FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Magnetic branding is the belief that a brand shares the same central value (some brands might call this belief, obsession, core ideals, promise, or myriad other names) between its employees and customers. The goal of magnetic branding is to find the common ground so we can create the strongest communications possible for both audiences.

Just like a magnet, a brand repels as well as it attracts. It is just as valuable for encouraging the wrong employees and consumers to decide NOT to join.

Magnetism is especially important in the age of brand transparency, when the whole world can see into a corporation’s culture, and every employee can broadcast from within.

At MindHandle, we conduct our work with this perspective in mind. It’s easy for a company to slide into the 2-brand framework. Instead, we encourage our client partners to operate with a one-brand-2-audiences mentality.

At MindHandle, we aim to guide our clients on every step of the journey to developing an employment brand strategy. Those steps – and the goals, activities and results of each – are: 

1. Discovery
    
   • The Goal – To become smart enough about a business to make qualified recommendations that will lead to a successful program.
     
     
   • The Activities – Primary and secondary research spanning Brand, Competitors, Audience and Communications.
     
     
   • The Result – A Magnetic Scorecard and findings to support it.
     
     
2. Mapping
    
   • The Goals – To validate the topline findings and align on the specific actions necessary to address the opportunities and obstacles. 
     
     
   • The Activities – Validation in employee experience often includes hands-on, interactive participation from an organization’s people. This means we’ll invite our clients to join us in:
      
     • Workshopping
     • Employee Journey Mapping
     • EVP Development
     • Mission, Vision & Values Development
       
       
   • The Result – The Magnetic Scorecard becomes actionable with strategic recommendations.
     
     
3. Creating
    
   • The Goals – To co-create the communications that will leverage the opportunities and knock down the obstacles we’ve uncovered and validated.
     
     
   • The Activities – MindHandle’s Magnetic Branding process is interactive and iterative, and includes:
      
     • Creative briefing
     • Campaign concepts presentation – write ups and mood boards
     • Development of The MindHandle (the brand idea)
     • Development of ad-like objects
     • Brand Activation Playbook
     • Alignment on implementation plans
       
       
   • The Result – This phase of a Magnetic Branding project ends with all the ingredients to produce a strong brand campaign.
     
     
4. Implementing
    
   • The Goals – The ultimate goal is to align on the plan to improve a company’s brand over time. Goals are highly dependent on:
      
     • What we uncover together in the first 2 phases, and
     • The resources available on our clients’ internal teams
       
       
   • The Activities
      
     • Content calendar development
     • Comms strategy development
     • Resource planning and scoping
     • Ongoing asset creation
     • Custom photoshoots and video productions
     • Paid, earned & owned media strategy and creative to fill placements
     • Recurring meetings, workshops and interviews
     • Analysis and optimization
       
       

• • The Results – Results vary by organization. To see some of this work in action and the value MindHandle has created with our clients, please read our case stories.

We are always looking for the best and brightest talent in the world of employer branding, especially if you consider yourself a “recovering advertiser.” We regularly post open roles, which you can find on our careers page. Even if you don’t see the job with your name on it, let’s talk, because we might be able to make a connection here or elsewhere.

MindHandle’s HQ is in Dallas, TX, with a hybrid/remote work setup, and we serve businesses all over the world from right here in the Lone Star State.

A brand is the sum total of all communications on behalf of a company. An employer brand is the sum total of all expressions of an EVP (employer value proposition), and it ultimately builds, changes and reinforces beliefs, habits and perceptions for employees (note: employer brand and EVP are not interchangeable).  

Hint: Imagine an Employer Brand as the recipe you’re making with the contents of your pantry (and your EVP is what’s in your pantry). It’s the meal your guests will enjoy, and it consists of what you have on-hand. If you did your shopping correctly and deliberately, your recipe will be enjoyable. When you set your meal on the windowsill, it will attract the people you want at your table.

Designed to solve specific problems and overcome specific challenges, a campaign is a time-bound collection of tactics that reach target audiences. Not unlike a political campaign, an employer brand campaign is designed to affect people’s hearts, minds and actions. This may include paid, earned and owned media strategies to impact both:

• Recruiting: When we need to change either/both a) the speed/volume at which people join the organization, or b) the quality of applicants, we publish materials to reach candidates and inspire them to choose our brand over their available alternatives.
• Internal Comms: When we need existing employees to reevaluate their feelings and actions related to their employment, we publish materials to engage, retain and inspire them.

