100 How To Activate An Ambassador Program Using What You Already Have | Carrie Corbin (Hope Leigh)

[00:00:00] There Were Like Six Things That We Were Already Doing. Because You Don't Always Have To Go Build A Fancy Business Case, And Go Build A Fancy Program, And Build A Bunch Of SOPs. We Had Employees That Were Already Talking About The Business. If You Are Creating An Ambassador Program From The Start, It Can Be A Real Heavy Lift. Going To A Hiring Manager, Who Would You Recommend To Become An Advocate? As A Sports Fan, When A Team Is Trying To Figure Out Who They Need To Recruit, They Go To The People Who Are Already At The Team.

[00:00:30] You Can Stalk Them, Chugly. Chugly. But You Find Them And You Create A List, And You Start From That List, And You Can Watch The Behaviour. Welcome To The Video My Podcast Series, Where We Go Two Inches Wide And A Mile Deep On Employee Brand, Recruitment Marketing, And Internal Comms. I'm David Machucker, And Joining Me For This US Series Is Co-Host Brian Chaney, Founder Of PeopleNerd, And PBC. Let's Get Into It. Welcome To The Video My Podcast. Welcome To The VideoMy Pod. I'm David Machocker. And I'm Brian Chaney. And I'm Carrie Corbin.

[00:00:59] And We Are Going Two Inches Wide And A Mile Deep On One Of My Favorite Topics. We're Talking About Ambassador Programs. Carrie, Before We Jump Into It, Do You Mind If You Tell Us A Little Bit About Yourself? Sure. I'm Carrie Corbin, And I Have Been In Our Industry For Over 20 Years At This Point. I Was On The Practitioner Side With A Lot Of Big Global Brands, American Airlines, AT&T, Samsung, Most Recently With Dell, Before I Started My Own Recruitment Marketing And Employer Brand Agency,

[00:01:29] Hopefully Marketing Group About Six Years Ago Yesterday. Happy Birthday, Hopefully. Thanks. Awesome. Awesome. So, I've known you for a long time. And you've been doing this work before half the job titles that we use today existed. Do you ever listen to conversations like employer brand conversations specifically now and think, did we solve this 15 years ago?

[00:01:59] I frequently feel like I wish we solved them 15 years ago. I think it's been interesting to be kind of from the beginning, if you will, to see, watch the evolution and see how, how it's grown and how, I think, how our expectations have had to evolve around what we thought it was going to be to what it actually looks like today.

[00:02:22] But there's so many things that, you know, I, each generation of new talent still has to learn for themselves though too, so they think they're solving something new. And I think they, that's part of the exploration and the learning, right? And I think back to like one of my first HR conferences and they had a session called document, document, document. And then I went back 15 years later and they still had that same session of document, document, document,

[00:02:49] because there's some things that are just core foundational things that people have to go through and learn and experience. So what do you think is genuinely new? I don't, I don't know. I think it's, I think it's more of the positioning for, like you and I have talked a lot about right around what employer brand really, it's the idea of everybody saying what employer brand means to me instead of actually aligning on a baseline definition, right?

[00:03:18] And building a practice from there. You and I both feel very strongly about the employee experience and the internal comms and that whole kind of connected employer brand experience where a lot of what I think is labeled employer brand now is, is really truly recruitment marketing, but it's the go to market strategy. It's the activation. And what I feel like is new for me is, is, is maybe not pushing back so hard and just understanding that that is,

[00:03:45] that is how organizations are building it. That's what people are doing. So how can we still help them be successful in their role? And that's where, you know, I center a lot of our focus on storytelling and messaging and take it away from putting so much of the focus around the terminology and the definitions. Just meeting people where they are today. Yes. It's interesting that you said that,

[00:04:11] from what I'm picking up is traditionally or historically it's been employee brand recruitment marketing, but you sort of touched on internal comms and, and that's what's new. Is that what you're suggesting that there's, there's, it's not always reporting into talent acquisition that you're, you're seeing a bit of a trend where we're, we're moving more into not more, but in internal comms as well. I feel like we've missed that boat a lot actually. But if in my ideal world,

[00:04:40] we would have an employee experience organization similar to how some of the larger organizations have a customer experience arm that isn't sales. It's not marketing. It's not customer acquisition. It's taking care of the customer, right? And the customer is in the employees. Right. Well, I'm saying in a customer experience leg, right? Or, or department, right? That that's kind of what the focus is where it's, it kind of takes the best of all of those things to care for your user experience, your customer experience company.

