Building an authentic Employer Brand through employee voices

On Thursday, September 28th, we welcomed Anna Bertoldini, Global Head of Employer Brand at NielsenIQ and one of Frontify’s top 30 Brand Visionaries of 2023, alongside our Founder and CEO, Emily Forbes. Anna is a real thought leader in the Employer Brand space with nearly 25,000 followers on LinkedIn and is actively on a mission to help organisations either build their presence or reinvent themselves to attract the right talent to scale sustainably.

In this webinar, we discussed the importance of ‘Building an authentic Employer Brand through employee voices’. In a rapidly evolving and competitive business landscape, Employer Branding has emerged as a pivotal force in attracting and retaining top talent. This webinar provides a unique opportunity to uncover the secrets behind successful Employer Branding, focusing on the vital role of employee voices in shaping the narrative.

“An employee voice is the way employees communicate what they think about their employer and influence matters that affect them at work.”

Anna Bertoldini

Theme 1: Turning your EVP ‘outside in’

Anna started by reframing the meaning of the Employee Value Proposition, or as she calls it your ‘north star’. She explained that an EVP is how you engage with employees and candidates alike, and what differentiates you as an employer.

Anna highlighted the importance of having an internal-first mindset and turning the EVP outside in by getting employees excited about their company and allowing that excitement to permeate on the outside. A key factor of the EVP is culture, which Anna defined as the combination of moments employees feel throughout their time at the company.

With the recent hiring freezes, Anna pointed out the unique position Employer Branding and Talent teams are in. Attraction has been put on the back burner, making it the best time to reflect on retention by infusing a human touch into communications.

Finally, she explained the importance of upskilling, training and enabling recruiters. Creating a living and breathing toolkit that gives permission to speak on behalf of the brand, and is a clear invitation for employees to speak up.

“I’m not the brand police, it’s about leaving them room and flexibility to be themselves and speak about the company in their own way.”

Anna Bertoldini

Theme 2: Developing and rolling out a global Employee Value Proposition

“EVPs tend to be in the middle of grounded and aspirational. In between your aspirations and the reality of workplace culture.”

Anna Bertoldini

We asked Anna to share how the NielsenIQ EVP was designed and rolled out, and she pointed out there is no right or wrong way to design an EVP.

Her efforts to role out the EVP took months, starting with a listening tour across teams to hear about needs, major priorities and challenges. She then performed an audit of the candidate journey across channels, making sure all touchpoints were covered. And finally, focused on upskilling and equipping recruiters to attract talent.

Anna shared she feels this is a continuous process. She emphasised the importance of internal relationships with other teams, calling on others for expertise and consulting with teams. She highly recommended communication and collaboration throughout the process.

Theme 3: Humanising your brand through employee voices

“It’s important to tell company stories through the employee voice because employees are the ones who live and breathe your culture every single day and can speak to it the best. Employee advocacy is based on the principle that people listen to people and people trust people.”

Anna Bertoldini

Anna underlined the role employees can play in bridging the gap between the company and the candidate by putting a face to a brand. She illustrated that layer of legitimacy employees bring through a video from the #LifeAtNIQ campaign. Companies can often seem like a black box, and people want to know what it’s like to work there before they join or even apply.

This video shared is some of the top-performing content on NIQ’s social media and has inspired others to speak up and get involved.

Anna concluded by saying unpolished, genuine and authentic content is what people relate to the most.

About Seenit

Seenit is the employee-generated video platform built for employer brand and communications teams looking to elevate the employee voice. We help companies like Amazon, H&M, and Vodafone securely crowdsource content from their colleagues and edit it into videos that engage 8x more than traditional content. All with a tool that anyone can use in minutes, no video experience needed.

Seenit saves you time, money, and effort and is the flexible, scalable, and safe way to crowdsource and edit content from your colleagues, wherever they are. Seenit produced content is up to 20x faster to collect, reduces production spend by 70%, and increases video output 9x.

Empower your colleagues to create engaging and authentic videos to attract talent, enhance your employer brand, and engage your colleagues with Seenit, the employee-generated video platform.