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Tag: Company Culture

The Engine of Productivity: Wellness in the Workplace

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

How we define the workplace has changed radically over the last few years. Offices no longer represent the primary workplace, and remote and hybrid modes of working are becoming the norm rather than the exception. And this has greatly disrupted the way we work. The “office rhythm” is out the door when you’re zooming with people three time zones away one minute, taking a call from the car while you drive your kids to school the next, and collaborating with colleagues face-to-face once or twice a week. It’s hard to connect. Hard to disconnect. And it’s hard to orient yourself in a culture without the daily cues to keep you on track.

All of this leads to wellness issues. The stress of being connected all the time. Or the self-doubt that leads to quiet quitting behaviors. The physical toll of being rooted at your desk all day. The erosion of mentorship in the workplace, and the rise of coaching to fill the gap. HR professionals are on the front lines of a crisis, and they’re responding by paying more attention to wellness than ever before. Employee well-being has emerged as a major focus as organizations replace the free-lunch and foosball-driven ethos with programs aimed at helping people thrive personally so they can thrive professionally.

The data supports this trend: corporate wellness directly influences the emotional and physical health of employees and, by extension, the health of the entire organization. Companies that prioritize wellness not only see an uptick in morale but also in productivity and retention​​​. In fact, 83% of employees report that having a psychologically and emotionally healthy workplace correlates with a significant increase in productivity.​​

Crafting Cultures That Resonate with Employees’ Needs

Leaders in HR play a pivotal role in translating these programs into strategic elements of the company culture. The trend is clear: holistic wellness programs that address the full spectrum of well-being—mental, physical, emotional, and financial—help retain people and attract new talent. They make people more productive, as happier employees take fewer sick days, are more loyal, and bring a higher level of creativity and energy to their roles. And they add to your overall organizational resiliency, which is critical to navigating the ups and downs of today’s volatility.

How to make well-being a strategic element of your employer brand

1. Define a Wellness Philosophy: Have a candid conversation with leadership about why your organization values wellness, and how much you’re willing to invest in it. This is a crucial first step to getting your leadership team aligned on the value that wellness creates for the entire organization. You’ll need to address the holistic equation of well-being—physical, mental, emotional, and financial—and how each dimension drives employee performance and satisfaction.

2. Consistently communicate your POV on Wellness: Use every communication channel to consistently reinforce how wellness is woven into your corporate culture. Share stories that highlight the positive impacts of wellness initiatives on employees, strengthening the perception of your brand as caring and supportive.

3. Align Wellness with Strategic Goals: A key part of your wellness initiatives involves connecting the dots between employees’ well-being and the strategic objectives of the company. For example, link mental health programs like mindfulness sessions to innovation to demonstrate how they result in a more creative and productive workplace.

4. Showcase the Impact: Evidence that wellness works only deepens belief in it as a necessity. Share real-life examples of how wellness programs have improved workplace outcomes. Highlight case studies and testimonials from employees who have benefited from these programs. Create case studies that demonstrate improved productivity, reduced stress levels, and better teamwork.

5. Lead with Wellness: When leaders actively participate in and advocate for wellness programs, it sends a powerful message that no matter where you sit in an organization, you’re still a person with the same needs for support. The more leaders participate and evangelize your wellness programs, the more they become a core part of the company ethos.

6. Offer personalized Wellness Options: There is no one-size-fits all when it comes to well-being. By offering personalized wellness options that can be tailored to individual needs, you underscore your commitment to supporting each employee uniquely. This flexibility makes the programs more effective and highlights your company’s dedication to its workforce.

7. Measure Success and Adapt: As your employees engage with wellness programs, their needs will change. You need to continuously assess and adapt your wellness initiatives to keep the offerings relevant, the energy fresh, and the impact high. By actively managing the portfolio of wellness offerings, you show your workforce that rather than checking a box, the organization is committed to making wellness a foundational element of your employer brand.

Thinking Beyond Wellness Programs

Wellness programs alone can feel like Band-Aids if they’re not connected to the employer brand—the internal expression of your mission, purpose, and values—that drives your organization. As employee well-being emerges as a dynamic force that shapes every aspect of workplace engagement and productivity, employees need to feel that it is part of your organizational DNA.

