Hello, everyone. Welcome to our webinar. We'll go ahead and give everyone a little bit of time to join in. Welcome to those of you joining. Just give everyone a minute, and then we'll kick things off. Watching that participant list climb. If anyone wants to say good morning in the chat where you're joining us from, love to hear from you. I am located in Oregon. It's a beautiful day here. I'm in Toronto. Not so beautiful here today. We've got the great state of Texas joining us. Awesome to see. Pennsylvania. Big fan. I have family that lives out there. London. Very cool. Getting a bunch of different regions together today. That's awesome to see. The UK. Very cool. We'll go ahead and kick things off. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. Good afternoon if you are across the sea from us. We're really excited to have you joining our webinar today on employee connections. My name is Laurel, and I am a strategic account manager here at PageUp. And today, I'm joined by my wonderful client, Jessica Prosper. She is the talent program manager at Cognitive, and she'll be sharing how they have been able to use employee connections to share authentic employee feedback and turn their employees into brand advocates. So we will be sharing a copy of the webinar recording afterwards via email. We'll send that out. But before we kick things off, we did wanna start just with a quick poll today. So we would love to get your input on that. You'll see that pop up on the screen, so we'll give everyone a moment to answer those three questions. You can click that get QR code option to be able to go in and complete that out, scan it with your phone, and then complete out the survey. Awesome. Seeing some answers come in here. Very cool to see. And then feel free to use the chat as well. If you have any questions, go ahead and pop those in there. We do have a q and a session at the end, so we'll work to get those answered, towards the end of the call today. Give everyone another minute to finish answering those questions. It's really cool to see the responses coming in, though. Mhmm. So it looks like primary value of involving real employees is definitely building trust through authentic insights. That's what we're here for today. So really excited to share about that. Which platforms have been most effective for sharing? Looks like LinkedIn is the number one. Big fan of LinkedIn myself, so happy to see that there. And then the last question, which type of interaction do you think candidates find the most valuable? Video insights from employee ambassadors. Looks like it's the number one, but then text based q and a with employees is number two there. Fun fact, employee connections can do both. So we'll kinda talk about that a little bit later today as well. But thank you for your answers on the poll. I'll go ahead and close it, and we'll move on to the next slide. So for those of you unfamiliar with employee connections, go ahead and imagine a recruitment strategy where your employees are that strongest brand ambassador, and they're helping you attract talent effortlessly. That's really what employee connections can do for you. Today's candidates want a lot more than just that job description text on a page. They want to know what it's actually like to work at your company, what a day in the life looks like. Really, they want to know what they're getting themselves into. Employee generated content is the key to delivering that but authentically. So by sharing real employee experience, you're creating that transparent engaging candidate journey, and it's really gonna build trust and drive that interest towards engagement and then hopefully really strong hires. So why does this matter? Couple different reasons. It's gonna increase engagement. Candidates trust employee voices a lot more than, you know, senior leadership or corporate branding, things like that. So this is gonna make them more likely to engage, get their questions answered, give them the right information at the right time to really make an informed decision about working for your company. Seamless sharing is another huge perk of employee connections. It's gonna make it really easy for employees to be able to amplify your brand across social media channels. And we do find that, LinkedIn personal posts tend to go a little bit further than some of the corporate ones. So it's another great avenue, one, to build out, you know, employees brands as a brand advocate, but to get your message a little bit wider of an audience to see it. Last is the higher quality candidates. So we really wanna attract those candidates that want to work for you. The ones that do the research on the company are really engaged. They find the EVPs on the site. They're getting all that information. They know what a day in the life looks like. They're getting a real picture of what it's like to work there. So then you're getting people interested. They apply. They see that it matches up with what they were expecting, and that reduces the risk of turnover. So it helps across the entire, candidate life cycle, but those are just high level some ways that it can help out. So talking about what we'll cover today in the webinar, we're gonna run through a couple different things. First, we'll start by looking at market trends, talk about what we're seeing in the market today, and then we'll dive into a case study with Cognitive, talk about how they're using employee connections, the success that they've had. And that way, they can help set you up for success with employee connections as well. Then we'll got dive into our, AI chatbot assistant. We'll take a quick look at that and the future of it and how that involves employee connections. And then we'll finish off with some key takeaways and our q and a section where we can answer some questions. So again, feel free to pop those in the chat if you have any questions that come up, and we'll work to get those answered at the end. Alright. So looking at the market today, let's talk about the