239. What’s your Employer Value Proposition as a Coworking Space?
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Resources Mentioned in this Podcast:
Bryan’s Book: Give and Get: Employer Branding
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TRANSCRIPTION
239. What’s your Employer Value Proposition as a Coworking Space?
00:00:01 Welcome to the Everything Coworking podcast, where you learn what you need to know about how the world wants to work. And now your host coworking space owner and trend expert, Jamie Russo. Welcome to the Everything Coworking podcast. This is your host, Jamie Rousseau today. My guest is Bryan Adams, CEO of P H dot creative Bryan's agency does talent engagement strategies for companies such as apple,
00:00:41 American airlines, British telecom and Virgin, but don't worry. It was fairly easy for Bryan to kind of drop down into the mindset of a coworking space owner. He has a distributed team and they work out of co-working spaces. So he was even familiar with the role of Community Manager, which was my favorite example of sort of leveraging his concepts to apply to the hiring that we do.
00:01:07 So Bryan talks about concepts such as the employer value proposition and the give get equation. So thinking about what do employees need to give in order to get the benefits that our role with our business promises, he recently wrote a book called the give and get employer branding. We will link that up in the show notes, so you can grab a copy of your interested in his concepts.
00:01:34 So I'm not going to delay any further. I'm going to jump into my conversation with Bryan. I will say even small companies today need to think big about how to attract great talent. And I think some of Bryan's concepts will be really good food for thought about how we message how we position and how we think about the hiring process. Thank you for joining me today.
00:01:57 I have a guest coming to join us from San Diego, California, although he has a bit of an accent. So Bryan we'll have to talk about your background. Bryan is the CEO and founder of P H creative, which is recognized as one of the leading employer brand agencies in the world. And if you're driving around or walking your dog, you can raise your hand if you've not ever used an employer brand agency.
00:02:20 So I can't wait to hear about the work. Bryan does pH specializes in building world class, employer, brand EVP and talent engagement strategy for companies such as apple, American airlines, British telecom and Virgin. So I just walked Bryan through who our listeners are and who you are. And some of the pain points around talent recruitment retain retaining. And, you know,
00:02:48 he said, what do you want to talk about? And I said, probably the same topic everybody wants to talk about, which is, you know, what, an unusual time we've found ourselves in. And it's always a challenge to find great people. So we love that topic. And thank you for taking the time to join us. So you're in San Diego.
00:03:06 We're specifically not that we want to find your house, but so I had, I was just in San Diego in mid December, and I'd only really spent time downtown, which is fine, but I had a few days to myself with no family members, so I could, whatever I wanted. And I went to LA Jolla and Del Mar and Coronado island like to spend a lot of time near the water and lots of green food.
00:03:35 So I got to explore cause people love San Diego. And I was always kind of like, I don't know if I totally get it and now I get it. I would like to live in Delmark. That would be my Well nice, beautiful. We like Rancho Santa Fe, but we live on Coronado island On the island. I mean, I was driving around and I was like,
00:03:56 I guess people live here. I saw some kids playing soccer. It was, I must've been there partly over a weekend. And I was like, oh, people live here. It's not just like a tourist space. And I still like an hour walking on. I mean, it was actually, it had rained rain the first day I was there.
00:04:10 It was like December 8th through the 12th, I think we were there. And so I was like, who knew it? You know, it rains in San Diego. And then we had just like gorgeous days. And we went to, we went to the Henry for dinner, which was Good. Yeah. So I was there. I have a couple,
00:04:30 so I'm a big CrossFitter, which my audience knows and my best CrossFit friend wanted to do this competition in San Diego is four dates. And I said, oh no, I won't do a four-day comp. I've done two day comps. And they, you know, like lay me out. So, so they did it. And I played around in San Diego on the beach for four days.
