Amplify Your Talent By Building Your People Brand – a DisruptHR talk by Nichole Marshall – People Brand Specialist at Earl’s Restaurant

DisruptHR Vancouver 1 – November 4, 2015 in Vancouver, British Columbia. #DisruptHRYVR

What are some key questions that you need to answer to develop an awesome employer brand?

– What gets you out of bed every morning?
– How do your values align with your company’s values?
– What is your bigger purpose?

At Earl’s Restaurant, one of the core values is that we’re committed to causes greater than ourselves. To highlight this, we created and defined different social media hashtags to give a glimpse into what it’s like to work at Earl’s, and showcase different aspects of our company, like leadership, development, having fun, etc.

The hashtag #myearls gives people a “behind the scenes” look at what it’s like to work at Earl’s Restaurants – things that a job description wouldn’t necessarily include. This hashtag has had over 20,000 posts on social media just since we came up with it a little over a year ago.

We knew that learning and development was a pain point for our employees, so we created the hashtag #PeopleGrowHere to provide an opportunity to draw attention to promotions that we have, and leadership courses that taking place.

We also did a recognition survey, and found that many employees didn’t feel like they were being recognized for their work. The hashtag #EarlsKudos was created to help draw public recognition to our employee’s efforts, and has helped to create a community of recognition within our organization.

The hashtag #EarlsLife embodies our soul. We believe in people living large, purposeful lives – while having fun. We want people to know that working at Earl’s Restaurants is more than just a job.

How did we create awareness about these hashtags at our company?

On our intranet, we created a social stream that pulls in every hashtag that we use. This has not only increased the usage of our hashtags, but also the use of our intranet – which is awesome. And, It’s helped employees at our different stores to share ideas and learn from each other. We also created a social stream on our Careers web page that includes all of our hashtags, so candidates can view the page before they apply. Our analytics prove that people are loving that feature.

The takeaway for you?

Sit down with your team and figure our why you love working for your company, and find ways to illustrate exactly what it’s like to work there. Then, give your employees the resources to tell their stories – because they want to.