Great question. Who knew swapping a letter or two could change the meaning of a word so much?

Employer Branding, according to SHRM, is “what an organization communicates as its identity to both potential and current employees. …Incorporates an organization's mission, values, culture and personality.”

Employer brands are:

• Driven by company leaders and HR
• Defined at the corporate level
• About the environment where employees work
• Used throughout the employee experience

For example, MindHandle’s work with Invitation Homes falls into this category. The brand was defined at the corporate level… All about the environment. This is where you can do your best work. Frost’s “That’s What it’s About” campaign is another example of employer branding. Even though we’re highlighting individuals and their contributions, we’re painting the picture of the environment where they can be successful.

Employee Branding, on the other hand, isn’t as much about the environment. It’s about the individual. It’s the expression of when an employee internalizes the employer’s mission, vision and values.

Employee Brands are:

• Driven by employees
• Defined by HR
• About the people who succeed in the environment
• Primarily used for recruiting (Do I see myself there?)

For example, the work MindHandle has done with Raising Cane’s would classify as Employee branding. We defined what a successful employee looks and acts like, and we primarily directed our efforts toward recruiting.

So, why does MindHandle refer to ourselves as an “Employment Brand Agency?” While “employer brand” is the most common industry term, it’s important to us that our clients know we can be trusted to span the spectrum with you. The term employment brand rests above both employee and employer branding, indicating we are capable of both.

The Magnetic Scorecard is a diagnostic tool built around the 3 stages of a relationship with a brand, by two sides, or poles, of the magnetic branding spectrum.

It measures the effectiveness of an organization’s brand by assigning a score in each of 3 categories: attraction, adoption, and championship for the consumer and employer brand communications.

The Magnetic Scorecard defines how we approach work to be done with our client partners. We use it to:

• Uncover opportunities and obstacles 
• Align on challenges
• Prioritize brand initiatives

The answer to this question depends on how magnetic your brand is. In an ideal world, we recommend there should only be nuanced differences when the brand speaks to employees compared to consumers. We recommend taking a one-brand, one-voice, two-audience approach to branded comms, and under that lens there is very little difference in how the brand should look. What differs, primarily, are the messages, tone and channels.

At MindHandle, we are no strangers to problem solving, and our work often spans the scope of how our clients organize by departments. HR, Internal Comms and Marketing all benefit from employment branding, so below is a (by no means exhaustive) list, organized by the three disciplines. At our core, however, our gift to our clients’ organizations is actually best described as orchestrating so these three departments play from the same sheet music.

Human Resources Problems We Solve

• Our authentic story isn’t reaching candidates
• Our talent content doesn’t feature actual employees
• People are leaving (and/or quiet quitting)
• Low awareness of mission/vision/values
• Lower employee engagement than desired
• Slower to hire than desired
• Recruiters aren’t equipped with good material
• Little/no recruiting comms strategy
• Our career site sucks
• Inconsistent branding
• Consumer brand stronger than employer brand
• Little/no internal comms strategy
• Onboarding isn’t working right
• Career pathing not clear
• Talent content takes too long to create
• Employees aren’t producing content themselves 
• Our social media only targets consumers and isn’t building our reputation as an employer

Marketing Problems We Solve

• We can’t seem to hold onto good people long enough to see any of our important marketing initiatives through
• Our recruiting or internal comms creative doesn’t feel like it came from our brand
• Our social media feeds are cluttered with recruiting messages
• There’s a “now hiring” poster on the window at [location] and it looks embarrassing
• Our brand experience is only as good as our employees’ abilities to deliver it
• Our employees don’t know as much about new product launches as our consumers do
• Our ad agency (or PR firm, or digital agency, etc.) won’t (or can’t) work on employee communications
• Building a great brand includes being a great employer and we’re not there yet

