Spending time together in person is really valuable, especially for small teams and solo practitioners. That’s something well understood in employer branding.

That’s why events like The EB Space’s Uncut [Un]Conference matter so much for the employer branding community - and why it was great to return to Havas People for the second year running.

What Claire’s built here is fantastic - more on that later, when I share my conversation with her from the end of a long day.

Here’s what stood out for me, with my own take thrown in where I’ve got one.

[A quick note: as this was a safe space for conversations within four walls, I haven’t gone into detail of who said what specifically - but I want you to get a feel for the themes discussed, and hopefully it encourages you to join future events].

AI Won’t Replace Employer Brand...But It Might Replace Average Employer Branders

Right off the bat, we took on the massive topic of AI - it’s unavoidable, weaving its way into life, society, and work like the internet on steroids.

Will AI replace employer branding, or just the people who do the things it can now take on? One interesting opinion was that the job description for an “average” employer brander doesn’t really exist anymore, and addressing that is down to leadership - understanding what the discipline needs to look like in a world with AI in it, which means a willingness to embrace change.

AI isn’t there to replace what already exists - it’s there to scale it. Research is a good example: AI has massively increased the practical capability available to employer branders, though the output still needs checking. AI shouldn’t replace strategy, but it can support it by accelerating the research strategy is built on. What it shouldn’t replace is the underlying skills - you need those first if you want to use AI well.

Creativity came up too - there’s something inherently human that AI can’t replicate, and a real danger of everything starting to look the same when people lean on it too much. My take: that danger exists with humans too - the result being corporate jargon and empty messages - it’s why my fellow podcaster Chris Murdoch started a podcast called Employer Bland - love that title.

A big piece was seeing AI-generated creative work that’s technically fine but missing the punch of great human creative - and that shows up in performance, not just looks. One example: a video where an employee hesitated on camera, the editor offering to smooth it out - but it was the hesitation that needed to stay in. I said it myself in the LinkedIn comments on this event last week: those imperfections are perfect. AI would remove that - and that’s something we see far too often in employer branding.

My take: the hesitation story is less about AI. It’s an editing-philosophy point that AI just happens to have made more visible. Polish a moment too much, whether by algorithm or editor, and you lose the heart and soul.

Who Are You Without Your Job Title?

This session was a good example of the difference this conference brings to the employer branding space - a conversation that really helps everyone reflect and get value from other people’s experiences.

One thing was about how you introduce yourself to someone. In the UK, the instinctive question is “what do you do?” - but less of a thing in other countries. A job is, no doubt, a big part of our lives. It shouldn’t define you - though it can be part of your identity.

As personal branding becomes more important, presenting yourself matters - but only if it’s true to you. Being one person online and someone totally different in person is the real issue. Your reputation is real, so stay true to yourself - it’s you who works with colleagues and peers day to day, not your online persona.

The conversation encourages everyone to think about how they introduce themselves - not job title first, but something distinctive or genuinely part of who you are. From writer to coffee drinker to curious person - these all help us be more us. The conference lived this out - there were no job titles on name badges, just your name and an icebreaker question.

My take: the unpolished, real version of a story is almost always worth more than the manufactured one.

Pitch Slapped: What Nobody Says About Agency-Client Relationships

It’s really refreshing to hear this topic discussed openly at an industry event - it’s something a lot of people in employer branding feel and go through, but rarely say it out loud.

One theme was that clients sometimes forget an agency has other clients, breeding unrealistic, ASAP expectations. But agencies often get selected precisely because of the variety of clients they work across - this isn’t always acknowledged once a client assumes they’re the only one being served.

In-house teams often navigate internal approval chains agency people don’t see, which can explain a lot of the back-and-forth that frustrates people on the outside. Empathy on both sides is the answer.

Then there’s the balance between answering a brief exactly as given and offering what you think is the right solution. Is an unanswered brief a misunderstanding, or a genuine push toward something better? The answer, I think, is clarity: a short conversation, before or after the brief lands, avoids the email ping-pong of second-guessing each other.

There was a great audience question: should companies pay agencies to pitch? My own view: it pushes companies to select the right ones in the first place, and it shows a respect for time, money, and contribution from day one. But agencies need to position themselves clearly enough that companies know who to invite in the first place too.

Culture Isn’t a Content Strategy

Employer brand can tell powerful stories, but it can’t fix culture on its own. This session explored the tension between what we say externally and what people actually experience internally.

This was a really interesting session for me, considering I live in the employer content space - I often say I’m about helping organisations turn workplace culture into content. Employer brand doesn’t fix culture; the truest expressions of it are strategy and communications simply wrapped around a culture that already exists.

One of the POVs from the panel wasn’t just to communicate culture anymore - it was to actually shift it. My first reaction: agencies can talk all day about influencing culture, but they’re rarely embedded deep enough inside a business to move it through branding alone. Real change happens from really being in the inside.

The panel’s conversation built toward something similar. Spin collapses the moment employees stop believing the story told about their workplace - and if they don’t believe it, candidates won’t either.

Another key point was how company values get interpreted differently around the world. Real co-creation with local teams matters - if you don’t localise the meaning, it just becomes hollow.

My take: I’d frame the title differently - “Content strategy isn’t your culture, but it can help bring it alive.” Your culture already exists, good or bad, and content’s job is to give it a pulse, out loud, through real engagement with the people living inside it. Done well, the vibe comes through implicitly - and it cuts both ways, because the people who wouldn’t fit sense that just as clearly as the people who would.

The Debate: Employer Brand Is Dead. Long Live Reputation

2pm is when energy at an all day event usually dips - so this debate injected some spiciness into the room. Speakers were told which side they had to argue seconds before talking on stage, which made for some afternoon chuckles.

One argument centred on control - employer brand is what you can shape and own, while reputation is largely what happens to you. The counter-argument leaned on consumer trust: would you trust the company selling the air fryer, or the hundreds of reviews saying it burns your fish fingers? There was a very timely political comparison too - reputation is Kier Starmer, whereas Employer Branding is Andy Burnham.

One more point was that AI is now doing candidates’ research for them, stripping away even more control.

Part of the debate spilled into a different question - where employer brand should actually sit within a business. This age-old question could have been a session in its own right, so I picked it up with Richard Gordon afterwards.

Where should employer brand sit in an organisation? Listen to Richard Gordon 🔊

Richard worked both agency-side and across several different companies in-house, and I wanted his view given that breadth of experience. His take: there’s no universally right answer. He had a case for sitting within Talent & Learning, since housing EB only inside TA narrows it to attraction, without asking whether the external story holds up once someone’s inside the building.

The Candidate Trust Crisis

It’s great to see this topic discussed so openly - because for everything we do in employer brand and talent, the candidate is ultimately a huge part of it.

AI came up again: candidates using it to apply at scale and game the system, while companies use it to assess applications at the same scale - a trust crisis sitting right in the middle. But it’s just as much about ghosting, vague job descriptions, and the gap between what’s promised and what candidates actually experience.

One point that stood out for me was that this erosion of trust starts even earlier than the job market itself - tied to a broader decline in trust in institutions like universities, accelerated through COVID.