At Emotive Brand, we specialize in connecting business strategy to culture strategy to develop employer brands that are not just smart—they resonate emotionally. Making sure that employees experience wellness programs as part of a larger narrative around how you value people is essential to delivering the experiences that contribute to an organization being a great place to work.

If you have thoughts about the role wellness programs play in culture strategy, please add to the conversation below. And if you’re thinking about ways to get your culture better aligned to your business strategy, we are always happy to help you think through how to approach the challenge.

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy and creative agency that unlocks the power of emotion to propel a brand, culture, or business forward. We are a remote-first agency with a footprint in the San Francisco Bay Area.

How Do You Orient Your Team When Everything Seems Uncertain?

Posted on by Jamey Aiken

The old axiom about uncertainty being the only certainty in business seems quaint given today’s headlines: Historically low unemployment. Hiring shortages one day and hiring freezes the next. Creeping inflation. Shaky markets. Unexpected layoffs. It’s whiplash inducing. And it’s the world we live in.

As the economy shifts and shudders, leaders are challenged to make strategic decisions with increasingly limited foresight. And employees? They’re left feeling disoriented, confused, and vulnerable. It’s a recipe for getting stuck. People become less willing to make mistakes, to stick their necks out for each other, or to take the smart risks necessary to adapt to the changing environment. In a time when flexibility and agility are critical qualities to business success, many organizations find themselves in a state of emotional contraction, unable to zag gracefully forward.

The problem is alignment. Conventional objective-setting tools simply fall short as a way to get everyone on the same page because they’re based on past assumptions rather than the competing signals of the future. Plus, they don’t give employees the right context for seeing themselves in that changing future—much less get them excited about it. For companies to navigate wave after wave of uncertainty, you need a more responsive approach:

Understand how your employees are feeling right now.
Are they cynical or optimistic? Are they barely hanging on or feeling enthused and inspired? Do they understand the vision for where the company is going? Or do they need more evidence and explanation? The more understood and recognized people feel in times of uncertainty, the more opportunities you have to deepen trust and allegiance. If you ask, people will let you know how aligned they are with a vision for the future and the strategy to get there. You can identify what dissonances need to be reconciled. Where the sources of doubt take hold. What fears need to be assuaged before they grow out of proportion. Powerful alignment—the kind required to change and adapt with the business environment—is only possible if you have clear insight into the emotional state of your organization at any given moment.

Address employees’ emotions with a clear story of how you plan to move forward.
While emotional understanding can improve conventional objective-setting by creating deeper connections with people, you still need to establish a clear point of view that will guide your organization toward its future. All businesses have multiple critical initiatives going on at any given moment: corporate strategy, product, go-to-market, brand, people & culture. If the narrative about how they connect is haphazard or unintentional—or confused by external market conditions—people will start quilting their own narratives. The result is multiple, often conflicting stories that lead to different end states. In other words, brand confusion. You must cut through the noise of function-specific goals, objectives, KPIs, and OKRs to make business and brand more emotionally relevant to the people in an organization.

Get employees focused on a future that they are empowered to create.
In times of flux, business leaders face pressure to leap into action—to batten down the hatches, set a course, and prepare teams to brace for the worst. But what employees most need today is leadership that inspires people with purpose and meaning amidst uncertainty. If your organization is feeling trapped by mounting performance pressure and shrinking time horizons, you must give every employee the ability to see, believe, and participate in creating a future that they know is not only possible but necessary. Emotion is the accelerant, the enabler, the multiplier, and the amplifier that connects powerful ideas more deeply and resonantly to the people who need them.

To move your business forward and ultimately grow in times of uncertainty, you need better ways to connect to what employees are feeling. And you need to equip them not with a best guess about the future, but rather with a clear picture of how they’ll create their future. When employees feel they have the agency and ability to control their destiny, they lean into the future with an entirely different spirit. This is how you translate all the ambition that underpins your brand into a coherent set of actions that keep an organization aligned, confident, and positive as it speeds into the uncertain future.

