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I’ve known Des since school, and these days the main way I get to see him is when he pops up in a TV advert or on a popular BBC show. That usually ends with me pointing at the screen shouting “It’s Des!”, and someone in my family telling wondering how on earth?! So it was really nice to actually get him into a studio for a proper conversation. I always enjoy getting into a studio and having chats like this - I’m curious about how people do what they do, and I’d been wanting to ask Des about something: How similar is putting together the right cast for a production to bringing together the right people in an organisation? It’s very similar, as it turns out. For Des, it all starts with the story you’re trying to tell, and then finding the people it genuinely excites, the ones who read it and feel something and want to be part of it. Working with, not for I loved how Des talked about organisations seeing their people as working with them rather than for them. When everyone’s bought into the story and where it’s heading, he reckons people tend to rally together pretty naturally, without needing to be pushed. That’s super important when you’re filming and ad or TV show to a deadline. He described a film set, which I loved. The producer tells the director they’ve only got the set for one more day, so make it work. The director then turns to everyone else and says the same, and before long the whole crew, actors included, are getting stuck in to make it happen. There’s still someone in charge, of course, but everyone feels like they’re pulling in the same direction. A big part of that comes down to people feeling heard. Not in that suggestion box kind of way, where ideas go in and you’re never quite sure anyone reads them, but properly listened to. Not every idea is going to get acted on, and that’s fine, but when people feel heard they feel like they’re part of the team. Whereas if someone’s always fighting against what their organisation wants from them, there’s always going to be a bit of a disconnect. More than the title Then he made a point that I reckon anyone working in employer branding will recognise straight away. As an actor, he can’t rely on the title of a script to give him that feeling, and in the same way, an employer can’t rely on a clever headline to give candidates it either. When you watch Des on TV, you’re seeing the finished result, not all the days in between that went into getting there. And candidates, he said, want to see those days in between. What’s the company actually like day to day? Nobody’s happy all the time, but when something goes wrong, how does it get sorted, and does everyone keep moving forward together without anyone being left behind? That, for me, is exactly what good employer brand content should be doing. Showing people what it’s really like to work somewhere, through the people who actually work there, rather than leaning on a slogan and hoping for the best. “Employees aren’t people who work for you, they’re people who work with you.” Nicely put, Des. Get full access to Employer Content Marketing at www.employercontent.marketing/subscribe

Employer branding still has to shout for a seat at the table as a strategic business asset - and the people who can change that fastest are the practitioners themselves, by using their voice. Sang-Kyun ("Sanny") Park, Global Expert for Employer Branding and Talent Attraction at KWS, is one of them. He's spent the past 18 months building a voice on LinkedIn, and it’s more than just sharing a post or two on LinkedIn.This conversation is about what it takes for employer branding to be recognised as central to how organisations attract and retain talent — not a side function. Sanny didn't wait for a strategy before he started posting; he picked topics he had an opinion on and worked out what resonated by watching the numbers. That habit of sharing expertise, done consistently, is what raises the profile of employer branding as an industry and gives individuals more of a voice inside their own organisations. About Sanny: Sanny moved into employer branding after a career in classic FMCG brand marketing, and now leads employer brand and talent attraction globally at KWS, one of the world's leading plant breeding companies. His weekly LinkedIn videos have grown into a company-wide social media advocates programme.What you'll hear: - Why raising individual profiles on LinkedIn also raises the profile of employer branding as an industry - Why Sanny started posting before he had a content strategy — and why that wasn't a mistake - The personal reason he pushed himself in front of the camera after years working behind it - How one post about "job hugging" hit 3 million impressions, and what he learned from it - Why leading by example is the fastest way to get employees creating content - How KWS built a social media advocates pilot from Sanny's own experiment Find Sanny: www.linkedin.com/in/sang-kyun-park-kws Find Chris: www.linkedin.com/in/chrislch Get full access to Employer Content Marketing at www.employercontent.marketing/subscribe