My take: the fix is mostly unglamorous. My mum and dad always said please and thank you doesn’t cost anything - and that’s what can get dropped first when teams are stretched and AI becomes “the answer’.

EB Therapy - Closing Q&A

This session is another good example of why this event is great - pre-submitted questions from all delegates were put into a box and plucked out for answering.

Two questions stood out for me. Are careers sites still necessary? Yes - but the role is shifting fast given how much job discovery now happens through AI. My own view: they need to stop being a build-it-and-forget asset and start operating like a living editorial hub. The other: how job search behaviour itself is changing.

There were plenty of other questions and side conversations too, and that was a great way to end the day - focused purely on value to the people attending.

And Relax: A Conversation With Claire de Souza After Another Epic Day 🔊

As the [un]conference wound down, I grabbed a drink and managed to catch Claire to find out why she gives up this much extra time, in an already busy life, to keep making this happen.

Here’s our conversation:

She really cares about doing this, and wants to build a space for genuinely good, unpolished conversation. What she’s built is deliberately hand-made, down to gluing lolly sticks onto cards and stuffing sweets into bags in her living room.

Claire wants people to leave with more than a goody bag and pages of notes. She wants them feeling a bit challenged, and a bit refreshed. Nothing beats human connection - very true, Claire!

It was a great event, and I’m super glad to have been part of it again. Keep an eye out for other events by The EB Space.

Chris

Host, Employer Content Marketing

Founder, Content Marketing Pod Ltd

Why I wrote this

It started as an idea during on an early morning walk. Then when I started talking to people about it the feedback was positive. So I decided to write this guide that’s here in my hand.

And I wrote it for good reason.

The content attention crisis is the single biggest shift in employer content. And it’s the problem this guide helps you solve.

In a world of constant notifications and endless feeds, the competition for attention is brutal. Today’s candidates are drowning in content. Holding attention has never been harder.

Which is exactly why a lean approach and being self-sustainable matters. Rather than committing months to planning campaigns, or relying on spending tens or hundreds of thousands on productions with uncertain outcomes, lean lets you:

• Test ideas quickly, without breaking the budget

• Learn what resonates with your specific audiences

• Scale what works across roles, business areas, channels and formats

After months of writing and editing and building in between work, family and friends, The Lean Employer Content Guide is now available.

What it is

The Lean Employer Content Guide is a practical framework for in-house teams in employer branding and talent acquisition.

Lean is a way to be more self-sustainable and to take small steps towards something bigger.

It’s the approach I’ve built my business around, and it’s how I’ve taken clients from mobile-shot employee videos all the way through to full video productions - without the blockbusting film budgets.It’s also how I’ve run this newsletter, podcast, YouTube Channel and my LinkedIn.

The Lean Employer Content Guide is built around a framework that covers two things: the foundations you need to get right before you start creating — how you think, how you plan, and how you set yourself up to produce consistently — and a three-stage cycle for actually running your content operation.

Every chapter ends with five take-action items you can run that same week. It’s nearly 90 pages, about an hour’s read end to end, and built to be dipped into as a working reference rather than read once and shelved.

What you get

• The printed guide itself, with notes pages built in so you can capture your own thinking as you read

• The 4-Week Sprint Toolkit, to run your first Content Cycle as a proper time-boxed sprint

• The Content Cycle Canvas, a single-page worksheet worth pinning above your desk

• Occasional emails from me, nothing relentless

For my first print run the guide costs £26, UK shipping included.

Order the printed guide - £26

Thank you to the early-morning starts, the coffee shops, the sofa sessions, and to everyone who encouraged me to turn the idea of this guide into the guide itself. You know who you are.

Chris

Host, Employer Content Marketing

Founder, Content Marketing Pod Ltd

There’s a YouTube channel called Life At The BBC.

If you haven’t come across it, it does exactly what it says on the tin — a peek behind the curtain at one of the world’s most recognisable organisations. Who works there. What they actually do. What it feels like to be part of it.

Over the last few months they’ve been quietly putting out a stream of YouTube Shorts. Short, punchy, filmed simply. And if you work in employer brand or internal comms, I recommend spending twenty minutes with them — because there’s a masterclass buried in there.

Here’s what stands out.

The setup is deceptively simple

The first thing you notice watching these Shorts is that nobody’s spent a fortune on kit. It’s sometimes a walk-and-talk through a familiar BBC location. And sometimes a quick explainer from someone in a craft role you’d never normally hear from.

That’s intentional because one of the biggest excuses I’ve heard from in-house teams is that they can’t do video properly without a production budget. The BBC is proving otherwise, week after week, on a short-form format that anyone with a camera and a subject can replicate.

The format is a permission slip to crack on. If they can do it lean, so can you.

But the content goes somewhere most employer content doesn’t

Here’s what I find really interesting.

The Shorts aren’t just “here’s what it’s like to work here” fluff. They lift the lid on what the BBC actually does — the craft, the decision-making, the experience of being inside a big, complex organisation with a lot of moving parts.

That’s a different angle. Most employer content stays surface-level: the office looks nice, the people are friendly, there are good benefits. This is my day full of commuting, coffee, lunch and maybe a hint of the work in between. Tick, tick, tick. The BBC content goes deeper. It shows process. It shows expertise. It treats the audience like grown-ups who are genuinely curious about how things get made.

This content goes from “here’s our culture” to “here’s how we work” — and I think it is one of the most underused moves in employer branding. It builds credibility in a way that a careers page can never quite manage. People don’t just want to know what it’s like to work somewhere. They want to know what they’d actually be doing.

Building intrigue

There’s one more thing working in the BBC’s favour, and it’s worth naming honestly: the organisation itself carries intrigue.

People are curious about what happens behind a Strictly camera, or inside a BBC news studio, or in the writers’ room on a flagship drama. That curiosity exists before the content starts. The Shorts plug straight into it.

You might be thinking: that’s easy for the BBC. We’re not a household name.

Fair point — but only partially. Every organisation has things that would genuinely surprise an outsider. The decisions that happen in the room. The skills that nobody associates with your sector. The moments where your people are doing something quietly extraordinary. Most of it never sees the light of day because teams assume it’s not interesting.

It is. It just needs someone to find it and film it.

The BBC’s advantage is a head start on intrigue. Your advantage is that your story is probably less told — which means there’s more room to surprise people.

Here are more of their YouTube Shorts.

What to actually do with this

If you’re building or refreshing your employer content programme, here are a few things:

Pick a format and stick to it. The BBC Shorts work partly because they’re consistent. The audience knows what they’re getting. That predictability is an asset — it builds a habit of watching.

Go beyond culture, into craft. Find the people in your organisation who are genuinely good at something specific, and put them on camera explaining it. Not their job title. What they actually do. The granularity is what makes it compelling.

Let the organisation’s reality be the story. You don’t need a narrative overlay or a clever concept. What happens at your company every day is already interesting. The job is getting it out of people’s heads and onto screen.

Use the short format as a discipline. The constraint of short form forces you to find the single sharpest thing in any given conversation. That’s a skill worth building — and it applies well beyond short-form video.

