Shaping Company Identity

I attracted 53% of my old employer’s apprenticeship talent, with 1 simple tool and £0 budget. . I’ll be completely transparent… I LOVED my old job at Heathrow . In fact, I loved the airport so much, it poured out of me and overflowed onto the internet. . For over 5 years, I would pick up my phone and make daily videos about: . Things I was getting upto Things I was learning, and Advise I wish I knew earlier . The result? . A walking talking job description in the form of short, sharp and educational videos across instagram and TikTok… . “A Digital Twin” of my experience, so to speak . Now here’s the interesting part: . These videos were made with £0 budget and just my phone… as a result they were NOT: . Silky smooth shots Highly edited Scripted or planned . Instead they were: . Authentic Raw REAL! . They built trust and connection… . This resulted in THOUSANDS of messages with questions about the role I was doing… . And most importantly, how could they get this role too? Yeah… I answered all of them . Before I knew it, this online community had grown so rapidly it overtook the number of followers that Heathrow Airport had across its own social media channels 😅 . This is something every organisation can learn from… . Your best talent attraction strategy…is your own talent! . Allow them to have a voice! Allow them to use it! . This authenticity is the only thing that will stand out on social media and cut through the noise. . Anything else will just look and feel like an advert… . And we all know what happens when we see an Ad.. . *Skip* . . . Some organisations penalise their staff for speaking about their job on social media… . Those days are over. . The organisation that will attract the best talent of the future are the ones that encourage, empower and, dare i say it, TEACH their staff how to use social media! . Yes, thats right! Invest in building your own internal “influencers” . Give them a social media master class, teach them where the red lines are and encourage them to share their day to day experiences at work . Then sit back, and watch the magic happen. . Ps - If you like the idea of getting ahead of the curve and developing your own internal team of “influencers”, let’s talk. . #TheAirportGuy . #TalentAttraction #Aviation

Yoga, meditation, pizza parties, and smoothie bars often get a bad rap—or become easy scapegoats—for ineffective wellness strategies. But these activities can support well-being when used alongside deeper organizational efforts. Real change only happens when organizations tackle the core drivers of burnout and embed well-being into their core values and culture. This includes: • Fair workloads and staffing levels to prevent chronic overwork • Clear roles and expectations to reduce confusion and stress • Psychological safety so employees feel comfortable speaking up • Supportive leadership that models healthy boundaries • Flexible schedules and work options where possible • Opportunities for career growth, learning, and personal development • Effective communication and alignment to reduce unnecessary stress • Access to mental health resources and peer support networks Sustainable and holistic well-being isn’t served by isolated activities or “wellness programs.” It requires building a culture of joy, purpose, and connection where people feel valued and empowered to thrive in their work and life. Have you seen organizational cultures that get this balance right? #JustOneHeart #Wellness #Leadership #Culture

Most organizations want more collaboration. Fewer know specifically why and that ambiguity is usually the reason the efforts to build it do not hold. This is the starting point for any serious attempt to increase teamwork across an organization. Clarity about where collaboration is actually needed, how it creates value in that specific context, and what would be lost if it did not improve. Without that clarity, the actions taken tend to be generic culture programmes, team-building exercises, values statements and the results tend to be correspondingly shallow. When you have that clarity, the research points to a set of levers that work. All of them, not one or two. People: teams with higher average levels of agreeableness tend to be more cooperative. Hiring and developing for this matters. Leaders who support change and model learning have the power to drive team culture more effectively than almost any structural intervention. Tasks: framing work as genuinely interdependent so that each person can see how their contribution connects to the whole makes cooperative behaviour more likely and attracts more cooperative people over time. Recognition: at the point where bonuses, promotions, and assignments are decided, the behaviours that are rewarded shape the culture more directly than any stated value. If collaboration is not being actively recognised at those moments, the culture will not sustain it. And one finding from the research on multi-team systems that I find particularly important is coordination among leaders across teams matters more than coordination within individual teams for overall system performance. In other words, get the leadership layer aligned on goals and values and then give the operational teams the autonomy to execute. Trying to coordinate directly at the operational level is actually counterproductive. The collaboration challenge is a leadership challenge. It starts, and is sustained, at the top. #Collaboration #TeamPerformance #LeadershipCulture #OrganisationalBehaviour #RandallPeterson