[00:05:10] What I am seeing over the last probably five years is a lot more employee experience. Departments or functions or heads of where they are starting to merge that a little, you know, I am seeing that more and we're seeing just a lot more of the jobs, right? I think when I was looking for a job 10 years ago, there were like five employer brand jobs in, you know, in a year and now, you know, there's, they're everywhere and they may sit within marketing. They may sit within HR. They may sit within talent. They may sit within,

[00:05:39] um, you know, in the comms function and some of them sit with an employee experience. So I do think some of the companies are seeing that and making those moves. And we are starting to see executive level titles like that's new. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Executive level for employer brand. There was just a conversation in, uh, in people brand collective around job titles and getting excited when you see VP or SVP of, of an employer brand

[00:06:08] or recruitment marketing or talent attraction, um, level role because they realize the kind of impact that you can have, but also more holistically across experience too. So for me in my most recent role, it was around how, how do you connect and communicate the people experience. So it was, and that's why like internal comms set with, uh, you know, what was called talent brand, really it was employee experience. Right. Right. And that's the thing is

[00:06:39] when it sit, when, when employer brand sits within a talent acquisition, that's an external function, recruiting doesn't own your culture. Recruiting doesn't own the employee experience, you know, and, and talent brand employer brand folks have to be able to surface that content and be able to understand what that is and how to articulate it, but they don't own it, control it. They don't really impact it. It's just really, how do you communicate it externally? Right. But,

[00:07:08] but you, what you also want to be careful of is you don't want to communicate a message externally that doesn't match what your employee culture actually is because then you run the risk of it being a bait and switch for your new hire experience. And that's, you know, that's creates a backlash, you know, opportunity or situation, right? If you've, you're not selling the right experience. Well, that's a great segue into ambassadors and advocacy and those authentic

[00:07:34] stories. So let's jump into that. What, what, what is the benefit of activating an ambassador program? What does, why, why is it important to get it right? And what does it mean for a business when they do get it right? It's important for a lot of reasons. The one I will start with is I always think about, and this is dating me, right? But it's a, I don't even remember what

[00:08:00] movie it was, but Will Ferrell standing behind in the library, you know, and it's the, the shiny things. I don't know, but it's, but it's the experience of a, a leader, executive leader in a video telling you all the reasons why it's important to work there or why their company is great. The job seekers don't want to hear from the leaders, right? They want to hear from people that are like them. They want to hear from their peers. They want to hear from other employee voices. And it's one thing for us to go and interview people and surface up some of those

[00:08:28] stories. It's another, if we can activate our employee groups that are already engaged and excited about working for your company and that they'll, that if you can tap into people that are going to be genuine with their message and let them help share that voice for you, it's going to be that much more impactful when people do their homework on your company. If they see it coming from the people that actually do the work as opposed to the figureheads that are telling them what it's

[00:08:58] like to work there. So an ambassador program can mean a few things within an organization. Typically marketers have used an ambassador program to sell product. Um, and it's been very much sales led, whereas employee branders or talent, um, talent, uh, leaders, um, have been using ambassador programs as advocacy, employee advocacy to attract talent. What, why is it important that employees share the content

[00:09:27] as opposed to, uh, the way a consumer led focus ambassador program is run? Well, I think that centers on the same reason why it's important to have an employer brand or talent brand identity that's separate from your sales and marketing, right? It's not product focused. It's not service focused. It has a different target audience and it has a different message. Um, when I think about the, the, the ways to sell it in an organization, right? And, and to build that difference, it's that the nice thing,

[00:09:57] right? Is that the employee voice can still have a benefit for the sales side where the sales side doesn't, I don't know that it's always a two way street, right? Where, where you're going to get it as much depending on the organization that you work for. That makes sense to me, but, but could you explain it for, for someone who is considering an ambassador program and how they're thinking about pitching it to the business? Like the same, same, but different. Um, well, I, one thing that I do always start with when

[00:10:25] people are talking about, Hey, we want to do employee advocacy or employee investors, right? Is, is a couple of things. I'll always ask if you have an employee referral program, right? Because if you have an employee referral program, you already have ambassadors. You already have people that are ambassadors for your company. Potentially if they've got a gallon. Well, but it's something you can leverage, right? Yes. And I'll, and I'll get, I'll get back to that. And then if you've got employee resource groups, right? So employee resource groups, they are naturally, they're engaged. They've got,

[00:10:52] they've got something that have come together and built community aligned with your organization and where they're building, you know, peer networks and, you know, they might be doing things within the community. They're already advocating for your brand on some level. Can you give us an example of what an employee resource group or an ERG could look like within an organization? Well, historically, most of them, you know, are in a little bit mid to large size organizations,

[00:11:18] you know, and they're generally centered around, um, a lot of times they're going to be centered around what are considered your diversity areas, right? So it's going to be, you know, ethnicity, gender, um, disability, religion, military status, right? Um, and then I actually helped launch one at AT&T that was just focused on generations. And, you know, and it was, it was very, very inclusive, right? Anybody is in a generation and everybody got really excited about that one. Cause it was all

[00:11:46] something they could get behind as people get excited about comparing their different generation, generational traits, right. And, right. And understanding how that, that, how that impacts the work, you know, the workplace. Um, so that's super interesting. So if someone is considering creating an ambassador program, uh, historically, the business could be aware of what an ambassador program is because they've been using it on the sales front to sell products. Um,

[00:12:13] and there is something that's on the shelf at the moment called an ERG or employee resource group that they could tap into to give them a bit of a start. Yes. Potentially. Yes. Well, and when I, when I was at AT&T, we, um, I was actually asked by, uh, Mira Greenland, who at the time was with career arc, tweet my jobs back in the day. I mean, it was, this was a long time,