A note on where this fits

This piece is part of a series I’m running through the rest of the year — looking at organisations doing employer content well, and pulling out the thinking behind it. Some are household names. Some aren’t. What they have in common is a clear instinct about what they’re trying to do and why.

If you’re working through how to approach this for your own organisation, you’ll be interested in a guide for in-house teams that I’m release very soon. It’s called The Lean Guide To Employer Content, and it’s packed with guidance for in-house teams who want to build self-sustainable and scalable content functions. So if you want to know more about it then keep an eye on here or subscribe and get it in your inbox.

More to come in my Field Notes on Employer Storytelling Series. If there’s an organisation you think I should be looking at, drop it in the comments — I’m always looking for the next one.

Thanks

Chris

Chris Le’cand-Harwood

Host, Employer Content Marketing

Founder, Content Marketing Pod Ltd

This article covers the things we talked about. Watch the episode above, or listen to it below.

The agency landscape has changed a lot across mine and Nick’s careers. Recruitment advertising agencies that used to book media and fill it with creative evolved into something more. Websites, brochures, events, social media, employee comms… and employer branding.

Then over the last decade we saw employer brand emerge as agency projects, new specialist agencies, and in-house job titles.

So with the rise of in-house specialists and them working with other in-house teams, there’s a commercial question from the bosses who hold the purse strings - do you need an agency at all?

But the question isn’t whether to use an agency. It’s what they’re actually there to do — and when.

Because the thing agencies do really well, the thing that’s hard to replicate inside an organisation, is creativity. Not creativity as a vague concept — but the kind that comes from working across dozens of organisations, sectors and challenges. From having different reference points in the room. From seeing the same problem play out in ten different ways and knowing what actually works.

And that’s not just “words, pictures and pixels” creativity. It’s problem solving creativity.

The opportunity is agencies bringing that creativity at the right time, alongside in-house teams who have their own deep knowledge of the organisation. Not taking over. Not just delivering a brief and walking away. But coming in when it matters, adding the thing that’s genuinely hard to build internally, and leaving something better behind.

That sounds like a true partnership, right?

The knowledge transfer opportunity

One of the things Nick and I talked about is how much value sits in the movement of knowledge — in both directions.

People who’ve worked agency-side before moving in-house are often great hires for an organisation. They’ve seen the same problems play out across multiple organisations, built instincts from a breadth of experience, and can transfer that to a team quickly.

But there’s an opportunity for agencies too. Rather than the traditional model — take the brief, go away, come back with the work — what if agencies embedded alongside in-house teams, filled in the gaps, amplified what was already happening, and left the team genuinely better than they found it?

That’s a different kind of engagement. Smaller maybe, but higher impact [and value]. And it keeps the relationship going — because you’re building capability rather than creating dependency.

Look at the RADs six or seven years ago. The usual suspects. Now there’s a much wider range — smaller agencies, boutique outfits, even in-house teams entering their own work. That diversity is healthy. It pushes innovation, it pushes the bigger agencies to think differently, and it creates better work across the board.

And when agencies shed people — as has been happening — you get independent consultants and small groups doing things differently. Faster to mobilise, lower overhead, able to bolt into a team for a sprint and step back out. That model is growing because it meets a real need [and one of the reasons I set up my business].

What next?

The future of employer branding agencies isn’t smaller or larger. It’s different, more targeted, and more about knowing when to come in and what to bring — rather than owning the whole thing.

What’s going to be happening in five years is being worked out right now. In new agency shapes, in how knowledge moves between organisations, in conversations like the one I had with Nick. That feels like an exciting place to be.

If you know someone who would find this topic helpful then please do pass it on to them.

And if you want to talk about how I can help you with my fractional content marketing capabilities then I’d be happy to talk.

Thanks

Chris

Chris Le’cand-Harwood

Host, Employer Content Marketing

Founder, Content Marketing Pod Ltd

With global employee disengagement on the rise (highlighted in Gallup’s State of the Workplace report), organisations can no longer afford to treat culture as a “soft” topic.

In Episode 155 we’re looking at why culture impacts profitability, retention, and employer reputation.

Crista and Matt share insights from their work helping organisations manage employee reviews and online reputation, as well as lessons from their book The Review Cycle. Together, they dive into how transparency, feedback, and employee voice shape both internal culture and external perception.

Crista and Matt also go into why you’ll “never be better than your star ratings” and how organisations can proactively manage their reputation without manipulating the truth—by amplifying real employee experiences.

Watch the episode here:

Listen to the episode here.

About the guests:
Crista and Matt Vance are the co-founders of Mobrium, a platform that helps organisations manage employee reviews and improve employer reputation across the web. They are also the hosts of The Culture Profit podcast and co-authors of The Review Cycle, a book focused on feedback, ratings, and workplace culture.

Links:
- Connect with Crista and Matt on LinkedIn
- Check out The Culture Profit podcast
- Get the book: The Review Cycle
- Learn more about Mobrium

If you know someone who would find this topic helpful then please do pass it on to them.

Thanks

Chris

Chris Le’cand-Harwood

Host, Employer Content Marketing

Founder, Content Marketing Pod Ltd

So last week I found myself on the 22nd floor of 22 Bishopsgate in a room with about 300 other people, looking out over London while Steven Bartlett and Dr Kristen Holmes got comfortable on stage.

The event was called The Reset. Chapter 2 put it on, and Nick Homer kindly invited me along so I thought I’d share some of the gems from the stage.

The room was full of CHROs, CPOs, Heads of People, Directors of Talent Acquisition and Heads of Talent Acquisition. That tells you something — two names pulled this crowd out for a Thursday night. That doesn’t happen often these days.

The conversation on stage was one that’s on the mind of many: what leadership skills help you succeed when AI keeps reshuffling the deck?

Over the next hour or so, Steven and Kristen went in a load of directions. Failure. Humility. 1% gains. Psychological safety. Storytelling. Hiring that actually predicts how someone will perform rather than how they want to be seen. The big thing: being human is the moat, and the organisations built for this decade are the ones willing to question everything, experiment constantly, and push through the paper walls.

I filmed five segments of the conversation. Here they are:

Why “unromantic” leaders are going to win the AI decade

Steven went in hard early doors with this one.

His argument: if the correct answer to every part of your business is now changing faster than it ever has, you cannot afford to be romantic about how you do what you do. Stay romantic about the impact. Be completely ruthless about the process.

Then he tied it to identity. “Someone would rather go to the ends of the earth than make an edit to their own identity,” he said. Because our identities are our harbour. They’re where we feel safe. But in a world where new AI models drop every week and yesterday’s correct answer is already wrong, that harbour quietly becomes a liability. Cue cognitive dissonance — the brain’s reflex to reject whichever piece of new information threatens the old one. It happens to leaders. It happens to their teams.

So what do you do about it? His answer: experiment at a ridiculous rate, fail openly, and build a company where humility runs top to bottom. Flight Story literally has a Head of Experimentation and Failure. They track the number of experiments and failures they run, and the job is to get that number up. “Kill the guesswork” is apparently a phrase the interns use as fluently as the CEOs.

And he was refreshingly honest about the personal cost of getting this wrong. His first startup failed, he said, because he couldn’t bring himself to admit he was wrong. That stuck.

