Workplace Passion: Part One

January 29th, 2015

Marc Iannacone

Can it be created? Do you need it? A blog series.

I’ll put this out there. You know that feeling you get when you visit a workplace where there are high levels of passion?

Several years ago I was in the process of engagement with a new client undertaking an employment brand project. At the meeting was a member of the internal recruitment team, and a talent manager who’d recently been appointed to manage an outsourced recruitment model for the company.

The client had some budget to create an employer brand – problem was that they did not have the time to make an employment brand – they needed people through the door, and they needed them quickly. Could eBrands help?

So what was the driver, the overriding criteria?

“Passion. We need passionate people,” replied the talent manager.

“Passionate about what?”

“Just people with passion, we need more passion”, he replied dispassionately.

You might guess this was not one of those places.

There is no turnkey solution to a complex issue. Despite this, we began at the beginning and explored solutions that might work given the limitations of the situation.

The point of the story? I want to focus on ‘passion’. In 90% of the client work I’ve been a part of, passion will be mentioned. It is either asked for as a hopeful outcome – or proudly acclaimed with manic finger pointing as living breathing thing that we must divulge. Finding passion points is one of the things eBrands has become very good at.

Passion is linked to brand: they both deal in the trade of expression; one being a commodity (ouch), the other being a belief system. Employer brands that talk to the passion within the business achieve a powerful return on investment. They create something that we call ‘passion capital.’ Instigating and celebrating passion capital is one of the areas that the employer brand can be most active in internally.

So I’ll come back to our externally focused client scenario at the end of the series. First we’ll explore the factors that I believe employers need to provide in order for workplace passion to exist so that a brand can be built on it.

Future posts will explore:

The importance of the two-way street & hiring
The ethics of work ethics & horizons
Dealing with the snipers & diversity
The disruptive hive & consistency