00:04:54 You've definitely had the best side of that deal. Absolutely. But it's a lovely place to spend four days. And so I'm from Liverpool in England, originally home of the Beatles and the best football team in the world, Liverpool football club. But I've been in San Diego probably coming up to five years and it still feels I still get that sort of first day of holiday feeling when I wake up because the weather is distinctly different,
00:05:19 you know, to the sort of past 38 years of life. This is, this is very different to me. So I do feel blessed and lucky to live in San Diego. Awesome. Okay. So tell us a little about you, the work that you do, and then we'll kind of dive into the content. I have your book on my Kindle in front of me.
00:05:39 Yeah. So, so thanks for that, Jamie. And it's a real pleasure to talk this day and I can't wait to dive more into this little niche. I love a good niche. You know, when we can apply what we do to a specialist sort of area it's it's magic. So employer branding, we're a specialist employer brand agency, and we're calibrated to work with large global employers with complex talent audiences or mid sized organizations with aggressive aspirations for growth or transition.
00:06:05 Typically that's, that's where we replay. And employer branding is essentially the reputation you have as an employer. And it's, it's, there's three components to it. So the reputational aspect is one, the proposition that you offer your talent is the, is the EVP, that's the employee value proposition. So think of that as a two way value exchange. What can you offer me to make me spend most of my waking hours every day,
00:06:36 working for your organization? You know, what does it take to thrive? Why should I care? And then the third aspect is the talent experience. So how do you design an employee experience that delivers purpose impact and belonging and reinforces the reputation you claim to have? And the proposition you say you have on offer? You know, and as we move into a world where people are the only competitive advantage left in business,
00:07:04 full stop, then everything else can be automated and commoditized and bought and scale people make the big difference here where we're seeing employer branding rise at the top of corporate strategy, and it's a phenomenal place to be and watch. And, you know, we learn every day and we get to interact with some of the best brands on the planet. So I feel very blessed and lucky to do that.
00:07:28 It's exciting and it makes a profound difference to people's day. So our vision is everybody loves their job. So we exist to help organizations better articulate the work, the employee experience so people can make better career decisions. So who is your client in a larger organization? Is it HR? Is it the chief people officer kind of role? Yeah. Yes.
00:07:51 So that's a good question. So typically 74% of the contracts that get signed in the partnership work that we take on assigned by that the head of talent attraction. Usually it's sponsored by the chief people officer and then we'll work with an employer brand manager or somebody of that nature, but usually it comes from the head of TA. So what is sort of the,
00:08:20 I don't know, how do we think about for somebody who's not as familiar thinking about an employer brand? What is the manifestation of that? And I'm curious, cause I know you have some like, you know, different ways of thinking about this equation, but is this a, like a glass door rating? Is it getting on the list of best places to work?
00:08:39 Yeah. So where you, where you rank on those listings and ratings and the, your, your Glassdoor rate, that's an indicator as to sort of how well you're doing from a reputational perspective and how well you're setting the expectations. You know, employee brand hasn't been around very long. It's still in its infancy. Really we're talking, you know, my agency is 18 years old.
00:09:06 That makes me feel old, but, but the term employer brand has probably been around 15 years, maybe, maybe a little bit less. And the, the initial idea was we'll just lift and shift what people do in marketing and we'll dial up why it's such a great place to come and work at our organization. So we can be more attractive and increase the volume of applicants towards our recruitment process now,
00:09:35 as that's matured and you know, I'm sure you'll agree. And you know, I've never met a TA leader that disagrees with this. Now we're in a place where we certainly just don't want more volume of applicants. We want more of the right applicants and we don't want people to join because we've made a promise and they think that joining an organization, that's one thing only to find out that it's something else.
00:09:56 And then they leave shortly afterwards because it's a great big waste of time. So now we're in a period of maturity in this industry where also it's a buyer's market at the moment, you know, the resignation or the great, the great epiphany as I call it, organizations are being forced to take a good look at themselves, strategically clarify and simplify their message and decide what type of organization are we,
00:10:25 what do we have to offer? And typically from a reputational perspective, that means they're either going to be seen as a career catalyst, a place to accelerate somebody's career. They're either going to be seen a trade on the culture, which is like synonymous with employer brand, how it feels to go to work every day and bringing your full self and the sense of belonging or the fed.
