What we do

Everyone who works for you thinks they know what it’s like to work for you. And they’re all right – and wrong.

The value you offer to people who work for you – whether they already do or you want them to – is a combination of benefits, features, systems, legacy architecture and bolted-together stuff that was done years ago and no one knows what to do with it. It’s everything from when you get paid to the company typeface to whether flexible work is a thing. And it’s not universal – it’s an average of everything that everyone who works for you has to deal with.

We’ve designed research methods to ask the important questions of your most engaged employees, your ready-to-quit superstars, your brilliant jerks and your ‘been here forever’ culture-setters. And we’ve designed methods to understand what your leaders genuinely value, and how those values drive the decision-making behaviours that can alter your cultural DNA – without actually meaning to.

Despite our best efforts, sometimes it’s tough to recognise the things that are having an undue negative impact on the employee experience. From ungainly processes to invisible discrimination to bad legacy software and more, little things can add up to a big pain point that turns off your people’s trust, engagement and extra effort.
We’re adept at using focus groups, internal surveys and employee feedback to pinpoint, isolate and quantify these areas and the impact they’re having. We look at the culture mismatches or SOE (system over experience) problems that can sting enough to cost you the best your people can offer. We partner with suppliers to rectify, eradicate or minimise these issues to restore the bond with your people and deliver a better day-to-day experience for your talent.

Being authentically you (as a brand) isn’t an isolated incident. Working for you is a comparable experience to thousands of other workplaces, each with its own value proposition and set of benefits. What are you great at? What do you suck at? What are the values and behaviours that people can rely on when it’s time to knuckle down, or celebrate, or chase a new dream? And what can you do that no one else can, to make working for you a unique experience?

We examine the merging point between the value you offer your employees and the values they can depend on to understand you. We analyse the reasons people join, leave, rejoin or swear off you forever, and generate opportunities to shift the dialogue in your favour out there in the talent market.

Sun Tzu wasn’t kidding. Knowing yourself is integral to coming out on top of any conflict or challenge. What he didn’t say is that you also have to show people who you are, so they can decide to join you, oppose you or ignore you. And showing people who you are is a LOT harder than just chucking a few talking head videos up on YouTube or TikTok.

Every interaction with talent matters, whether they’re already in your organisation or potential future hires. Sadly, many organisations let these interactions be dictated by template-driven recruitment systems, low-effort ‘best practice’ solutions or ‘the quickest possible fix’ during system implementation. Using form letters isn’t how you get people to fall in love. Using default functionality benefits your recruiters, but your candidates pay the cost.

If you want to embody your values in the experiences you create for talent, you have to go further than making sure everything is ‘fine’. You have to think about creating emotional responses, building trust, creating unexpected delight and doing more than the bare minimum.

Designing candidate and talent experiences is a huge passion area for us. Making you memorable in a sea of SEEK ads or LinkedIn posts is a worthy challenge. Making sure your ideal future employees recognise you and have an accurate picture of your value (and values) is the difference between filling seats and an overwhelming surplus of enthusiastic new talent.

Campaigns are about sustained impact to nail an outcome. They’re not slapping a job up online. They’re not a single video. They are, by definition, outside your normal way of doing things. Which can be hard when you’re rewarded for thinking the same way by your Brand teams and line managers.

Sometimes it’s useful to have someone from the outside world come in and take a look around. To pitch some wild ideas in amongst the process-adhering normal stuff. And to look at how the parts of a campaign can link up in the audience’s world to be surprisingly smooth, entertaining or interesting. Sometimes you get good at the old stuff and need someone to show you what’s possible when you can take chances and make changes. That’s us.

Everyone can do the basics now. A video isn’t revolutionary. A podcast isn’t unique. The use of various mediums for recruitment and talent brands is almost exhausting. These mediums are rarely used to full effect. To evoke emotion. To tell a story that suits the style. To surprise and amuse and entertain.

We’ve always said ‘We don’t do boring and we don’t do ordinary’ in this space. Challenging the norms to connect with potential talent (and even surprise your current people) is lucrative and empowering. If you’re sick of receding ROI and making stuff that even you aren’t impressed by, let’s chat about the world beyond corporate videos.

Attraction is about desire and availability. Many organisations are great at the latter, posting standardised job descriptions full of the right buzzwords on every platform they can find. And that’s not a bad thing. But the journey from ‘disinterested observer’ to ‘enthusiastic fan’ doesn’t start or end with a job ad posted on LinkedIn. To be an attractive employer, showing the open door isn’t enough. You have to show what life is like on the other side.

And that specific life, that experience of being part of your culture, probably needs more than a talking head by a well-groomed, well-rehearsed photogenic employee in a YouTube video or a TikTok. The story needs to be accessible, matched to platform and audience expectations, consistent across the spectrum of media, and interesting. Very few people seek out a talking head of someone’s day as an accountant. And even fewer people share it with their friends.

Building the kind of stories and experiences that engage, seduce and secure talent needs a deep understanding of both your story and your talent’s appetite. It needs a strategy that encompasses media choices, content choices and active brand-building well beyond making sure the job ads all match. That’s where we come in.

Plus, obviuosly, a heap of unique, custom-designed stuff we’d love to talk to you about.