[00:12:40] a long time ago. And she said, she asked me about speaking about employee advocacy. And I was like, I don't even know what that is. It was such a new term. Right. And, and, um, and so I started doing some homework and was, and, and that's when I was like, okay, what does it actually mean? What are the things that we are in? And I realized there were like six things that we were already doing. And that's why, why I start the conversation with people of what they already have. Cause you don't always have to go build a fancy business case and go build a fancy program and

[00:13:07] build a bunch of SOPs. It's kind of, it is leveraging what you already have. Right. And, and that's where the employer referral groups, the, I mean, the employer referral program, the, the ERGs, the ERGs. And then also things where we were partnering with our internal comms group to market what this, again, this is going way back in the vault. Right. But we realized that we had employees that were already talking. I feel so old. This was like the early start of social media. Right. And it was instead of trying to tamp down people talking about the business,

[00:13:36] it was trying to understand who was talking about externally about the business already. Yeah. And, you know, and, and, you know, and that's where Twitter was so useful with search terms, right. With hashtags and, um, you know, finding those employees and inviting them to be part of what we call it our Twitter tribe. And then, you know, just, and it made it a little bit exclusive, right. Oh, you know, kind of making it attractive that they get this invitation to be a part of this and then help curate content that they could then share. And then lots of different

[00:14:05] parts of the business could get involved with that. It wasn't just exclusive to sales and marketing. And it wasn't just exclusive to recruiting. Like, so it was like, we were already doing all the work. Yeah. Well, I feel like it's important to identify these strategies that could happen just to create a few shortcuts, because if you are creating an ambassador program from the start, it can be a real heavy lift going to a hiring manager. Who would you recommend to become an advocate? There's a lot

[00:14:31] of conversations that would, would have to happen when you can tap into resources that already exist within the organization. So as a sports fan, when a team is trying to figure out who they need to recruit, do they go, do they go to the people who are at the gym? Probably not. They go to the people who are already at the team, already with a team or already doing the thing on their own. They're already

[00:15:00] interested in it, maybe at a lower level, right? They're looking at, okay, where can we recruit based upon that behavior, based upon that interest. So the same thing applies. When you started an organization, you got to find out, to your point, who's already doing this. And maybe not because somebody asked them to, but because they already are excited about, that's how they're built. That's what they want to talk about, what they're doing. They're excited, or they appreciate something,

[00:15:28] where they just want to share, right? There's somebody who shares those stories externally, and you can find them. You can stalk them, gently. But you find them, and you create a list, and you start from that list, and you can watch the behavior. And I think that's one of the coolest things, because of what words are they using without ever being asked. I think that's really cool. You can learn a lot from that. I would like to go back to the ERGs for a second. We talk about ERG members as advocates,

[00:15:57] and they are. Obviously, you've been on the other side. In your experience, what does the employer brand person, whether that's in their title or if they're the de facto owner, when they go and ask an ERG for help, what do they usually misunderstand about being inside an ERG? That's a good question. When I first started

[00:16:24] partnering with the ERGs, I was not part of one. And so it was only later that I ended up getting tapped to help lead Oxygen. And for the ones that we had at AT&T, they were set up as a nonprofit. And they also did a lot of community development. Wait, so your ERGs were set up as a nonprofit? Yes. That's huge. Yes. And each of them had a board. And those boards were made up of employees.

[00:16:54] And so they would do a lot of community development. They would do scholarships for kids in the community. And that's a natural pipeline that we should be tapping into, the community development piece externally also. But I didn't know any of that until I actually joined one and understood how they were formed. The other thing that I realized quickly was the person that might be in charge of

[00:17:22] communications for the ERG might actually be a finance person in their day job. And so they're like, what do I talk about? What do I do? It's, I'm the secretary. What does that mean? You know? And so the thing that I was able to tap into at AT&T was I realized that they needed help with content and with getting their own members engaged. So helping them kind of do their own employee experience, employee engagement, peer-to-peer engagement, getting people excited about being as in part of the ERG.

[00:17:51] If I could help them tap into that, then by having them help us, it became a win-win for our partnership. And so, yeah. So we basically would, we would create incentives for the different ERGs where we would create a competition for them to share, share our jobs or share our talent community, and then have, you know, and then we would, you know, track how many people we were getting as a

[00:18:17] result of those to the extent that we could track. Cause we know tracking is everybody's favorite subject that is still not solved. But, you know, but, but we didn't create a leaderboard and, and whichever, you know, ERG got us the most folks in the talent community or applied to a certain job or, or whatever this, this scenario was, it might be that we would do, we would

[00:18:45] at give them $5,000 for their scholarship or something, right? It was like, you know, there were just different things that we would do to partner with them to try to create, you know, early on, we were able to just name a winner, right. And just have, just rely on just old-fashioned competition. But, you know, once, once we got established and built it, we were able to build some structure and some parameters and some incentive and some budget around it so that, you know,

[00:19:08] we can really build on it. So when you think about the value, there's a push and pull there, right? Recognition is big within an organization for ERGs, for the members, for the organization itself. It's not like there was a lot of structure built around it, which is great, which provides, you know, them with experience. You said the, you had a camera, what was, what was the role where you said like the, the, the treasurer or the conference, the secretary actually sitting in finance. I'm like, yeah, but that's, that's a way for them to learn and grow.