challenges that our employers are facing. They really want to be able to provide candidates with the right information at the right time, but make sure it's credible and helps turn that interest into actual applications, actual conversions. Candidates today are a lot more skeptical than they used to be of that traditional employer branding. Personal messaging is a lot more transparent and authentic to them than something coming from senior leadership or, you know, the corporate site, things like that. They really crave that authentic insight and what it's like to be an employee from the employee perspective. So that's where employee connections can come in and sort of bridge the gaps that we're seeing across the market. So looking at the gaps, there's definitely a gap with content as well as with credibility. So fifty seven percent of candidates say that employers don't share the important details like a day in the life. What is it really like to work there day in, day out? They want more than just that job description, and they wanna see what it's actually going to be like for them. Your employees are gonna be the best way to deliver that information, especially with being able to represent a wide variety of different departments, different regions, just giving that information of what each one looks like when you're actually in that role. Sixty one percent of applicants are more skeptical of what employers say about themselves. So that traditional employer branding, and it's just not enough alone. You have to have your employees backing up that corporate message as well, and employee connections can help you bridge both of those gaps. So the impact of employee connections, there's a huge impact. So by bridging the gaps, you're gonna see a lot of great results. Eighty percent of hires who did engage with employee connections would recommend using it. Seventy seven percent say that it did improve their perception of the company and make the recruitment process smoother. So you can find out about day in the life, but you can also find out what it's like to apply there, what it's like to interview there. So it does cover that entire life cycle. You can talk about onboarding, the experience there, and really get all those questions answered, which is gonna cut down on the amount of questions for your recruiter and give them a bit more time back in their day, which everyone loves. And then sixty eight percent of employees, said that it was critical in their decision to accept the offer that they leveraged, employee connections and were able to see information. On my end, I actually when I was interviewing for PageUp, I checked out the different products that they offer, and I was very impressed with employee connections. And it's actually the product that made me decide to work here. So it's been really cool to see how the product has come along in the two years that I've been here and now to be able to advocate for how great of a product it is and what it can do for your business. So, obviously, when candidates are hearing directly from your employer, they're get from your employees, they're getting that more authentic view of the culture, and that authenticity leads to higher engagement, better quality applicants, and ultimately more accepted offers, and good candidates that are going to last because they have a true understanding of what it's like to work there. So long story short, if you're looking to improve that candidate trust, boost your engagement, and increase offer acceptance, employee connection is gonna be the key for that. Alright. I'll go ahead and hand it over to Jessica now. If you wanna go ahead and tell us a little bit about yourself as well as Cognitiv and your journey with them. Absolutely. Thanks, Lo. Well, hi, everyone. Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to share our employee connection story with you all. My name is Jessica, and I'm the talent program manager at Cognitive, and I'm based in Toronto, Canada. I've been with Cognitive for almost three years now, starting off as a talent acquisition partner and recently moved into the talent program manager role. However, I've been in the talent and HR space for the last eight years, supporting industries like construction, health care, and professional services. My journey to employer branding actually started with Cognitive because none of my previous employers ever had employer branding functions as part of the talent acquisition teams. So when I joined Cognitive and got to learn what employer branding was, I really knew that I had to jump at the opportunity to take it on. And since learning more about employer branding, I really felt compelled to help shape the candidate experience, but to also help position cognitive as a leading employer in our space where we've now gone on to win multiple employer awards. And since diving into employer branding, I've had the opportunity to take on multiple projects and initiatives to better support cognitive. So by now you're probably wondering what is cognitive all about? Well, we are a Workday consulting firm that is built and run by Workday Consultants. We were founded in two thousand sixteen and have been profitable since day one without any outside investments with an on demand pay as you go philosophy. And as a Workday partner, we support hundreds of Workday customers with full platform post production support and projects like mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, phase x implementations, and enhancements. And in addition to cognitive, we also have Filament, which provides a wide range of Workday staff augmentation support services. And we also have a sister company, Rooster, which is an interview scheduling tool that integrates with Workday recruiting. They are also a Workday partner and won a partner innovation award in twenty twenty four. So myself and the rest of the talent acquisition team here at Cogniv supports both Filament and Rooster for all talent acquisition activities, including employer