RecFest 2026 was my fourth year going, and Jamie Leonard and the team knocked it out of the park once again. Taking a recruitment conference and mashing it together with a summer festival is no small task — but thousands of talent acquisition and employer brand people in a field at Knebworth showed that it just works. This year I went to find out what’s on the minds of TA and EB people right now — and, more importantly, what they’re doing about it — so I could share it here. Here’s how the day unfolded, plus my own takes along the way. Doing AI vs Doing AI properly — compliance Before I’d even got through the gates, I bumped into a few people I know and had the kind of catch-up where you spend the first few minutes trying to work out when you last saw each other. I asked one of them, someone who talks to senior people leaders every day, what crops up the most in conversations. Their answer, unprompted: AI — but specifically AI compliance. They told me about someone who was asked to AI themselves, and their own team, out of a job. And another situation where a CEO decided to “pick up AI” alongside people leadership and everything else — needless to say, it became a big addition to their to-do list, and it came with unexpected challenges. AI is moving from just talking about it to actually doing something about it. There’s doing AI, and then there’s doing AI properly. Get the compliance piece wrong, and it can create more problems than it solves. And don’t expect AI to be a silver bullet - like with anything, for it work well you need to put the time and effort into it. Talent Acquisition and AI in 2026 This year I wanted to spend more time at the talks than wandering the stands and chatting in the field — although I did plenty of that too. My first stop was Hung Lee (Recruiting Brainfood) on the Inspire Stage, taking us through what we need to know about TA and AI in 2026. Hung covered a lot of ground, but here were some of my takeaways: The pyramid is becoming a diamond. The traditional org shape — a big base of employees, fewer managers, fewer leaders still — is shifting. With fewer people doing the delivery work, and AI doing the heavy lifting underneath - that changes what the remaining humans need to be capable of. If you’re going to have fewer people around AI, those people — managers and leaders included — need to understand both AI and people properly. There’s no room left for a leader who only understands one half of that equation. Everyone’s data is training data now. Hung shared a photo of a woman in India filming herself doing everyday tasks — chopping a mango, iPhone strapped to her head — paid specifically so that footage can be fed into AI models. Wow. What happens to the people doing that kind of task-based work once the model has learned what it needs from them? Recruiting is starting to look like executive search. Individual hires matter more because AI multiplies what one person can now produce, and recruiting capacity is shrinking because more of the process can be automated. That should free recruiters up for the genuinely human parts — mapping the market, building relationships with hiring managers, succession planning — rather than replacing them. “TA Plus” and proximity to value. If the transactional tasks get automated, the job becomes about adding value beyond the task: real relationships with the business, real understanding of what it’s trying to achieve, not just working from the brief a hiring manager hands you. My comparison: it’s like a football agent who can tell you exactly what value their player has delivered for the club, not just that they filled a squad slot. The future of early careers: the missing middle? Next up was a panel on early careers hiring — “The Missing Middle: Why cutting early careers today creates tomorrow’s talent crisis.” The argument: AI is now capable of doing a lot of the entry-level tasks that used to be how people learned the ropes, which makes it tempting for organisations to cut early careers hiring significantly, or altogether. But that just pushes the problem further down the line. Early careers talent brings the fresh thinking, the comfort with new technology, the innovation a business needs to keep evolving. When your senior leaders are thinking short-term, ask them what will the impact on the business be in two to five years’ time? Will leaving a hole of talent in the middle of the business make them more, or less, competitive? Something else from the panel was a great piece of advice wrapped up in a story - an intern who, within weeks of starting, built something that generated $100,000 for the business. That kind of story moves people far more than a slide of data ever will — exactly the kind of proof point employer brand teams should be capturing and telling, not sitting on. ROI matters, of course — but storytelling and relationship-building are what actually position the importance and impact of early careers talent internally. Working in employer branding in-house? You’re the orchestrator, not the owner Over on the EVP stage, James Ellis and Audra Knight brought some big energy about employer branding in-house. Treat employer brand as a business tool, not a TA tool or an internal engagement nice-to-have — if you can use it to solve an actual business problem, you become far more relevant in the room. There was a brutal little exercise thrown out to the audience: use ChatGPT to look at your website and ask it to pull out the key messages. Now do the same for your competitors and see the difference. The results will likely tell you that differentiation is lacking more than it should be in employer branding. There was a comforting message for EBers. Often, employer branding comes down to one person or a small team. As an employer brand person, you don’t have the authority to tell the whole business what its story is — you’re the orchestrator, not the owner. This really resonated with me - the job is surfacing the knowledge and experience that’s already sitting inside teams and giving it a shape. That’s also, not coincidentally, exactly the point I keep making about content: it’s not a bolt-on to a business strategy, it’s the front end of it. Culture and EVP: the Mars bar analogy “Insight to Impact with Great Place to Work: Building an Authentic EVP Rooted in Culture Data,” with Claire Knights (Chief Growth Officer, Great Place to Work) and Vicki Saunders (Founding Director, The EVP Consultancy), was a really interesting session on the foundations of authentic EVPs. It was interesting