Have a watch.

Scaling WHOOP from 30 to nearly 1,000 through high intensity and high humility

When Kristen joined WHOOP there were 30 people. There are now nearly a thousand, and they’re hiring another 600 this year. In the meantime they’ve switched their model, switched their subscriptions, and gone from a hardware business to a software one.

So when she talks about change, she’s knows all about it.

Ask her what has actually held through all of that and she points at two things. The values they hire for — “high intensity, high humility” — and a flat-out willingness to experiment in public. Loads of what WHOOP has tried has failed.

What you see now as a neat suite of features is really the result of an enormous amount of trial, error and tweaking.

Celebrating the small things is big thing for the business. WHOOP runs a gratitude ritual at the start of every meeting. You thank someone. It has to be someone outside your team. It loops back round through HR. They’ve got a Slack channel where the little wins get celebrated.

On paper, it may sound fluffy. In practice, Kristen’s point is that the work is unglamorous most of the time, and psychological momentum is the thing that keeps people going when nobody’s clapping for the big stuff.

Worth a listen.

Psychological safety, storytelling, and spies

I couldn’t stop recording this stretch of the conversation. So it’s the longest segment, but worth the time.

Kristen kicked off with the research. Google’s Project Aristotle found psychological safety was the defining trait of their best teams — and those teams produced $4.5m more than the average. Her point: bring it up as a bottom-line conversation, not a wellness one.

Then Steven talked about something fundamental to us humans - storytelling. Facts and stats don’t really move people. Stories do. He’s interviewed a lot of former spies for his Diary of a CEO, and they all say the same thing: the real skill is listening. Andrew Bustamante - a former CIA Agent - told Steven he could get your secrets in nine months, starting with a casual bump-in at an event… exactly like this one.

Then he tied it back to his own company. Flight Story disbanded their innovation team and embedded innovators across every department, wrapped in a simple story: our people have magic in them, and our job is to remove the stuff that isn’t.

His take on failure: focus on the input, not the output. Reward the attempt. They’re literally building a hall of failure. Classic Bartlett.

Have a watch — there’s a lot in this one.

Hire the people who push through “paper walls”

Steven’s “paper wall” idea worth hearing about.

He’s sceptical of psychometric tests that ask if you’re ambitious. Of course you’ll say yes. He wants to know what you’d actually *do* in a specific, awkward situation. So his company built a culture test using real scenarios. Every answer sounds reasonable on paper. Your biggest client’s locked out of Instagram on a Saturday and the only person with the password is on honeymoon — what do you do? A supplier says delivery has slipped from four weeks to six. Do you scale back, push it out, or ask why it takes six weeks?

His most successful people ask why. They push through the paper wall.

He cited Amancio Ortega moving Zara’s supply chain from nine months to 14 days. Most thought this would be impossible but he pushed on. And Bernard Sado was told men would never wheel suitcases — until he sold them to women first. The first queue at the retailer was mostly men. Now 99% of suitcases have wheels.

120,000 people have taken Steven’s test. He says he’s never found a better predictor of performance, in either direction.

Watch him explain it.

Why you should clap for the air freshener

1% gains. They really do make a difference.

Flight Story has a Slack channel where the team literally claps when someone makes a change that looks petty on the surface. Jemima swaps the air freshener in one of the podcast studios. Somebody posts. Clap and flare emojis all over the place.

1% changes look petty in foresight and obvious in hindsight. He gave one example — they changed seven seconds at the top of *Diary of a CEO*, and the view-to-subscription rate went up 178%.

His argument: chasing big step changes is demoralising because they’re rare. Chasing small ones is motivating because they happen all the time, and they compound. That’s a culture you can build on purpose.

A good night out

The Reset was well worth the trip into London. 300+ people in one room, along with the great conversations, really gave me energy. AI is changing the game in front of our very eyes, so to have such influential and engaging humans on stage was really valuable.

And I always enjoy bumping into familiar faces and meeting new ones!

Big thanks to Nick Homer for the invite, and to Leo Harrison and the Chapter 2 team for putting the night on and running it so well.

Chris

Chris Le’cand-Harwood

Host, Employer Content Marketing

Founder, Content Marketing Pod Ltd

Right now, the dominant model is using employees as a distribution channel. Brand creates content. Employees reshare it. A bit more reach, not much more engagement, and the people involved don't feel especially connected to any of it.

The shift - and this is what this conversation is really about - is from distribution to co-creation. When employer brand teams work with employees to surface their genuine expertise, knowledge, opinions and stories, something different happens.

Employees are more bought in. They share the content because it's actually theirs. And the content does more: it helps retain existing clients and customers, brings in new ones, keeps people motivated, and attracts the talent you're trying to reach.

That's not a content strategy. That's demonstrable business impact.

Andy Lambert has been building towards this thinking for over a decade. He co-founded ContentCal in 2016, grew it to become the fastest-growing platform in its category against Hootsuite, Sprinklr and Sprout, and sold it to Adobe in 2021.

He built that business almost entirely through people-powered content. He's now the author of Spheres of Influence - a framework for turning genuine human voices into sustainable word-of-mouth growth.

Andy and I have known each other for about ten years. This is a conversation where the thinking has had time to develop - and it shows.

What we talked about:
- Why co-creating content with employees beats just using them as a distribution channel
- How giving employees a genuine voice creates buy-in - and better content
- The business case: talent attraction, employee motivation, reputation, sales and client retention
- Why LinkedIn's AI discovery shift makes this more urgent than ever right now
- How to get employees creating content without handing them a blank page
- Andy's six spheres of influence — a practical framework for personality-led growth

Find Andy and get his book:
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/andyrlambert/
Spheres of Influence

Watch or listen to the episode here:

How are you getting the most value from employee advocacy? It’d be good to hear your thoughts.

Thanks

Chris

Chris Le’cand-Harwood

Host, Employer Content Marketing

Founder, Content Marketing Pod Ltd

The pattern most people in EB will recognise goes something like this. An organisation has a hiring challenge. Someone decides what they need is better employer brand content. A campaign gets made. Maybe an EVP refresh. A careers site. A hero film. Content goes out. The Glassdoor score stays where it is.

Nick put it in a way I thought was great:

”Sometimes the question can often be, how can we use our employer brand to get over the fact we’ve got a poor Glassdoor score? Rather than, if we’ve got a poor Glassdoor score, what are we going to do about it?”

Using employer brand to paper over something that hasn’t been fixed. You can produce the best career site in your sector, a compelling EVP, well-crafted social content. But if the experience people have when they arrive doesn’t match what you told them, none of it does what you need it to do.

Nick used the restaurant analogy during our chat: If your reviews say the food is poor, you don’t run a campaign about how great the food is. You fix the food. Then you tell people about it. The same logic applies to employer brand, but most organisations don’t operate that way.

There’s also something else we got into. The loyalty equation between employers and employees has shifted. When people can see redundancy decisions playing out in real time on LinkedIn, when AI is creating uncertainty about job security, reputation matters more than ever. And it isn’t built by campaigns. It’s built by what actually happens.