[00:19:37] So there's always built-in values or built-in gets for them for participating. But yeah, where, where do you think that balance is? What else do you think the ERG should get in return? Talked about the incentives. But who decides whether something should be shared externally? It's like, where do you think that should sit?

[00:20:04] I think candidly, there was, we probably had a little bit of a boundary there of, you know, it's, it's, there's kind of like how we, let me back up, kind of like how we did with the Twitter tribe. There's content that we could curate, that we could share with them and encourage them to share, right? And, and track engagement metrics, et cetera. But there, but they did definitely operate as an independent entity, as a nonprofit, right? So we, we were very careful to not be like dictating

[00:20:30] their work or, you know, trying to really drive what they did. And it was, and, and really wanted it to have that organic feel to it. And some of them would really participate. Not all of them did, but it'd be, you know, and, but again, like being a part of one, I also realized, recognize the power of just committees too, right? And so if you can help them tap into building committees within an ERG and you can get kind of a subset of certain people, you start to narrow it down. And it's not so much

[00:20:58] that you're trying to capture the whole pool. It's that you're really getting to the heart of the people that are going to be influential and that are willing to share and shepherd your message. What if there was one platform specifically built to streamline the entire employee content lifecycle? Meet VideoMy, the AI powered content intelligence platform for enterprise teams to create authentic employee content at scale. Automate every step of the process. VideoMy makes it easy

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[00:21:54] every employee story with VideoMy, the AI powered content intelligence platform for employee generated content. Book a demo at VideoMy.co. In ERGs, sometimes the same people put their hand up to be advocates, to answer questions, to participate in the program. But there's some great stories that exist throughout

[00:22:21] the ERG. How do you activate those people as well? So again, I think my role from a talent brand perspective was very different than my role as a board member on an ERG, right? And so again, it was kind of drawing on my experience of being a board member for an ERG. I'll go back to just building the committees. It's too, you've got to also, you've got to take some responsibility

[00:22:44] for the storytelling and the messaging and creating excitement around it so that it's not just dangling the carrot, right? Because dangling the carrot only works so much. And that's where there, if there are fun opportunities to highlight people and what they're doing, right? If we can help share their stories, there is additional value there on the talent brand side, because we can get them some additional exposure in and outside of the business too. You know, I actually think back to,

[00:23:14] like, we were pretty early adopters of doing realistic job preview videos in the early 2000s. And, you know, that was the other thing that I realized where we were already doing the advocacy, right? Was we were, anytime we would do a video, we would try to make it kind of the trifecta. If I'd get testimonials, we would get photos, we would get videos, but then, you know, I would build not necessarily database because I'm not that sophisticated, but I, you know, like my, my database

[00:23:41] of employees that I knew were excited enough that willing to be interviewed to talk about it and then share back that, Hey, here's all the places where we put your face on a billboard or in an email campaign or a video on our website. And then also returning that creative back to them, then they're excited about that. They're going to want to go share their friends and family, right? So it's kind of, yeah, you're tapping into the, I'll make you famous, you know, a little bit for a minute.

[00:24:09] And I had some really excited employees and doing the photo shoots was so fun. Like we, we had one, one guy just busted out and did a toe touch and we've got a perfect photo of him doing this toe touch. That was like, that is not a stock photo. That is actually one of our employees that did that because he was having so much fun. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. Yeah. Recognition is huge and it's something that a lot of companies might not consider about the value

[00:24:34] of telling and elevating some of these stories, because that's more recognition than a lot of people get in their time at the company. They might not feel, they might get it, but they might not feel it as much as they would if they're representing the company. They're representing, whether they're representing their ERG, they're representing the function, they're representing the company as a story that the company wants to share.

[00:24:59] Right. Well, and I mean, AT&T is a huge company, right? They're at the time, they were Fortune 5 and, you know, thousands of people in multiple states and countries. So to be able to get that recognition, you know, whether it's in a photo shoot or video shoot, or even as part of the ERG thing, the ERG is where we actually got to see the power of that really amplified because they were while

[00:25:26] there and because it's concentrated groups that we could tap into that weren't necessarily the people at headquarters that just happened to be available because they're in the local office. How does it, how, how can it really take that step forward even more once you really hook onto that sense of belonging and it being something that's important to amplify diversity, ethnicity,

[00:25:52] age, that, that sense of belonging? Because there are people within organizations that really care about that. Yes. That's where I think it becomes bigger than the employer brand traditional role, right? But that's where we leverage partnerships internally and partnering appropriately with internal comms with your corporate social responsibility teams. If you've got an actual DEI team, which we did, during that time, our DEI organization decided to actually host an annual ERG conference.

