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Tag: Employer Brand

Integrating Company Cultures After a Merger or Acquisition

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

High M&A Activity

Mergers and acquisitions are at an all time high, with $4.7 trillion of global deals signed last year according to a recent M&A report by KMPG.

And although the payoff of a successful M&A is great, these are high risk deals. It’s not just about the financial gains. Reputations are on the line. Stakeholders observe nervously. And in order to ensure the expected return on investment is delivered, a great deal of planning around integrating company culture must go into the preparation.

Cultural Integration Issues

After an acquisition, the merger is a difficult undertaking – and often controversial. Employees may feel confused or unsure about what the future holds. And uncertainty can undercut the upsides of the deal.

When there’s a lack of communication, an incongruent cultural fit, or a poor integration plan, many mergers fail to positively impact the business – not delivering on the expected ROI. In fact, research has shown that around 70% of M&A fail to deliver their anticipated benefits because of “cultural issues.”

Because most M&A have financial, operational, or positioning motivations as the driver, many organizations fail to recognize culture as an influence that can derail the deal. And neglecting how a merger will affect your people can lead to many problems down the road.

Integrating Company Cultures Is Key to the Success of Your M&A

1. Communicate Early and Often

When people on the inside feel as though they are left in the dark, they are unlikely to jump on board with change. Transparency is key here. When your people come along on the journey and see and understand the vision for the future, they are more likely to support the integration effort.

In order to ensure internal buy-in, you need people to feel confident in the decision to merge companies. You also need them to feel secure in their job and valued in their position. You need employees on both sides of the merger to get on board with the change. Keeping everyone in the loop about the change ahead is an important first step.

2. Examine Cultural Differences

In order to establish common ground, you have to recognize and address gaps. Define each culture and map them next to each other. Where are they not aligned? Determining differences is key to figuring out what shifts need to be made and where you might run into problems. Be clear and direct about disparities so you can tackle them head on.

3. Define Your New Culture and Develop a Cultural Integration Plan

A company’s culture is made up of the values, beliefs, and behaviors that are shared among all people within your organization. Oftentimes, culture is something that is difficult to pin down and, as a result, leaders may steer away from clearly defining their culture.

However, it’s very important to define the culture you are trying to build. Leaders should be aligned and clear so they can succinctly articulate the new organization’s aspiration for the future and then behave accordingly.

So it’s important to put in place the measures and incentives that will fuel the behaviors that will then drive your culture. Dedicate the resources needed to create tools for facilitating cultural integration, measurement, and management.

4. Celebrate Change

In the end, cultural integration is about both sides adapting and celebrating the new culture that is born from the merger. This is a time of coming together and taking the best that both organizations have to offer. It’s an opportunity for growth—to get aligned, adopt new thinking, strengthen your culture, and move your business forward.

It’s a Process and Brand Strategy Can Help

Oftentimes, M&As require an investment in brand strategy to really ensure the expected ROI is delivered by employees. Don’t expect the cultural integration to happen overnight.

Dedicating the time and resources to developing and articulating your new brand will help enable both cultures to understand the opportunities of the merger. And creating a newly developed employer brand after a merger will help everyone get on board and aligned with the new brand and the future of an integrated culture.

With the right investment and focus on employees and culture, all employees will meaningfully embrace the changes required during the merger and, as a result, your business will thrive moving forward.

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

HR and Marketing: Building Your Employer Brand Together

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Finding the Right Fit: HR’s Number One Challenge

HR and Marketing? The role of HR has evolved significantly in recent years. Attracting, engaging, and retaining top talent is a high priority for executives, and most companies place this responsibility on HR. According to PwC 18th Annual CEO survey, a full 73% of respondents are concerned about the availability of talent – a 10% increase from 2014. Executives worry that it’s getting harder to recruit and keep the people who are both skilled high-performers and ‘fit’ within their organization’s culture. And without top talent, maintaining a competitive advantage, adapting to industry change, and growing business is nearly impossible.

Fierce marketplace competition makes it difficult for candidates to know if they are a good fit for the brand without some guidance. Ensuring employee ‘fit’ means your brand needs to know why it matters. That’s where an employer brand comes in. Your employer brand must do the hard work of being clear and consistent about its promise (EVP), communicating an authentic, meaningful brand experience across all touchpoints. When done well, an employer brand helps attract the right talent, allows prospects to self-select for fit with your organization, and increases the likelihood that they will develop into long-term, low-churn, high-producing members of your team.

