Employee Content is a Strategic Resource and Golden Opportunity to Differentiate Your Talent Brand

Stories are a powerful tool for talent attraction, recognition, even internal mobility. Capturing the voice of employees and life-at-work stories that spotlight skills and talents can enhance the employee experience and build your employer brand at the same time.

When we talk to CEOs, marketers and talent leaders about why employee content is so critical right now a few things always seem to come up. Employee content (collect the right way) is authentic, trusted, relatable, and a powerful way to demonstrate and reinforce the culture and values of the organization.

Companies of all sizes are moving fast to realize the benefits of employee generated content and employee stories for recruiting and marketing, onboarding, building culture, and change management. Want to see how hot this topic is becoming?

Do a search of Indeed and LinkedIn jobs for keywords like: employee stories, employee content, corporate narrative, "bring our brand to life," active our EVP, authentic storytelling, diversity recruiting content, etc. The number of open jobs increases everyday. Prior to the pandemic the numbers were much lower.

Why the demand? How stories really help you grow inside and out?

Stories help employees succeed. Companies invest a lot on goal setting, vision, mission and purpose. Strategic plans call for changes in how business is done, which inevitably means changes in people’s actions and behaviors. New regulations and standards require training and new ways of doing business. Authentic and relatable employee experience content can demonstrate the benefits of change and why it matters. Leaders we talk to use employee storytelling as a tool for employee appreciation and engagement, to reinforce change, and connect talent to the mission in a way they will remember. 

Stories attract talent most likely to succeed. It’s hard to get the attention of job seekers. There are over 40 review sites that define your brand before you ever talk. Job ads have become increasingly ineffective. Industry organizations like Rally Recruitment Marketing, representing over 30,000 members of the recruitment marketing and employee experience community have hard data showing that the best way to get the attention of candidates is with team and people-based stories about the work experience. Employee content about real work experiences (not scripted) can set an employer apart. 

14 Factors for a Successful Employee Story Strategy

Whether you are rocking your employee story efforts like Yelp, Evans Consulting, and Morley Companies, or just getting started, we offer this guide as a source of ideas for taking things to the next level. It’s based on many conversations with bold talent attraction and people leaders like Lori Sylvia from Rally Recruitment Marketing, Serge Boudreau and Shelley Billinghurst from The Recruitment Flex Podcast, Brad Shorken and Andy Golding authors of We Are Still Human, and many more who have influenced our work and product here at GoodSeeker.

1) Your story strategy needs Ownership and Visibility

Is it clear who is responsible for the overall strategy and direction of efforts to engage employees and stakeholders in order to capture their experiences with your team, culture, values, and brand? It's important that this person has a view of the entire organization in order to make sure the benefits of supporting your employee content strategy are conveyed across the organization. 

2) Sr. Leadership Support and Engagement is critical

The graveyard of failed employee content programs has a big sign at the entrance that says, “Great Potential Lost To Leaders Who Never Bought In.” Culture is shaped (and crushed) by tone at the top. Leaders need to support the investment and go further by contributing content, sharing employee stories, and incorporating content into other executive communications programs. Without leadership support we recommend that Recruitment Marketing pros move on. Just search Indeed. You’re in demand! 

3) Recognize the Enterprise Value of employee story efforts

The most valued company narrative strategies use employee storytelling to advance the company mission broadly, beyond employee recognition or recruitment marketing For example this trusted employee content is also invaluable for; change management, business transformation, onboarding, sales, and continuous-learning. Quarterly or semi-annual planning with members of HR, recruiting, L&D, corporate communications, marketing, and sales should be held to determine who needs employee stories and who can benefit. Ensure that you have a single centralized location for stories to be accessed.

4) Ensure your are Aligned with Company Goals 

Do you have in place goals related to employee stories that are aligned with business priorities? These can be related to retention, activating your EVP, hiring plans, DEI&B commitments, ESG reporting, etc. If Diversity is truly a priority one would expect to see it in your storytelling. Success stories can be used in sales all day long. Are you capturing stories that reinforce differentiators for sales? Rally Recruitment marketing does amazing research related to recruitment marketing goals. They also offer a powerful tool called Rally Inside for keeping track of important content KPIs. Try the free version. 

FREE Resource. Check out our Employee Story Toolkit. Includes a Story Strategy Template, 14 employee content campaign ideas, etc.

