101 Why Employer Brand Has To Start From The Inside | Amy Parker (Valtech)

[00:00:08] Yes and No. So it's true that a lot of times internal comms is looked to communicate the strategy and help our executives share the right message. But no, it's not the core of the job either. Optimize, which is all about like how are we leveling up our people and then engage. It's like how are we celebrating the moments of belonging and culture that exists in our organization.

[00:00:37] Yes, absolutely. That's something I work constantly on with our leaders and I believe that that trust and transparency kind of treats our employees as a human they are and the adults that they are too so that they know like, okay, I'm here at this company. I feel confident in the leaders that they're making decisions for my best self. Oh my gosh, absolutely not.

[00:01:09] Before we get into today's episode, I'd love to ask for your support. We're bringing together incredible practitioners from employee brand, recruitment marketing, internal comms and talent leaders to share their challenges, what they're trying and what's actually working within their workplace. If you found value in these conversations, please hit subscribe. It helps us more than you know. It helps this community and it helps me to be able to bring more episodes like them to you.

[00:01:37] Thanks for being part of it and I hope you enjoy the episode. Welcome to the VideoMy Pod 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.

[00:02:16] And I'm Amy Parker. Sure, of course. First off, thank you both so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. But yes, my name is Amy Parker. I am currently working at Valtech, an experience innovation company. And my role there is the head of internal comms.

[00:02:45] I've worked there for what is now almost nine years and really built the strategies for employer brand for the company. So spent seven years of that time building employer brands amidst a lot of organizational change. So two rebrands and an acquisition and kind of grew up building employer brand in the States, then for the Americas and then globally scaled the function.

[00:03:10] But I would say a year and a half ago, I had the opportunity to shift and really take the power of employer brand and move it internally and really strengthen our internal comms function to improve employee engagement.

[00:04:04] Oh my gosh, such a good question. It almost felt like I was joining a new company at the time. I'd really built a career at Ken and Carta. And prior to that, it was Solstice. So I knew the company like the back of my hand. I knew its people. I knew its highs and I knew its lows. So joining Valtech, it was the merging of two equal size companies. And we became now a 6,000 force of a globally distributed organization. And I just really saw it as an opportunity to learn.

[00:04:33] So I led about 80 interviews across the business of folks I'd never met who came from wildly different experiences than I did and tried to marry the two of those together to understand what are the sparks of each organization and how does that create one cohesive story for our people. At the time, it was so important because we really found that Valtech had grown through acquisition.

[00:04:59] And so we had different cultures and different feelings of what was the offering, what was the why across the whole globe. And so it was our opportunity to really question like, okay, we're done with our acquisition journey. We're ready to just be the 6,000 force and determine the path ahead. Let's name it. Let's actually make the definition of who we are and why we're different, why people join and why people stay. So that was the important element to pause.

[00:05:35] At the time, I was leading employer brand. And so it was a partnership between employer brand, which sat in marketing, and then our people and culture function. So it was a partnership between marketing and HR. I think that's an important thing.

[00:06:12] Oh, my goodness. Yes. I think the why people stay was consistent. It was the same across the two companies. If you ask, why are you here? It's always the people. They're both technology consulting agencies that hire great people to do great work. And it's their project teams. It's the people they sit with every day. They're smart. They're driven. And that's been consistent.

[00:06:40] And so as a storyteller at heart, an employer brand and internal comms, that's the precipice. That's the base of everything is the amazing people we get to work with and the stories we tell. It was the entrepreneurial spirit of the companies.

[00:07:09] Both of them looked a little bit different. But at the end of the day, yeah, it showed up. It was you were empowered to drive your career. You were empowered to raise your hand, make the business better. And that was celebrated at both legacy firms and continues to be celebrated today.

[00:07:41] I have. Yes. Great. So you're in this really... That's a good question. I feel like we go back and forth about this topic so much in the employer brand world.

[00:08:12] I started my career in TA. So I was hired as a recruiting coordinator and really just got the push by our TA director at the time to just build a coordination function. Like our recruiters just need help. And so I stepped in and really fell in love with candidate experience. What I found through that was we could build such a good base of employer brand in the recruiting org that I was in. But then we had an honest conversation with my manager and she was like, I can't grow you anymore.

[00:08:42] Either you take on recruiting ops or you stay to an employer brand here and it kind of stays the same. I think it was just the functions and the tools at the time, like the investment opportunity of the TA org of where we're at right there. Right then. It was kind of limited of what all could be done and where all we could push forward. I might have been.