The Heat is On

Today, HR is tasked with creating an employee experience that markets the business to recruits and employees. Crafting a relevant and resonant employer brand involves aligning your organization’s aspirations, values, needs, and wants with the people you are looking to recruit and retain—no easy feat.

The pressure to create a unified, engaging experience for employees and prospects is real. And, launching an employer brand often involves obtaining budget from a CEO who may not see its value. What’s more, building an employer brand can become nearly impossible if the corporate brand is outdated, or worse, non-existent. When HR operates in a silo, getting budget and approval can be an uphill battle.

We’ve worked with a number of clients with varying global challenges around recruitment and employee engagement and there’s one thing they all agree on: successfully building an employer brand can’t be done in isolation. Engaging and partnering with marketing from the very beginning is essential.

Five Ways to Create a Successful Partnership Between HR and Marketing

  1. Designate an owner. Clarifying ownership is key. There is no better steward of an employer brand than the CEO, but gaining alignment from the rest of your leadership team, including key stakeholders, securing budget, and taking the project to the finish line won’t happen without a designated decision maker from either the HR or marketing team. 
  1. Map the employer brand to the corporate brand. Even if the corporate brand looks outdated or lacks relevance, the employer brand needs to build off of the brand’s foundation, otherwise it is confusing to your employees and the marketplace. Use what assets the brand has and build from there. If your corporate brand has a brand promise, find a way to use that as your North Star. The authenticity of the employer brand depends on HR and marketing working together to create an employee experience that is true to the brand.
  1. Get a commitment from key stakeholders. Getting the leadership team invested in the employer brand is more than just establishing a committee where people can voice opinions. It’s also important for each leader to understand the reach of the employer brand as a key influencer of your brand’s image and reputation. Leadership needs to have skin in the game from the start. This up-front work will help you and your marketing team move quickly with alignment and see the project all the way through.
  1. Build a coalition. Once you’ve got your employer brand strategy in place and support from the key stakeholders, you’ll need advocates from both marketing and HR to roll-out the employer brand. Unfortunately, there’s no “launch” button for your employer brand. To make the biggest impact, you’ll need a team dedicated to the project who have always been part of the journey. Marketers know how to drive and measure audience engagement, create engaging experiences, nurture audiences, and tell a story that keeps people interested and engaged over a long period of time. And you don’t just need the marketing execs on board, you need the whole marketing team.
  1. Don’t forget purpose. Your employer brand needs to be rooted in purpose and meaning in order to emotionally connect to and successfully recruit and retain the type of talent best suited for your business. HR understands what matters to employees, but marketing knows how to capture their attention, authentically win them over with purpose-driven messages, and create valuable brand experiences at every touch point. When HR and marketing collaborate on an employer brand strategy together, they ensure that the company lives up to its promise and executes it every day.

Collaboration Wins

HR and marketing are not used to collaborating on strategic initiatives, especially those driven by HR. But not engaging marketing in the project can be a fatal mistake. Marketing owns the brand and they need to be brought along on the journey. Marketing will appreciate being asked to participate and HR will save time and angst by getting them involved from the start.

Top talent have their choice of companies to work for. Access to information and opportunity has accelerated a new employer brand rule book where companies are continually learning to adapt the hiring, retention, engagement strategy, and practices for success. By coordinating these efforts with HR and marketing, your business will reap the benefits in terms of the talent you attract and how well they ‘fit’ into the company.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco branding agency.

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.

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.

Employer Branding Trends for 2020

Posted on by Paige Lansing Valle

Today, we’re continuing our deep dive into the most important trends affecting your business, brand, and culture heading into 2020. Following our look at content strategy, let’s examine employer brands.

Remember when the common sentiment toward millennials was laden with disgust? Who were those entitled young people and their outrageous demands for flexibility, remote working, and—gasp—having a greater purpose in work than making money? It wasn’t that long ago, but oh how the tides have changed.

Now, as we all know, those “millennial” demands have not just become normalized, but meeting them has become the de facto minimum requirement for employers if they’re going to attract and retain top talent, of any generation. But just as the demographics of employees—and their shared needs and desires—shift every year, the trends of effective employer brands shift as well.

As a refresher: an employer brand is the articulation of what makes your company a great place to work. Your employer brand is integral to every touchpoint an employee or prospect might interact with, from the website to social media to the interior design of your office and internal communications. Because the potential touchpoints are vast, consistency is key to ensure optimal impact on your audience: the people most critical to making your business a success. Staying on top of employer brand trends means keeping in touch with what employees are looking for, and thereby ensuring your employer brand is relevant.

