Missing out on talent brand
I was listening to a podcast this week and I heard the term “talent brand.” My ears perked up and I said to myself, “What is this? I have never heard of it. I must find out more!”
And then I learned that there is employer brand and talent brand, and they are two different things. In short, employer brand is “who you say you are,” and talent brand is “who you actually are.”
When crafting an employer brand, an organization gets to say using their prescribed words what they stand for, how they hope to be perceived, and what their story is. It can sound awe-inspiring like a lot of mission and vision statements do.
Talent brand, on the other hand, is “the honest story of life as an employee inside your organization, as told by the employees…current, past and even prospective,” based on this Indeed article. The article's author Bryan Chaney suggests that our talent brand seeps out in “social media posts, review site comments, direct network conversations, face-to-face interactions and referrals.”
In arts organizations, we all work hard to ensure we have an employer brand that checks all the boxes and paints a vision of a better future.
Yet, we are missing out on the power of our talent brand. We are not using (or noticing at all) the voices of our people and what they say our organization is really about. We don't use it to reflect, strategize, and actually get better as organizations.
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On the outside, an organization can plastered its ideal employer brand all over traditional and social media. Internally, the talent brand may reveal a different story.
Think of all the times you may have heard musicians talk begrudgingly about their organizations or working conditions, calling the management liars or revealing unfair pay and unethical decisions. In addition to the public stories, there is much anecdotal evidence of toxic cultures and a fear of speaking up about it in the orchestral space. I discovered a wonderful and thoughtful piece called "Consumed in the Culture" by cellist Emma Quackenbush discussing the absence of appropriate human resources for orchestral musicians as a factor in enabling toxic cultures and organizational dysfunction.
That happens when we sit down to compare an orchestra’s employer brand (who we say we are) and its talent brand (who we actually are) side by side? What would line up? What kind of dissonance might it reveal?
A Forbes article by J.D. Conway shares that, “If an employer brand is developed without a deep look into existing talent brand, organizations often miss the mark and come off as oblivious.“
As a conductor, I realized that I can say all I want about how great I am, what tremendous value I could bring, or how I can be of service. I can curate my employer brand to my liking. But if it is not corroborated by the actual experience and evidence of influence in the people I have worked with, it doesn’t really mean anything. It’s an empty promise.
People are not dumb. They will see this. Conway adds, “When potential employees discover the dissonance, it’s going to cost you.”
This is what happens to organizations when we are not curious about our own talent brand and what our people have to say.
Actually, we are curious. We survey our musicians regularly. Sure, the main point is to learn about how things can be better, but the results can't be all bad. What the musicians have to say may be extremely positive! In that case, we are missing out on capitalizing on that data to build and celebrate our talent brand - and to further inform our employer brand.
If there are patterns, positive or negative, we want to notice them.
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Have you ever seen organizations celebrate their musician's positive stories of everyday experiences at work? If so, what kinds of stories are they? Could you find a thread that weaves all of them together?
Imagine the impact these positive stories could have on:
Recruiting - attracting like-minded folks who desire those same stories to join the organization.
Marketing - providing insight into how an organization may uniquely position themselves and stand out in the market.
Fundraising - showcasing deep, personal, and real stories that are worth investing in.
Risk management - revealing internal dissonance that, if left unattended, may lead to big problems down the road.
Employee fulfillment - allowing people the ability to be seen and valued for their experiences at work
On the other hand, when our talent brand reveals some undesirable stories, we can use that to evaluate how aligned our talent brand actually is to our employer brand and to find strategies to reach better alignment. This data will offer organizations clear direction rather than relying on employer brand ideals that can exist in a vacuum.
When we ignore these negative stories in our talent brand, it could get to the point where we have to tiptoe around the employer brand. Some organizations can become overly cautious about how they present themselves to the public and the media. Musicians are sometimes even micromanaged and coached on what we should say and what we can't say, what we should be doing to represent the organization's values, and what our brand should look like.
What if what we are asked to say or believe is incongruent with our existing reality? We start to feel dishonest, betrayed, or unseen - and all sorts of other problems may arise.
So at the end of the day, an organization can say all it wants about its employer brand, but it doesn't really have a direct say in its talent brand. The people do, and they do it honestly.
It's definitely a win to take advantage of that talent brand.
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