Ever noticed how some teams in your office seem to glide through challenges, their creativity blooming under pressure? What's their secret? You might be surprised: it's feminine energy. It's not just a trendy term. Leave that for the washed up influencers. Rewind a few years in my own career. A team reached out - they were all about hustle and grit—typical "masculine" traits of being tough and competitive. They were doing okay, but the air was often tense, and smiles were rare. I focused on nurturing, empathy, and cooperation—qualities typically associated with feminine energy. The transformation was not instant, but it was profound. By embracing these so-called "soft" skills, they didn't become less productive. Instead, they became a powerhouse. Teamwork improved, ideas flowed freely, and people felt valued and heard. This wasn't about making the workplace 'gentler'—it was about making it more human, more connected, and, yes, more successful. Critics often dismiss feminine energy as not suitable for the "tough" world of business. To them, I say: Think again. Isn't true resilience about bouncing back from challenges, something that requires empathy, understanding, and collaboration? These traits forge teams that aren't just tough, but truly unstoppable. So, how can your company tap into this powerful resource? Start simple: • Value all voices: Create spaces where every team member feels safe to express ideas and concerns. • Lead with empathy: Train your leaders to listen actively and respond with understanding. • Promote collaboration: Shift focus from individual achievement to team success. Embracing feminine energy isn't about tipping the scales entirely; it's about balance. It's about making the workplace not only more productive but also more joyful and sustainable. Key Takeaways: • Feminine energy involves traits like empathy, intuition, and collaboration. • Integrating these traits can lead to more innovative and resilient teams. • Start by fostering an inclusive, empathetic, and cooperative workplace culture. Imagine a workplace where everyone feels they belong, where the goal isn't just to succeed but to thrive together. That's not just inspiring; it's revolutionary. Let's start building that world today.

Culture is everything 🙏🏾 When leaders accept or overlook poor behaviour, they implicitly endorse those actions, potentially eroding the organisation’s values and morale. To build a thriving culture, leaders must actively shape it by refusing to tolerate behaviour that contradicts their values and expectations.
 The best leaders: 
 1. Define and Communicate Core Values: * Articulate Expectations: Clearly define and communicate the organisation’s core values and behavioural expectations. Make these values central to every aspect of the organisation’s operations and culture. * Embed Values in Policies: Integrate these values into your policies, procedures, and performance metrics to ensure they are reflected in daily operations. 
 2. Model the Behaviour You Expect: * Lead by Example: Demonstrate the behaviour you want to see in others. Your actions should reflect the organisation’s values, from how you interact with employees to how you handle challenges. 3. Address Poor Behaviour Promptly: * Act Quickly: Confront and address inappropriate behaviour as soon as it occurs. Delays in addressing issues can lead to a culture of tolerance for misconduct. * Apply Consistent Consequences: Ensure that consequences for poor behaviour are fair, consistent, and aligned with organisational values. This reinforces that there are clear boundaries and expectations.
 4. Foster a Culture of Accountability: * Encourage Self-Regulation: Promote an environment where everyone is encouraged to hold themselves and others accountable for their actions. * Provide Support: Offer resources and support for employees to understand and align with organisational values, helping them navigate challenges and uphold standards.
 5. Seek and Act on Feedback: * Encourage Open Communication: Create channels for employees to provide feedback on behaviour and organisational culture without fear of reprisal. * Respond Constructively: Act on feedback to address and rectify issues. This shows that you value employee input and are committed to maintaining a positive culture.
 6. Celebrate Positive Behaviour: * Recognise and Reward: Acknowledge and reward employees who exemplify the organisation’s values. Celebrating positive behaviour reinforces the desired culture and motivates others to follow suit. * Share Success Stories: Highlight examples of how upholding values has led to positive outcomes, reinforcing the connection between behaviour and organisational success.
 7. Invest in Leadership Development: * Provide Training: Offer training and development opportunities for leaders at all levels to enhance their skills in managing behaviour and fostering a positive culture. 8. Promote Inclusivity and Respect: * Build a Diverse Environment: Create a culture that respects and values diversity. Inclusivity strengthens the organisational fabric and fosters a more collaborative and supportive work environment.