Here are the top trends to look out for in 2020.

1. Authenticity

Publicly displayed company values are key indicators for employees looking to align their personal values with how the business is run. But values are meaningless unless you can back them up. Take ‘family-friendly.’ Paid parental leave is nice, but if new parent employees are expected to be available 24/7, traveling all the time, or have rigid expectations placed on when they need to be in the office once parental leave is over, the ‘family-friendly’ value comes across as completely disingenuous. And thanks to sites like Glassdoor and Indeed, it’s pretty easy to find the truth.

2. Growth

As ‘digital transformation’ has become common parlance, employees understand that job security depends on acquiring new skills regardless of where you are in your career. And this doesn’t necessarily mean sending employees to expensive conferences or bringing in a world-renowned speaker. Offering employees exposure to senior leaders or inviting them (even as a fly on the wall) to big meetings is just as important for growth as more formal activities. Using the employer brand to communicate these types of opportunities demonstrate to your employees that you are invested in their development, which in turn makes them feel invested in your company.

3. Personalization

“To attract and retain talent, we’re seeing organizations creating a consumer-grade experience at work which reflects their attractive, authentic employer brand,” says Forbes columnist Rebecca Skilbeck. Personalization, i.e. acknowledgment that I am an individual, not a number, goes hand in hand with hustle. It’s an implicit contract: I work hard for you, you give me praise to keep me motivated. Being treated as an individual, whether through customizable career pages à la Nike or Starbucks, or 1-1 praise indicates a company values your talent and contribution, your experience and perspective. And by acknowledging that through personalization efforts, it creates a virtuous cycle in which employees are more motivated to continue performing.

4. Brand Association

An employer brand’s effectiveness goes hand in hand with the external brand. So if the brand itself lacks public awareness, sells a meaningless product, or worse, is involved in shady behavior, that reputation is going to impact how employees and prospects feel about the company.  A recent LinkedIn study has proven that more than 75% of job seekers research a company’s reputation before applying. People care about the brand they are working for because it reflects on their personal brand—which has become more important than ever in ensuring long-term career growth. Assessing your brand reputation and taking control of the narrative is imperative if you’re going to attract and retain top talent.

Keep your eyes here for the latest and greatest in all things 2020.

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

How to Deal with the Looming Talent Shortage

Posted on by Chris Ames

Who’s Got Talent?

How many times have we heard that robots are coming for our jobs? Whether it’s from science fiction or straight from the mouth of Elon Musk, it’s a dystopia we’ve been anticipating for quite some time. However, based on a recent study from Korn Ferry, a global organizational consulting firm, we may have been misplacing our fears on the wrong targets.

In a sweeping country-by-country analysis, the biggest issue isn’t that robots are stealing all the jobs – it’s that there simply aren’t enough human beings to take them. According to the study, by 2030 there will be a global human talent shortage of more than 85 million people. For scale, that’s roughly equivalent to the population of Germany. Left unchecked, in 2030 that talent shortage could result in $8.5 trillion in unrealized annual revenues.

Talent Crunch

So, how did we get here and what can we do about it? For starters, many of these problems stem from simple demography. Japan and many European nations, for instance, are continuing a decade long decline in birth rates. For countries with the deadly combination of low unemployment and a booming manufacturing sector – the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and many others – labor shortages are accelerating automation and increased use of robotics “not to replace people, but because there aren’t enough of them to fill the factories,” the report says.

In the United States, the graying population is a major contributor to the talent shortage, with some 10,000 baby boomers reaching retirement age every day for the next 19 years. Even last year, U.S. job vacancies hit a record 6 million per month. The fact is, younger generations will not have had the time or training required to take many of the high-skilled jobs left behind.

“As with many economies, the onus falls on companies to train workers, and also to encourage governments to rethink education programs to generate the talent pipelines the industry will require,” says Werner Penk, President of Korn Ferry’s Global Technology Market practice.

Follow the Leader

The impact of the talent crunch is so significant that the continued predominance of sector powerhouses is in question. For instance, the United States is the undisputed leader in tech, but the talent shortage could erode that lead fast. In tech alone, the US could lose out on $162 billion worth of revenues annually unless it finds more high-tech workers. When you look at India, which is projected to have a surplus of more than 1 million high-skilled tech workers by 2030, it’s not difficult to imagine them as the next tech leader.

“As a result,” the report says, “organizations may be prompted to relocate their headquarters and operational centers to places where the talent supply is more plentiful. Governments will be forced to invest in improving their people’s skills to avert corporate flight and to defend their nations’ income and status.”