branding. And as Cognitive started to prioritize employer branding, we knew that in order to drive true impact, we needed to have a dedicated career website. And that's where we got to speaking with Clinch PageUp, and that's how we got to learn about employee connections. And so we've been live with the platform since January twenty twenty three, and it's been a very successful almost two and a half years, and that's what brings us to our discussion today. Awesome. Yeah. You've got your hands full. There's Yep. A lot going on there, but it's been really great working with you and seeing how, you know, the Clinch career site as well as the employee connections piece has kind of bridged those gaps and helped out a ton with your employer branding as well as just hiring great people. Yeah. So why become an insider? This is probably what you're wondering. How are you gonna get your employees to buy in? What's the benefit of that? No problem. We've solved this for you. We'll give you the information. So there's a lot of different reasons why becoming an insider is so important, and we'll kinda talk about strategy here in a minute, but it's gonna improve the candidate experience. I think everyone who works at a company wants that company to succeed, and they want to have the candidate experience for anyone coming in be smooth, wonderful, have the information that they wish they would have had if they didn't have it. So there's that piece, but you're also providing that authentic information. You're making sure that they are really aware of what it's like being on the team. You can talk about the great team that you're on, what they're doing. Just provide that authentic feel for that, and you're humanizing the process. So with your responses, your personal stories, telling your unique journey with a company, You're putting that out there for individuals to be able to see and, you know, maybe understand there is career development here. They do care about your career progression. There's internal promotions. Just help them understand those things that, you know, we don't necessarily ask during the interview process, but everyone really wants to know what they're getting into when they apply for a new company. You can also provide answers from a diverse set of employees. So we'll talk about that as well. But, I I mean, look at all the different regions that we have joining the webinar today. Wouldn't it be cool if all of us could provide our feedback from working in our companies in our different regions? That's gonna help with anyone that's viewing the jobs and being able to understand, the different regions and the culture at the different locations. Next up, you'll be able to showcase your role, your skill set, and your career progression. So on the screen, we do have, some insiders, just some highlighted ones. With the insiders on their profile, we have a shot a little bit later on, but you can put in your title. You can put in some advice. You can put in your career progression. You can really kind of customize it so that people can see the full journey of the insiders that you have on the platform, which is really awesome. And then last but not least, building your own brand on LinkedIn. So everyone that is posting out their information or, you know, maybe some other answers that they didn't give but a other employee did on LinkedIn, That's gonna reach a wider audience, but it's also going to build your brand on LinkedIn and show that you are a committed employee that is devoted to the company and able to advocate for the company. Heck, you could maybe even get some referrals out of it and get referral bonuses if your company offers that. So the sky's the limit there, but really just being an additional advocate for your company is the reason to become an insider. So let's talk about identifying insiders. How do we get people to want to do this? Cognitive has done this masterfully, so I will turn it over to you. You can let us know how you're able to accomplish this. Yeah. Thank you. Well, since I mentioned before, we provide a wide range of Workday support services, and we do that across several different SKUs. And we have entities in the US, Canada, and India, so I do try to have a diverse range of employees across the different departments and the different countries that we employ out of, just to be able to address all areas where candidates may be interested in learning more. As well, I typically like asking, employees who are active on LinkedIn or active in our different Slack channels as I find that those people tend to be more interested in taking on the role of being an insider. And something I think that we do quite uniquely here is we like to do a six month refresh. So every six months, I like to check-in with the insiders and see who's interested in staying on or who wants to roll off. And the people who are interested in rolling off, I do like to ask them to nominate a peer, and then once they nominate the peer, I check-in with the peer just to make sure that they are interested in taking on the role of being an insider. And most times when they are nominated, I do find that they are interested in in taking that on, and it just allows, you know, the insiders to not have to commit to being an insider for for too long. So we'd like to do that six month refresh to give them a break, but to also bring in fresh new perspectives. You know, we're constantly hiring, and so it's always great to bring in new people, to the platform. Yeah. And we can actually see in this chart of the questions and answers, there's a spike over that six month period because you invite those individuals to go through the questions that have already been asked and add their own unique answers to it. So you can always kinda build upon the content that's on there and add a more diverse set of answers. So I think that's another great strategy as well is as they're getting comfortable with the platform, let them take a look at it, answer any questions that they're seeing on