Build an Amazing People-Magnet Machine: Establish Your Brand as an Employer

The dream of many suc­cess­ful lead­ers and entre­pre­neurs is to have a strat­e­gy and fly­wheel so pow­er­ful that they expe­ri­ence incred­i­ble growth. When you’re doing great work deliv­er­ing what your cus­tomers need and you’ve fig­ured out how to scale up, then the biggest chal­lenge is to get enough of the right peo­ple on the bus, and to devel­op them so that growth is sustained. 

The key is to have a con­stant flow of amaz­ing peo­ple who want to come work with you — like the tech giants who open a new office in town, and attract line­ups of peo­ple, look­ing for work. Because those com­pa­nies are so well known, peo­ple want to be part of some­thing great. 

In this first of a series of three blogs, we’ll talk about how to build what my Growth Whis­per­ers pod­cast part­ner Brad Giles and I call an amaz­ing peo­ple-mag­net machine.

Here is the first prin­ci­ple to help you to attract a flow of awe­some people.

Estab­lish an Employ­er Brand

Lots of com­pa­nies put all their ener­gy and mar­ket­ing efforts into get­ting or keep­ing cus­tomers, but not near­ly enough into get­ting and keep­ing employees.

• If you look at the careers sec­tion of your company’s web­site, is it as pow­er­ful, engag­ing and well thought-out as the pages designed for prospec­tive clients?
• Have you found a way to show and artic­u­late how appeal­ing you are to some­one who’s con­sid­er­ing com­ing to work for you?

Here are some things to con­sid­er when build­ing your employ­er brand:

• Get on a list of great places to work. Many high per­form­ers take this into account because it’s like a cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of car­ing or qual­i­ty. If you don’t get on, the time and ener­gy you put into try­ing is like­ly going to improve some things in your company
• Show your engage­ment sur­vey results. If you are a great com­pa­ny, the feed­back you’ll get from your team would be excellent.

We con­duct quar­ter­ly mini-pulse sur­veys to stay aware of every­thing need­ing to get done head­ing into strat­e­gy meet­ings. The end result is a word cloud relat­ing to the cul­ture. This is an excel­lent brand­ing tool to describe what the com­pa­ny is real­ly like.

• Proac­tive­ly share great things about your cul­ture and what you’re up to now. Per­haps an inter­view in which your CEO talks about your cul­ture. In addi­tion, com­pli­ments from cus­tomers, sup­pli­ers or your employ­ees, post­ed on social media.
• Artic­u­late your employ­ee promise. This is sim­i­lar to the strat­e­gy work we do on the cus­tomer side to define a unique val­ue propo­si­tion. This exer­cise defines what makes peo­ple want to come and to stay work­ing with you. What makes you dif­fer­ent and more pow­er­ful than oth­er com­pa­nies? This exer­cise helps to align many of your HR deci­sions. It also pro­vides clar­i­ty on how you can con­tin­ue to improve your employ­ees’ experience.

The Chal­lenge

• Make your employ­er val­ue propo­si­tion crys­tal clear. Why is work­ing at your com­pa­ny such a great oppor­tu­ni­ty for the right person?
• Who are you going to work with, to make it happen?

For more on this top­ic, check out Episode 37 of The Growth Whis­per­ers podcast.