to see that Great Place to Work doesn’t just see themselves as an accreditation body handing out badges — it’s a data company. And the analogy Vicki used is that of a Mars bar: the ingredients, the bar itself, the wrapper, the tasting, and the reviews. You can have the glossiest wrapper in the industry, but if there’s no substance in the bar, people find out fast — and increasingly, so does AI. In a world where LLMs are shaping how candidates form opinions about employers, generic marketing language with no proof points behind it just won’t land. Interrogate your data, find your proof points, and look at the long-term pattern rather than a single good year. That’s what makes an EVP true rather than a campaign — and the payoff has multiple benefits. Internally, people believe it because they can see it’s real, which kills cynicism. Externally, the wrong people self-select out before they apply, and the right people arrive with fewer surprises when they join. Conversations between the talks The conversations flowed from the tents to in between the agenda, and here are some of the things we talked about in the July sunshine. On the agency model. A properly interesting conversation about whether agencies still need to be the size they used to be, or whether a leaner model — bringing in the right specialist at the right moment — is actually the better way to work now. AI and monetisation: If AI makes things quicker does that mean agencies should charge less? Yes, and no - it depends. But AI in the hands of someone who doesn’t know a specialism produces something generic, but AI in the hands of someone who really knows their craft produces something sharper. That’s a big case for partners with real knowledge working alongside in-house teams. On the science of storytelling. A great conversation about understanding how people actually react to content, rather than just what they say they think about it — looking at the physical, almost instinctive response to a piece of video versus the polite feedback you get when you ask someone’s opinion of it afterwards. It’s a good reminder that there’s real craft and science behind storytelling that works. Even when plenty of it can be done in-house, it’s worth investing in content production experts, while also building your in-house capability - both help each other. On employee-generated video. A conversation about the real barrier many in-house teams face with video — it’s rarely desire, it’s headspace, resource, time and capability. In-house teams who decide to “do video” often only realise what it actually takes once they start doing it themselves. That’s important for internal learning, and it shows that software which helps employees generate their own content really helps — but so does having the bandwidth to manage the process. Using partners in the right way can make all the difference. On hiring for storytelling. I chatted to a global brand who’d hired for a senior storytelling role a few months back — and what’s interesting is that the role sits in comms, not TA. So it’s not just a TA thing — storytelling is something that covers multiple touch points in a business, and therefore brings value in multiple places. Building the business case is about looking at

I had a conversation with Nick Homer at Chapter 2 about the future of employer branding — it was such a good one that we decided to do a shorter episode on the future of employer branding agencies. This article covers the things we talked about. Watch the episode above, or listen to it below. The agency landscape has changed a lot across mine and Nick’s careers. Recruitment advertising agencies that used to book media and fill it with creative evolved into something more. Websites, brochures, events, social media, employee comms… and employer branding. Then over the last decade we saw employer brand emerge as agency projects, new specialist agencies, and in-house job titles. So with the rise of in-house specialists and them working with other in-house teams, there’s a commercial question from the bosses who hold the purse strings - do you need an agency at all? But the question isn’t whether to use an agency. It’s what they’re actually there to do — and when. Because the thing agencies do really well, the thing that’s hard to replicate inside an organisation, is creativity. Not creativity as a vague concept — but the kind that comes from working across dozens of organisations, sectors and challenges. From having different reference points in the room. From seeing the same problem play out in ten different ways and knowing what actually works. And that’s not just “words, pictures and pixels” creativity. It’s problem solving creativity. The opportunity is agencies bringing that creativity at the right time, alongside in-house teams who have their own deep knowledge of the organisation. Not taking over. Not just delivering a brief and walking away. But coming in when it matters, adding the thing that’s genuinely hard to build internally, and leaving something better behind. That sounds like a true partnership, right? The knowledge transfer opportunity One of the things Nick and I talked about is how much value sits in the movement of knowledge — in both directions. People who’ve worked agency-side before moving in-house are often great hires for an organisation. They’ve seen the same problems play out across multiple organisations, built instincts from a breadth of experience, and can transfer that to a team quickly. But there’s an opportunity for agencies too. Rather than the traditional model — take the brief, go away, come back with the work — what if agencies embedded alongside in-house teams, filled in the gaps, amplified what was already happening, and left the team genuinely better than they found it? That’s a different kind of engagement. Smaller