[00:26:20] So that became an opportunity where we could also bring everybody together. We could amplify the stories. We had different parts of the business that had a booth, you know, and could engage and answer questions and ask questions. And then we could also feature some of the employee stories. And it just, again, kind of creates that engagement loop and, and the excitement and the emphasis there, but definitely was not something that my team did. You know, we, we got to ride the coattails, if you will,

[00:26:47] of that partnership and really just continuing to build that momentum across the different organizations and drive home the larger impact for, for all and benefit for all of us that were involved. Yeah. What I love about something like that is it takes something that an organization like the ERGs, that they need, right? They need to bring that connection and understand what the goals are and have that touch point. But I've done that a couple of times where they're like, oh yeah,

[00:27:15] we're planning a thing. And we're like, well, can we, can we show up? Can we, can we be there? Can we help document it? We'll, we'll, we'll cover the costs. We'll, we'll do this. We'll do that. And then, like you said, we ride the coattails. But in the end, what ended up happening was we created a, a video, an overall video. And obviously lots of content came out of that that were, you know, that were sliced up and shared in different ways. But they ended up with a video that told the story

[00:27:41] of that, not just as an operating expense, but as, okay, what purpose, how do you feel connected? Is the company investing in the ERGs as a, as a function? So it's, it's more than lip service. What are you getting out of it? What's that experience? So that was shared internally. I think it's so important, communicating culture. It's, it's so important. Internal mobility,

[00:28:11] driving people to stay longer because they feel like they belong. Um, they're the benefits of an advocacy program and it just happens to be tapping into a resource internally. That's an ERG. Well, it never reminds people why they stay too. It's not just, Hey, come take a look at us because we're a place that values these things. It's, Hey, we need to remind you why you came here in the first place and what we're continuing to, to drive

[00:28:39] and build around it for you. Well, when you think about companies like AT&T and American airlines, they're not the most beloved companies in the world, right? Externally, externally, right? Most company, most people don't love their cell phone provider and, and we hear a lot of complaints about flights, right? So there is a need for us to separate that employer brand identity in this case, and, and to be able to amplify and tell those employees stories in a different way in the culture

[00:29:08] stories. And some of the more fascinating things that I've seen, you know, companies do that they do all this stuff internally and then they don't talk about it. And, um, and, and when, if they do, and if it comes off salesy and pitchy, it's like, who's their target audience? And so they just, they're doing all this cool stuff. So when I got to American airlines, this isn't necessarily ERG related, but it is advocacy, right? Of how you kind of do this. They, American airlines partnered

[00:29:33] with several, um, local community organizations for the military and help and hold this huge, um, it's like almost a week long event, but it's like the culmination of it. I can't even remember the name of the event now. It's, um, but it's sky ball, sky ball. And so they basically, they had a hangar that they would turned into a big gala and they invited 5,000 military and hiring our heroes

[00:29:59] was one of our customer values as a, as a company. Right. And, but so my first question was like, well, great. We're hosting, we're inviting 5,000 military or we, what are we trying to do to recruit them? They're like, huh? Hadn't thought about that. And, and so we had actually just done some photo shoots and videos and with some of our pilots and, you know, and some of our crew. And so we, I got my, our recruiting team to just, we set up a photo booth at the entrance of the,

[00:30:25] of this big gala because everybody's dressed up and they're coming to this big American airlines event. And it's a lot of our employees and all this external military that like this big thing happens and there's hardly anybody talking about it. But because we had just done these photo shoots, I had again, my client own little personal database of people that I tapped into. So I had pilots and mechanics and different people that were engaging with everybody as they walked in. And then from that, we had a story to tell about that event, you know, and then the next year we kind of caught,

[00:30:54] they found out they were doing a career fair with this, but they were giving it to companies that bought tickets to the gala and it was a disaster. And so I kind of commandeered the career fair and actually got the different parts of the organization to come in and set up booths and just make it like information sessions for people. And then we did a lot of the creative around the storytelling around, you know, we're doing all this cool stuff in the community for, you know, for the military, but also our employees are getting to participate. And then we're using that for, for messaging and

[00:31:24] creative. And there's so many cool experiences that nobody was talking about and our employees were ecstatic to be a part of, and they loved being able to have the opportunity to then tell their part of the story. Right. And so it's like, I'm still connected. A lot of those American airlines folks, because we had them so involved in a lot of the stories that we were telling. So we talk about the stories that people are excited to share. We'll touch on ERGs,

[00:31:52] we'll bring it back to ERGs for just a moment. And then, but ERGs naturally contain employees who care deeply enough to participate, to show up. Do you think that creates the same problem that ambassador programs have where we're either accidentally or intentionally presenting the most engaged employees as representatives of everybody? Ooh, that's a good question. Well, can I, can I throw a lens over that? I think that it is a bit different if you're looking

[00:32:21] to attract talent to the types of people that might be internal. Well, assuming that you've got a, a representative selection, right? And that's why you have to make sure that there are lots of different kinds of stories, not just this is the best thing since sliced bread and whatever analogy you want to use, but what, what's in it for them and what, why did they come? Why did they stay?

[00:32:49] So I think the only way you mitigate that is that you don't over index on doing the same thing. Right. And you've got to have a diversity in your strategy. And that's where we think about, again, going back to like the realistic job preview videos. Um, that's one of the first things that we did like with at AT&T, we wanted to showcase the ugly side of our jobs. And we're doing that through the employee voice, right? We're showing that you have to carry a 75 pound ladder as

[00:33:15] a installation technician and that you have to go in attics in the Dallas heat in the summer and to go install people's, you know, uh, fiber optic networks or whatever. I could be saying that completely wrong, but I think fiber goes in the ground, not in the attic, but it's, yeah, but it's, but it's like, you know, it's, we've always got to still understand our responsibility of set of telling the right story externally and making sure that we're telling the good, the bad, the uniquely you,

[00:33:45] right. Um, the, the stuff that if I can make the job, it sound as ugly as possible. And you still want to work here, you're going to be, uh, you know, probably a lot more likely to stay. But, but again, so if you're going all in on your ERG story, you are going to be potentially conflating and making it sound like it's just a bunch of shiny, happy people. If you've got a strategy, your pillars, your behaviors of your pillars, you're really amplifying

[00:34:09] and reinforcing those behaviors. I think it is important to have a diverse set, but if it's aligning to that, your behaviors, it's reinforcing, um, what, what your culture is and who you are as a business more internally than externally, I would say, because you're looking for moments that show up internally more so than always trying to attract the people that will naturally fit in.