Be a Life-Long Learner

The savviest organizations are taking on the onus of training talent themselves, increasing their hiring of people straight out of school, says Jean-Marc Laouchez, president of the Korn Ferry Institute. These firms are also trying to instill a culture of continuous learning and training. “Constant learning – driven by both workers and organizations – will be central to the future of work, extending far beyond the traditional definition of learning and development,” he says.

Though we love to blame robots, the truth is that global growth, demographic trends, under-skilled workforces, and tightening immigration policies are much more sinister culprits. There isn’t one solution to this alarming trend, but there are a series of insights and implications we can use to inform how we attract and retain top talent.

Insights

  • Demand will be biggest for highly educated professionals, technicians, and managers. Professionals will be in particularly high demand in the trade, transportation, and communications industries in developing nations.
  • In the next two decades, demand for professionals in manufacturing will peak at more than 10 percent in developing countries, exceeding 4 percent across all countries sampled.
  • Healthcare research and development alone will generate enormous demand for skilled labor worldwide.
  • Employees without critical knowledge and technical skills will be left behind.

Implications

  • On the business side, introduce strategic workforce planning to address imbalances between labor supply and demand.
  • On the government side, easing migration will attract the right talent globally.
  • On a personal level, increase your chances at long-term employability by advancing technological literacy and cross-cultural learning skills.
  • For HR managers and recruiters, develop a talent “trellis” by focusing on horizontal and vertical career and education paths.
  • Management should be willing to ditch the 9-to-5 and encourage contract, freelance, and virtual mobility to access required skills easily.
  • Hiring teams need to continue their diversification and equality efforts by tapping women, people of color, folks from the LGBTQIA community, older professionals, and immigrants.

To learn more about how your brand can prepare for the looming talent shortage, contact Founding Partner Tracy Lloyd at [email protected].

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

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 Next Frontier for Employer Brands: Healthy Behavior Change

Posted on by Carol Emert

At Emotive Brand, we’ve seen a jump over the last year in clients seeking help with employee behavior change. Better brand behavior isn’t the focus. Instead, organizations are actually trying to help their people live happier and healthier work and personal lives.

It’s exciting to see companies living out their employer brands through a greater commitment to their people, and to see them authentically rewarded with more trust and loyalty.

Several trends have brought us to this point, starting with greater competitiveness in recruiting – especially in Silicon Valley, which seems to be innovating the employee-employer relationship as fast as technology these days.

Other factors include better neuroscientific insight into the mechanics of behavior change coupled with proven successes, especially in the area of health. And putting all of that theory into action are new digital tools that can monitor, measure, and support healthy habit formation over time.

From our vantage point at the intersection of brand and business, we’ve identified four best practices for successful behavior change.

1. Open the door with a powerful creative idea

You can chuck a new benefits program over the fence through an email and a new section on your HR page.  Or you can really engage employees through a strategic internal campaign wrapped in a powerful creative idea.

To get to an idea that works, you need to deeply understand your people. How they perceive the problem. Their barriers to adoption – both functional and emotional. What their ideal end state looks like. The language that resonates with them. The cultural context in which they live and work.

Connecting the dots between these data points will provide the emotional insight that informs your messaging. This insight and the resulting creative idea should create a siren’s call that’s so true and powerful, your people open up to it instinctively.

2. Make behavior change activity visible

Once you have peoples’ attention, they’ll be more drawn to a new program if they can see others participating. A sense of momentum triggers both FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) and a genuine desire to be part of a collective action.

Think of the poor chump who is the first to give a standing ovation after a performance. Standing alone feels incredibly vulnerable – and foolish if nobody joins in. But once the standing O gains momentum and most people are doing it, the vulnerability shifts to the few people left sitting. A moment ago they were a regular part of the crowd. Now they appear either mean-spirited or clueless.

This principle, called social norming, is classically illustrated by this video of a lone Dancing Guy who convinces a whole hillside of picnickers to stand up and boogie.

For organizations, social norming points to the importance of seeding a new behavior change program with high-profile early adopters. Then make their activity visible, ideally both through external markers like a progress-tracking exhibition or swag, and digitally through workplace social networks, apps, or an intranet ticker showing an ever-growing number of participants.

3. Reward small actions and accomplishments

Gamification has exploded with the proliferation of apps promoting wholesome behaviors, from exercise to saving money to learning a language. Congratulatory badges and notifications have become expected bread crumbs down the path of behavior change.