maybe, but higher impact [and value]. And it keeps the relationship going — because you’re building capability rather than creating dependency. Look at the RADs six or seven years ago. The usual suspects. Now there’s a much wider range — smaller agencies, boutique outfits, even in-house teams entering their own work. That diversity is healthy. It pushes innovation, it pushes the bigger agencies to think differently, and it creates better work across the board. And when agencies shed people — as has been happening — you get independent consultants and small groups doing things differently. Faster to mobilise, lower overhead, able to bolt into a team for a sprint and step back out. That model is growing because it meets a real need [and one of the reasons I set up my business]. What next? The future of employer branding agencies isn’t smaller or larger. It’s different, more targeted, and more about knowing when to come in and what to bring — rather than owning the whole thing. What’s going to be happening in five years is being worked out right now. In new agency shapes, in how knowledge moves between organisations, in conversations like the one I had with Nick. That feels like an exciting place to be. If you know someone who would find this topic helpful then please do pass it on to them. And if you want to talk about how I can help you with my fractional content marketing capabilities then I’d be happy to talk. Thanks Chris Chris Le’cand-Harwood Host, Employer Content Marketing Founder, Content Marketing Pod Ltd Get full access to Employer Content Marketing at www.employercontent.marketing/subscribe

In Episode of 155 of Employer Content Marketing, Chris Le’cand-Harwood is joined by Crista and Matt Vance - co-founders of Mobrium and hosts of The Culture Profit podcast - to explore the powerful link between company culture and business performance.With global employee disengagement on the rise (as highlighted in Gallup’s State of the Workplace report), organisations can no longer afford to treat culture as a “soft” topic. This conversation unpacks why culture directly impacts profitability, retention, and employer reputation - and how businesses can start taking it seriously.Crista and Matt share insights from their work helping organisations manage employee reviews and online reputation, as well as lessons from their book The Review Cycle. Together, they dive into how transparency, feedback, and employee voice shape both internal culture and external perception.In this episode, you’ll learn:- Why culture has a measurable impact on profit, retention, and customer experience - How employee reviews influence hiring, turnover, and brand perception - The role of transparency in building trust with candidates and employees - Why employee voices are more credible than employer messaging - How to turn culture into compelling content that attracts the right talent - Practical ways to build feedback loops and strengthen your employer brand Key themes:- Culture vs. “soft” business thinking - The rise of employee-driven transparency - Online reviews, AI, and employer reputation - Emotional storytelling vs. data-driven proof - Building trust through authentic employee voice Crista and Matt also explain why you’ll “never be better than your star ratings” and how organisations can proactively manage their reputation without manipulating the truth—by amplifying real employee experiences.About the guests:Crista and Matt Vance are the co-founders of Mobrium, a platform that helps organisations manage employee reviews and improve employer reputation across the web. They are also the hosts of The Culture Profit podcast and co-authors of The Review Cycle, a book focused on feedback, ratings, and workplace culture.Links:- Connect with Crista and Matt on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/crista-vance/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattrvance/- Check out The Culture Profit podcast https://www.thecultureprofit.com/- Get the book: The Review Cycle https://www.amazon.co.uk/Review-Cycle-four-step-mastering-reviews/dp/B0B2HGHPHY- Learn more about Mobrium https://mobrium.com/If you’re interested in employer branding, employee engagement, and turning culture into a competitive advantage, this episode is packed with practical insights. Get full access to Employer Content Marketing at www.employercontent.marketing/subscribe

Employee advocacy is growing - and that's a good thing for employer brand.But there's a gap between where most organisations are and where they could be. Right now, the dominant model is using employees as a distribution channel. Brand creates content. Employees reshare it. A bit more reach, not much more engagement, and the people involved don't feel especially connected to any of it.The shift - and this is what this conversation is really about - is from distribution to co-creation. When employer brand teams work with employees to surface their genuine expertise, knowledge, opinions and stories, something different happens. Employees are more bought in. They share the content because it's actually theirs. And the content does more: it helps retain existing clients and customers, brings in new ones, keeps people motivated, and attracts the talent you're trying to reach.That's not a content strategy. That's demonstrable business impact.Andy Lambert has been building towards this thinking for over a decade. He co-founded ContentCal in 2016, grew it to become the fastest-growing platform in its category against Hootsuite, Sprinklr and Sprout, and sold it to Adobe in 2021. He built that business almost entirely through people-powered content. He's now the author of Spheres of Influence - a framework for turning genuine human voices into sustainable word-of-mouth growth.Andy and I have known each other for about ten years. This