It’s no surprise that a number of Fortune 100 companies and hundreds of organizations and corporations have HR blogs. Blog is a great communication tool that allows companies to be more personable. HR departments have blogs to demonstrate company culture and answer various questions that applicants might have.
However, a company HR blog might not be as social as a blog should be. Even the name – corporate HR blog – sounds stiff, and lacks personality. So how do we turn it around, how do we create a company blog that is focused on HR matters and recruitment, but still has some personality?
Let’s start with a vision:
As the economy starts to slowly pick-up, a consumer goods company is planning to hire a dozen people starting next year. The company, however, wants to find passive highly skilled candidates, and doesn’t want to sort through hundreds of resumes to find the few that actually are worth reading. Their goal is to attract the best talent available by painting the picture of what it is like to work in the company, and what environment a new employee can expect. This organization already has a blog, where a corporate recruiter posts job announcements, and answers various questions, but they want to make it more personable and less corporate.
Action Steps:
- True value of a company blog is in content that you can’t get anywhere else. Allow your employees to write guest posts or even start their own blogs where they talk about the company culture, company news, bagels on Friday, or whatever else they please. This could also aid in getting more web traffic to your site, as employees will likely want to share their blogs as well.
- Establish a blogging policy. Freedom is essential, but you still can have certain guidelines. I encourage looking at a sample social media policy that was created by Intel. Employees can share the content they want as long as it doesn’t disclose confidential information, shares only true information, and they are polite and eloquent with what they share.
- Many companies will say that it is dangerous to allow their employees to be public spokespeople, that it creates a liability. However, if an employee hates the company they work for, they will find a way to damage a company’s reputation whether they have a blog or don’t. On the other hand, information that is shared by employees quite often looks more honest. There is a whole range of subjects that your employees could write about, thus creating a more complete picture of your company.
- Employees need to understand that what’s valued is participation and contribution not sugar-mouthing. Explain to your employees that their participation is directly tied to the company’s marketing initiatives. An employee/employees that will emerge as an active voice of the company’s culture will become almost indispensable to the organization.
The basic premise of launching a company blog with a recruiting related purpose is to allow potential employees to learn more about the company and its culture. Job description is not enough to attract passive job seekers who are very conscious of where they work. You want the best talent for the job, and the best talent wants an exciting, challenging and personable environment. Let your current employees act as advocates, and let your potential employees see the company from the eyes of the people that make it work.