The thing we kept coming back to in our chat was the question of agility. How do you build an employer brand that keeps up with what’s actually going on inside an organisation?

Nick argues the EVP has to be treated as a living framework, not a static asset. I think he’s right.

”The EVP has to be organic and has to be iterative. If you’re still talking about the same thing that you were a year ago or 18 months ago, it should be actually a bit out of date just by the very nature of the companies changing.”

We also talked about what happens once someone is inside the business. An EVP that only works as an attraction tool is only doing half the job. There’s real opportunity to use it internally too, reinforcing what made the proposition compelling and being honest about the gaps. Most organisations running surveys already have data on projected tenure and what’s not landing. That data should be feeding into EB strategy.

The teams doing employer branding well right now aren’t necessarily producing the best content. They’re asking better questions. The content follows from that. It doesn’t lead it.

Here’s the full episode to watch or listen - would love to get your thoughts on this topic.

Thanks

Chris

Chris Le’cand-Harwood

Host, Employer Content Marketing

Founder, Content Marketing Pod Ltd

Of course those things exist, and they can be powerful. But they’re only part of the picture.

Much of the real work of employer branding happens in the day-to-day. It’s about how teams test ideas, adapt their approach, learn what resonates with employees and candidates, and gradually build systems that help the organisation tell its story.

In other words, employer branding is rarely plug-and-play marketing campaigns. It’s an iterative process.

This is something we explore in Episode 151.

In this episode, I speak with Dennis Borchers from Tractor Supply Company about how their team is building employer branding inside the organisation.

The episode is part of a series supported by Cliquify – the Employer Branding Operating System for organisations – where I speak with in-house practitioners about how employer branding really works inside organisations and what the work looks like day to day.

Starting with the foundations

When employer branding came into Dennis’ team’s remit, there was already activity happening in the organisation. Recruiters were posting roles on social media, channels existed, and people in the business playing their part.

So rather than launching a large campaign, the first step was to look carefully at what already existed. Were the channels still reflecting the organisation as it is today? Were recruiters being supported with the right assets and resources? And was there consistency in how the company appeared across platforms?

This kind of foundational work may not always be the most visible part of employer branding, but it’s essential if the work is going to scale.

Recognising advocacy that already exists

Another interesting part of the conversation was around employee-generated content.

At Tractor Supply there were already employees sharing parts of their lives online — often because they genuinely enjoy the lifestyle the company supports.

The team realised this content was incredibly authentic. So rather than immediately building a formal advocacy programme, they simply started connecting with some of those employees and asking if they could share their posts on the company’s employer brand channels.

It was a small step, but it allowed the organisation to highlight real stories that genuinely reflect the culture of the business.

Why experimentation matters - Start Up Mode

One of the biggest things that resonated with me from the conversation was that employer branding evolves through experimentation. Teams test ideas, see what works, and refine their approach over time.

I like to call this “startup mode” - a mindset that allows the team to try things, learn quickly, and gradually build systems that support recruiters and share employee stories more effectively.

For many employer brand teams, particularly smaller ones, that approach will feel very familiar. And importantly, it isn’t a sign that something is missing.

In many cases, it’s exactly how effective employer branding should take shape. Because life doesn’t fit into a theoretical strategy deck.

Listen to the full conversation

If you work in employer branding, talent acquisition, or HR communications, there’s plenty more in the conversation with Dennis about how this approach is evolving inside Tractor Supply.

Employer Content Marketing Podcast - Episode 151 (Cliquify Series)

I’d be curious to hear your perspective too.

Does employer branding in your organisation feel like a carefully designed programme, or something that’s evolving step by step? It may be a bit of both!

Thanks

Chris

Chris Le’cand-Harwood

Host, Employer Content Marketing

Founder, Content Marketing Pod Ltd

Understanding this isn’t a nice to have - it’s a strategic business imperative. It’s what makes businesses succeed.

I was fortunate enough to be invited to the launch of The Global Workplace Happiness Report at Google in London - hosted by The Happiness Index.

I did a Substack Livestream with Matt Phelan [Co-Founder of The Happiness Index] on stage before the day kicked off.

We cover the why and what of The Global Workplace Happiness Report [it’s based on 1.9 million data points!]. I ask Matt about the key themes here:

It’s always great chatting with Matt - his third time on the podcast - and this is episode 150! A worth topic for such a milestone 🫶🏻

Matt and the team do really important work so it’s a real privilege to chat with them and share this episode with you.

Want to dive into the report?

You can download it here.

And get on to LinkedIn to connect with Matt.

Now on to the rest of the event - looking forward to the talks and having some more conversations about workplace happiness today. Subscribe for more content like this in your inbox.

Good times. Thanks for the invite Matt!

Chris

Chris Le’cand-Harwood

Host, Employer Content Marketing

Founder, Content Marketing Pod Ltd

It happens in leadership discussions. In project debriefs. In team events. In everyday conversations between employees.

The problem is those moments rarely get captured properly. Because teams are busy doing the thing!

And afterwards someone usually says: “We should have got loads of content from that.”

When you approach it more intentionally, something interesting happens.

A single day can generate 20+ pieces of meaningful content - short-form video, employee insight clips, LinkedIn posts, written articles, and content that can support hiring campaigns for months afterwards.

And it doesn’t feel like marketing.

It’s simply employees sharing their knowledge, experience and perspective. The kind of conversations that already happen internally, but rarely get captured and shared externally.

That kind of content tends to work because it does a few important things at once.

It fuels hiring campaigns with credible, human stories. It helps employees raise their professional profile. It strengthens internal engagement and recognition. And it builds reputation for both the organisation and the people inside it.

There are a few ways to make this work depending on the situation.

- Sometimes it’s agile, on-the-day interviews with a lightweight setup.

- Sometimes it’s bringing in a small crew to record structured conversations.

- And sometimes it’s running a remote studio-style interview day so employees can join easily from anywhere.

But the key thing is simply planning to capture the moment before it happens.

If you’ve got something coming up and would love to turn it into months’ worth of content, then feel free to message me.

The Culture Profit Podcast focuses on something that really resonates with me: that workplace culture is not just an internal “people topic”, but something that can directly influence business performance.

Strong cultures shape better products, better customer experiences, and ultimately stronger commercial outcomes.

So I was super happy to get an invite on to their podcast recently. The more we can connect culture with cash, the better.

Here are some of the themes from the episode:

Why culture needs to be seen, not just described

Many organisations invest time defining their values, their mission, and their Employer Value Proposition. But when people outside the organisation encounter that messaging, it can feel abstract.

Statements like “we value collaboration” or “our people are our greatest asset” are common, but they rarely tell you what it actually feels like to work somewhere.

Content changes that.

When employees talk about the work they do, the problems they solve, and the impact they have, culture stops being a slogan and starts becoming something tangible. A short video conversation, a podcast discussion, or a behind-the-scenes story can reveal far more about an organisation than really polished piece of copy on a careers page.

That’s why I’m so interested in helping organisations capture these stories.

Employees are the most credible storytellers

One of the themes we discussed in the episode is the importance of letting employees speak for themselves.

