Imagine a world where the majority of your employees simply don’t trust your organisation…where your business and recruitment marketing activities are viewed with increasing suspicion… and where nearly two thirds of people will question the credibility of statements made by your CEO and other organisational leaders.
A nightmare scenario? Sadly not. As the 2017 Edelman Trust Barometer reveals, it’s a statistically verified reality faced by multiple businesses in the UK and across the globe.
How is this possible? As anyone in the recruitment marketing industry knows, most organisations have invested significant time and money in recent years to fully articulate their employer brands, craft appealing employee value propositions and engage with their various recruitment constituencies across the social media landscape.
And yet the research shows that on average just 45% of people in the UK trust business.
True, some organisations have brought this lack of trust on themselves. Mistreat your workforce or turn a blind eye to the unethical pursuit of profit and you’ll rightly be condemned. But for most organisations whose operational and HR teams are clearly and genuinely committed to creating strong and principled businesses capable of attracting the best talent, the prevailing lack of trust points, in many cases, to a failure of communication rather than behaviour.
Ten minutes spent on Google will reveal literally dozens of companies that ‘put people first’, believe in ‘transparency and trust’ and are ‘passionate about innovation’. These statements are, in themselves, effectively meaningless. Worse, they lack emotional resonance are often presented without context and sufficiently engaging explanatory content.
In short, many companies are failing to tell their story in ways that are credible, authentic, relevant and meaningful – and it is only by harnessing the true power of storytelling, I suggest, that companies can start to overcome the limitations of current employer branding models and address the growing trust deficit in business.
Why story? Because a good story always beats a spreadsheet and a formulaic values statement. Whether we are delivering a service, selling a product or recruiting an employee, we have to look beyond the process and the jargon to understand that we are all emotionally-driven beings.
And that, in essence, is why story matters.
As a species, we are wired for story. It is the structure that gives meaning and order to our lives – our past, our present, our future. It is how we convey our deepest emotions and talk about those things we value the most. It explores who we are and why we matter, tapping into our reason and intellect while simultaneously bonding us to others who share our values and form part of our personal, public or professional community.
What are the stories customers tell about your brand? What stories do your employees tell about your company? How can they guide us in communicating the heart, soul and practical manifestation of your brand? Stories, properly elicited and told, take us beyond the fact of what you do and how you do it. They engage with why you exist and what your vision is. They express your culture and help shape the way people engage with it – telling them how to fit in, what behaviours are valued and why anyone should care.
Story has rightly been called the ‘sensemaking currency of organisations’ and in a recruitment marketing universe where cynicism and lack of trust prevail, it has become vital that companies tell a better story.
Some organisations are already doing a great storytelling job, of course. Think of MacMillan, Oxfam, Cancer Research, Walkers and Apple – all listed among the top storytelling brands in Aesop’s ‘Brand Storytelling Survey’ last year. One of our own clients, Alzheimer’s Society, is another organisation at the forefront of what it means to be an authentic storytelling organisation. So it is hardly surprising that these organisations also rank highly on the trust scale – and, through their use of story, in their ability to stand out in a crowded recruitment marketplace.
But most organisations have yet to harness the power of story, not least the positive (andtrue) stories about, and told by, their own employees. This matters because – as the latest Edelman Trust Barometer reveals – employees are regarded as the single most credible and authentic source of information about the organisations they work for.
So where better to start mining, crafting and communicating the true stories that will not only give your prospective candidates a reason to join, but will make them believe and care as well?