is a conversation where the thinking has had time to develop - and it shows.What we talked about:- Why co-creating content with employees beats just using them as a distribution channel- How giving employees a genuine voice creates buy-in - and better content- The business case: talent attraction, employee motivation, reputation, sales and client retention- Why LinkedIn's AI discovery shift makes this more urgent than ever right now- How to get employees creating content without handing them a blank page- Andy's six spheres of influence — a practical framework for personality-led growthFind Andy and get his book:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andyrlambert/Spheres of Influence: https://amzn.eu/d/0198edDsSubscribe to the Employer Content Marketing newsletter: www.employercontent.marketingFind ChrisLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/chrislecandharwoodNewsletter: www.employercontent.marketingWebsite: www.contentmarketingpod.com#EmployerBrand #EmployeeAdvocacy #LinkedInMarketing #employerbranding Get full access to Employer Content Marketing at www.employercontent.marketing/subscribe

Nick Homer has done employer branding in-house and in agencies across his career, most recently at Chapter 2. In this conversation, we get into where agencies genuinely add value, where the current model is falling short, and what a more relevant version of the relationship between agencies and in-house teams might look like.The honest answer isn't that agencies are irrelevant. It's how we can close the gap between what clients need and what agencies deliver. The opportunity is real — but so is the need to change.Here are some of the points we cover:- Why the in-house vs agency cost comparison is forcing harder questions- Where creativity is still the clearest case for agency involvement- Why knowledge transfer — not just execution — could redefine what agencies offer- How independent consultants are filling gaps that neither agencies nor in-house teams cover well- What the RADs this year suggests about where employer branding creativity is heading- Why disruption from smaller entities is probably good for the whole industryThis episode was recorded during a session for a broader episode about the future of employer branding - you can watch that episode here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/165mXweEyhXN0scVxR85yI?si=ry3YOz80QEmOHMcZimELpQ Get full access to Employer Content Marketing at www.employercontent.marketing/subscribe

Most employer brand content is built to attract - too often built to fix underlying business issues. Nick Homer has been making this argument for a while - and his case is that until EB teams start treating reputation as something to be improved rather than marketed around, they'll keep filling a bucket with a hole in it.I had a great conversation with Nick about what employer branding actually needs to do to stay relevant — and what gets in the way.Here are some of the things we talk about: - Why employer brand is a reputation discipline first, not a marketing channelHow to spot whether your EVP is already out of date — and what to do about it- What authentic content actually looks like (and why most of it isn't)- Why the loyalty contract between employers and employees has fundamentally shifted- How in-house EB teams can build capability and move faster- Why the pace of organisational change means your EVP needs to keep upAbout Nick HomerNick works in employer brand at Chapter 2, a talent business working across embedded talent, talent intelligence, and employer brand. He brings a great combination of in-house and agency experience — having led employer brand globally at Bumble and Wayfair, and worked across specialist agencies including ThirtyThree, Tonic, and Blackbridge. Nick likes challenging received wisdom in employer branding, including a widely-discussed post on LinkedIn arguing that employer brand is fundamentally about reputation.BONUS EPISODE: The role of employer branding agencies in the future: https://youtu.be/wcKYKOsiHUUSubscribe for more episodes direct to your inbox: https://www.employercontent.marketing/ Get full access to Employer Content Marketing at www.employercontent.marketing/subscribe

Do you want to understand workplace happiness? Get your sleeves rolled up and see what motivates and engages people at work?Understanding this isn’t a nice to have - it’s a strategic business imperative. It’s what makes businesses succeed.I was fortunate enough to be invited to the launch of The Global Workplace Happiness Report at Google in London - hosted by The Happiness Index.I did a Substack Livestream with Matt Phelan [Co-Founder of The Happiness Index] on stage before the day kicked off.We cover the why and what of The Global Workplace Happiness Report [it’s based on 1.9 million data points!]. I ask Matt about the key themes in this episode.It’s always great chatting with Matt - his third time on the podcast - and this is episode 150! A worth topic for such a milestone 🫶🏻Matt and the team do really important work so it’s a real privilege to chat with them and share this episode with you.Want to dive into the report?You can download it here https://thehappinessindex.com/the-global-workplace-happiness-report/ And get on to LinkedIn to connect with Matt https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewphelan/Subscribe for more content like this in your inbox https://www.employercontent.marketing/Good times. Thanks for the invite Matt! Get full access to Employer Content Marketing at www.employercontent.marketing/subscribe