[00:09:10] I also think at the time we had a new CMO step in who loved the people story and the opportunity to show the people story. She yanked you out. Yes. I think she might have planted a seed that then got spread across the organization. So I chose to move over to marketing and it worked out so well for my case because I had already built such strong relationships with our recruiting and our HR teams because I'd grown up in the business there.

[00:09:39] So I more so wanted to protect those relationships as I sat in marketing. What was the first thing you realized that was different about reporting to being in that function and being in marketing? Oh, the measurement was different. I had to learn. I had to learn so much about what marketers measure, how they talk. The other thing was just the tech stack.

[00:10:06] I think my tech stack, I learned so much in the first six months. You could get access to more. Yes. I got access to everything. And our marketing team at the time was strapped. They were busy beyond belief. And so someone couldn't, I couldn't just hand over the work to anyone else. I really had to dig in my heels and learn everything. So I became a digital marketer very quickly, which I think made me a better employer brander too. Because I could do it myself and execute and measure and make the changes. So the grass is greenery.

[00:10:35] From my experience, I loved sitting in marketing.

[00:12:20] I did make a home there. I loved marketing. I have absolutely fallen in love with it. But I will say, I think coming from the sitting in the recruiting function, it was a muscle I had to flex. Was to really understand like, okay, on a monthly basis, I need to report to recruiting. What metrics do they need? And then at the same time, I would do the same conversations with HR. And my presentations would change, whether I was talking to a marketing leader, a recruiting leader, an HR leader.

[00:12:48] So I really kind of took that extra step to make sure each function felt loved and looked after, even with the change of where the role sat. Yeah, still sitting in marketing, which kind of was a great follow-on from moving over to the marketing org. That's where internal comms is at at my company since I moved over.

[00:13:14] So through that, I got to build really strong relationships with internal comms, understand that job a little bit better. And now kind of like building the foundation or strengthening the foundation of internal comms at Valtech.

[00:13:41] A lot of them paused, unfortunately, which is someone coming from employer brand. It's like the worst thing to hear. But they did pause. We took a break of pushing externally and really saw the opportunity of like we were seeing from employee surveys. We needed some love internally. We had to create stronger alignment to our strategy and focus in on the belonging and engagement for the company. So those are on the back burner for now.

[00:14:10] Eager and ready to kind of pick them up and always have my employer brand hat on of how we can keep people talking externally about the stories at work. But I've shifted a lot of it to internal. I think I've carried so much from employer brand into internal comms.

[00:14:36] The biggest thing that I see is the targeting, the segmentation, the campaign view that employer brand marketers have to have and recruitment marketers have to have. You're constantly thinking about who am I trying to reach? How can I target to get this segment and get them the information they need? Oftentimes, internal comms is just a blast of information.

[00:14:59] So I think having the background in employer brand enables me to bring that campaign segmentation targeting focus into how we're communicating with our people. I think so. Yes. And I think that started a couple years ago while I was still working in employer brand.

[00:15:26] I kind of just reached out to our internal comms lead at the time and said, hey, can we just start talking and just connect the dots of what we're working on? And so now that I'm actually leading that work, I have that view of what are our employees saying? How are they feeling? Where are the bright spots of our company? And then where are we headed? And so now I can tell those stories. I can pick them out of moments in the experience. So how do you do that effectively?

[00:15:55] Because working in a 6,000 person company, there's a lot going on. How are you? It's a really good question. And I'm always learning how I can do this better. I would love to know if there was one right way and answer. But we're globally distributed. A lot of our employees work remotely.

[00:16:18] So it's a lot of sleuthing on our digital channels, joining as many communities as I can, hearing an employee say something or seeing them post a story, and then messaging them and be like, hey, that was so awesome. Can we build something around this? Or talking to someone, a manager, for example, and having them recommend like, hey, the person who reports to me just did X, Y, Z.

[00:16:43] So it's a lot of word of mouth, a lot of sleuthing, and just kind of reaching people through the networks. So a lot of relationship building, I would say. Yes and no. So it's true that a lot of times internal comms is looked to to communicate the strategy and help our executives share the right message.

[00:17:13] But no, it's not the core of the job either. I find that most of my job is partnering with functions to help us roll out other updates from across the business and connect our employees, like really manage the tech stack and the tools that enable employee connection across our workforce and create it as a place of belonging, whatever that looks like as an organization. Any consideration?