Internal Communications Problems We Solve

• Random acts of internal comms
• Our employees aren’t enrolling in benefits
• “Mission, Vision & Values? I got a card with those on it once… Where did I put that?”
• Our employees’ achievements aren’t being broadcasted internally
• Our intranet sucks
• Our employees aren’t creating content themselves (in employee social or other platforms)
• Our employees don’t understand our company strategy or their role in it
• Our leadership team aren’t seen as thought leaders
• People aren’t recognizing each other often enough
• We’ve merged or been acquired, and employees don’t know what that means for them
• We have a new LMS, but it doesn’t represent us in its off-the-shelf form
• Workday (or name a platform) isn’t built for quality communications

Common deliverables in employment branding include, but are certainly not limited to:

• Career site content
• Employee testimonial videos
• Intranet content
• Training & development content
• Culture documentation
• Employee social media campaigns and content
• Recruiting materials
• Career fair materials
• Promotional products
• Custom photo and video shoots
• Employer brand guidelines
• Employer brand activation playbooks

Check out our Services page for a more comprehensive list, and then take a spin through the answer about our process. If you still have questions, please get in touch.

These terms are often used interchangeably, but there are several differences between them. Primarily, recruitment marketing is an activity within employee communications that benefits from a strong employer brand. To explore in more depth, read this article about the similarities and differences. Then, take a look at how employment branding is also a retention tactic in this article, How To Increase Employee Engagement with Branding.

How long is a piece of string? But seriously… Building a brand that both reflects and inspires your internal culture is what we call “soil work.” Especially when it needs to be balanced with your consumer brand too. It doesn’t bear fruit overnight, so we recommend embarking on it only when the team is ready to do the work and be patient for the results to appear.

However, if the question was “How long does it take to build an employer brand campaign,” that’s a different answer and it depends on your goals.

Regardless of whether you’re building an employer brand or a campaign, it’s best to prepare yourself – and your team – for work that takes between 6 months to 3 years. Yes, that’s a ridiculously large range, but there are so many variables.

To arrive at the truest answer to this question, we should talk about what you’re trying to accomplish on your organization’s behalf, so the best thing you can do is get in touch with us.

Yes! And… Also no. We’re a branding agency, which means our expertise lies in areas like employee experience, communications strategy, brand storytelling, creative ideas and content development. While we can certainly consult on the intranet as a channel, we are not a digital development firm, nor do we partner with one intranet product over another. However, we’re fortunate to have a large network of partners with ranges of capabilities in this space, and we would appreciate the opportunity to leverage their expertise on behalf of this important channel in your employee experience. Let’s talk if any of the below sounds familiar:

1. Sharepoint? Ugh.
   
   
2. We’re emailing our employees to death. Shouldn’t we be able to gauge their effectiveness better than this?
   
   
3. Engagement is difficult to measure, and culture is difficult to promote, especially in light of our remote workforce. 
   
   
4. We’re doing tedious work, sending the same messages over and over. We wish some of this stuff could be automated.
   
   
5. Our employees are weeding through irrelevant, out-of-date information to find what they need.
   
   
6. We’ve struggled to reach employees who don’t regularly use computers to do their work. Especially those “in the field.”
   
   
7. We lack actionable, timely employee experience insights to inform our important,  strategic business decisions.
   
   
8. Our employees use a lot of tools and services to do their job but lack a centralized place to access them.
   
   
9. Our current comms tech isn’t scaling to meet the demands of our changing workforce.
   
   
10. Every time we attempt to involve our IT department, we get the eye roll of doom.

When executed well, an employment brand strategy is a talent acquisition professional’s best friend. It shapes all the communications on behalf of an employer, defining how candidates see themselves succeeding at the organization.

At MindHandle, we often celebrate brands for their ability to repel AND attract. It’s not important for everyone to opt in, rather only the right people. Imagine the difference between hiring 100 people and hiring 100 values-aligned people. This is the work of employment branding.

Generally, the impact to recruiting can be measured in:

• Reduced time to hire
• Offer acceptance rate
• Improved awareness among candidates
• Improved employer reputation
• Diversity of applicant pool
• Increased employee referrals 
• Improved applicant and candidate quality
• Reduced contingent recruiting costs
• Reduced time to full productivity following hire

A strong employment brand extends well beyond recruiting, inspiring better communications throughout the employee experience. Retention is a natural result of a strong employment brand, thanks to tactics that underscore and remind employees why they joined in the first place, and what they love about their work. Consistent reminders of values-in-action encourage champion employees to act in line with desired behaviors, and provide examples of what success looks like on the job.