Recently I had the pleasure of being a guest on The Culture Profit Podcast, hosted by Crista and Matt Vance, to talk about something I believe more organisations should be doing: turning workplace culture into meaningful content. The Culture Profit Podcast focuses on something that really resonates with me: that workplace culture is not just an internal “people topic”, but something that can directly influence business performance. Strong cultures shape better products, better customer experiences, and ultimately stronger commercial outcomes. So I was super happy to get an invite on to their podcast recently. The more we can connect culture with cash, the better. Here are some of the themes from the episode: Why culture needs to be seen, not just described Many organisations invest time defining their values, their mission, and their Employer Value Proposition. But when people outside the organisation encounter that messaging, it can feel abstract. Statements like “we value collaboration” or “our people are our greatest asset” are common, but they rarely tell you what it actually feels like to work somewhere. Content changes that. When employees talk about the work they do, the problems they solve, and the impact they have, culture stops being a slogan and starts becoming something tangible. A short video conversation, a podcast discussion, or a behind-the-scenes story can reveal far more about an organisation than really polished piece of copy on a careers page. That’s why I’m so interested in helping organisations capture these stories. Employees are the most credible storytellers One of the themes we discussed in the episode is the importance of letting employees speak for themselves. Too often employer branding content tries to sound like marketing. But audiences - especially candidates - are increasingly good at recognising polished messaging. What they respond to instead is authenticity. * An apprentice explaining how they faced the world of work for the first time. * A nurse describing the moments they see the real impact of their work, despite the challenges. * A graduate talking about what culture looks like in their day to day. These kinds of conversations create content that is informative, credible and often genuinely inspiring. They allow people outside the organisation to understand the purpose behind the work, not just the job description. The important thing is to create the environment that helps them bring their authentic self to the screen or mic. Here’s a clip about how I do that. From storytelling to business value When organisations consistently share thoughtful, useful content about the work happening inside their teams, several things start to happen. First, they build trust with potential candidates. People considering a role gain a much clearer picture of the environment they might be joining. Second, the organisation develops a reputation for expertise and openness. The same content that attracts candidates can also resonate with customers, partners and industry peers. And third, employees themselves often feel a stronger sense of pride and ownership when their work is shared and recognised publicly. In other words, workplace culture content doesn’t just support hiring - it contributes to brand, reputation and commercial success. A practical way to start One of the points I always emphasise is that organisations don’t need a large production budget to start creating this kind of content. The most important ingredient is curiosity. Start by recording conversations with people who are doing interesting work inside the organisation. Ask them about the challenges they’re tackling, the expertise they’ve developed, and the moments that made them proud. Those conversations can become podcast episodes, short videos, articles or social clips. Over time, these stories build a body of content that reveals what the organisation actually does and why it matters. It also means you can build internal confidence, proof of concept and business cases for higher production content that sits alongside this. Watch or listen to the full conversation If you’re interested in employer branding, organisational culture, or the role content can play in connecting the two, I hope you enjoy the conversation. You can watch the full episode here: Thanks again to Matt and Crista for inviting me. It was a great opportunity to chat about how organisations can move beyond describing culture - and start showing it through the stories of the people who create it every day. Check out their podcast here. Get full access to Employer Content Marketing at www.employercontent.marketing/subscribe

How do you scale employer branding when multiple teams, stakeholders and regions are involved?Whether you work in a global company or a growing organisation with several departments, employer branding quickly becomes complex.In this episode, I chat with Jane Mehringer, Global Head of Talent Attraction at ABB, about how organisations bring employer branding together across teams, stakeholders and locations.While ABB operates globally, the challenges Jane describes are familiar to any organisation trying to coordinate employer branding across different parts of the business.This conversation explores how to:✅ Align multiple stakeholders and departments ✅ Maintain consistent employer branding across teams or regions ✅ Balance global guidelines with local flexibility ✅ Build processes that help teams collaborate ✅ Use technology and platforms to scale employer branding ✅ Prove the value of employer branding to the wider business ✅ Build internal communities that drive adoption and momentumThe key lesson: Scaling employer branding is about aligning people, processes and technology across the organisation. Listen to the episode here.This episode is part of a series supported by Cliquify - the Employer Branding Operating System for organisations - featuring conversations with in-house practitioners about how employer branding really works inside organisations. Find out more about Cliquify here. 🗓️ The next episode in this 4-part series sees me chatting with another in-house practitioner, so be sure to subscribe to get it direct to your inbox. Get full access to Employer Content Marketing at www.employercontent.marketing/subscribe