[00:17:45] Yes. I've actually built, in partnership with my manager, like a campaign view on internal comms. So there's always three focuses that I'm thinking about. It's strategic leadership comms. We call it Unify. Optimize, which is all about like, how are we leveling up our people? And then Engage, just like how are we celebrating the moments of belonging and culture that exists in our organization? So it's those three elements we always have at our top of mind. I get it.

[00:18:30] Absolutely. Yes. Exactly. I find that it's always hard to choose one. It's always kind of a mix of all three campaigns. And they feed into each other. I find that in our town halls often, we're shouting about the people stories that were part of the Engage campaign. We're trying to like elevate those stories in the middle of what might be a strategic update as well.

[00:18:57] Because at the end of the day, all the stories that we choose to tell, they're all aligned to our vision of like celebrating the best of our workforce and aligning us to where we're going in the future. When you...

[00:19:52] Yes, absolutely.

[00:20:23] Absolutely. And then they know like, okay, I'm here at this company. I feel confident in the leaders that they're making decisions for my best self. Oh my gosh. Absolutely not.

[00:21:34] Mm-hmm. Yeah. And obviously because of my background, I think about every email. Yeah.

[00:22:09] Yeah. I'm really in the process of building that right now. How do you think so? Yes. I stepped into this position with very limited data just because we've had legacy IT systems that, and then a lot of change in the organization. So now we have the structures where we can start like measuring open rates and looking at more like survey data.

[00:22:31] So I have the open rate data, I have employee engagement surveys, but I've started to measure to like usefulness of communication. So added a survey into every email, like how useful was this? So we can not only see someone looking at the content, but is it helping them do their job? And then I always marry every, all of my campaigns to the employee engagement survey. So a big focus of mine right now is alignment to strategy.

[00:22:59] I want to make sure our people know where we're going as a business so they know how they're a part of that. So we have a biannual engagement survey, and that's kind of my like long wind view of whether the comms are working. And have you done?

[00:23:30] Yes. It's kind of a stretch mechanism, but I often will look at like who's someone we spotlighted in our content and are they still here? And like how does their engagement and how is it impacting their engagement? Again, a stretch metric for sure, but it's something I'm constantly looking at. Yes. Exactly. Yeah. And raising their hand too to remain involved and engaged.

[00:24:01] I'm also in the process of standing up kind of an employee advocacy program. We have a 200 person. That's another episode. Yes. Tell us about it. It's very early stages, so it'll be in the future. But we have about 200 people who are now AI champions. So I'm going to plug into that group, and that's going to be like a core measurement, very much in line with employer brand of how are those folks engaging with content internally and externally, and how are they coming back?

[00:24:29] Quick word from our sponsor, Video My, the company I founded. At VideoMy, we believe that people trust people. We help organizations capture and amplify authentic employee stories that bring their culture and moments that matter to life. If you're looking to use employee stories to attract, engage, and retain talent, visit videomye.co or send me a LinkedIn message. I'd love to hear what you're working on. Now, back to the episode.

[00:25:31] Yes. In a role? It has. It's taught me that we need to have more fun at work. Like, at the end of the day, it's about the relationships that we are able to create in our roles, whether that's through the onboarding journey or the town halls, the times that we invite people into our offices. Like, those are just moments that matter. And I see that with the college students that I work with. They're just there. They're so creative.

[00:25:56] And they bring such fun ideas of, like, how can we ensure that that person who comes to our meetings and doesn't engage with others? Like, how are they pulling them in? So I always use a good call out. It's an important view of work, too. It does. Yes.

[00:26:19] I find that any time I meet with that group of students or the person that I'm a mentor of, I bring so much more creativity to my job after I'm able to meet with them. Because it just reminds me, like, it's not always so serious. Like, we can still have fun at work. You can find the little pockets of culture and bring that into the internal ecosystem or the external ecosystem and celebrate it. Yeah.

[00:26:53] I'm used to it. Yeah. Oh, that's a very good question. I would actually flip it.

[00:27:22] I would say they should just start asking internal comms. I don't know. I don't think they're asking what they should be asking. Okay. I don't know that they're asking internal comms enough questions of, like, how can we align? Oh, they're taking, they're going on their own solo folks. I think so.

[00:28:14] But I'd be curious for your thoughts. Maybe you think they are reaching out enough and they need to stop asking other things.