What is a Brand Promise and Why You Need One

Posted on by Emotive Brand

There’s a lot of talk about the concept of a brand promise. But, what is it? Why does my business need one? How would it make my business stronger? How does it relate to my brand strategy? Here we explore the answers to these pressing questions.  And perhaps more important, what kind of a brand promise does your business need in today’s world to have an impact?

A brand is a promise delivered.

A contemporary brand promise articulates an idea that goes beyond the rational benefits that worked in the past, and extols a higher-order emotional reward. A brand promise is not a slogan or advertising headline. It is not, by definition, a public statement (though it can be as long as your brand truly lives up to it). Finally, it is not a “unique selling proposition”. Indeed, its uniqueness and differentiating power comes not from what it says, but how it transforms the way your organization creates strong and meaningful connections with people.

Continue reading “What is a Brand Promise and Why You Need One”

Global Growth, Local Success: Your Employer Brand Can Do Both

Posted on by Saja Chodosh

Level Setting: Employer Branding Is a Must-Have

As a brand agency whose work revolves around transforming business by changing how people feel about brands, we’re naturally true believers in the impact of employer branding. We think of employer brand as the practice of ensuring a company’s external branding efforts are supported by a corresponding and complementary internal brand that speaks to current and prospective employees. When companies do succeed at successfully articulating an emotionally meaningful proposition of what it means to work for their company, recruitment, retention, and engagement aren’t the only metrics that soar.

Numerous studies show that employer branding has an impact way beyond a company’s ability to keep employees happy and attract talent. It has a significant and measurable impact on the bottom line. Here are just some facts:

  • Negative reputation costs companies at least 10% more per hire. (HBR)
  • 64% of consumers have stopped purchasing a brand after hearing news of that company’s poor employee treatment. (Career Arc)
  • Employer branding can increase stock prices by 36%. (Lippincott)
  • 96% of companies believe employer brand and reputation can positively or negatively impact revenue, yet less than half (44%) monitor that impact. (Career Arc)
  • A strong employer brand can lead to a 50% decrease in cost per hire and a 28% increase in retention. (LinkedIn)
  • Strong employer branding discourages early departures; new hires are 40% less likely to leave after the first 6 months. (LinkedIn)
  • Companies are overpaying on salaries by 10% if they don’t have a strong brand. (HBR)
  • Employee turnover can be reduced by 28% by investing in employer brand. (Office Vibe)

Global Growth? No Better Time for an Employer Branding Initiative

Many of our clients come to us in times of change or in search of growth. Whether it’s organic or M&A, they need an employer brand to drive global recruitment, retention, and engagement at a time when human capital is critical to keeping pace with growth demands.

With accelerated growth at the global level comes a challenge a bit more complicated than filling the funnel with talent or filling the office with snacks to fill the talent. With growth, comes change, and with change, comes uncertainty. It’s only human. Organic global growth means learning to navigate everything from regional work style differences and communication nuances to basic time zone management. While global expansion by way of M&A brings the additional challenge of merging established workplace cultures and power dynamics.

For executives, this means acknowledging that practices that have served the company in the past might not serve it into the future. For HR and recruitment leads at each location, it’s often fear that expansion at the global level might dilute attention on their own location’s unique assets or needs. With clients who’ve grown through M&A, each location may be in a different stage of maturity. And for employees themselves, growth brings a murkiness of its own: “What does adding a new office or a whole new staff mean to me, my role, and my work?”, or even “Do I still belong here?”

Finding Your Connective Tissue, Globally

The first step in creating a globally-resonant employer brand is identifying, or in many cases unearthing, a company’s connective tissue—the underlying truths at the heart what you do, how you do it, and why it matters.

Discovering these across global locations isn’t always obvious at first. Differing cultures, a diverse workforce, or a broad spectrum of capabilities often make it appear like difference outweighs similarity—especially to those on the inside.

This is where a strong outside perspective brings value—and can help a company identify its universal truths. As an agency partner, we begin by diving deep into all facets of your brand, business, and culture and have numerous conversations with employees and executives working in different roles across the world. It’s our job to look for patterns, discover shared beliefs and values, and uncover common ways of thinking, working, or perceiving.