If you are a founder who has a decent personal brand but your employees are silent on LinkedIn, your culture is still a theory, not proof. You are showing up, sharing your stories, building your personal brand, and I love that. But if you really want to 10x your visibility, credibility, and influence, you need your team to show up too. Your strongest marketing asset is sitting inside your office right now. Your team. If you want to attract top talent, let your current talent speak. You can build a great business, but your team will build the reputation. If your culture is real, it should reflect outside your office too. Employer branding is no longer HR's job. It is your employees talking online. You talk about culture, leadership, values, and teamwork, but no one else from your company speaks about their experience, then it all just stays in theory. But when your employees also share their stories, talk about their learnings, mention your company, tag you, speak about their growth journey, that is when the brand becomes real. Just genuine voices from inside the company. So if you are a founder reading this, having a personal brand on LinkedIn is the bare minimum now, especially for you and your CXOs, and your top performers. Encourage your employees to also build their personal brands. Let them share what working with you feels like. And I get it. Not everyone knows how to write, create content, or build a voice online. You can hire strategists and ghostwriters, but your employees usually cannot. Which is why the best thing you can do is to host a LinkedIn personal branding workshop for your team. Call in someone who can guide them on profile optimization, writing posts, sharing experiences, and building their presence online. PS- If you want to explore this, either virtually or in person, and you want someone to help your team get started the right way, Happy to discuss it over the DMs :) #shambhavi_writes

While analyzing dozens of social media trend reports, I noticed something fascinating: EGC is becoming the secret weapon for B2B brands looking to cut through the noise. 🌟 Here's what makes EGC so powerful: 1. Expertise Showcase - Your engineers explaining complex tech? That's gold. - Subject matter experts sharing insights? Pure value. - Real people = real credibility 2. Human Connection - Behind-the-scenes content outperforms corporate messaging - Interns sharing conference experiences - CEOs celebrating product launches - Culture becomes content 🚀 3. Cost-Efficiency Win - Reduce external content creation costs - Scale with internal "employee influencers" - Redirect influencer budgets to empowering your team Companies are now boosting employee posts more instead of running traditional ads. Why? Because authenticity sells. Brand examples? I got you. Currys, NitroBar, and John Deuce are on it providing this is not just a trend, but the future. 🌟 Prediction: 2025 will be the year of the employee creator. Those not leveraging LinkedIn's "golden age" through their team will fall behind. Pro Tip: Don't aim for perfection. The magic of EGC is in its authenticity – let your team's real personality shine through! ✨ What's your take on employee-generated content? Are you empowering your team to create? Share below! 👇 Also, I am opening my books on LinkedIn for more clients interested in improving their personal (or employee) brand. Feel free to DM. #B2BMarketing #ContentStrategy #EmployeeAdvocacy #LinkedInMarketing #FutureOfWork #MarketingTrends2025

Another shocking headline below. Half of benefit managers know their wellness programs are failing. 🙄 Humans are a little more complicated than a program, portal or prize (or a benefit). In my opinion, there are two main directions employers can take to create the best opportunities for employees to be healthier and happier: 👉 Create the institutional infrastructure needed to support employees. 👉 Create a well-being culture that prompts the shared behaviors, beliefs and attitudes that align with health and well-being. What does this mean in practical terms? 1. Choose an organizational assessment tool that is evidenced-based. These tools provide a framework to approach the policies, leadership support, interpersonal strategies and yes, benefits, that support most employees' needs. Examples include: 👉 The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Worksite Health Scorecard 👉 The American Heart Association's Well-Being Works Better Scorecard 👉 WELCOA (Wellness Council of America)'s Well Workplace Checklist [now sponsored by the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans (IFEBP)] 2. Create a Well-Being Culture. You can't buy this from a vendor and it's certainly not a point solution from a benefit company. You have to roll up your sleeves and build it yourselves. The good news is that you don't have to guess how to build this culture. There is a framework that addresses these six pillars: 👉 Leadership Engagement 👉 Peer Support 👉 Norms 👉 Social Climate 👉 Connection Points 👉 Shared Values The full recipe can be found in 📖 "A Cure for the Common Company". https://amzn.to/3bG1q1D Also not shocking... this is a marathon, not a sprint. Have a 3-5 year plan. #HumanResources #OccupationalHealth #EmployeeBenefits https://lnkd.in/eB_iZT_Y *** Hi, I'm Rich Safeer. I’ve been in the employee health and well-being space for 25 years and continue to learn how the intersection of our workplace, our jobs and the people at work impact our health and well-being. I’m a husband, dad, son and brother, manager, author, speaker and the chief medical director of employee health and well-being at Johns Hopkins Medicine. 📖 Trying to develop a new healthy habit? Try ‘A Cure for the Common Workday’, a journal designed to keep you on track. https://lnkd.in/ex5ywsc5 🎤 Keynotes, Workshops and Podcast Guest 💻 Already read the book and you want to learn more? Try the training program at https://lnkd.in/eeidfsrM 💙 Learn more at RichardSafeer.com Want to stay connected? 🔔 Ring the bell on my profile

