It's time to challenge your Employer Brand team; not put them on ice.

Dear CEOs/CMOs/CPOs and TA Heads,

While there is no comparison between the immediate and tangible necessity of our vital key workers right now, I want to make the case for the importance of your Employer Brand Manager/Partner/Team if you'll hear me out.

I know. You've got more pressing things to deal with right now, things keeping you up all night - like keeping your company afloat, building financial projections for shareholders that have to be redone again a week later and worrying about whether you need to lay-off valued talent. However, if you have put your Employer Brand Manager/Partner or Team on ice then consider the possibility you are failing to leverage a vital resource who could be truly helpful to you now and beyond the crisis.

Many companies have implemented hiring freezes and are making incredibly difficult decisions about whether to furlough or let go of valued talent. With talent attraction becoming a low priority for many companies, Employer Branding can therefore feel like a nice to have, but that's only if you consider EB to be solely about recruitment. Like it or not, your employer brand (ie what you promise your people in return for their service and commitment) is now on public display and up for real-time review. If Glassdoor and Blind made you nervous, then this must feel decidedly uncomfortable. But instead of going to ground, why not empower your EB partners and teams to be part of the solution.

It is in extraordinary times that extraordinary solutions are needed, and those solutions can and should come from anywhere.

Look at it this way. Employer Branding is a role for resourceful, forward-thinkers who work well in utter ambiguity. Trust me. Who else would take on a role that has, as employer brand expert James Ellis aptly put it on The Chad & Cheese podcast last week, 'the whole company on their shoulders with no control over most of their actions'.

If you've hired or partnered well it's likely your EB Manager has a wide-ranging skillset and understands elements of everything from digital marketing to content creation; from influencing internally and externally to engaging with employees from all parts of the business at all levels. They've probably never had a decent roadmap for success unless they are one of the lucky few and yet always manage to do a lot with a little. They also probably have an amazing ability to reach across departments and will likely have an ear to the ground on employee sentiment in a way that is hard day-to-day in HR. So just imagine what that resourcefulness could achieve if given a bold brief and permission to overstep a little...

Assuming you have hired or partnered with such a unique talent, I hope you are at the very least working with them to engage meaningfully with candidates who are now stuck in limbo and to create thoughtful content that shows how you are living your values to support your employees and the wider community. That said, they could be doing so much more...

Imagine what that resourcefulness could achieve if given a bold brief and permission to overstep a little.

Here are 3 briefs I would suggest you give to your EB Manager or Partner right now. Give them a strategic seat at the table and I bet you won't be disappointed. And to my EB pros out there, why not have a go at one of these briefs proactively and pitch it back to the business. It is in extraordinary times that extraordinary solutions are needed, and those solutions can and should come from anywhere. Why not then from someone who has by default had to get to know the entire business inside/out in order to do their job?

Brief 1: Is the story of how we treated our people during this crisis one we will be proud of coming out the other side? What more could we be doing?

Give your EB teams not just the job of reporting the positive work you are doing but actually shaping it and better still pushing the company to do more. Who else has their finger more on the pulse of what your competitors for talent are doing well and the incredible initiatives that are already out there? Have your EB manager provide insight and strategic guidance for benefits teams, internal comms teams and other teams that are stretched dealing with the day-to-day logistics of a remote workforce. Leverage EB to help you think beyond the immediate and look at longer-term initiatives or outside the box solutions.

Brief 2: How will the talent landscape and our own people be changed by this experience?

Empower your EB professionals to deep-dive into the human part of HR. They've already been engaged with social listening to understand the candidate psyche so why not put that skillset to even better use. Ask them to map shifting talent personas based on the human factors that will come into play now even more - single-parent households, the impact on women whose share of the domestic load is often disproportionate, expat talent without support networks, lower-income talent more likely to be at risk of layoffs, any minority groups whose needs are being discounted as companies struggle to adapt...the list goes on.

How will these factors impact what talent want and need beyond the crisis? How will Covid-19 shape what employees expect and need from an employer? If we encourage everyone to bring their 'whole selves' to work are we taking into account the fact that this might include navigating reintegrating those who have gone through trauma?

There are so many problems to solve so if you have an EB team that thinks all day long about what drives people to accept roles and stay in them, and you aren't leveraging them to help answer these questions - why not? I would also say this should apply to any strategically-minded recruitment professional who is being under-utilised.

Brief 3: How can we innovate our comms infrastructure?

If the virus has taught comms professionals one thing only it's the need to be agile and think (and act) on our feet. Most companies are not structured to do that well. Where companies are getting it right they are able to make quick comms decisions and redeploy skilled individuals quickly to where they are needed most. Why not find ways to make this the new normal beyond the crisis instead of returning to business as usual?

Knowing now also that all elements of your brand are deeply interrelated in the eyes of the public and your own people, it's a great time to ask questions like: how can we make our Brand/PR/Internal Comms and EB teams more fluid as a holistic comms and branding partnership? How can we better partner together and better leverage eachother's skillsets in times of need? How can we think beyond our silos and evolve our ways of communicating with employees, customers and stakeholders with one authentic voice?

I imagine your EB Managers have had a point of view on this for a while as the oft-frustrated outliers - why not ask for their input and get a refreshing take on how comms collaboration Post-Covid could look?

I urge you to use this moment to ask the big questions and give employer brand professionals the chance to show what they can really do. If not now, then when?