Ultimately, the common truths we identify bubble up to your EVP, or your Employer Value Proposition, the most differentiated and relevant way to communicate your workplace’s value to candidates and employees, which we pressure test through the following filters:

  • Does it have the power to unite and rally your existing employee base?
  • Will it attract the people your business needs to thrive and invite them into the fold?
  • Can it expand with you as your business grows?
  • Can it flex to each unique location’s distinct needs or challenges?
  • Does it feel authentic, meaningful, true, and unique?
  • Is it differentiated from the competition?

Getting Local With It

At a global level, your EVP may drive brand touchpoints such as a global recruitment campaign, a new career website, or a global employee communications strategy. But what does it mean at a local level? What if one office needs help recruiting experienced talent in a remote city where brand awareness is low? And another office site requires a way to stand out in a location abundant with industry competition? This is where the exercise of localization becomes key.

In every global engagement, we work one-on-one with each location to closely understand their individual challenges, needs, and goals—and how the Employer Branding initiative can support them. We create a roadmap that targets key dates, identifies key stakeholders, and acts as a guide as we develop customized brand assets and strategies for ensuring success. Our work is about meeting each team where they are, flexing the EVP to work to what you have, what you need, and what you want, all while underlying the overall global message that sits above it all.

Global growth? Local success? Yes, we’re here to tell you both are possible. Get in touch to learn more about our future-proofing your Employer Brand for growth.

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy and design agency in Oakland, California.

Feeling the Holiday Spirit: Introducing Emotive Feels

Posted on by Chris Ames

Emotion Is Everything

For brands to make an impact on the outside world, they must explore inner worlds. In our line of work, emotion is everything. The most successful brands are those that evoke feeling—that ignite new ways of thinking about the world and our unique place in it

At Emotive Brand, naturally, we’re obsessed with emotion. We believe every company can perform better if its brand connects with people on an emotional level. A brand that’s emotive triggers feelings, inspires action, earns loyalty, and lifts spirits. In the overcrowded business world, your brand must resonate rationally and emotionally. Never overlook the mind, but always aim for the heart.

Emotional Impact

As part of our methodology, we’ve identified 301 positive emotions that a brand could possibly elicit in their target audience. These range from expected—supported, enabled, secure—to unconventional—nostalgic, vibrant, zealous. We call this set of feelings an Emotional Impact, and it acts as a compass for guiding creative and strategic decisions.

Emotional Impact is a tool we use in workshops, it’s on our business cards, and all 301 emotions even hang as separate tiles on our office wall. This year for our holiday card, we were thinking of another, more expressive way to bring this methodology to life.

Introducing Emotive Feels

And so, we created Emotive Feels—an interactive dictionary all about emotion. For each entry, we paired graphic design and animation with quotes from our team and influential thinkers. More than just defining the feeling, we’re seeking to enact it through motion and emotion.

“Visualizing the set of 301 positive emotions has always been very important to us,” said Creative Director Thomas Hutchings. “We are always looking for new ways to do this and find new ways for people to engage with this emotion-first philosophy. This site adds to this quest. It’s fun, engaging, and meaningful. It’s always been important to us to make sure this comes through. A methodology should never be laborious and self-serving.”

To be a truly emotive brand requires more than creating one-off emotional ads. It’s about forging valuable emotional connections at every touchpoint: your logo, your website, even the tone of voice your employees use on customer calls. When brands behave this way, they connect more meaningfully with their audiences. This means people are more likely to remain loyal and engaged, and ultimately feel bonded to the promise of the brand in the long term.

“The Emotive Feels site is such a great opportunity for our studio to showcase a unique aspect that separates us from other agencies,” says Designer Keyoni Scott. “The creation of the site makes our methodology tangible so it can always live on the web and be a tool to help anyone learn about the ways we help brands thrive. We’re always striving to evoke feeling through design.”

“The big buzzword in design is ‘empathy,’” says Senior Designer Jonathan Haggard. Everyone wants to design with empathy for their end-user in mind, which is great, but the conversation usually stops there. In order to effectively design for your customers, it’s best to understand them on a visceral and emotional level. At this level, you are able to affect their perceptions using the principles of design to build a brand or product that amplifies certain emotional responses.”