[00:34:40] Well, oh yeah, you definitely don't mean you want people to fit in, but that's, you don't just want the people who will, who will fit in. You also want the people just like in any team, right? You don't just want the person who's going to be the cog in the wheel. You also want the person who's going to help fill a gap. The person who's going to add something that you didn't even know you needed. So I think that, I think it's both of those things. I think it's both of those things. I think, I think you, you just have to know when you're looking at some of those stories

[00:35:06] that it's not always, you know, the sunshine and rainbows of a special occasion. There's also the day to day of what does that look like? But I, and I, and we know that because we're thinking about that, like, like communicators, like marketers, and we're thinking about telling those stories in that way, but not everybody thinks about that. People are, people are doing way other, a whole lot of other things that we don't ever consider. And so when they come to it, they, oh, they get this shining

[00:35:32] message of saying, oh, these are the things that this person might experience two months out of the year. So I think there's just a balance there between like, how do you tell the aversion part of the story in addition to the attraction? So I think this is actually kind of a good time to go back to the employer referral program too. So when we think about employer referral programs,

[00:35:56] everybody loves them, right? No, because they, it's good. Most of the time they have a low adoption rate. They're hard to manage. They're hard to track. And if there's a payout associated with it, that's hard to track. It's hard to pay out. It ends up being an administrative nightmare. This is where I also kind of talk with people about, and I shared this with you, right? That Lazlo Bock from the former

[00:36:24] CHRO of Google, right? Had written in his, I can't remember the name of his book either. I'm old now. I can't remember things. But he talked about why employer referral programs fail. And it's because we're trying to get people basically to be advocates that aren't. Employer referral programs that work, that are effective, are the ones that are tapping into people that are already engaged in your brand, right? And that they're, if they, if they enjoy working for you, then they're going to organically

[00:36:54] refer friends and family. They don't have to be paid to do it. And what, and what he learned was, no matter how much money they were throwing at people, even at Google, they could never move the needle on their employer referral program. But they knew that people wanted to work there. They knew that people wanted to share friends and family. And what, what it really was, was reducing the friction and making it easy and also telling the right story. And so he came up with the gimme five, which is, they did an email campaign or communication campaign, whatever,

[00:37:21] and just said, Hey, do you know anybody that's good at math? Could you send them to us? Do you know anybody that's good at, you know, instead of saying, do you know a systems architect that will, you know, level three, refer them our way, right? You just, you tap into the skills, you make it easy for people. And they're like, and then the ones that are actually, Oh yeah, no, I totally might, you know, and, and they'll start sending your way. So it's just making it easy and making it simple. And by doing that, then you have a whole nother audience that you

[00:37:49] can also then tap into for those other things. When you want to do videos, when you want to tell stories, when you want, you know, so again, they're just kind of this, there's these, these pockets of opportunity to, to already activate people that are, that are engaged and excited for your brand. Yeah. There's a big Venn diagram of people who are engaged enough to show up and support ERGs, your referrals, your employer brand stories, all of those things. There's like the one group right in

[00:38:18] the middle. Those are the people who just like get asked, get tapped for everything because they continue to show up because they care. But I love, I love that piece, but you also want to the referral point you made. There's also your, you also don't want people just speaking to the relationship either. So you're speaking to the skills, right? Are you good at math, but you also want the relationship because you want that validity. Have you actually worked with this person before?

[00:38:47] What degree, uh, are you familiar with them? Have you worked with them? Do you just, are they just acquaintances? Are they friend and family? Like what, what is the nature of that relationship? So I think it's both of those things, but we do tend to lean on the relationship over the skill, or should I say, referrers tend to lean on more of their relationship. Oh, absolutely. But I, but I, we did not get that granular when we did it, you know, and, and our, our thing was there were certain pockets where the business was

[00:39:17] established and making payouts, but by and large, we didn't, we didn't do payouts and we had about a to 35% referral rate, um, which is, you know, good where you're not hitting that point of saturation. Right. But, um, we, our goal was just to make it simple. It was reduce the friction, create a landing page, make it easy for them to submit. And then that's where it's the recruiter's job to, to make the distinction on whether they're quality referral or not. It sounds like it's an important piece just to

[00:39:45] make it humming. It's a piece. It's like, if you have this piece, it can really go, um, go a long way for the advocacy or ERG program, um, ambassador program to be successful. If someone's out there considering creating an ambassador program, in your opinion, where should they start? Um, well, again, that's where I'm going to go back to the employer referrals just because most people

