Yesterday we looked at what you can do to avoid a bad reputation. Today we’ll look at how transparency can help those efforts.
Keeping It Transparent
Let’s face it. Sometimes a company says that it is a great company for such and such reasons when any worker will tell you that, in practice, those reasons are not true. That strategy may have worked once, but with contemporary transparency thanks to things like social media and media outlets that can be accessed by anyone with a computer or phone and an Internet connection, this no longer works. These things combined with the advent of sites like Glassdoor® means that your company’s practices are transparent, whether you know it or not, and whether you want it to be or not. If your company is misrepresenting itself, potential hires will know about it.
If your company is going to be transparent, you might as well take advantage of that fact. Here are some basic ideas to help you use transparency to your advantage:
- Stories. Create a collection of stories from employees about what they do and what they like about their jobs, and make them publicly available. This lets you give an honest account of what it’s like to work at your company.
- Social media. Make use of social media—not just Twitter and Facebook, but Instagram, too. Share images, videos, and accounts of your employees and their work environments. Studies show that applicants respond well to pictures and videos from a company and use them to develop an opinion about that company.
- Confront negative press head-on. If poor practices or conditions at your company have recently made it to news sites, you need to get ahead of it. Follow up on camera with current practices, and ensure that if there were any problems, they are being addressed.
- Don’t go big brother. Trying to limit what your employees can say about your company is a mistake. The fact that you are trying to cover up something itself becomes the topic that gets out there. It also puts your employees on guard.
- Embrace what you have, not what you want. It’s important to highlight what people love about your company instead of what you love about your company. They might be different, and in the end, accenting the perceived value of your company is much more valuable than talking about something you are proud of but that maybe no one really cares about.