we thought.
Dan Kessler (21:11):
So, so for us, that is really at the heart of what
we do and obviously starts withmeasurement.
Um, so, so what we do is, youknow, through our data, we're
able to give every company asingle number, a workplace
experience score thatarticulates where they stand,
and we give them the opportunityto earn recognition based on how
they stack up.
So, we recognize top workplacesall over the country.
(21:34):
We're really excited, William,that we have a new partnership
with USA Today.
So, we're going to be publishingtop workplaces USA, um, in, uh,
the spring of 2024 and everyyear, um, moving forward.
And so, for us, it's abouttaking that assessment,
understanding where you stand,you know, If there's something
(21:55):
to celebrate, shout it from therooftop, um, and if there's not
something to celebrate, we'regoing to help you figure out,
you know, one, how to find somepositive things to articulate
about your culture, and forevery company, we're going to
help you continue on that pathto improvement, um, and to be in
the, you know, be in the cultureand having the brand that you
want, but for us, it all startswith that voice of employee and
(22:18):
employee feedback being thethread that ties it all
together.
William Tincup (22:21):
Drops mic, walks off stage.
Dan, thank you so much.
This has been absolutelywonderful conversation.
Thanks for educating ouraudience.
Dan Kessler (22:30):
Thank you so much, William.
Really enjoyed it.
William Tincup (22:32):
Absolutely.
Thanks everybody for listening.
Until next time.
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