[00:40:12] have a program, right. And it's, it's, but it's look for the opportunities to tap into the already engaged audiences, build that awareness and that story around that. So that then if you do need to build a more formal program, you can tap into and show your, that, Hey, we already have it. Let's make it a little bit more formal. Let's figure out what, where the gaps are and what else do we need to do to make it a little bit more rounded out as a program rather than

[00:40:39] stray things that people are doing in the company. And do you think that's where the ROI is for the program to grow? Um, I mean, you can do it without really, you can do it without spending money, right? That's that, that's kind of the whole thing with the last little block example I gave you on the employer referrals, right? It's just, if you can, if you have the program and you can figure out what can we do to make that just more accessible and easier for people to use, like that's something you

[00:41:06] can do without really having to invest. Right. But, but I mean, in terms of return on investment for time investment, yes. I mean, you know, if you can still put just, I guess, some walls, some structure around it so that it is something that gets care, care and feeding, right? You, if you pay attention to it and nurture it, you're, or you should be able to see even better returns and what you're getting organically just by having it exist. So for instance, if, um, there's an organization

[00:41:35] out there and their referral program is not going very well for the variety of reasons that you mentioned earlier, say it, the one referral, uh, every two weeks or a month or whatever it is, and it dials up to two, four, six, is that worth reinvesting and padding out the ambassador program? I think it's a good starting point. Right. Um, but, but again, it's just, if you can,

[00:42:03] within that example, making it accessible, reducing friction, those two things are going to make a big difference because most, those are usually the big obstacles to being successful. I would also add, because I've been in organizations that had decent bonuses for referral hires, but because of that, there were certain moments in time when they were trying to hire a lot and they were more concerned with volume because if you get sales, your, your revenue,

[00:42:33] it was a function of how many salespeople you can hire. So there were, there was, I won't call it the wrong motivation, but I'll say a specific kind of motivation to double the referral bonus from time to time and your employees see that and they react. And we had some people, uh, the referral program sat under me for a hot minute. And so I got really, really close to the details around, um, what that

[00:42:58] meant. And there were some people who were just throwing stuff against the wall to see what would stick because they're just seeing that referral bonus as their motivation. So what I would say is not just, are there people making referrals, but are there people who are getting referral hires? And I think that's the sweet spot where you want to identify people who, who are, and can continue to

[00:43:26] be influencers. But I, I, I agree. And I, I mean, I think to your question around the ROI and being a little bit more structured, what we did in the case of our employer referral program that did start to move the needle was, um, with, and then, and also gave us more material to work with too, was when we, we were already doing email campaigns when we, when we had a, uh, a targeted need. Right. Um, but so we

[00:43:52] actually just put a footer in the bottom of the email and said, Hey, if you, if you like AT&T enough to refer friends and family, would you take 30 seconds to record a video to give us a written testimonial to, you know, whatever. So it was like, it wasn't just, it was kind of part of the same call to action, but it was leveraging, Hey, maybe they don't know someone, but maybe they're also willing to still give us content and still be an advocate. So it's like, they might not make the referral, but it, but with that care and nurturing and just putting a little bit more structure around the

[00:44:21] program is still created another opportunity for us to get in front of those employees and capture their voices, you know, and to be able to, to be advocates for the brand. I love that. I love that because you're taking advantage of that piece. One, most people don't get asked to make a video, right? They just don't. And so if they're, if they're, they're responding to it in the spirit of supporting the company and showing up, I love that. And I also love like

[00:44:47] the writers on other things that make sense, right? Cause if they were to get an email or say, Hi, you want to create a video? Then it'd be like, well, like, you know, like, are you, why are you asking me that? What's going on? Um, but if, but if they're thinking about, Oh, refer somebody, Oh, I get that. I want somebody like, I want to think about what environment I'm inviting people into. And then alongside that it's, if you're already thinking that this is an environment you want to invite other people into, let's capture some of that. Yeah. I love that.

[00:45:14] So ambassador programs can be super valuable for those people who are considering an ambassador program and they, they're drafting a business case. How should they be thinking about an ROI? Well, I mean the, the easiest answer I think to that is how can I leverage this in a way that gets me more, um, hires and more applicants and more hires where I'm spending less money on advertising.

[00:45:40] Right. So, um, everybody loves to, when they get their LinkedIn renewal bill every year, my clients, especially, um, that's, that's a bad joke, but, um, Um, no, that's a bad joke. No, I mean, it just, it's, it's really expensive. Right. And, and a lot, a lot of our clients really want to reduce their dependency on LinkedIn. How do you do that? You know, what can we do to build more of an organic referral source? And we're going to do that through advocacy.