Employers can leverage this trend by offering consistent, step-by-step rewards and incentives to get people started on a new behavior and then keep them on the path of progress. In addition to digital gamification, rewards can include personal recognition, financial incentives, and perks – whatever feels most true to the employer brand.

4. Break down big challenges

Sometimes behavior change is difficult because mastery requires an intimidating amount to learn or do. The sheer number of topics to master or actions to take can be paralyzing. Financial planning is one example. Losing 70 pounds through diet and exercise is another.

There are two ways to take the intimidation out of behavior change. One is to break down each step into pieces that feel doable. The second is to start with what’s easy. For example, someone might find it hard to create a financial plan that addresses all of their life goals. But starting with something that’s inherently rewarding, like saving toward a vacation, can open the door to a broader conversation.

If the process is then laid out in simple steps, ideally reinforced with a system of rewards, there’s a better chance of an employee getting all the way to the end.

A new frontier for employer brands

Behavior change is hard. Historically, it’s been a lonely endeavor. But we believe organizations can change all that by following our simple blueprint: Harness the power of your community. Break down big challenges into the doable. Offer motivating incentives. And deliver it all through inspiring communications.

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

2016 San Francisco Branding Agency: A Year in Review

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Looking Back

As I look back on this year and reflect on the work we did, the shifts our agency made, the clients we encountered, and everything else in between, I can’t help but share some significant insights and lessons I learned working in a San Francisco brand agency.

Agile Strategy Meets Actual Reality

This year was about meeting clients wherever they were on their brand strategy journey and finding tangible ways to deliver impact to their business and brand. Luckily, we saw this coming. We developed new ways to adapt our more linear brand strategy methodology to the changing needs of business leaders over the past two years.

This year was about honing in on how to deliver the strategic thinking and creative opportunities at a high level on a shorter timeframe. Working in agile ways requires a completely different approach to strategy. So we adjusted our agency at every level from operationally scoping a project to delivering a statement of work (SOW) — fast. Our projects are specific. We work in sprints. We are more collaborative with leadership teams. And we are developing a strong reputation for leading this style of work with high-growth companies.

Investing in Employer Branding and Culture

This year we saw a big shift in both interest and funding for developing employer brands and improving employee engagement and culture. This is an exciting turn for us as an agency as we strongly believe your brand comes from the inside out. We had more inbound calls this year and worked on more employer brand projects than in the last few years combined.

Research by PWC points to CEO’s being concerned about not being able to recruit top talent. And we have seen this ourselves with some of our larger, global enterprise tech companies this year. Recruiting and keeping top talent requires an investment in brand. So we are excited to see employer branding become more of a part of marketing. This will enable a more integrated approach between corporate brands and employer brands. Music to our ears.

The CEO Makes All the Difference

At Emotive Brand, we work in the C-suite. It’s where strategy is developed and executed. It’s where purpose and vision are born. And it’s the only place you can actively drive meaningful change. But, not all CEOs are the same. Their needs and interests around the brand they support vary dramatically.

As a whole, the projects that we worked on that were the most successful stemmed from an actively engaged CEO: someone who understood the full value of brand strategy. Brand strategy projects that do not actively include the CEO as a driver of the project become less strategic and tend to lose momentum and focus.

Sales-led Brand Strategy Resonates

As an agency, we have a very sales-led approach to developing brand strategy. And we’ve started using it in how we market ourselves as an agency and how we develop brand strategy. Executives want to know that you care about driving their business forward in all areas – most especially increasing revenue and profit. When we work closely with the CRO or Head of Sales, we see the impact of our work on the business’ bottom line. We get inside of the sales organization to learn what’s working and what isn’t. What their prospects and clients are looking for. What messages resonate and don’t. It helps us hear what the brand is doing well and what it needs to do to better compete as voiced from the front line. And when we intimately understand the needs of the customers, we’re better positioned to craft a strategy that resonates at an emotional level.

What does that mean for Emotive Brand in 2017? A Return to Brand

I believe we will see a renewed focus and an increased investment in brand strategy across the board.

Businesses that thrive will be those that have a solid brand strategy in place to drive growth, differentiate, and enable more meaningful experiences. In order for marketers to be strategic and successful within their own organizations, they will need the brand to work harder for them than ever before. And in order to meet the needs of marketers, I imagine brand strategy will become even less traditional: more strategic, more purposeful, and more personalized in its approach.

At the same time, clients will have a new opportunity to lean into brand strategy with confidence knowing they don’t necessarily need to buy the whole enchilada. I think we will continue to see clients looking for specialized projects – ones that meet the immediate needs of the business.