On Emotive Feels, you’ll find inspirational words from poets, designers, editors, strategists, musicians, artists, and historians. You’ll see shapes shift, bend, twist, morph, spin, snake, and dance. And when you’re done, we hope you leave feeling differently than when you arrived.

“Emotional Impact has always been embedded in our design process, so this project was a fun opportunity to create something visually engaging around our methodology and have it live beyond our office walls,” said Design Director Robert Saywitz. “I think it’s also vital to constantly exercise that creative muscle by carving out the time to create internal projects such as these, where imagination really leads the charge and allows everyone to be involved for a true team effort.”

From our hearts to yours, we hope the holidays are merry and bright.

The blog will return after the holiday break in January 2020.

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy and design agency in Oakland, California.

Competing for Talent in a Hot Market

Posted on by Dominique Smith

When you’re a young company hoping to thrive and compete for talent in a hot market, like the tech industry, it can be tempting to succumb to the table stakes of the “free” work culture. Many of the most well-known tech giants of Silicon Valley offer free food, gym memberships, massages, dry cleaning, concierge services, work activities, the list goes on, all with the intention of attracting and retaining talent. But, are the free add-ons really working?

According to a 2018 LinkedIn report, the tech industry had the highest turnover rates at 13.2% with a median tenure ranging from 1-2 years. In other words, free employee perks might attract talent, but it definitely doesn’t keep them.

Organizations that effectively cater to their talent are those that prioritize strong leadership, effective communication, and dedication to its employees and their growth within the company. The lack of presence of these initiatives within some of the larger tech companies are exactly why employees end up leaving—just take a look at their company reviews on Glassdoor.

So, how can your company attract, retain, and engage talent? Here are three markers of a successful employer brand.

Growth and Recognition

Employees want to work at organizations that not only create opportunities for continuous learning but also for career growth within the company (i.e. promotions). There is an understanding that when you stop learning and advancing in your career, you run a high risk of falling behind and becoming less competitive, especially in today’s economy. New companies and trends are constantly emerging and the talent pool will only become more skilled.

Vision

Full transparency and communication between leadership and employees about the direction the organization is heading in and how it intends to get there highly factors into how aligned employees feel within a company. Employees want to have a clear picture of where they are investing their efforts and ensure that there is still a place for them in the organization. Implementing this heavily relies on effective communication from managers and executives.

Leadership

The togetherness of an organization must trickle down from the top. Employees want to trust their managers and believe that they are competent, communicative and experienced enough to not only lead and make well-informed decisions on behalf of the company but also provide mentorship and value to the company.

In today’s climate, working for an organization that has a strong, effective foundation and is willing to invest in its employees in a way that cultivates opportunity for growth and advancement are the organizations that will have the upper hand in attracting and retaining talent. The free add-ons are a plus, but employee satisfaction is really rooted in working somewhere that is dedicated and supportive to the growth of your career and goals.

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy and design agency in Oakland, California.

Brand, Purpose, Culture: The Triple Threat For Business Right Now

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

In Tandem

We talk a lot about how businesses today need a strong brand, a clear purpose, and an inspired culture. Each of these brand components are playing a greater role in business success today. Sometimes it appears that if you just have one, you might be able to turn your business around. But this is no longer the case.

Without all three – brand, purpose, culture – working together and driving one another, rising to the top is not a possibility. Simply embracing purpose is no longer enough to stand out. Even the most talented people aren’t going to drive you into the future without a clear vision of what that future is. Likewise, a highly strategic and perfectly designed brand won’t succeed without purpose-led people who can bring it to life.

Purpose, Delivered

Purpose is only powerful when it is really brought to life – when it acts as the underlying driving force behind the business. And what brings a purpose to life? Your people. The culture you build. Your employees united around a strong, clear, aspirational future with a clear outline of how to get there.

A vague purpose is no purpose at all. Neither is a purpose that doesn’t dictate your leadership’s behavior and drives best practices that trickle down. So businesses who want to compete today don’t just have to lead with purpose, they have to deliver on that purpose – following through with every brand touch point, living their promise, driving towards their greatest goals, and bringing their employees together every day.