Generally, the impact to retention can be measured in:

• Increased retention of values-aligned talent
• Reduced regrettable attrition
• Reduced absenteeism
• Improved workforce diversity and inclusion
• Understanding of – and performance against – business strategy
• Improved employee engagement scores
• Improved vertical momentum and succession
• Improved training and development participation
• Increased referral rates
• Improved employee benefits enrollment
• Increased productivity

Investing in an employment brand strategy clearly improves the top line of an organization’s finances. Engaged employees are a strategic advantage to any business, capable of massive impact to the customer experience and more.

There are several common revenue-improving factors that result from employment branding, including:

• Attracting top talent
• Improved employee retention
• Enhanced customer experience
• Productivity increases
• Market differentiation & distinction
• Expanded sales and business opportunities
• Positive momentum
• Environment of innovation and creativity
• Understanding of – and performance against – business strategy

Engaged employees are the key to a profitable business. In addition to the obvious cost-reduction benefits to recruiting, there are a handful of ways an organization’s bottom line will benefit from a strong employment branding strategy. 

• Reduced turnover
• Improved market differentiation
• Improved customer satisfaction
• Increased efficiency
• Heightened productivity

A strong employment brand does not exist without a solid EVP, yet it’s one of the most misunderstood and commonly debated topics in our work. So we’ve dedicated an entire section of this FAQ to letting you know where we stand as an agency on this term, and how we approach defining, developing, evaluating and articulating an employer value proposition.

An Employee Value Proposition (EVP) is a snapshot of the value we offer our team members, and the experience they can expect from a career at our organization. A strong EVP typically comprises the following elements (from functional to emotional language):

1. Reasons to Believe – 3 to 5 “pillars” or collections of ways employees will observe the culture. These are best voiced to finish the statement “Here you can…” because they should feel empowering. Reasons to believe can range from culture to mission to benefits, and are typically considered building blocks of a career at the company.
   
   
2. An Employee Benefit Statement – A single-minded expression of all the Reasons to Believe, combined. Above all, this statement should feel meaningful and true.
   
   
3. An Employer Promise – Because the Employee Benefit is meaningful and true, as an employer, we are able to make this promise to people (current and future team members) about what it means to have a career in our organization.
   
   
4. A Value Proposition Statement – A single-minded expression of the entire collection of language. This statement should feel differentiating (i.e. no competitor could offer this), and it should inspire us to think not only about how we communicate the employee experience, but also what is offered as part of the experience.

Hint: While an employment brand is the recipe, Imagine an EVP as the contents of your pantry. You’ve shopped carefully and curated them to include a range of healthy to indulgent foods, ingredients for recipes to pre-packaged snacks. If you want to bake a pie, you could likely find the ingredients to do it.

MindHandle recommends organizations treat their EVP like a living, breathing organism. It needs to be nurtured, revisited often, and promoted consistently. It will change as the company changes, and should be reviewed at least once every year.

With that in mind, the main use of an EVP is to define and drive the employee experience. This includes, but isn’t limited to:

1. Employer branding – The EVP is a critical component of a company's employer branding strategy.
   
   
2. Talent attraction – Refer to your organization’s EVP in any recruitment marketing effort to attract potential candidates.
   
   
3. Candidate experience – In interview discussions, recruitment events, and interactions with the company's employees, candidates will want to feel the EVP in action. A transparent and authentic EVP can help candidates make informed decisions about joining the organization.
   
   
4. Employee engagement and retention – When employees feel their organization values and invests in them, they are more likely to be engaged, satisfied, and motivated to stay.
   
   
5. Performance and productivity – When employees feel a strong connection to the company's purpose, and are provided with the necessary support and resources, they are more likely to participate and innovate to their fullest.
   
   
6. Internal communication – The EVP should be well-articulated internally to all employees. This ensures that everyone in the organization understands and can represent it consistently when interacting with external stakeholders.

An EVP is a multi-faceted tool, so to assess its use with a single dimension might not be the most productive exercise. Still, as we “try them on,” it helps to run our responses through some simple filters:

• Is it meaningful? For those who will use it to make decisions and create communications that equip the employee experience, will the EVP provide language with consequence?
  
  
• Is it true? Is the language an accurate reflection of the culture, both where it is today, and where it’s going?
  
