Show off employees with social media storytelling

How does your company show off its employees? Alex Brown, senior social media and employment branding specialist at Waste Management, talks about how they use social media storytelling to highlight star employees.

Robin: Hello and welcome to this edition of Brandonomics, an inside look at top brands and their marketing strategies. I am Robin Tooms, Vice President of Strategy at Savage Brands, and my guest again today is Alex Brown, Senior Social Media and Employment Branding Specialist at Waste Management. So, Alex, welcome back to Brandonomics.

Alex: Thank you so much for having me, Robin. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Robin: I love talking social media with you, and now we get to talk about something that I truly admire about what you’re doing on your social media, is showcasing ways that employees are really doing good and being good employees beyond just getting a paycheck at the company. So tell us how are you using this as part of your recruiting strategy, and what are some of the stories that you’re telling?

Alex: Sure. Well, as a company with over 20 million residential and commercial customers, we like to make sure that we’re giving back in as many ways as possible to the communities that we serve. One of the ways that we do this is that we empower our employees to be impactful members of the community. An example of how they do that is in several communities across our enterprise we have implemented what we call the “waste watch” program. We bring in local neighborhood watch groups to train our drivers to help be vigilant members of the community, to essentially be the eyes and ears of communities that they visit very regularly. This allows our employees to feel like they’re making a huge impact on the communities that we serve, and that’s a story that we like to tell during the recruitment process. We regularly highlight employees who have stood out and excelled in this program to help make sure that we’re telling a story that each of our employees who participate are able to be impactful members of the community and have that be an extra benefit of the rewarding employment opportunities that we offer.

Robin: Well, that’s why I love what you’re doing. I mean when you think about it, it’s not just you talking about how great the company is, it’s you showcasing how great some of these employees are. So how are you using these kind of different channels to spread the word then?

Alex: Well, as part of our strategy to make sure that we’re telling our employees’ story from their perspective, we identify the stories where they have stood out as fantastic members of the community. We like to repurpose those stories as frequently as possible across our recruitment social media channels, which include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or wherever we feel that the message will be most impactful to our audience.

Robin: Well, that’s very good. And now I’m convinced you must have like the coolest job in the world.

Alex: I certainly love it.

Robin: All right. Well, thank you, Alex.

Alex: Thanks so much.

Robin: This has been another edition of Brandonomics, an inside look at top brands and their marketing strategies.

 

Waste Management, Inc. is North America’s leading provider of integrated environmental solutions. It partners with customers and communities to manage and reduce waste from collection to disposal while recovering valuable resources and creating clean, renewable energy. https://www.wm.com/