How do you scale employer branding when multiple teams, stakeholders and regions are involved? Whether you work in a global company or a growing organisation with several departments, employer branding quickly becomes complex. In this episode, Chris Le’cand-Harwood speaks with Jane Mehringer, Global Head of Talent Attraction at ABB, about how organisations bring employer branding together across teams, stakeholders and locations. While ABB operates globally, the challenges Jane describes are familiar to any organisation trying to coordinate employer branding across different parts of the business. This conversation explores how to: - Align multiple stakeholders and departments - Maintain consistent employer branding across teams or regions - Balance global guidelines with local flexibility - Build processes that help teams collaborate - Use technology and platforms to scale employer branding - Prove the value of employer branding to the wider business - Build internal communities that drive adoption and momentum The key lesson: Scaling employer branding is about aligning people, processes and technology across the organisation. This episode is part of a series supported by Cliquify - the Employer Branding Operating System for organisations - featuring conversations with in-house practitioners about how employer branding really works inside organisations. Find out more about Cliquify here: https://www.cliquify.me/ Subscribe to the Employer Content Marketing Newsletter here: https://www.employercontent.marketing/ Connect with Jane here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/janemehringer/ Get full access to Employer Content Marketing at www.employercontent.marketing/subscribe

Employer branding is often portrayed as large campaigns, polished EVP launches, and big budgets. But the reality inside most organisations looks very different.Employer branding often grows organically - it evolves through experimentation, testing ideas, learning what works, and adapting along the way.And that’s not a weakness - it’s often exactly how effective employer branding develops.In this episode, Chris Le’cand-Harwood speaks with Dennis Borchers from Tractor Supply Company about what it looks like to build an employer brand in “startup mode” inside an established organisation.Dennis shares how his team has focused on building the foundations first: - creating consistency for recruiters - integrating employer branding with HR communications - amplifying authentic employee-generated content - experimenting with new channels and approachesRather than forcing a rigid programme, the team has allowed the work to grow organically — responding to business needs, testing new ideas, and refining their approach as they go.It’s a great example of why employer branding isn’t a plug-and-play exercise.Instead, it’s something that develops through experimentation, iteration, and collaboration across the organisation.This episode is part of a series supported by Cliquify - the Employer Branding Operating System for organisations - featuring conversations with in-house practitioners about how employer branding really works inside organisations.---Chapters 00:00 Introduction 00:37 Dennis Borchers introduction 03:45 Employer branding in “startup mode” 07:00 Creating consistency across channels 10:00 Supporting recruiters with better content systems 15:00 Employee-generated content and ambassadors 18:50 Internal engagement and leadership amplification 22:20 Scaling employee advocacy organically 25:50 Experimenting with TikTok and new content formats 29:00 Why employer branding requires experimentation---Who's this episode is forEmployer brand leaders; Talent acquisition leaders; HR communications professionals; Teams building or evolving their employer brand---🎧 Listen to the podcasthttps://www.employercontent.marketing💬 Connect with Chris on LinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/chrislch/💬 Connect with Dennis on LinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/dennis-borchers/ ➡️ Subscribe to Employer Content Marketinghttps://www.employercontent.marketing/---If you work in employer branding, talent acquisition, or recruitment marketing, subscribe for more conversations about how organisations are building employer brands through content.📌 Question for viewersIs employer branding in your organisation something that was carefully designed… or something that has grown organically over time? Get full access to Employer Content Marketing at www.employercontent.marketing/subscribe

AI has become one of those topics that risks an automatic eye-roll. Another tool. Another trend. Another thing we’re supposed to care about. But when it comes to employer branding and talent attraction, AI isn’t a gimmick. It’s solving a problem teams have struggled with for years. I was discussing this recently with Erik Rivas, alongside my fellow Employer Content Club co-host Chris Murdoch, and one idea stood out: AI isn’t about creating fake stories or replacing human voices. It’s about extending the life of real ones. The old way of using employee video For a long time, the process looked something like this: You’d record great employee interviews. You’d publish the videos. You’d slice them into clips. You’d post them on socials and add them to a careers site. Valuable? Yes. Exhaustive? Also yes. Once that content was “used”, it largely stayed where it was. Revisiting it months later meant manually rewatching footage, pulling quotes, or starting again with new filming. What AI changes Now those same videos can be treated as something more powerful: searchable, reusable