[00:46:07] And if you can create those programs where you tap into ERGs and, you know, get your employee referral program working well, finding those ways to leverage those employee voices. If I can drive organic traffic and I don't have to spend all those dollars on, on the more expensive advertising, that to me feels like the easy business case, you know, and, and then especially if you can point to, by the way, we already have these things in the organization. We just want to,

[00:46:33] you know, again, put some finesse to how we manage them and put some guardrails and put some, you know, create those opportunities to enhance their effectiveness. Dr. Justin Marchegiani It's hard to put a dollar on retention or like attrition retention, but an advocacy program plays into that as well. It certainly could play into your internal mobility strategy and that you could tap into just shifting people. And as we think today where there, people

[00:47:01] are moving and their skillset is changing internally. There is a real opportunity for that as well, for an advocacy program to support. Dr. Jennifer Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, at AT&T in 2008, I think, right, it was post-merger and it was recession and it was also, we had the exclusive launch of the iPhone. So we were the only carrier approved, right? So we were still hiring. We hired

[00:47:30] 70,000 people that year and I think they're set 20 to 30,000 of those were all internal movement, right? So, you know, build, telling those employee stories internally and creating awareness around the different things that we do as a company and, you know, creating the, and tapping into that just, yes, absolutely. It was, it was a big part of our strategy. Dr. Justin Marchegiani And I would have thought that someone who is driving in an ambassador program,

[00:47:59] tapping into the various channels is a real valuable asset, someone who is communicating culture, not sort of jumping up and down as the market is peaking and candidates are really scarce and hard to find and their role is so important to the fact that the market drops out and we're in recession. And then their, their, their role isn't as valuable. What's your take on that, Brian?

[00:48:29] Brian The consistency? Well, Brian The consistency is the one for a big part of how fun is it to call your friend from university, college, I'm being international. How fun is it to call them? Better yet, how fun is it to get the call to ask you for help moving your friend's furniture? Right? And so all I can think about now is Ross from

[00:48:54] friends yelling pivot but but but more specifically it's when you ask somebody for help how do you communicate those things when do they land well if you're if you're hiring 70 80 000 people you know the demand is there you know what the need is you know why you're getting asked but if you're showing up and you're sharing those stories if you're in a recession for hiring has slowed or

[00:49:22] if all those things know like oh there's not like a world demanding need for you to for you to to share that story and talk about um what's great what have you learned why should somebody consider a career leader what is that about what is it about that experience that keeps you there even in hard times that's when you know it's going to land it's not just when you know it's convenient for you i think there's actually that's where the benefit of employer brand and recruitment marketing being

[00:49:50] commingled works to the advantage of people that are in our space when i went to dell i had a team of content creators all over the world and um and you know covering every region and my first thought was i need to recession proof this team because if if we have if that happens they're going to be gone there's no there's that value is just not going to be there if we have that swing and so i really

[00:50:15] worked to actually get them a lot more strategic as partners to their countries and regions they supported to get involved in the advertising and to understand all the external activation beyond just the creating the content but understanding where we were spending the dollars how we were optimizing how they could actually be a strategic support partner to their country leaders um and and and we built a career path for them and and in doing that um that was 2018 2019 and then i left in january of 2020

[00:50:45] but um and the rest of my team though as recruiters were getting cut at dell my team did not right and and so even in spite of that because you still have to advertise because you still have to care for your attrition the company doesn't stop functioning in a recession right so if you you know so that's where like for our function right we made it a lot more strategic and operational than just you know engaging in storytelling storytelling is great and it's very necessary

[00:51:13] but it's not necessarily going to be the the glue that binds so that we can keep the team and you know to in the those turbulent times so you spent decades being the client as an in-house practitioner after becoming the agency what was client side carry completely full of shit about

[00:51:39] well i'd say it was more of a pain in the ass as a client probably than i was full of shit um but i mean i have high expectations i've you know and i i break things and i break and i build

[00:51:53] um and i always had really strong agency partners to help me do that um hmm i i don't i i think the the heart i don't know that i have an answer to that i think i think the biggest learning for me

[00:52:18] moving into an agency role was just learning how to only work on the things that my clients paid me for and not try to solve all their problems like that so you needed to stop thinking like i needed to stop thinking like i was still in house because i would be like i'm getting my hands in so many different companies stuff and i wanted to fix everything and i couldn't and you know and that's the thing that probably had amanda pulling her hair out because they're not paying us to do that work it's free

[00:52:44] consulting carry stop it like that was truly i think my biggest my biggest learning i i don't i don't know that there was anything that i was too pollyanna about because i've i've always been pretty practical i think even in being aspirational in a lot of the things that i was doing um i think the biggest thing and i will say this because i was uniquely positioned with at&t kind of as social

[00:53:09] media was coming into its own right there were a lot of things that i was doing that i assumed everybody else was doing that's probably the biggest thing was kind of through the duration of my career um you know realizing that so like todd rafael had had asked me to write for the journal for ere you know in like 2009 and i was like what am i going to write about like everybody's doing all this stuff they weren't all doing all of all of the stuff i didn't realize how fortunate i was to be in

[00:53:37] the position to and then to be given the freedom to be able to break things and do it differently that's what i got and and the best way to figure that out is to talk to other people who are who are doing the work find out what are people doing what are they breaking what are they pushing what are they trying and what are they learning from that i think that's the most important thing and being able to connect and share that information um with with others because we do take it for granted yeah

[00:54:07] well i think that's the where the wisdom come did come from changing jobs right and going to american airlines and seeing how much they didn't have going to dell seeing how much they didn't have you know and that's where the what realizing that oh okay i'm going to start an agency because i can i can help so many more companies from the outside in than i can being the person on the inside trying to do the work it's been a fascinating conversation thanks for joining us we really appreciate it yeah thank you for having me it was fun