What does that mean for us at Emotive Brand?  A continued commitment to be more flexible. We can no longer rely on a one size fits all solution to brand strategy. So we plan on doubling down on our time spent listening to client needs in order to craft the right solutions that meet those needs and create maximum impact. And we will be working even harder to develop the right processes and frameworks to do just that. Here’s to a strong 2017!

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco brand agency.

What’s the Right Wellness Program for Your Brand?

Posted on by Paige Lansing Valle

The New Rules of Wellness Programs

The EEOC recently issued new rules for employer wellness programs that have made a big splash in the media. With all the recent buzz around wellness, we began thinking about the overall value of these programs and how to build programs, as Obama hopes, that benefit employers and employees alike.

What are the best practices for businesses as they incorporate wellness programs into their benefits packages? How can employers encourage wellness, while simultaneously respecting and protecting individual’s personal privacy and making sure employees never feel discriminated against based on wellness?

Shifting Expectations

In today’s ever-competitive market, employee wellness programs are expected. As a result, businesses everywhere are working to create workplace environments that foster wellness and actually work – benefiting both employees and employers. At their best, these programs can help employees deal with stressful situations, increase productivity, lower overall healthcare costs, increase happiness, and improve long-term health.

The wellness industry is booming. Experts have predicted that health and wellness is the next trillion-dollar industry. Innovative health, fitness, and happiness startups are everywhere. With this influx of health technologies, like wearables and digital health apps that give instant access to health information, people are paying more attention to how they eat, move, work, and feel. And corporate companies everywhere are transforming workplace wellness.

The problem is that wellness as an offering is a tricky business proposition. Wellness means something different to every individual, so an employee wellness program can’t be everything to everyone. It can’t be boiled down to a new health gadget or a one-size-fits-all benefit. Traditional models no longer cut it. In fact, the old models that focused only on physical health and punished employees never produced the benefits employers hoped for.

So how can your business design a wellness program that benefits employers and employees?

Instead of focusing on creating the perfect, optimized system of punishments and rewards meant to cut employer costs, create a wellness program that is:

  1. Flexible: Since every individual is different, the program needs to be able to adapt to different circumstances and changes. A rigid program feels…just that, rigid. Flexibility gives employees the power to shape their own program,  knowing what works for them. And punishing employees does not work. Instead, work to build a program that is accommodating. An employee’s needs will change, and your program needs to have the pliancy to change with them. This kind of flexibility encourages improvement in a more long-term, sustainable manner.
  2. Adaptable: Healthcare has changed drastically in the last decade. Now, 20% of smartphone owners have at least one health-app on their phone. 40% of millennials own a wearable device. Nutrition and exercise are perceived as top influences on health and wellness, and routine healthcare is getting pushed aside by many, especially younger generations. Across the board, people are more concerned with ideas like work-life balance and they worry about stress levels and time spent sitting behind the screen. Trends in wellness will only continue to advance, and companies that embrace these trends and build a workplace geared towards an up-to-date conception of wellness will thrive.
  3. Tailored to the Individual: More and more, people want and expect wellness programs that feel like they were made specifically for them. Empathy plays a large role here. Be human. Make sure your program treats each individual as an individual. By recognizing differences and working to customize programs so they work best for each person, your program and the people within it will flourish. Just as everyone has different work styles, everyone has different wellness styles. Take the steps needed to understand the wellness styles of each individual employee so that you can make your program work for everyone.
  4. A Feedback System: In order to create a flexible, adaptable, and tailored program, you need a feedback loop. Build in consultations, check-ins, goal-creating meetings, or any means by which important questions from employees can be discussed with them. Ask: What do you need? How is this program working for you? What can we do better? How can we help you get the most out of this program? In addition, set up a system for measuring the effectiveness of your program on a higher level. Decide what wellness measurements are important and align with your values, be it productivity, happiness, sick days, etc., and track these measurements so you can see where your program is working and where it is not.

Aligning your wellness program to your brand

If you place your focus on the individual person and their needs, your wellness program will help recruit and retain top employees. Your company will build a program that fosters a culture of wellness in an empathetic way. And happy, productive, healthy, and motivated employees who feel supported by your program will help your business thrive. In the end, your employees’ wellness matters to the success of your business. So make sure your employer brand incorporates a wellness program that is flexible, adaptable, customizable, and open to feedback. And when you do, your brand, your business, and your employees will thrive.

Emotive Brand is San Francisco branding agency.