there, and it just boosts that engagement as well. So enabling insiders, I think, is gonna be the next barrier. We have the people identified. We've reached out to them. How do we get them to buy in and add one more thing to their plate? Can you talk a little bit about what you've done to enable them, and kind of the time that it takes to do this? Yeah. So one of the the great things and one thing that makes it really easy to get people interested is that it is very minimal, commitment month to month, week to week. We usually say maybe, you know, five to fifteen minutes a month. It really is not not that big of a, you know, a take on. And so, you know, that's the way that I get people interested. It's, you know, very minimal time commitment, and then the, you know, the six month refresh. So when I do bring on new, insiders, what I've done from the very beginning was I recorded our initial onboarding call that we did with our first fifteen insiders. And so I've saved that, and I send that to all new insiders that I'm onboarding. And that training was super comprehensive. Very few times do I have people reaching out to me for support and setting up their profile. And the profile takes, you know, no time as well. You just have to upload a photo, provide information on your career history, and some, you know, achievements, milestones, pieces of advice. So it really takes no time. And, when I do bring on new on, new insiders like Lo had mentioned, I do have them go through the current discussions and see where they could maybe add impact or a new fresh perspective. And then another thing that I've done to really, you know, bring in the group is I've created a dedicated Slack channel, for the insiders and, you know, we discuss the different questions that have come in, who's most appropriate to take on that question, if it was generalized, how do we go about responding to some of these questions. And it just really opens up the dialogue and makes it a lot easier for these insiders to be engaged and, you know, create impactful discussions. Yeah. The Slack channel or, like, a Teams channel, something internal where you can kind of have those conversations about wording, branding, how do I answer this, who's the best to answer this. That's been something that, my clients that are really successful in the platform leverage. So can't recommend that one enough. And, obviously, everything does go through the admin, so the admin has to approve and publish it. So nothing's gonna get through, you know, with incorrect branding, things like that. You can have those conversations and, you know, get it updated before you push it live. But that's definitely been something that's helped with enablement across my clients. It just keeps it nice and easy for everyone. Another thing that we mentioned earlier is that the the questions can be answered via video. So, typically, they're gonna be text based responses. You'll have the person's, face, their profile, and then their text response, but you can also do video responses as well just to kinda diversify what you have on the site, and then you can share those out on socials as well. So those are perfect for, like, a LinkedIn post. But even these questions and answers, we can share out to LinkedIn. And like we said, the personal posts on LinkedIn tend to go a little bit further. So they can tag in the company, post the question and answer, and then it, you know, just widens the net for your audience. So the platform is an always on platform, which is fantastic. So I'll press play on this, and we can kind of see from cognitive site. So this is a question about the twenty twenty five, consultant program, and you can see a wide variety of insiders came in and answered that question. So if I'm an individual that's looking for more information about that, on the site, I can search for different items. It'll kind of tag the discussions, and we can look at different areas. So we can look at best discussions and stories, things like that. And then I can scroll through, see the answers as well as ask a new question, and just kind of build upon what's already on the site. But it's really easy to navigate the site and find the questions that you're looking to get answers for. Jessica, do you mind talking a bit here about what we're seeing on the right side of the screen? Absolutely. So as you can see there, we do have a question that was asked. We had two responses, one from Igor and one from Jake. Igor was part of our first initial pilot group, you know, the pioneers to employee connections at Cognitive, so to speak. And, you know, he eventually rolled off. Six months later, we brought on Jake and, you know, again, reinforcing, taking a look at the discussions and adding your own unique perspective. Jake jumped in and answered that question. And the reason being was Jake actually came through our early careers program. So he is well equipped to answer that question and provide a really good response to really help people, you know, build their careers in in the Workday space. And so, again, it was just really cool to see, you know, the employees really diving into the platform, answering questions that weren't necessarily assigned to them, but providing, you know, unique perspectives to really help these candidates out in their job search. Awesome. So looking at, oh, this is a key takeaways. So I'll dive into the chatbot, and then we'll go back to the key takeaways. But speaking of always on platforms, our newest feature at PageUp Clinch is going to be our AI chatbot assistant. So this is in the early adopter phase. We have people moving through it. So definitely talk to your strategic account manager if you have questions on the product. But the key features are going to be expanded upon, being able to do a job search is current state, apply to jobs, look for jobs, being able to apply to a talent community, things like that, as well as answer frequently asked questions. Those are all things currently in process. But as the year goes