00:10:46 See the sort of, and this is the sort of the big one at the moment is this idea of citizenship is, is our organization a good citizen? You know, are we doing right by the planet? Are we impacting the world in a positive way? And as millennials officially ruin ruin the world. Now, apparently this idea of citizenship is it's coming up more and more and people are making career decisions based on the mix of those three seeds.
00:11:13 So that's the sort of, that's that isn't, that is your employer brand, but then the proposition of how you show up and how you work towards achieving becoming a career catalyst or trading on your culture or citizenship, that's your, that's the proposition. And typically it's as simple as the book give and get employee branding lays this out. It's it's as simple as what do I have to give as an employee,
00:11:40 sacrifices, commitments, harsh realities, and adversities of, of, of working at your organization in order to receive the strengths, benefits, and opportunities you have to offer, you know, and traditionally the marketing bit would leave out the harsh realities and the adversities. It would just talk about the sunshine truth and the rainbows and unicorns side of things. Yeah.
00:12:02 Cause we're recruiting. We need to talk people joining us. Can't tell them how it really is on a bad day. It's funny, isn't it? Because now the average candidate will research between six and eight hours before deciding whether to apply for a role. And what they're looking for is the answer to the question. Do I have what it takes? You know,
00:12:26 am I going to be successful in this role? Is it going to add value to my career? Is it going to add value to my life? Can I do it? You know, what's the truth. What do I really need to know? So Glassdoor's an interesting one because it's seen as a place where you can go and get the truth and employ a brand is there to own the truth.
00:12:44 Yourself, control the truth as much as you can, and actually controls the role where it's more influence you can't, you can't control the brand these days. You can only influence it, but leaning into what might be seen as the negative side is actually the key to being more compelling to the right matched talent, because what you and I might see as a climb,
00:13:06 you know, that's, that's too steep is going to tend some people aren't such that, okay, that is suitably challenging to fulfill what I'm trying to achieve in my career. So what is good to some people is bad to others and vice versa, and really there's no good or bad, it's just well-matched or not. But most organizations just lack the clarity and simplicity of the message to just be truthful about what to expect,
00:13:29 you know, and, and you still have to sell the organization, but we, we say you should always sell the truth. Okay. So yeah, there is right. It's not a marketing exercise. It's a, yeah. How do you, how do you phrase it? I mean, who do you, who do you, yeah. What is your process for working with a team to get at this?
00:13:58 So that's a great question. So typically our research, it's a mix of quantitative data like surveying and so on and so forth or qualitative digging into listening to people on a one-to-one or group environment. We always say data tells you what, but people tell you why. So essentially we just give an organization a really good listening to and see what the common themes are,
00:14:22 what people are all saying, what the, the sentiment that comes across, you know, the common themes across the organization of why people join and then why people stay. And usually they are different, you know? And it's when you talk about passion and pride in, within a role or within a team or within an organization, typically that tells you where to dig for stories of adversity,
00:14:45 challenge, being stretched and accelerated through a career. You know, we've never found contentment and pride and passion and a sense of achievement without an obstacle. And your brand of difficult is actually the key to success here. And, you know, it's not just being more truthful about the negatives. It's, contexting the value that people find on the journey. People will go on,
00:15:12 you know, at grassroots, very simple people just want people, you know, just, just level with me, what so expect it, you know, so if I'm going to work at coworking space, you get to meet some weird and wonderful people every day. If you're an outgoing person that they'll never be a shortage of conversation, if you like helping people,
00:15:32 you know, and connecting and making a difference to small business where it really matters and representing lots of people's brands every day and making a significant difference to the bear brand experience, possibly contributing to, to them winning new business, or keeping new keeping existing clients, then there's a significant amount there to, to find fulfillment and challenge. And this, that,
00:15:54 and the other, however, the flip side is you've also got to be prepared to take responsibility for how the place feels and looks, which means emptying the bins and those teabags need to be in the trash, can not next to the trash can. And you know, you might have to have some difficult conversations with some messy people, allow people and be respectful of this,
00:16:12 like the other. So, so it's not for everybody. And when, and when you can have a conversation, as simple as that, and you finish it with, so it's not for everybody. Now you get into the good stuff and people can make a real educated decision based on reality. And that's what people want. Hey, I just wanted to jump in really quickly before we continue with our discussion.