Too often employer branding content tries to sound like marketing. But audiences - especially candidates - are increasingly good at recognising polished messaging.

What they respond to instead is authenticity.

• An apprentice explaining how they faced the world of work for the first time.

• A nurse describing the moments they see the real impact of their work, despite the challenges.

• A graduate talking about what culture looks like in their day to day.

These kinds of conversations create content that is informative, credible and often genuinely inspiring. They allow people outside the organisation to understand the purpose behind the work, not just the job description.

The important thing is to create the environment that helps them bring their authentic self to the screen or mic. Here’s a clip about how I do that.

From storytelling to business value

When organisations consistently share thoughtful, useful content about the work happening inside their teams, several things start to happen.

First, they build trust with potential candidates. People considering a role gain a much clearer picture of the environment they might be joining.

Second, the organisation develops a reputation for expertise and openness. The same content that attracts candidates can also resonate with customers, partners and industry peers.

And third, employees themselves often feel a stronger sense of pride and ownership when their work is shared and recognised publicly.

In other words, workplace culture content doesn’t just support hiring - it contributes to brand, reputation and commercial success.

A practical way to start

One of the points I always emphasise is that organisations don’t need a large production budget to start creating this kind of content. The most important ingredient is curiosity.

Start by recording conversations with people who are doing interesting work inside the organisation. Ask them about the challenges they’re tackling, the expertise they’ve developed, and the moments that made them proud.

Those conversations can become podcast episodes, short videos, articles or social clips.

Over time, these stories build a body of content that reveals what the organisation actually does and why it matters.

It also means you can build internal confidence, proof of concept and business cases for higher production content that sits alongside this.

Watch or listen to the full conversation

If you’re interested in employer branding, organisational culture, or the role content can play in connecting the two, I hope you enjoy the conversation.

You can watch the full episode here:

Thanks again to Matt and Crista for inviting me. It was a great opportunity to chat about how organisations can move beyond describing culture - and start showing it through the stories of the people who create it every day.

Check out their podcast here.

✅ Maintain consistent employer branding across teams or regions

✅ Balance global guidelines with local flexibility

✅ Build processes that help teams collaborate

✅ Use technology and platforms to scale employer branding

✅ Prove the value of employer branding to the wider business

✅ Build internal communities that drive adoption and momentum

The key lesson: Scaling employer branding is about aligning people, processes and technology across the organisation.

Listen to the episode here.

This episode is part of a series supported by Cliquify - the Employer Branding Operating System for organisations - featuring conversations with in-house practitioners about how employer branding really works inside organisations.

Find out more about Cliquify here.

🗓️ The next episode in this 4-part series sees me chatting with another in-house practitioner, so be sure to subscribe to get it direct to your inbox.

And it’s how potential candidates decide whether they can see themselves belonging somewhere.

When employer content is done well it has the power to bring an organisation’s culture to life in a way no campaign slogan ever could.

The challenge isn’t believing in the value of content.

The challenge is how you consistently create effective employer content in a way that’s sustainable, and scalable.

So when content is clearly such an important part of employer branding, the question becomes: what do you actually do with it?

How do you approach employer content in a way that’s intentional and sustainable, rather than always feeling like you’re catching up?

This is why I put together this one-pager - the Employer Content Marketing Engine — drawing on years of working with employer brand and talent teams, and conversations with over 140 guests on my podcast.

It’s a simple framework designed to help teams think about employer content as a system, offering a clear direction without prescribing a one-size-fits-all solution. So feel free to take this and use it to help you and your team [and pass it on to anyone else who would find this helpful].

Content matters…but only when it’s intentional

Most employer brand, talent acquisition and people communications teams aren’t short on ideas.

If anything, they’re surrounded by them:

• Employee stories they want to tell

• Leaders with opinions and perspectives

• Recruiters hearing the same questions from candidates again and again

The problem is in finding the time, structure and approach to turn those ideas into content that:

• Feels authentic

• Is aligned to the EVP

• Reaches the right people

• And supports hiring and reputation over time

Without a system, content quickly becomes reactive.

It’s produced when there’s urgency, pressure, or a vacancy spike — and then quietly disappears again.

What’s needed is a clear train of thought.

A way of working that helps teams create content at the right time, in the right cycles, with a sense of continuity rather than constant reinvention.

Start with strategy, not output

An engine isn’t anything without the spark. That’s where strategy comes in.

This isn’t about channels, formats, or posting frequency.

It’s about being clear on:

• What your EVP really stands for

• The stories, opinions and challenges that sit behind it

• And how content can help people feel what a culture of an organisation is really like even before they become a candidate.

The guiding principle comes directly from content marketing:

Earn attention through stories, opinion and advice — rather than trying to interrupt people. Be the content, not just the ads.

When employer content is genuinely useful, insightful and human, people lean in.

When it feels forced or promotional, they switch off.

Everything else in the engine flows from this strategic clarity.

The Employer Content Marketing Engine: how the system works

Rather than treating employer content as a series of disconnected activities, this drives a continuous loop of content. Each stage feeds the next, and each cycle strengthens what comes after it.

1. Quarterly content series

The starting point is a quarterly content series.

Instead of chasing one-off ideas week by week, plan one flagship series every quarter — often anchored in video and/or audio.

These series are built around:

• Real challenges your organisation is navigating

• Topics your audiences genuinely care about

• The expertise that already exists inside the business

Quarterly planning creates focus. It gives content a theme, a direction, and a lifespan beyond a single post.

Just as importantly, it creates breathing space — time to think, plan and create without everything feeling urgent.

2. Workplace content creator community

Strong employer content doesn’t come from one small team sitting in isolation. It comes from people across the organisation.

A workplace content creator community enables employees to become contributors, not amplifiers. And I really believe that distinction matters.

This means:

• Capturing lived experience, not marketing messages

• Encouraging stories, perspectives and lessons learned

• Supporting people with guidance, structure and confidence

When done well, this approach increases authenticity while reducing pressure on employer brand teams.

3. Clip, repurpose and multiply

Once you have strong core content, the question becomes how to make it work harder. Get more for your effort, time and money.

This is where repurposing comes in — not as a volume exercise, but as a way of respecting both your team’s effort and your audience’s time.

A single piece of core content can be thoughtfully turned into:

• Short-form video

• Social posts

• Articles and carousels

• Email content and landing pages

The aim isn’t to flood channels. It’s to create consistency, reach and meaning.

4. Organic and paid distribution, working together

Organic and paid distribution are often treated as separate conversations. In reality, they work best when they play together.

Organic content helps build:

• Trust

• Familiarity

• A consistent presence over time

Paid distribution should then amplify what’s already resonating — extending reach rather than compensating for weak content.

When both are working together, distribution becomes a multiplier rather than a sticking plaster.

5. Lead generation and nurturing

Employer content doesn’t need to be overtly about jobs to be effective. But it should support demand and decision-making.

This stage focuses on:

• Capturing interest from the right people

• Nurturing them with genuinely useful content

• Introducing job opportunities naturally, when the timing makes sense

The outcome isn’t about more applicants — it’s better-informed, better-aligned candidates.

