Employer Brand: A Team Sport at Relativity

Successful employer branding is not a one-team game. It requires the commitment and collaboration of a diverse set of cross-functional teams who help shape and influence how your company is perceived in the talent market. How? By bringing your authentic employee experience to life - every step of the way.

Below, key leaders from a range of functions at Relativity are explaining how they connect to their organization’s EB strategy.

Angelika Mathur

How does the partnership between the employer brand and people communications teams impact the employee experience?

A compelling employer brand inspires and energizes both prospective and existing talent by clearly communicating and showcasing a dynamic employee experience. But if your value proposition doesn’t line up with reality, you’ve got an authenticity problem. 

We all know that our amazing people are our best brand ambassadors, so it’s critical to ensure that the vision that they bought into before joining the team remains front and center even as they settle into their roles and move from rookies to veterans. 

Employee-facing communication plays a powerful role in keeping team members engaged and invested. This is evident in everything from business performance, to company culture, to alignment around your mission, vision, and values. So, while the tactics may differ depending on the point in time in the employee lifecycle, the core messaging must remain consistent, genuine,  and representative. Fostering a tight-knit relationship among your internal, people-facing teams—including employer brand and communications—will help you better cultivate and reinforce your unique employee experience.

Johnathan Hill

Tell us about the Relativity Fellows program and why EB is such an important focus for the program in 2022 and beyond.

Through our Relativity Fellows program, we aim to expand economic opportunity in the United States by finding, certifying, and placing untapped talent in the eDiscovery field.

The roles and titles for Fellows are not only different, but there is a different approach required to attract this talent. There is a lot of patience involved in bringing them down the funnel – we have to educate them on an industry they’ve probably never heard of, expose them to roles that seem out of reach otherwise, and dismantle the feeling that they aren't worthy of being sought after. 

This is why our employer brand is so important for the Fellows community. We’re intentionally targeting a community that's been overlooked and unengaged on traditional platforms, and showing them how much potential and opportunity they have available to them at Relativity. 

Through employer branding, we have an opportunity to create transparency around what we're looking for. We’re also in a unique position to tap into alternative pools for talent by an appreciation for skills, affinity groups, and alternative programs to traditional college through elevating partnerships and employees.

Ana Ramirez

How do you and the employer brand team work together to make an impact on our inclusion, diversity, and belonging efforts? 

All in all, our DE&I team’s partnership with the EB team is that extra step we take to build a diverse community, inside and out of Relativity.

We collaborate to ensure the stories we're externalizing are accurate and fully representative of our employees, and that the external organizations we work with are appropriate partners for us to engage with. 

We also work together alongside our Community Resource Groups to give the CRGs an opportunity to co-host events and build relationships with these external organizations. 

Karolina Oldak

Why is employer branding important in your local area and how do you ensure global alignment on Relativity’s EB initiatives?

Our second largest office is located in Krakow, Poland, a city that has become one of the most important technology centers in Central and Eastern Europe. There are hundreds of IT companies, from small ones that operate only in the Polish market, to large subsidiaries of foreign corporations. So while the market is large, there is no shortage of attractive job offers and it’s highly competitive for employers. In such a dynamic market, attracting talent requires a much broader strategy than recruitment alone, and consequently the importance of localized employer branding has grown significantly. 

I combine EB, Corporate and People Comms into one function in the Polish market, so I am looped in at all times to various HR and marketing projects at global and local levels. This makes it easier for me to align and unify the initiatives, even when we need to culturally tailor things to local markets. As our local EB needs to adhere to the same guidelines as our global EB to keep messaging cohesive, there is constant cooperation between several global teams.

Lauren Janosko

How do you partner with the employer brand team and what are some of the results of this partnership?

Through the close collaborative partnership between our software engineering and employer branding teams, we're able to achieve quick wins and set a long-term brand awareness and hiring strategy. 

Last year we set out to hire 100+ roles, a daunting task. Engineering identified the highest priority roles, and we worked in conjunction with the employer brand team to develop a multi-pronged strategy that included new strategies for paid job ads, recruitment events with a focus on diverse audiences, and maximizing postings on job boards. The employer brand team executed these flawlessly, which engendered trust and allowed us to take some small risks with our approach.

We met on a biweekly basis to review outcomes resulting from each of the tactics, which helped us determine what the next action should be. I learned a lot from the employer brand team, but there were also situations in which the business provided intelligence that made us pivot strategy. 

For example, engineering leadership shared websites that developers use to look for new job opportunities that the employer brand team hadn't utilized before, which created a new pipeline opportunity. Results stemming from this partnership include: 83% of people that viewed our ads are considered 'net new' engagers, increasing brand awareness; nearly 500 job applicants; and 3M unique impressions.

Kylie Denk

How do you go about bringing in partners from within your organization to help you achieve your goals, and why are these so important? 

Our partnerships have grown over time. Initially, our core partners were the HR function (mainly Talent Acquisition where we sit, and our Social Impact team) and the Marketing function (specifically the social media, PR, internal communications, and design teams). These teams remain core partners today as we have scaled.   

We have since expanded to partnering with several key areas of the business. We work with Chief of Staffs and teams related to high-priority hiring, collaborate with our Inclusion, Diversity, and Belonging team and community resource groups, and most importantly, we have shared many tools and resources with all employees so they feel supported in sharing their own stories and experiences working at Relativity.

I would love for every employee to feel like an owner and contributor to our employer brand. A lot of the time we are brand advocates of our companies without even realizing it, whether wearing swag while travelling or mentioning work at a friendly gathering. All of these stories and experiences that we share influence the perception of our company as a great workplace.

Beth Clutterbuck

Why is your Employer Brand a priority for your business?

Your employer brand is the narrative about what differentiates you from others. It showcases why your company is an amazing place to work, grow and thrive. It captures the essence of the company culture, the exciting challenges and problems to solve, and how its people are at the heart of every decision.  

Getting your employer brand right – in look, feel and tone – is critical to express these concepts quickly for potential new employees, existing employees and all your previous employees who are still ardent brand ambassadors.

Your employer brand isn’t just a boardroom strategy executed by one team. It’s a constant partnership between everyone in the company, who each have a stake in its outcomes. After all, great EB brings in great talent, and that’s the way to build any successful business!