00:16:39 If you're working on opening a co-working space, I want to invite you to join me for my free masterclass three behind the scenes secrets to opening a coworking space. If you're working on opening a coworking space, I want to share the three decisions that I've seen successful operators make when they're creating their Coworking business. The masterclass is totally free. It's about an hour and includes some Q and a.
00:17:03 If you'd like to join me, you can register at Everything Coworking dot com forward slash masterclass. If you already have a coworking space, I want to make sure you know, about Community Manager, University, Community Manager, University is a training and development platform for community managers. And it can be for owner operators. It has content training resources, templates from day one to general manager.
00:17:30 The platform includes many courses that cover the major buckets of the Community Manager role from community management, operations, sales, and marketing, finance, and leadership. The content is laid out in a graduated learning path. So the Community Manager can identify what content is most relevant to them on their experience and kind of jump in from there. We provide a live brand new training every single month for the Community Manager group.
00:17:58 We also host a live Q and a call every single month so that the community managers can work through any challenges that they're having or opportunities get ideas from other community managers build their own peer network. We also have a private slack group for the group. So if you're interested in learning more, you can go to Everything, Coworking dot com forward slash Community Manager.
00:18:27 Yeah. I feel like I needed such an interesting perspective and I feel like it when you say it. So clearly it makes sense. And you know, we, I think about my experiences, you know, my husband's working for a sort of smaller startup company that happens to be public. So lots of trade-offs you was yelling at his computer earlier. And I was like,
00:18:51 Hey, I called Kenny electric theater, you know, and we talk a lot about, yeah, the, the trade-offs right. And I think what you're saying is like, put those out front, like don't bait and switch anybody because they won't stay. Right. If, if, if we're not prepared for the trade-offs and the Community Manager role, you described it,
00:19:14 you know, so, well the investment you make in attracting someone and then onboarding them and training them and then to have them leave because you didn't make the whole picture clear and you're not aligned with what they're willing the whole given get. And your yes, your book is called give and get employer branding with the whole, hold on my Kindles, hiding the whole title,
00:19:38 repelled the many and compelled the few. And the, I have the show notes written already there. The book is linked up there and brands, Twitter feed. But yeah, I mean, exactly. You're trying to make that given get really clear from the beginning. Don't hide it, but it's so tempting. That's why I think again, like the conversation was like,
00:20:01 okay, Bryan, I get, I totally get it. That makes sense. And yet I can see it being very tempting to not do that, especially now in a buyer's market. And I'm curious, your book launched like a minute before COVID right. Except, you know, I, I said to Bryan, when we started, I said, well,
00:20:23 the COVID has been, you know, the worst thing and hopefully the best thing that's ever happened to Coworking and flex office. And I think, you know, for someone who works with employers on how to attract the right people, maybe similar, a lot of like stuck, you know, but now, okay. We have some work to do to,
00:20:44 to figure this out. So yeah. I'm just curious, like, has your perspective on what you are advocating shifted or is it just amplified in this like buyer's market and the location question and all the, the value like employees can now sit, I think they've been given permission more permission than ever right. To say here's what is important to me. And th the three CS you mentioned,
00:21:09 like, they're more aware of that. Like that's a lot of what's driving the great resignation, right. Is like, I want to find that match. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, people aren't interviewing with companies, companies are interviewing with people. I think that's fair to say. And if you, haven't got a clear coherent message and you can articulate it simply and justify that message,
00:21:31 then you're in trouble. And if, even if you do do that, but then the next person that they speak to says something else, then, you know, equally you're in trouble. Now, the interesting thing about the given gap approach is it's, it sounds counter-intuitive, but actually when, when you position, Hey, look, here's five reasons not to join us.