on, we're gonna build upon that and really pull in a lot of the employee connection pieces. So future state being able to showcase those insider replies via relevant FAQs is going to be something that's gonna be really great. So we'll take two of our always on platforms, kinda merge them together to be able to answer the questions. So that is looking at kind of the future for the AI chatbot. But with the AI chatbot, really, it's gonna be a tool for our customers. It's basically an additional supercharged team member that can answer those, questions, provide that unique branding, showcase the EVPs, and it's just a point of connection for the candidates, to be able to ask those questions, kinda cut down on what the recruiters are gonna get asked. And it's automated, so you can have it just as your little friend on the website to assist with the process, and I think everyone likes a little assisting as well. Let me go back to the key takeaways here. So that covers what we were gonna go through today. Really, we just wanted to provide you with what candidates want in the market. They want that authentic look and feel of day in the life, and employee connections is the perfect way to capture that in an authentic and transparent way. Candidates just trust the information more from an employee level. We're the ones that are in the weeds doing it day in and day out, so our feedback is definitely something that they're looking for on the sites rather than, you know, the nice tied up with a bow corporate messaging. This is gonna empower your employees to become brand ambassadors. They'll be able to share their unique journeys, provide feedback, and really change the candidate experience as well as the brand reputation and perception. So that's a great feeling as well. And then, obviously, it's going to create that system that ensures fresh content that's relevant to all areas of your business. You can do the six month refreshes like Cognitive does to keep that information updated and kind of flowing through, or you can decide whatever cadence works for you, with answering those questions and nominating insiders. And then there's a whole other side of employee connections around live chats where you can do, basically, like a group chat, almost like an AOL chat room where you can come in, do it around a product a certain, like, I don't know, if you're doing, an internship program and you wanna do one around that, you can invite anyone to come in and ask questions to Insiders about that specific topic. And then once you have that live chat completed, typically, they're about an hour, you can publish all those questions and answers to the site. So it's another way to kinda generate content, maybe around a specific area, specific item that you're working on, and then keep fresh content on the site as well. So lots of cool capabilities with employee connections. Definitely more coming in the future as we move through the AI chatbot, and what that can do. But just wanted to highlight how Cognitive is doing it with their insiders and the success that they've had. So I guess now we'll turn it over to q and a. I don't see anything in the chat, but we did have a couple questions come through ahead of time. So, Jessica, can you talk to me a little bit about the implementation process? Like, how long did this take to set up for you guys? Oh, gosh. You're making me remember two and a half almost years ago. Oh, good. Well, we did our website implementation and employee connections all at the same time. If I remember correctly, employee connections came in kind of at the end of our setup journey with Clinch PageUp, and, it really didn't take much time. I think we had a couple of meetings. We did, like, a quick onboarding meeting for admins to get us, you know, well aware of the platform, how to use the back end, how to invite insiders, you know, all the things that we need to do as admins. And then there was a quick onboarding session with, the insiders as well as kind of the onboarding specialist, and that was it. You know, we were set up, ready to go. It took no time. It was quick, painless, and very, very easy to set up. So, great experience across the board there. That's my favorite thing to hear about implementation. So no. I mean, it really is a very straightforward, easy to use product. There's not a lot of a lift. You don't need a ton of technical acumen to be able to go ahead and answer those questions, and it's definitely something that we keep very easy for the insiders. So you've probably seen these emails, but you'll get reminders as questions come in and remain unanswered. So they will get reminders of those. And then as an admin, you can go in and reassign them. So let's say someone's out on paternity leave, maternity leave, we can reassign that question to another insider, and then they'll get those email reminders to be able to go into the platform and answer that. The dashboard makes it really easy to see what's unanswered and go in and get those answered. So it's a really great tool. We try to make it as easy as possible to leverage. So, hopefully, there's interest and you guys can adopt the product and see how wonderful it is. But definitely highly recommend, go to Cognitive site, check out their talk to us section, look through the different discussions that they have in there, the different answers. They're really best practice for what we can see for employee connection, so a great example. Okay. Well, Jessica, I really appreciate, you know, partnering with you over the last two years and then being able to do this webinar with you. You did fantastic. I'd also like to thank everyone for joining us. Definitely feel free to get in touch with us if you have any questions. If you have a strategic account manager or CSM, please reach out to them if you have any questions. Otherwise, you can get in touch with us at clinch talent dot com or page up people dot com, and then definitely check out Cognitive's website as well. Awesome. Thanks, everyone. Thank you.