What this approach enables

When teams adopt a system like this, employer content starts to feel very different. Instead of campaign spikes, there’s continuity. Instead of constant pressure, there’s momentum. Instead of guesswork, there’s learning and optimisation.

The result is a sustainable, scalable employer content system that:

• Strengthens employer brand over time

• Supports recruiters and hiring teams

• Helps people understand your organisation before they apply

What’s coming next

Over the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing deeper dives into each stage of the Employer Content Marketing Engine — from planning quarterly content series, to building workplace creator communities, to making distribution and nurturing actually work.

Each piece will be practical and designed to help teams move forward, whether they’re building this internally or figuring out where to start.

And if you want to talk

Everything in this framework can be built in-house.

But if you want support — strategic, practical, or somewhere in between — I work with organisations through:

• Fractional employer content leadership

• Content strategy and planning

• Employer content production and distribution

I’m always happy to talk things through. If this way of thinking resonates, feel free to reply here, reach out on LinkedIn, or start a conversation.

More to come soon.

Last night, the RAD Awards announced their winners, and one piece caught my eye: Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust’s 90-second video, which won the Use of a Single Video category.

I’d actually talked about this same video a few months ago, when it won at the Recruitment Marketing Awards.

It’s simple, authentic, and emotional. Nurses, midwives, and patients are shown naturally, giving a real sense of what life in the maternity unit is like. There’s even a short poem woven through the narrative, highlighting the impact the organisation has on people’s lives. And it’s all achieved on a £15K budget [it won the £15K or under category at the Recruitment Marketing Awards in October].

I love doing these short dives into award winning work, because you don’t get to see much behind the winner’s name up in lights on the night. Taking time out to look at award-winning work is a valuable way to learn, get inspired, and reflect on what makes recruitment content genuinely effective.

Huge congratulations to all the winners and nominees from the RAD Awards last night. Shame I couldn’t make it this year - it’s always good fun!

Heres’ the full video:

Another tool. Another trend. Another thing we’re supposed to care about.

But when it comes to employer branding and talent attraction, AI isn’t a gimmick. It’s solving a problem teams have struggled with for years.

I was discussing this recently with Erik Rivas, alongside my fellow Employer Content Club co-host Chris Murdoch, and one idea stood out:

AI isn’t about creating fake stories or replacing human voices.

It’s about extending the life of real ones.

The old way of using employee video

For a long time, the process looked something like this:

You’d record great employee interviews. You’d publish the videos. You’d slice them into clips. You’d post them on socials and add them to a careers site.

Valuable? Yes. Exhaustive? Also yes.

Once that content was “used”, it largely stayed where it was. Revisiting it months later meant manually rewatching footage, pulling quotes, or starting again with new filming.

What AI changes

Now those same videos can be treated as something more powerful: searchable, reusable data.

The words employees say — their experiences, motivations, doubts, and advice — can be revisited and reshaped for different purposes over time.

AI allows teams to:

• Turn employee interviews into blogs, social posts, and campaign messaging

• Reframe existing content around new hiring priorities or challenges

• Answer candidate questions using real employee language, not corporate copy

You’re not inventing anything new.

You’re unlocking what you’ve already invested in.

A simple but powerful example

Erik shared a great example from his work at Police Now.

“Why should I join Police Now?”

That question might be asked by:

• A graduate

• A career changer

• A former teacher

• Someone five years into a different profession

The question is the same, but the context isn’t.

With AI, teams can surface stories from people who’ve actually made those transitions and answer the question in a way that feels relevant to each audience — using the same core bank of employee content.

Not personalised one-to-one. But intelligently relevant at scale.

What this means for employer branding

Employer branding isn’t like selling a product.Candidates can’t return a career move.

They can’t undo a cultural mismatch.

They’re making a high-stakes decision, often over a long period of time.

That means brands need to:

• Show up consistently

• Earn attention repeatedly

• Stay front of mind long before someone applies

The problem? Most budgets and teams can’t support constant new content creation.

AI doesn’t fix that by making content fake or automated.

It fixes it by helping teams:

• Do more with what they already have

• Stay visible without burning out employees or budgets

• Keep authenticity at the centre, not polish

The real opportunity

Used well, AI doesn’t dilute employer brand content.

It amplifies it. Real voices. More relevance. More consistency.

And finally, a way to meet the volume the world demands — without losing the humanity that makes employer branding work in the first place.

That’s not something to roll your eyes at. Exciting times.

Erik shared how they do this in practice using Vouch — a platform that helps teams capture employee video stories and then reuse and resurface them intelligently over time.

In the world of employer branding, we can fall into the trap of polishing the truth until it shines like a commercial.

But after 20+ years in workplace content, I’ve learned a fundamental truth: Advertising sells, but content builds trust.

When candidates or employees are considering your organisation, they don’t want sales messages. They want real stories, opinions, and experiences from the people actually doing the work.

The Shift from “Corporate Gloss” to Authentic Reality

One of the most common challenges organisations face today is the desire for authentic stories coupled with an uncertainty of how to get them. Employer branding practitioners often tell me, “We want real employee voices, but we’re not sure how to capture them without it feeling forced or scripted”.

This is where the distinction between “marketing” and “content” becomes crucial. Traditional marketing relies on corporate slogans; strategic content relies on giving talented people a platform to build their reputation and the reputation of their organisation.

My approach sits right in the middle of culture and content. Whether I am directing documentaries with psychiatrists and nurses or producing a podcast series on the sports fields of the Royal Air Force, the goal is always the same: to harness workplace culture to drive recruitment and build thought leadership without the gloss.

Strategy Before You Hit “Record”

It is tempting to jump straight into high-production solutions. However, effective employer content requires us to be strategic partners who figure out what to make and why before we ever turn on a camera.

This means challenging the brief. It means separating “wants” from “needs”. Sometimes, the answer isn’t a massive 12-month campaign. I believe in momentum over perfection. I would rather pilot something quickly, learn from it, and iterate than spend months planning the perfect piece of content that never ships.

For example, I once helped a client repurpose and serialise content from a film shoot that wasn’t delivering its full value. By applying a strategic lens, we turned a handful of videos into a whole suite of content that lasted months.

Solving the “Bandwidth” Problem

Even when the strategy is sound, execution is often the bottleneck. “We need to scale our content, but we’re stretched”.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution to this. Sometimes the answer is bringing in an independent producer to take the project end-to-end—assembling the crew and handling everything from strategy to delivery. Other times, the sustainable answer is building your internal capability through coaching and workshops, or having a partner embed with your team as an extra pair of hands.

A Privilege to Serve the Industry

My career has taken me from the NHS to working with brands like Hilton, Schroders, and Cygnet, winning 11 awards over the last five years. But my work isn’t just for organisations; it’s for the industry.

Through the Employer Content Marketing podcast and my work with the Employer Content Club, I try to facilitate discussions that help us all make better workplaces. Using content to make people happier and motivated to do their best work is a genuine privilege.

If you are tired of corporate sales slogans and want to start turning your culture into magnetic content, let’s focus on the stories that matter. Because sales messages can’t truly build the trust your employer brand needs—but content can.

Have a great week!