00:21:51 It actually makes you more compelling. It justifies the value and it contrasts the upside significantly such that people will then their mindset is no, no, no, no. I can do that. I can do that because I want, those are the things it's more believable. And, and unfortunately it's still a point of difference. And employer brand is also about differentiation saying something different to your competition of being more relevant,
00:22:18 just turns out being truthful and giving insights difference. And it's significantly more relevant, relevant than a banner that you could wear on a t-shirt or, you know, something that's just, just very positive and difficult to swallow. So D is, has that been amplified by COVID or Yeah, very, very much so. Very much. So it's definitely been sort of proven out that being organized.
00:22:45 You certainly can't trade on your consumer brand anymore and just expect people to apply for a job at Starbucks because you love their coffee or, you know, Nike, because absolutely. You know, it's just, it's just, doesn't, it just doesn't work like that anymore. And if, you know, it's like, I'm a recovering marketer and like, we always used to do a lot of consumer research,
00:23:09 you know, and the golden rule is that you need to be able to empathize and understand your audience now from an employer brand perspective, if you haven't got the clarity of your vision and you don't know how that tangibly relates to every seat that you're hiring for, then you're in trouble because the next organization does, you know, and it's tough out there.
00:23:31 And when you make a, I was talking to a good friend of mine yesterday, he used to work at Amazon is possibly one of the best recruitment trainers in the world. And he was relaying, you know, when he was at Amazon, like they would, they would hire somebody on fast and hide and give them an offer within the week. And sometimes,
00:23:50 you know, they'd flown into, they've flown into Seattle and they'd say, look, can you stop the taxi? Because we have an offer for you, like on the way back to the airport, you know? So the speed of which you can offer and make this happen, you know, and the clarity and the organization of the experience that you put on offer,
00:24:12 all of these are marginal games that in this particular market are essential to getting the talent that you want and need because they, they have multiple offers A hundred percent. So you're advocating, you have to do all those things like the speed to the offer and the, but also make those offers to the right people who see the value proposition. And yes,
00:24:39 Absolutely. But if you understand your value proposition and you know, your, your employer brand is there to get attention, your employee value proposition is designed to create affinity. You know, some people will find affinity with your proposition, others won't, and that's good. You want to put people to it to a decision. It also gives hiring managers and recruiters,
00:25:02 more clarity of what they're looking for and how people respond to the messaging that we're putting out there. So everybody is aligned much quicker and it's, it makes for a much efficient process because everybody knows what they're looking for. They know they're offering a consistent message and the response they're getting is either a good match or not. Yeah. And they're just being totally transparent and comfortable with.
00:25:25 Yeah, Absolutely. Yeah. It's perfect. It's like dating, it's better to know right away. Right. Absolutely. Looking for, what am I looking for? Is there a match or maybe that's dating, you know, in your, as a, is an adult, maybe not a, you know, in your twenties, but yeah. So w so the employer brand right.
00:25:47 Is to kind of attract. And then the value proposition is like every day for companies like in an apple, you know, Nike and Microsoft, like, how did they make that felt? I mean, how do you work with cup? Because I could see sort of the, we'll get you in, there's a match, but, you know, then it's just like day to day.
00:26:14 How do you create that culture where you, you sort of remind people of the give get and the value proposition. And, yeah. So, so again, it's another great question, because it's important to point out this isn't about just about talent attraction. If anything, it's more, it's not just about finding talent. It's more about reminding talents. And we always say,
00:26:35 start by re recruiting the talent. You've got, remind them why they joined. And most of the point why they should stay the value they bring the value they contribute and what it, what it means. You know, we've worked with both apple and Microsoft, and I can tell you that on paper, like two global giants from the technology space, they,
00:26:56 they manufacture and produce a lot of technology that is very similar. Technically somebody working at Microsoft is probably going to that who will thrive and enjoys their working environment, probably wouldn't last five minutes, apple and vice versa. You know, apple is a place which is built and driven on relationships. It's a very unstructured, organic organization. You'd know it's one of the biggest organizations on the planet.