It’s in the Data For Business

When we look at the data, we see the role of purpose having more and more of an impact on business results. According to recent Gallup research, 88% of millennials claim they would remain at their jobs for more than 5 years if they “were satisfied with the company’s sense of purpose,” but only 27% report feeling satisfied with their current company’s values. And this low rating directly impacts business with low employee engagement, low retention rates, and increased difficulty attracting the right fit of talent – top concerns for execs today.

Linking Together Brand, Purpose, Culture

Strong cultures can’t happen in a silo. They require shared accountability and leaders who behave in purpose-led ways that set an example for the rest of the business. And although building a purpose from the ground up is always the easiest practice, it might not be an option for many businesses today. That’s why leaders need to understand how brand, culture, and purpose have to work together to position the business for success.

Although purpose has been accepted by many businesses and brands as a strategic priority, many are struggling to directly link it to their company’s culture. Because of this, purpose can’t do the job it needs to do. First off, HR, not always seen as strategic, needs to be involved. As people demand more transparency, more authenticity, and more purpose from the businesses they want to work for, HR needs to have a seat at the strategic table – helping build a purpose-driven culture that can come alive and drive the business forward.

It’s all about strong leadership, clear vision alignment, joining forces at the strategic table, and figuring out how to communicate an inspiring vision to employees. Because when employees understand why the brand truly matters – what is driving the behavior of the company and its values – they can then align themselves in ways that help the brand outperform the competition and position the business to thrive.

Into the Future

Brand, purpose, and culture are critical to the success of your business. Investing in your brand is a good first step into driving your business and its people in the right direction. But when you invest in your brand, you also have to invest in your culture and never stray away from the power of purpose. Understanding the ways in which culture and purpose are linked, and how they drive your brand forward, is key.

Getting aligned around purpose and delivering on that purpose at every touch point should always be a strategic priority. Infuse it into your culture and help it motivate your people forward. Your company culture – when truly led by purpose – can bring any strategy to life, position your business for growth, and situate your team and your brand to thrive no matter the obstacles ahead.

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy and design agency in Oakland, California.

Remembering to Listen: Why Employee Input Is Key to Moving Your Brand Forward

Posted on by Joanna Schull

Employee Input: A Valuable Resource You Might Be Overlooking

At Emotive Brand, one of the things we strongly believe in is the importance of understanding how a company’s business strategy connects to its brand strategy. As a result, one of the first things we do is review a client’s research: external brand perception studies, competitive analysis documents, analyst reports, and so forth. This external audit is key – but in our experience, it doesn’t provide the complete picture. What’s missing? Potentially, your most informed and passionate stakeholders: your employees.

It’s something even the most well-run companies overlook. In an effort to accelerate processes and get to results, employee input is often the first thing on the chopping block. This isn’t limited to brand and positioning projects. It happens to multiple types of business strategy initiatives. The solution? Have a disciplined game plan and be mindful of the importance of getting input. Fortunately, it’s not rocket science and doesn’t need to be a cumbersome process.

Here’s What We’ve Learned About Getting Employee Input the Right Way:

1. Get input early in the process

Whenever possible, take the time to get employee input early in the process. This does not need to be a complex process. Online surveying tools make it possible to poll your organization quickly, and with minimal expense. To do this effectively, it’s important to be laser-focused in what you want to learn. It’s more instructive to ask 5 well-thought through questions that allow for optional free-response than 25+ multiple choice questions that confirm existing biases.

2. Mix it up

Some of the best insights can arise when you put people from different departments in the same room for an informal focus group. Again, this doesn’t need to be complicated or expensive. Order pizza or your company’s food of choice, find a trusted moderator who can facilitate the conversation, and ask them to weigh in on a topic, problem, or situation.

In our experience, this can be the quickest path to finding the root cause of complex problems that impact multiple parts of an organization. It’s important to do this in a way that makes the contributors feel that they can be completely candid, so often we recommend holding these meetings without senior leaders. They can get the detailed findings later, but individual responses remain anonymous.

3. Engage your sales force

When you want to really understand what’s working – and what’s not – get the sales team’s input. They are the direct line to hearing what’s top of mind for your customers – especially in B2B companies. Chances are, your sales team’s one-on-one conversations with customers in the field will be able to provide nuanced insights that a customer survey might miss. Additionally, getting your sales team’s input upfront results in better adoption and ownership when the final sales materials and messaging is rolled out.