Chris

And after conversations with practitioners like Ally Brown from VCA Animal Hospitals and Erik Rivas from Police Now, and a night out at the Recruitment Marketing Awards, I got into the studio with Chris just before Christmas.

We met up in London to record the final episode in our “Co-Created” Series. And it felt like the perfect way to wrap up this series.

Throughout Co-Created, we’ve explored how organisations of all sizes can build sustainable content operations. We’ve lifted the bonnet on real content engines, discovered what actually works with limited budgets, looked at award-winning work, and learned how practitioners are feeling about the challenges and opportunities ahead.

Episode 5 wraps the series up with a practical framework to help you co-create content with your employees.

Why these five pillars will help

If you’re a solo practitioner or part of a small EB team then the five pillars are here for you.

This is not a theoretical model, but five practical pillars built from real conversations with people doing this work every day [and based on our own experiences working in employer content marketing].

What we cover in the episode

Without giving too much away (because I really want you to watch or listen to get the most value from this!), here’s what we explore:

The mindset shift that unlocks creativity - It’s not about having more time, it’s about creating the right conditions for ideas to flow. I share my “Airplane Mode” approach and why stepping away from your desk might be the most productive thing you do all week.

Getting buy-in from busy people - Your colleagues are swamped. So how do you get them excited about creating content? We explore the “what’s in it for them” angle and why visibility might be the superpower your employees need in 2026.

The agile sprint approach - Can you really create meaningful content in four weeks? We break down how WhatsApp groups, voice notes, and co-creation can transform your content operation without fancy tech or big budgets.

Experience vs efficiency - As AI makes everything faster, we make the case for why doubling down on experience (not just efficiency) will be your competitive advantage in 2026.

The truth about creating content in 2026

The organisations succeeding with employee content aren’t necessarily the ones with the biggest budgets.

They’re the ones who’ve figured out how to create space for thinking differently, how to start small and iterate, and how to make their employees genuine partners in the content creation process.

They’re also the ones who understand that in a world drowning in AI-generated content and vanity metrics, authentic human experience cuts through like nothing else.

Watch or listen now

Whether you’re just starting to build an employer content function or you’re looking to level up your existing operation, these five pillars will give you a roadmap for the next 12 months.

Watch the episode here:

Listen to the episode here:

Join us for what’s next

This might be the finale of the Co-Created series, but it’s just the beginning for Employer Content Club.

We’re planning events for 2026, and we want you to be part of the conversation. Whether you’re a solo practitioner figuring it out as you go, or part of a team looking to do this more strategically, there’s a place for you in this community.

👉 Join Employer Content Club at employercontent.club

You’ll get early access to upcoming events, connect with other practitioners navigating the same challenges, and help shape how we build this community together.

And if you haven’t watched the previous episodes in the series, head over to the Employer Content Club website to catch up on all the conversations.

A huge thanks to Vouch

Their support has allowed us to have these important conversations about the operational side of content creation - the stuff that often gets overlooked at events and in communities.

If you’re looking for a frictionless way to capture employee-generated content at scale, Vouch is worth checking out. They’ve been brilliant partners throughout this series.

Check them out here.

What’s your biggest challenge with employee content creation? Drop a comment below or email me at chris@contentmarketingpod.com - I’d love to hear from you.

Chris

While it would be great to be able to go on multiple film shoots, the real world doesn’t always have the budget for that. So employee generated content is the answer.

As part of the Employer Content Club series that I’m hosting with Chris Murdoch [host of the Employer Bland podcast], we chatted with Erik Rivas from Police Now.

Here’s a segment of that conversation.

Erik explains that while high-quality videos are important for specific campaigns, they can be time-consuming and expensive to produce. In contrast, employee generated content can be produced quickly and at a lower cost, allowing the organisation to respond to changing recruitment needs promptly.

Watch or listen to the episode here

Join Employer Content Club

If you’re building an employee-generated content function in-house, this episode gives you the practical playbook.

Get access to the next episode in this series (including bonus content about AI) by joining Employer Content Club.

Become a founding member and help shape how we build this community. You’ll get early access to upcoming events we’re planning and be part of the conversation from the start.

👉 Sign up at employercontent.club

About the Co-Created Series

How to build authentic content WITH employees, not just about them.

Hosted by Chris Le’cand-Harwood (Content Marketing Pod) and Chris Murdoch (Voyse), co-founders of Employer Content Club.

Proudly created in partnership with Vouch - the tool that makes employee content creation frictionless.

Connect with Erik on LinkedIn

What’s your biggest challenge with balancing high-production and employee-generated content? Drop a comment below or email me at chris@contentmarketingpod.com - I’d love to hear from you.

Chris

When we do this, we learn and grow together, and the world of employer branding gets closer to the strategic business asset we all believe it should be.

That’s why it was brilliant spending time with Erik Rivas, Head of Employer Brand and Recruitment Marketing at Police Now.

Welcome to Episode 4 of Employer Content Club’s “Co-Created” series - all about how to build authentic content with your employees.

This episode is definitely worth watching or listening to.

It’s packed full of advice as we look inside Erik and the team’s content operations. We explore how they balance high-production content with employee-generated material to drive authenticity, agility, and measurable ROI for their employer branding and recruitment marketing.

What We Cover in This Episode

⚖️ The 50/50 balance: When to use high-production vs employee-generated content

🎬 Co-producing with employees: Getting authentic stories from those who’ve lived it

⚡ The agility advantage: Responding to changing recruitment needs in weeks, not months

🔄 Extending the life of expensive production shoots through smart repurposing

🧪 How flexibility enables fearless experimentation with new topics and voices

🎯 Proving ROI by connecting content to core business metrics

Why balance matters

Erik explains how Police Now created a content production system that balances two production approaches.

High-production shoots have their place in campaign-specific content and website hero videos - but they often need sizeable investment and can be time-consuming. When priorities shift and you need content about new locations or roles, you can’t wait months for another production shoot.

That’s where the balance matters.

Employee-generated content gives you the flexibility to experiment with new questions, try different angles, and respond rapidly - all while maintaining quality. The key is having both working together: polished branded content for campaigns, and agile employee content for day-to-day realities and rapid response.

The result? Authentic stories that set realistic expectations for candidates, the agility to pivot when recruiting different roles or locations, and centralised content management that extends ROI on every piece of content you create.

Watch or listen to the episode here

Join Employer Content Club

If you’re building an employee-generated content function in-house, this episode gives you the practical playbook.

Get access to the next episode in this series (including bonus content about AI) by joining Employer Content Club.

Become a founding member and help shape how we build this community. You’ll get early access to upcoming events we’re planning and be part of the conversation from the start.

👉 Sign up at employercontent.club

About the Co-Created Series

How to build authentic content WITH employees, not just about them.

Hosted by Chris Le’cand-Harwood (Content Marketing Pod) and Chris Murdoch (Voyse), co-founders of Employer Content Club.

Proudly created in partnership with Vouch - the tool that makes employee content creation frictionless.

Connect with Erik on LinkedIn

What’s your biggest challenge with balancing high-production and employee-generated content? Drop a comment below or email me at chris@contentmarketingpod.com - I’d love to hear from you.

Chris