00:27:25 It's hard to believe. It's very unstructured and relationship based work-life balance. Isn't great, but everybody knows that. And you know, that going in and, you know, like I've spoken to engineers, they'll do a 16 hour day at apple and go home and carry on building stuff because they like it. Like these guys are crazy, you know, But good on them.
00:27:49 And they know they, they don't just endure it. They embrace it. And they wear it like a, as like a badge of honor and Microsoft, you know, they have similarly passionately people and it's a fantastic place to work, but it's very structured and hierarchical. So it takes a different mindset. And there's a different support network around people to get things done in a,
00:28:11 in a very different way. You know, they both have great citizenship in different ways and so and so forth, but actually there's a, there's a type of person that would thrive in one place and not in the other and vice versa and understanding who you are as an organization. So you can be more efficient with the truth and cut through and being kinder to candidates when they're making a very big decision,
00:28:36 a career decision, you know, if you can give them all of the tools they need to decide, ah, I'm an apple person, not a Microsoft person. And that's the, that's the best gift you can give to somebody don't apply if you're not right for us, isn't that great. You know, so rather than a magnet to attract, it's a smart filter for decision-making,
00:28:57 you know, for both the organization and the candidates and employees. Yeah. I love your kind of concept of reminding employees. And I think, you know, if I was trying to distill, like, what are the really big employers doing that anybody can think about? Because it's so easy to get into the day to day and feel like, okay,
00:29:18 I've got this person we're good. We're, you know, and, and not, I guess, sort of, yeah. Getting back to the dating, like, okay, now we're married. I don't have to buy flowers anymore. And do the, you know, remind this person why they're, you know, decided to marry me because, because that,
00:29:35 because there is a given get, right, like on the days when you feel like you're maybe giving more than you need be reminded about the equation. And I love your, your badge of honor as well, right? Like that's a certain type of person. And, but to your point, like that equation is so clear to people going in, they're not going to go home and complain about their 16 hour a day.
00:29:55 They're just going to go home and write night out and code code, whatever they're, you know, working on coding and doesn't have to be an engineer. But I think like, that's what you want, right. Is for people. Yeah. Like that the downsides are sort of, the give is still a little bit of a badge of honor, but I get to do this.
00:30:14 Yeah, absolutely. And then, you know, you look at someone, an organization like Amazon, they've got a reputation for being quite hostile and aggressive and challenging environment, but they own it and they're not ashamed to not own it. And the proposition there is if you're smart enough to last two years in Amazon and you're highly employable afterwards, and you're probably going to leave with some great stock options as well,
00:30:42 you know, and, and that's okay, you know, but I've never, I've never, I've never come across a culture where, you know, even, even if the majority of people and this isn't my experience with Amazon, but if the majority of people say that there is a toxic environment somewhere, I'm yet to find, to not find somebody who loves it and thrives in it and appreciates it.
00:31:06 And you know, so it's about matching. It's not about good or bad, and it's about clarity and simplicity. And ultimately it comes down to alignment. You know, what kind of high-performance culture does the organization need to move forward? And then how does that trickle down to the brilliance and resilience from a capability perspective in the people we want to join together to make this happen.
00:31:28 And it's actually not rocket science at all. It's literally just aligning the two and being very clear on both sides. So what is the most challenging aspect for most companies in terms of kind of implementing what you're recommending the give get equation? So what's really interesting is sometimes we spend a lot of time educating leaders as to how we can be authentic and be a very functional,
00:32:03 sharp tool to drive the organization forward. And the fear sometimes from a leadership point of view is, look, if we do the research and we represent the company, as it is today, it's, it's authentic, but actually it's not the culture I need to drive the company forward. So paradoxically, how do we do that? Because either we're aspirational,
00:32:25 whether all we're set in reality and it's authentic, and employer brand is the bridge in between those two things. I'll give you a great example. It's one of my favorite examples. There's a company called VF corporation. They control 1% of the world's cotton. There are massive manufacturing company and they own brands like bands the north face Su-Preme Timberland. And they are the biggest bunch of fantastic people I've have ever worked with.