5) Invite Employee Ambassadors to the “Yearbook” Committee

One of the best ways to get traction with employee content programs is to invite people from different parts of the business to be part of your initial team. Treat it as something special and a recognition of their own commitment to company values and personal development. Clearly explain why the company wants to focus on employee stories and needs their eyes, ears, and positive instincts to help build the brand from the inside out. Always invite and encourage them to be some of the first to share their story and job experience. Their actions can inspire others and truly break the ice. 

6) Must be Easy to Request Stories from others

One key to a rockstar employee story program is the nudge factor. Fact is, it’s hard to realize the impact of our own efforts at work. Most people are heads down and humble. But reluctant storytellers can be the source of incredibly relatable content. A good storytelling system gives peers, managers, and leaders a simple way to request stories from others. Imagine this request. “I heard about what your team did. That’s a great reflection of our brand. Will you share that story on GoodSeeker to help others see what’s possible?” The reluctant storyteller now has peer motivation, inspiration, and reason to contribute. 

7) Go beyond employees to Capture Guest Stories

The network of people and organizations who experience your culture, values, and talent brand is broader than you think. Think about customers, clients, partners, vendors, community organizations, etc. who all have a story to tell about their experience with your team. They are all trusted third-party observers in the eyes of candidates and prospects. Give external stakeholders an easy way to submit testimonial stories that include mention of your talent and teams. Hint: clients feel good when they know their story can help an individual at work grow. So ask for their story, not a testimonial! 👍 

8) Demonstrate Diversity of Storytellers

The best company storytelling efforts will capture the voice of employees from all levels, departments, seniority, ERGs, etc. Having diverse employee stories helps to demonstrate that company leaders walk the talk on values and ESG commitments. Diverse employee stories showcase how you value the authenticity that every individual brings to your workforce. Ensure that you have a way to source, track, and report on content coming from diverse audiences that reflect the values of your organization.  

9) Frequency and Relevance can build employer brand trust

Trust is built over time through a series of small commitments and follow-throughs that reveal patterns. When it comes to corporate storytelling, recruitment marketing, and building trust in the values of a company, frequency matters. To activate your EVP internally and externally and promote the values of a company, make sure your storytelling system encourages frequent micro-stories over a period of time.

10) Create a mix of Produced and Unstructured Stories

High production quality content and video moves people. Professionally produced employee interviews and videos from firms like Stories Incorporated are immensely valuable and a great investment. Having an automated low-cost system to capture unscripted employee content can amplify themes in your high production quality employer videos. Less structured employee generated content (when it is frequent) also helps to fill the trust gap candidates often have when they compare company content with reviews. 

11) Offer Format Flexibility for all types of storytellers

From employee ambassadors to new hires, some people will be reluctant to contribute while others are thrilled you asked. For example, not everyone loves video, especially in non-customer facing roles. And in some cases a video story makes sense, but in others it may not. The story system you have in place to easily collect stories should make it easy for authors to contribute in forms of text, video or images. 

12) Discover Culture and Talent Insights in story data

Life at work stories are filled with data related to sentiment, skills, values, challenges, etc. Consider what can be gleaned from comments, tag frequencies, etc. What if IT mentions core value #1 in 30% of stories, but customer service never does? What if a top performing employee and frequent storyteller all of the sudden stops sharing. Flight risk? An ideal story system helps you see these insights. Tagged, indexed and centralized stories valuable for continuous learning, monitoring culture and knowledge sharing.

13) Combine Stories to make the biggest impact

Examples of the values of a company and your EVP are most believable when they are demonstrated frequently, with relatable examples, from diverse employee contributors. Sharing one story with a passive candidate can engage them faster. Sharing multiple personalized stories that align with candidate and new hire interests, career goals, and job questions is powerful. Consider a focused employee blog, or storyboard from GoodSeeker as a way to combine stories in a single view.  

14) Promote Stories Proudly to differentiate

Last year we researched over 2000 companies and how they collected and shared employee stories to demonstrate values in the company. We evaluated channels where employee stories are promoted, i.e. social media, homepage, dedicated career sites, etc. Companies who promoted employee stories clearly on their website were significantly more likely to be recognized as a “Great Place To Work”, have better Glassdoor ratings, and more active employee advocates. Lesson learned, don’t hide your employee content. Make sure your storytelling program and platform includes an easy way to get permission from authors, and for admins to approve stories for public sharing.

15) Want to add to our list of good practices? Send us a chat at www.goodseeker.com