  
• Is it inspirational? Does reading the EVP language make you think of your organization on its best day? Note: an EVP should not be aspirational. If it describes the future too much, we risk advertising to team members who may join under insincere pretense.
  
  
• Does it contain an element of give-and-get? The best EVPs describe what’s possible and also what’s necessary to achieve it. An employee should understand there is a trade-off beyond the transactional time-for-money, and this document is where that trade-off lives.

We want our time together to be productive and interactive, so for the best results we generally ask to invite 7-12 employees who:

• Are in good standing with the organization & policies
  
  
• Can share stories of success in the organization
  
  
• Are articulate, open and honest
  
  
• Are willing to discuss multiple topics beyond their position
  
  
• Represent a range of diverse cultures and backgrounds
  
  
• Are comfortable being on camera and recorded (For research only, not for actual campaigns)
  
  
• Represent both legacy and new employees (new to organization vs. tenured individuals with longer histories)
  
  
• Are not part of our direct, core client team. By this point in the project, we already know your perspective, and there’s a risk the people in the room will behave differently if you’re there.

MindHandle does not recommend the EVP language should reach employee audiences in its documented form. Its intention is to inform communications, not be communicated. An EVP guides those who create the employee experience, including teams who create the messaging to equip it. Further, because the EVP changes to reflect the changes in the company, we recommend reserving the space to update it, independent of the communications strategy it fuels.

First of all, if you’re considering working with MindHandle, thank you. It means a lot to us that you’ve arrived here, and that you see something that speaks to you about our work and how we approach it.

It’s a big decision to hire an employment brand agency. So to answer this question, it may help to break it down into some smaller ones. We’ve grouped those into 3 categories: your company, your role, and your mindset.

Your Company 

• Do you work for a large organization with several thousand employees distributed across several locations?
  
  
• Is there an effort underway to align communications on behalf of those employees?
  
  
• Are you looking to improve the way candidates learn about and join your company?
  
  
• Does your organization have a strong company culture?
  
  
• Does your company have a strong consumer brand, and generally high awareness in the market?
  
  
• Has your company recently encountered, or planned, on a change that will affect the employee experience? Like an acquisition or merger, a new leader, or a change in the company’s strategy?

Your Role

• Are you in an HR, Internal Communications or Marketing role?
  
  
• At your company, do those three departments share the responsibility to communicate to employees at scale?
  
  
• Do you feel pulled in a billion directions every day, and that you’re answering the same questions in several different meetings?
  
  
• If you’re in HR, are you seeing your role evolve? Are you being asked or expected to “think like marketers” when it comes to the candidate and employee experience?
  
  
• Also, if you’re in HR, have you been asked to work with the marketing team or agency to build an employee comms strategy? How’d that go?
  
  
• If you’re in marketing, are you often told how important employee communications is, but rarely provided the resources or plans to act on it?
  
  
• If you’re in internal communications, have you successfully connected the dots between what you do all day and employee engagement?

Your Mindset

• Do you ever wonder why there seems to be a lop-sided relationship between consumer and employer branding?
  
  
• Do you ever wonder what other successful companies do or spend to achieve a healthy balance between their employment brand and consumer brand?
  
  
• In your company’s internal communications, do you wish you were doing more than the standard, transactional comms, like “it’s time for open enrollment” and “there’s a town hall meeting Thursday”?
  
  
• Do you see an opportunity to engage your company’s people so they better understand the business strategy and their role in it?
  
  
• Do you find yourself feeling frustrated that the important messages aren’t getting to the right people? Or they’re not getting there in time?
  
  
• In your company’s recruiting communications, do you see an opportunity to better connect with people’s hearts and minds, beyond only connecting with their resumes?
  
  
• Do you see brand champions in your business today, and do you wish there was a way you could elevate their stories or behavior to inspire others?
   
• Do you often find yourself wishing the outside world had any idea just how great it is to work at your company?

If you answered yes to any of the above questions, we need to talk. It’s going to take more time to determine whether we’re a great fit, but this initial filter is a good indication there’s value to be created from a partnership.

This concern is completely understandable. At many ad agencies, the smaller clients get less attention, but that’s not the case at MindHandle. Our mission is to make work matter for all. Not some. All. What matters more than number of employees or consumer brand awareness? How important culture is to your organization and its business strategy. If you agree a business is basically nothing without its people – let’s talk.