00:32:51 Actually, they are lovely, really nice people to work with, but hands down, evidence-based across our global research, it showed up everywhere that there was a fear that people were too nice and it was stopping the organization move forward. So because of a fear of offending people or upsetting people, so forth, people weren't giving honest feedback to help people improve.
00:33:16 It was holding careers back. It was stopping progression. It was stopping innovation and to their credit from the top down, they, they embraced the evidence and we sort of held the mirror up. And sometimes that doesn't go very well. People don't like what we hold, but to their credit, they agreed that one of their employer brand pillars needed to be about radical candor.
00:33:36 And we could be upfront about, Hey, this doesn't exist today, but we need it to, so here's the gift. And here's the gap of that. You know, if you can give clear feedback, you know, total of with best of intentions and you can do it for the, for the good of the company and for the good of the individual with respect,
00:33:56 then we'll all benefit as a group. And then our job is to put that in place and bring it to life and tell stories of how people have propelled forward. And finally sort of got more things done in their day and feel better about themselves and their work environments and so on, so forth. And that's a great example of how we can be aspirational with the employer brand,
00:34:14 be authentic with the truth and drive the business forward. Whilst making people feel great. You know, it was an absolute pleasure to work on that. We're still work with them. Now it's a long-standing relationship, but that's a company that gets employer brand and uses it as a very sharp tool to drive forward. Do most companies need an external resource to see,
00:34:36 like you talked about listening and playing back and yeah, It can be done internally. You don't always need to use an agency. I'm slightly biased. I'd recommend there's pros and cons. The benefit is we know what we're doing. So it's not just about doing the research. It's about doing the right research. It's about asking the right questions and knowing what to listen for.
00:34:59 And sometimes the first answer you get, isn't the truth. So it's, it's, it's the second or third question that gets to the truth. And of course it's easier for an external consultant to say, here's what we found, whether you like it or not. And here's our recommendation, whether you like it or not. And that can be difficult for internal stakeholders to say,
00:35:17 how do I Tell them the messenger? And one of the most annoying, yet highly pleasurable aspects of what we do as well is sometimes we go in and we say exactly what the lead, the employer brand leader, or the TA lead has been saying for two years, but it's been falling on deaf ears. I in as an external consultant and suddenly it's the greatest idea.
00:35:40 And we should, of course do this and blah, blah, blah. And it's annoying, right? Yeah. If it's embraced that dynamic can really help as well. Yeah. So what is the sort of post pandemic? What is, what is the question or the challenge that you're spending time on? I'm curious if you can answer this question, the probably one sort of insight,
00:36:06 my audience, my audience will draw lots of insights from what you've shared, but they, the question lots of people may not ask that they're probably curious about is, you know, with the give get, how are bigger employers thinking about the location piece in terms of, yeah. Do you have that conversation or, Oh yeah. Oh yeah, absolutely.
00:36:26 And I'm glad to say that conversation's matured radically over the last six, nine months. Absolutely enormously. It's kind of like, remember when social media was sort of brought to the world and there was some brands out there that said, please don't complain on Twitter because we don't do our, we don't mind. It's like, it's like, well, guess what it turns out you do,
00:36:50 because if the audience is there, you have to be there. It's kind of the same thing. And certainly with the great resignation or the great epiphany as I call it, people are good. People are leaving good jobs and it's been baffling for organizations to figure out why. And ultimately it's about, and the reason I call it, the great epiphany is people are waking up saying,
00:37:12 Hey, I don't have to commute to work anymore. I'm going to sell this inner city apartment of 600 square feet and I'm going to move to Scotland and I'm going to buy a 6,000 square foot castle. And I'm going to do a job from there remotely because I can. And that's just the world we're in right now. So like anything it's about the dictatorship of,
00:37:40 of supply and demand and people are waking up all over the world for a variety of lots of different reasons, deciding to do something else or raise the bar on their quality of life or demand more flexibility or demand to be paid more or whatever. And organizations now just have to quickly fall in line. And there is a significant opportunity to be different and relevant.