4. Go to the front lines

In addition to involving your sales force, don’t forget to talk to your customer support team or the people at the register. Time after time, we’ve discovered that getting feedback and input from the people on the front lines yields insights that would otherwise go unnoticed.

For example, a major insurance provider didn’t understand why customer satisfaction ratings were terrible — until they sat with their customer service reps for a day and learned why customer service reps weren’t able to provide great customer service. They wanted to, but the underlying infrastructure simply wasn’t designed to allow them to. In other examples, baristas have provided direct insights as to why certain items weren’t selling well.

5. Don’t overcomplicate it

Getting this feedback doesn’t need to be complicated. Go sit with a customer service group, hold a focus group, or create an easy way to collect suggestions and feedback electronically. By going right to the source, you’re not only going to get valuable input and data, you’re involving your people in solving the problem.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco brand strategy and design agency.

Employer Branding Trends for 2019

Posted on by Chris Ames

Fun Work vs. Fulfilling Work

How we hire changes every year. Is there any page on a company’s website more volatile than its careers tab? At the start of the decade, it seemed like a place for plucky young startups to showcase almost everything besides what the organizations actually did. You’d have to scroll through two ping pong tables and at least one company dog before you got to any open positions. But at the end of the day, fun will only get you so far.

Why We Work

Now, the tech scene has largely outgrown its dorm room aesthetic. Prospective hires are looking for far more than bean bags and free lunches. Expectations have shifted from a place of amusement to a place of personal, professional, and emotional fulfillment. A modern company is required to have a handle on everything from 401(k)s to mental health benefits.

“The contract between the organization and the individual is beginning to change,” says Lynda Gratton, Professor of Management Practice at London Business School. “The old contract looked like this: ‘I work to buy stuff that makes me happy.’ The contract is negotiated by tangible assets. The new contract will be, ‘I work to make me happy.’ We have to think about work as being the thing, not the money you get from it. I don’t see many companies realizing how profound that change will be.”

How We Work

Beyond finding meaningful work, how we access that meaning is transforming as well. Eighty-two percent of people want to work from home at least once per week. In addition, it’s estimated that by 2028, 78% of employers will offer remote opportunities in some capacity.

By the numbers, you could view this mobility as chaos, but employers have a unique opportunity to rethink the way they build teams. As Rachael Klinefield says, “Rather than being wed to a finite group of employees who may or may not have the skill and passion to meet a company’s expectations, HR departments can nurture an ever-growing network of high-quality talent.”

This approach challenges the traditional hierarchical management style – and that’s a good thing. Instead, employers will shift toward relationship-oriented strategies that align with their pace, culture, and values. In this style of work, design and communication tools are absolutely essential to keep your talent network in sync, so find whatever works best for you.

Who We Work For

The idea of reputation management, perhaps something once relegated to a buzzword in the past, has never been more important in the age of purpose-driven brands. Like Yelp before them, sites like Reputation.com and Glassdoor act as gatekeepers between brands and top talent.

Recent research from Glassdoor found about half of more than 4,600 people surveyed use Glassdoor at some point during their job search, and that good ratings of a company’s compensation and benefits factor heavily in their decision about where to apply for or accept employment. If companies want to stay competitive, they have to treat their employer brand like they do their corporate brand and heavily manage its online reputation.

How We Find Talent

Just as technology is transforming the way people research brands, it’s shifting how brands research people. Modern recruiting software will continue to alter two key components of hiring: optimization and targeting. In other words, HR professionals will now use the time they once used combing through the slush pile to hone in on top talent. From beginning to end, the entire onboarding process will be streamlined, reducing the risk of a bad fit.

As technology continues to progress, companies will also take advantage of tools like machine learning and AI to build smarter chatbots. This will free up even more time for HR professionals to focus on the human aspects of hiring like relationship-building and discovering a value match.

The Future of Work

The future of work is a story that employers and employees are writing together. The role of an employer brand is ensuring that this story is as strong and harmonious as possible. Above everything else, a company is only as good as its people. Are you doing everything you can to attract and retain the right ones?