data. The words employees say — their experiences, motivations, doubts, and advice — can be revisited and reshaped for different purposes over time. AI allows teams to: * Turn employee interviews into blogs, social posts, and campaign messaging * Reframe existing content around new hiring priorities or challenges * Answer candidate questions using real employee language, not corporate copy You’re not inventing anything new. You’re unlocking what you’ve already invested in. A simple but powerful example Erik shared a great example from his work at Police Now. “Why should I join Police Now?” That question might be asked by: * A graduate * A career changer * A former teacher * Someone five years into a different profession The question is the same, but the context isn’t. With AI, teams can surface stories from people who’ve actually made those transitions and answer the question in a way that feels relevant to each audience — using the same core bank of employee content. Not personalised one-to-one. But intelligently relevant at scale. What this means for employer branding Employer branding isn’t like selling a product.Candidates can’t return a career move. They can’t undo a cultural mismatch. They’re making a high-stakes decision, often over a long period of time. That means brands need to: * Show up consistently * Earn attention repeatedly * Stay front of mind long before someone applies The problem? Most budgets and teams can’t support constant new content creation. AI doesn’t fix that by making content fake or automated. It fixes it by helping teams: * Do more with what they already have * Stay visible without burning out employees or budgets * Keep authenticity at the centre, not polish The real opportunity Used well, AI doesn’t dilute employer brand content. It amplifies it. Real voices. More relevance. More consistency. And finally, a way to meet the volume the world demands — without losing the humanity that makes employer branding work in the first place. That’s not something to roll your eyes at. Exciting times. Erik shared how they do this in practice using Vouch — a platform that helps teams capture employee video stories and then reuse and resurface them intelligently over time. Get full access to Employer Content Marketing at www.employercontent.marketing/subscribe

In the world of employer branding, we can fall into the trap of polishing the truth until it shines like a commercial. But after 20+ years in workplace content, I’ve learned a fundamental truth: Advertising sells, but content builds trust. When candidates or employees are considering your organisation, they don’t want sales messages. They want real stories, opinions, and experiences from the people actually doing the work. The Shift from “Corporate Gloss” to Authentic Reality One of the most common challenges organisations face today is the desire for authentic stories coupled with an uncertainty of how to get them. Employer branding practitioners often tell me, “We want real employee voices, but we’re not sure how to capture them without it feeling forced or scripted”. This is where the distinction between “marketing” and “content” becomes crucial. Traditional marketing relies on corporate slogans; strategic content relies on giving talented people a platform to build their reputation and the reputation of their organisation. My approach sits right in the middle of culture and content. Whether I am directing documentaries with psychiatrists and nurses or producing a podcast series on the sports fields of the Royal Air Force, the goal is always the same: to harness workplace culture to drive recruitment and build thought leadership without the gloss. Strategy Before You Hit “Record” It is tempting to jump straight into high-production solutions. However, effective employer content requires us to be strategic partners who figure out what to make and why before we ever turn on a camera. This means challenging the brief. It means separating “wants” from “needs”. Sometimes, the answer isn’t a massive 12-month campaign. I believe in momentum over perfection. I would rather pilot something quickly, learn from it, and iterate than spend months planning the perfect piece of content that never ships. For example, I once helped a client repurpose and serialise content from a film shoot that wasn’t delivering its full value. By applying a strategic lens, we turned a handful of videos into a whole suite of content that lasted months. Solving the “Bandwidth” Problem Even when the strategy is sound, execution is often the bottleneck. “We need to scale our content, but we’re stretched”. There is no one-size-fits-all solution to this. Sometimes the answer is bringing in an independent producer to take the project end-to-end—assembling the crew and handling everything from strategy to delivery. Other times, the sustainable answer is building your internal capability through coaching and workshops, or having a partner embed with your team as an extra pair of hands. A Privilege to Serve the Industry My career has taken me from the NHS to working with brands like Hilton, Schroders, and Cygnet, winning 11 awards over the last five years. But my work isn’t just for organisations; it’s for the industry. Through the Employer Content Marketing podcast and my work with the Employer Content Club, I try to facilitate discussions that help us all make better workplaces. Using content to make people happier and motivated to do their best work is a genuine privilege. If you are tired of corporate sales slogans and want to start turning your culture into magnetic content, let’s focus on the stories that matter. Because sales messages can’t truly build the trust your employer brand needs—but content can. Have a great week! Chris Get full access to Employer Content Marketing at www.employercontent.marketing/subscribe