Please resist the urge to define MindHandle by the clients with whom we work. We are not our clients, but we are a product of our experiences working with them. Take a look at what they have in common: Large companies with strong brands, many employees in many places, and an emphasis on culture as strategy.

To learn more about our clients and what drives our work with them, check out a few of our case stories:

Frost – Reduced time to hire values-aligned employees in a time of rapid growth.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise – Created a Global EVP to fuel growth and international integration through culture.

Nothing Bundt Cakes – Broke through the candidate clutter with powerful expressions of real employee joy.

You should hire THIS agency to work on your company’s employment brand. Just kidding. Kind of. Actually, many organizations find they can do at least some of this work in-house with the resources they have on their teams today. If you’re looking for some help deciding whether to hire an agency or DIY it, please take a spin through this blog: Employment Branding Solutions – In-House vs Agency. If you’re convinced you can handle it internally, check out our Resources page for some helpful tools and perspective.

Employment branding typically begins in HR’s arena, because there’s a common human capital goal in most company’s strategic plans: “To become an employer of choice,” or similar. At that point, the question becomes but how? Marketing is typically consulted, as is internal communications. All three departments debate and decide how to address this work, and that’s where the struggle becomes real.

The challenge: HR, Marketing and Internal Comms make fundamentally different contributions to a business. HR typically pursues quality (i.e. employee experience, total rewards, DE&I) while Marketing and Internal Comms typically pursue quantity (i.e. clicks, customer count, average ticket, benefits enrollment).

Yet, the skills required to succeed in employment branding primarily live in the marketing department and its extensions. Consider what it takes for an organization to build a brand:

• Creative concepting and storytelling
• Social media strategies
• Content strategy and distribution
• Media planning & buying

Do those skills typically live in an HR department? Did anyone at your organization join the HR team so they could be a social media strategist? Didn’t think so.

That’s why MindHandle recommends all three of these departments have a seat at the table when building an employer brand. Each will bring something unique, and that can best be organized at a high level like this:

• HR should be the authority on the authenticity of the employer brand. This department is responsible for the employee and candidate experiences, and are the experts in how communications empower them.
  
  
• Internal Comms should stand up for the current employee audience and the ways to reach them.
  
  
• Marketing should represent the brand-building mentality that drives belief through strategic communications. This team is responsible for knowing the consumer target inside and out, and their perspective is critical to the brand’s success.

And ideally, you’ll want someone orchestrating the discussions and decisions. That’s where MindHandle comes in.

At MindHandle, we’ve found there’s really only one way to create executive sponsorship in employment branding. Teams who succeed do so by bringing HR, Marketing and Internal Communications together to develop a business case and a plan.

It won’t be easy, but together, if you want to create a world-class employee experience, you have two responsibilities: To lay out the challenge and upside in simple terms, and to identify the “burning platform” that can’t be ignored.

On your MindHandle team, you’ll encounter 4 main roles:

• Brand Management - are the Handlers who guide our work together. They will facilitate projects and become very familiar with your business and the people in it. Brand managers represent our clients’ best interests, and they align all the resources to make those happen.
  
  
• Our Strategy Team - represents the audience, above all. At MindHandle, Strategists quickly become the experts in your company’s employees and consumers, so we can make recommendations about how to best communicate with them. Strategy commonly leads the deliverables early in our work together, presenting  artifacts like the Magnetic Scorecard and the Topline Findings Report. The Strategy team will also conduct our EVP workshops and continue to build a dynamic set of recommendations until we’re aligned on a creative brief.
  
  
• The Creative Team – usually featuring creative director, art director and copywriter roles – is responsible for the final product. They’re business-savvy communication artists, capable of ideas that literally revolutionize businesses. They bring the strategy to life, developing campaigns around emotional storytelling that propels your organization. 
  
  
• Project Management - is like the air-traffic controller in our work together. They develop and hold us all accountable to timelines and deadlines, and help us watch out for resource collisions and other deviations from the plan.

These 4 roles combine to create your employment brand project team, much like a string quartet combines to play an ensemble… One might carry the melody while the other provides the bass line for a while. But that changes throughout the project, and ultimately, it’s your brand manager’s role to help you understand what is happening, by when, and from whom to expect it.