00:38:05 Like we talked about from an employer brand perspective to differentiate and be more relevant in the agility of responding to what an audience is demanding at the moment. And there is an incredible opportunity as every organization on the planet, jockeys for attention to win talent and keep talent. And so, and so forth to, to use employer branding to a significant advantage in the marketplace.
00:38:31 And it doesn't take millions of dollars investment or radical change. It takes listening and it takes a little bit of agility and empathy, and just demonstrating you care about the people that you employ and you value their contribution and you are willing to change as a consequence. So this is probably the longest answer to the simplest question, but there is a real, there's a,
00:38:59 there's a new ingredient and a new component to employ a brand. That's never been in the sort of the framework strategy before. And it's demonstrating change as a result of the pandemic and black lives matter and civil unrest and so forth because people are looking okay, that's who you were. Now, you're saying, this is what you are and that's different. What's the learning.
00:39:25 And how did you get there? And now that story can be super compelling and that's your opportunity to say, we listened. We were humbled. We've changed. We feel better. This is the higher purpose. Now this is your contribution, and this is how we're going to make you feel belonging. This is how we're going to make sure you don't burn out and embracing the fact that we didn't do all of those things just 12 months ago is actually a benefit.
00:39:50 It's not something that should be shined away from. Yeah, I, yeah, that was, that aligns with what I've been seeing a little bit. And it feels like to your point, that's sort of new and uncomfortable and sort of talking about that, that real learning process and yeah. Being used to setting policy, but now really it has been driven by demand.
00:40:15 Yeah, absolutely. And went to Chan with a lot of sort of transition and change. There's also a lot of opportunity. If you think about a lot of the corporate America who have very strong conviction to diversity, equity and inclusion, but literally have to wait for the male pale Yale of the board to die before they can do anything about it. People are moving and changing and the,
00:40:41 you know, there's empty seats where there wasn't empty seats and holy thoughts towards retention. You've got to go with the flow. You can't control it. It's like trying to hold back the tide. You know, the w the, the average tenure just a few years ago was 4.2 years. And now it's 2.4 and it's trending down, you know? So it's,
00:41:07 it's, it's a very interesting place to play. And it's, as I say, it's a pleasure to work with so many organizations with all these different challenges and problems. I feel like I've, I've learned a lot myself in the last two years. It's been incredible. Awesome. Okay, Bryan, thank you for sharing your perspective. So you can follow Bryan at Bryan underscore PHC on Twitter,
00:41:30 and we have his book given get branding linked up in the show notes brand, any place else, people should look to learn more about you and your work. So Phi and creative.com our website. And there's a great play, a brand strategy sprint course we're offering at the moment, which is super cool. It's like two weeks of intensive sort of learn about employer brand strategy,
00:41:53 but I'm probably more active on, on LinkedIn. So I think it's Bryan item. Number one, you can find me. Okay. Well, I think I connected with you on LinkedIn. I'm also spend a lot of time on LinkedIn. So we'll link up your LinkedIn and your website. Yeah. I love it. Thank you for sharing your perspective with our audience.
00:42:12 Who's different than who you're usually talking to, but you, we didn't go into this, but you mentioned it to be at our pre-check that you, your team uses co-working spaces around the world. Yeah, Absolutely. It's an absolute pleasure. I really appreciate the opportunity to talk to you. And I think that the niche that you're in is, is really interesting and particularly relevant to,
00:42:32 to employ a brand. So if anybody wants any sort of follow-up conversation, or if I can help in any way, I'd be absolutely delighted to. Perfect. Thank you, Bryan. Hey there, thanks for sticking with us through the end of the episode, don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast player. And if you were enjoying the podcast, please go leave us a review.
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