To learn about how you can turn your employer brand into a magnet for today’s top talent, contact Founding Partner Tracy Lloyd at [email protected].

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy and design firm in San Francisco.

The Power of Debate in Meetings to Drive Business Forward

Posted on by Saja Chodosh

Meetings: Valuable or Valueless?

What’s more frustrating than sitting through endless meetings and coming out on the other end asking: What was the point of those? As technology introduces even more ways to communicate offline, you would think we’d see the quantity of meetings decreasing. However, the opposite has been shown.

Research shows meetings increasing in length and frequency. In the 1960s, executives spent less than 10 hours in meetings. Now, executives spend about 23 hours a week in them.

And although no one loves a day jam-packed with meetings, what’s really at the heart of the frustration is lack of quality. HBR found that 71% of senior managers think most meetings are “unproductive and inefficient.” And we too are in support of less but better meetings.

What’s the Point of Meetings Anyways?

The reason we have meetings – real, in-person, everyone-around-one-table meetings – is to discuss what can’t be properly discussed in an email or a quick phone call. Meetings should be made to decide on something that deserves more than a disjointed video conference. Because as advanced as technology is, it’s still hard to gauge emotional reactions or read a room across a screen.

Meetings are where we, as people, we can hash things out. Where we have an opportunity to voice opinions, to disagree, to argue, and then, to negotiate, to empathize, and to see anew – cultivating alignment and coming to decisions that everyone in the room can get behind.

The Power of Debate

We believe good debate can transform meetings from lackluster events into something people can actually walk away from and say, well, that was useful. We’ve seen productive debate in action in our own studio for years.

Here’s What We’ve Learned

1. First thing’s first: a clear meeting objective

Every meeting must have a clear objective. No matter how obvious the goals might seem to be, always reiterate the meeting objective before the it begins. Reminding people why everyone is there from the start can help ensure debate is directed. And if the meeting doesn’t have a clear goal? Don’t have it.

We find it’s also helpful to have a designated leader. In all of our client workshops, we designate a facilitator. This person asks hard questions, fosters productive debate, encourages quiet voices to speak up, and is able to step in to redirect when needed. It takes true leadership skills to make sure people feel empowered to speak, respected, and clear about what’s at stake – transforming the time normally wasted into time for engaging discussion.

2. If you don’t have a contrarian, play one

In most groups, there’s likely one person who questions everything. “But is that really the right approach? Not to play devil’s advocate, but…” We say, play it. It’s easy for groups to get caught in group think and sway towards one single idea.

Hashing it out might uncover that not everyone is as aligned as they think they are. In fact, when we conduct workshops for clients, leaders often discover misalignments quickly when we help open up conversations no one’s been having.

And even when aligned, questioning common assumptions, putting yourself in someone else’s shoes, and thinking through a new lens can help test what you believe as right. We’ve found that debate allows businesses to step away from the challenge at hand and see the problem in a new light – enabling new and better solutions to emerge.

3. Debate requires respect

As advocates of arguments (where’s the fun if everyone agrees all the time?), above all else, we are advocates of respect. Fostering a culture of respect is integral to productive debate. With respect at the table, we’re more likely to share opinions, open up to new ideas, and embrace different ways of thinking.

And as an agency who prides itself on our client relationships, we believe that in-person communication is essential to building respect. As is respecting people’s time. We all work hard – no one wants their time wasted.

That’s why people are more likely to engage in meaningful ways in meetings if they feel their time is valued. So erase pointless meetings from the calendar and put more thought and work into building meetings that matter.

The Power of Meetings

In many of the meetings we have with our clients, big decisions are made that define the trajectory of a brand and business. We propose shifts that require full leadership alignment and backing. And especially at the early stages of a project, our role is sharing what we see and opening up a conversation. What we’ve found is that it’s often in these conversation and in the debates they encourage where our greatest insights are uncovered.

Within our agency, debate is one of the best ways we come to creative solutions for our clients – questioning, being questioned, and leveraging other people’s ways of seeing to make our own solutions better. Debate helps us help our own clients push back against the status quo, embrace unique opportunities, and look forward, not backward.

Rethink debate into your meetings and see meetings as a new opportunity to drive your business and brand forward.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco brand strategy and design agency.