We can roll out all the wellbeing apps, “Lunch & Learn” seminars and wellbeing days we like, but if the fundamentals aren’t in place, these initiatives simply won’t move the needle. To put it bluntly, these initiatives can often be a complete waste of invested funds, time and energy. Here’s what the research tells us: According to WorkWell Leaders, a leader’s wellbeing has the single biggest impact on employee wellbeing. In fact, it's more than any other initiative. In fact, leaders’ leader wellbeing is 11 times more impactful than stress management programmes and four times more effective than wellbeing apps in improving organisational outcomes. (see- https://lnkd.in/gQ8-V4NR) So, what undermines all those great intentions? 🚶🏻Leaders who don’t walk the talk. (Let’s be honest, it’s hard to ignore a Saturday 4pm email from your boss.) 🥱 Promoting people who are already burnt out or chronically exhausted. 📋 Unmanageable workloads that make “wellbeing” feel like just another item on an endless to-do list. 🦺 An absence of psychological safety: when speaking up about stress or overload isn’t safe or supported, a poor culture of wellbeing (and performance) perpetuates itself. 👩🏽💼 And let’s add: a culture that celebrates busyness over boundaries, and “resilience” over real rest. The contagion effect is real. When leaders model healthy boundaries, prioritise recovery, and genuinely care for their own wellbeing, it gives everyone else permission to do the same. But when exhaustion, overwork and stress are the norm at the top, they ripple through the entire organisation and can have devastating impacts not only employees' wellbeing but also their performance and productivity. So investing in the wellbeing of your leaders is of critical importance. If we want meaningful, sustainable change, we need to start with leadership. Because wellbeing isn’t a program...it’s a culture. How are your leaders modelling wellbeing right now? If you're a leader, what are you doing to role model and support genuine wellbeing in your workplace? #PoweredUpPerformance #Leadership #WellbeingAtWork #WorkplaceCulture #SustainableSuccess #WorkWellLeaders #SpaciousSuccess

Your culture is the invisible force that shapes how people feel about your brand. And it starts with your leadership — → The way you hire and train → How you embed values into your work → The processes you deploy → The way you demonstrate who you are …these subtle cues convey so much about your brand. Because in a world of copycat products and services… …culture is your secret weapon. It's the DNA that can make your company so special. Here's how to harness it: ↓ 1️⃣ Live out your values Don't just write your company principles on a mission statement and forget about them. Embody them. And actively reward team members who embody them. At Motto, we recognize when someone demonstrates our values through kudos, performance, bonuses, and other recognitions. Whether it's showing radical candor or going the extra mile, we celebrate it. 2️⃣ Rally around a Big Idea Every company worth remembering has a Big Idea that clearly and concisely defines their reasons for existing. Express this in big ways — how your company operates as a whole — and in small ways. For example, the way you end team meetings. We sign off with "Do big things" to remind everyone they're here to do exceptional work. 3️⃣ Embed your values in hiring Your job postings and career page should reflect your culture’s transparency and values. We, for instance, outline each step of our hiring process upfront. This helps us proactively recruit candidates who align with our values and can handle our high-performance environment (while screening out those who can’t). 4️⃣ Proactively invest in growth Each of your employees is an asset. Give team members chances to learn and teach others what they’ve learned. On Friday, we give one hour for our team to take classes and share their knowledge with the team. It builds their skills *and* confidence in leadership. 5️⃣ Use failure as fuel When you hit a wall, always see it as a chance to innovate and bounce back even greater. Embed this into your company DNA more than anything else. Your culture isn't just internal. It shows up in every interaction with customers, partners, and the public. So, nurture it carefully. The culture you nurture today is the brand you have tomorrow.