[00:30:31] Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I love that. It's like the dream role is overseeing both. Because I think there's so much, I believe this since I started an employer brand. Like, you can't sell something and then once someone comes in, they're communicated to in a different way or they experience something totally different. Like, our poor employees that are experiencing that. Like, there's just such a flip change. So, I love that opportunity to kind of create that consistency. Yeah.

[00:32:04] Absolutely. Something I was thinking about today, too, is that, like, there's so much data on both sides of the functions. Employer brand gets such good insight from the talent market of how a role or an offering is landing. Internal comms get so much insight of how a strategy or a message is landing. So, if you marry those data points together, you can really inform one another, which I think is a huge opportunity that's untapped. It's white space there. Yeah. So much white space.

[00:32:33] Because if employer brand is hearing that we're struggling with X talent market, they tweak the message and that's how they got all these folks in. Internal comms can then use that information to say, like, okay, it's that same talent market that's now an employee. Let's use that and communicate to our employees that way, too. So, I think there's that cross-sharing that's huge. Like, there's so much opportunity there as well. I'm curious to know.

[00:33:14] That's a good question. I think the value is you don't just think about the internal ecosystem. I really found that when we have had crises that we've had to respond to, we're also thinking about the external reputation as well. Which I'm not saying internal comms doesn't inherently think about that. But I think I'm more so, it's just a part of my muscle is to also think about how is this going to show up externally for our brand and our reputation as well.

[00:33:45] So, I think that angle has helped. What? Yes. I actually was able to create our, or evolve our crisis communications playbook. So, got to build that from the ground up and go through a couple crises with the business, which has been super interesting. And I think I set it up in a way that each time it evolves.

[00:34:13] So, we kind of retro it and make it better with each change. But it's really made me question what stakeholders are in the room. So, it's thinking about our brand marketer as well, like a brand marketing leader to have that external view of the company and its people, not just the internal funneled view.

[00:35:09] Beginning, Amy. Oh my goodness. I would just say, be open to it all. Like, I don't know that I would do anything different. But I think I would say, plug more in internally. Like, I think sometimes it was safer for me to be like, oh no, I'm employer brand. I focus externally. And I can help inform and drive changes internally.

[00:35:37] But it's also not my job. Not that I'm ever a not-my-job person. But I think I would have, I would tell myself to be more open to have those hard conversations with leaders sooner. This reminds me, one of my first managers always said, you can't fill a leaky bucket. And that was always the way that I was trained to think about employer brand. And so I would kind of push that sentiment further to feel empowered to drive change internally earlier.

[00:36:06] To understand the engagement, understand the practices, understand the experience internally. You have to be able to do that and use the words that your coworkers are using in that conversation to then deliver that message externally. Like, I think that makes sense. You've got to understand what people are saying. Because if you can't engage people internally, it's going to be really hard to engage them externally. Absolutely. Yes.

[00:36:35] And the last question. That's a very good question.

[00:37:00] I think what I'm learning is that internally the story is a little bit more utility first. Of like, how can we make this super tangible for our people? And like, how does it impact their day-to-day? The external story has a little bit of that where you still have to like talk to the human who's reading the content. But it's less about like giving them the tools or the resources.

[00:37:29] So it's a little bit more polished in a way. Do you have a belief on tone? And the only reason I ask is I've worked in an organization where internally it was like, oh, it was cool. It was quirky. It was very approachable. And then external, it was kind of cold and analytical. And that's a really surprise to me. And I haven't seen too many of those, right? I've only got the experiences that I have. I get that.

[00:37:58] But I'm wondering, like, what's the use case for that or if you have a view of it? I believe the tone should be the same. I'm like such a stickler for like, how can we make this a consistent experience with the brand? I think the brand experience is the same no matter who you are, especially as a consultancy. Like we're a people business. It's our people and the way that they talk. It's why our clients come to us.

[00:38:23] So keeping that consistent, I think, is important and something I strive for. But I don't see it always perfect in our elements. Like I see externally we might be a little bit more client-facing, whereas internally it might be scrappier. But I see that over time breaking down.

[00:39:02] Yeah. Internally, it's like then you can play with the memes. You can kind of like, I don't know. Not everything is perfectly filtered. It sounds like you're having a lot of fun, though. I am. Yes. You're really enjoying yourself, which is great to see. Yes. So I really thank you for sharing your story. It's been really helpful to get that through to everyone. Thank you so much for having me. This was a blast. Yeah, thank you for sure. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.