Every platform, every feed, every channel is packed with posts and videos that increasingly look and sound like they were produced by the same machine. For employers trying to attract talent, corporate messaging already struggled to feel trustworthy, and AI-generated content has made the problem significantly worse. Candidates and consumers want to hear from real people, not polished brand accounts.
That’s fuelled growing interest in employee-generated content, where real employees share their own authentic experiences of working at a company. The potential is enormous, but so is the risk of doing it badly and simply creating more forgettable noise.
So how do employers tap into employee voices in a way that genuinely builds trust?
My guest this week is Rhona Barnett-Pierce, Founder of Workfluencer Media. In our conversation, she shares what separates effective employee content from scripted corporate messaging and how companies can get started.
In the interview, we discuss:
• Why employee-generated content builds trust
• How AI content is eroding authenticity
• Shifts in communication preferences
• Showing the work, not just the workplace
• The employers who are doing employee content well.
• Finding the existing content creators in your workforce.
• The future of content marketing
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00:00
Matt Alder
AI has flooded the Internet with employer branding content that all just sounds the same. Real employee stories could be the antidote, but how do employers stop them becoming just more AI slop? Keep listening to find out.
00:16
Matt Alder
Support for this podcast comes from Workable. Workable is known for its award winning applicant tracking and HR platform. Used by more than 30,000 companies worldwide to hire and manage talent more efficiently, they’ve recently rolled out two major product updates. First, they’ve completely rebuilt their reporting suite from the ground up. Workable now delivers enterprise ready data and reporting, giving teams the ability to create custom dashboards, tables, charts and pivot views using any hiring or HR data in the system.
00:53
Matt Alder
It makes it much easier to track.
00:54
Matt Alder
Hiring performance, workforce trends and an ROI without juggling spreadsheets or external BI tools. They’ve also introduced something really interesting called Workable Agent, a new AI recruiting teammate built directly into the ats. I actually had the chance to see this in action at a recent event and it’s pretty impressive. You start by having a conversation about the role and the agent drafts the job brief searches through a database of more than 400 million candidate profiles, engages candidates, screens them against your requirements, and delivers a short list of qualified interview ready candidates. It essentially gives your team full recruiting agency level capabilities directly inside your ats. If you’re looking to optimize your recruiting and HR processes and improve your ROI along the way, I definitely recommend checking out Workable. You can learn more@workable.com or by visiting their LinkedIn page.
02:13
Matt Alder
Hi there, welcome to episode 782 of Recruiting Future with me, Matt Alder. Every platform, every feed, every channel is packed with posts and videos that increasingly sound and look like they were produced by the same machine. For employers trying to attract talent, corporate messaging already struggle to feel trustworthy, and AI generated content has made that problem significantly worse. Candidates want to hear from real people, not from polished brand accounts. So is content the answer where real employees share their own authentic experiences of working at a specific company? The potential is enormous, but so is the risk of doing it badly and simply creating more forgettable noise. So how do employers tap into employee voices in a way that genuinely builds trust? My guest this week in an interview that we recorded live at Transform is Rhona Barnett-Pierce, founder of Workfluencer Media.
03:16
Matt Alder
In our conversation, she shares what separates effective employee content from scripted corporate messaging and what companies need to do to get started.
03:24
Matt Alder
Hi Rhona. Welcome back to the podcast.
03:29
Rhona Barnett-Pierce
Hi, Matt. I’m so happy to do this again.
03:32
Matt Alder
Absolutely. Well, the amount of things that we’ve.
03:34
Matt Alder
Recorded in the last sort of 18 months, hours of content, and very little of it has been face to face. So it’s great to record face to face. You even brought a video camera to film this because you are the archetypal expert content creator. For the few people who may not have heard you on the show before, just give us a quick intro to what you do.
03:56
Rhona Barnett-Pierce
So I’m Rhona Barnett Pierce and I own a company, a video content agency called workfluencer Media. I’m also the host of the workfluencer podcast. And what we do is create content mostly for companies in B2B space, small and medium companies, and we help them with employ generated content, which is mostly video, because I love video and because it’s really the easiest way to build trust. So we help them run employee generated content campaigns and employee ambassador campaigns.
04:32
Matt Alder
Is employee generated content particularly important right now? The reason that I asked that is we are drowning under a sea of AI generated content that no one wants to watch, no one wants to read. Does that make employee generated content more.
04:49
Rhona Barnett-Pierce
Important, the right type of employee generated content? Yes, because with all of the AI that is out there that we’re drowning in, a lot of companies are saying, okay, employees, take this AI content that we wrote and post this. That’s not what we mean by employee generated content. Yeah, the right employee generated content created by employees that people can get to hear, what it’s really like to work there, what’s really happening, what they really think about your product. Because I don’t want to frame this only in the talent attraction space because EGC employee generated content works for consumer marketing as well. So the right type of employee generated content with real voices is what’s going to differentiate you from all the AI content that’s out there.
05:42
Matt Alder
Absolutely.
05:42
Matt Alder
And you said right at the beginning.
05:44
Matt Alder
There about it’s really about building trust. Sort of take that apart for us a little bit.
05:50
Rhona Barnett-Pierce
So when you’re able to. Let’s take it back a little. Back in the day, before any of this technology existed, how did you learn about a product or how did you learn the truth about what it was like to work somewhere? You asked a friend, you found out, hey, do you know someone who works there? How is it for them? Well, now that we have the Internet, you don’t have to specifically know someone, but you can go search online you can go on TikTok where everyone, by the way, everyone likes to say it’s Gen Z out there. Millennials and Gen x are on TikTok a lot. So everyone can go to TikTok, can go to YouTube, can go to Instagram, and of course LinkedIn to see what it’s really like.
06:35
Rhona Barnett-Pierce
Because everyone knows that what the company says is, I like to call it aspirational. It’s what you’re seeing. The employer branding that most people do is aspirational. It’s like, this is what we would love it to be here. And we sat someone here and we did this very scripted interview and this is of these photos and all of this is what we want. But what people, what candidates want to know and what consumers want to know is what it’s really like. You get that from an employee because they know that this employee on their personal account isn’t just reading a script that corporate gave them.
07:17
Matt Alder
It’s interesting as well, because I’ve told you this before, but my TikTok is literally just full of people talking about their job. I think it’s because of the only thing I watch on there, but I’m getting addicted to it. I found out what it’s like to work on an oil rig backstage, West End theater in London, you know, all kinds of different things. And it is. It is really interesting if it’s done properly. And I’ve got no intention of either working on an oil rig. And I think my days of. My days of appearing in the West End are probably past me now. But it’s still fascinating, isn’t it? I think people really like that storytelling and that sort of that insider view, don’t they?
07:53
Rhona Barnett-Pierce
Yes. And right now, there is someone on TikTok. She’s. Her name is. I don’t. I don’t remember her name, but she’s known as the Staples baddie or oblivion on TikTok. And she is a newer employee to Staples, the old Staples company that we all know where you go buy, like office equipment and Staples. Yes. Well, she works in the print on demand department, which, by the way, I didn’t know they had at Staples. And she just wanted to. She loves working there and she wanted to show people what you could do. So she started doing a TikTok, just saying like, hey, look, we can print these mugs and just walking people around the store. And now they even have other employees on Reddit complaining about how much traffic to the store her TikToks are bringing. Because people like.
08:46
Rhona Barnett-Pierce
And it was even on the New York Times and everything. And I’m doing an episode about this on my podcast that’s coming out next week. Week. And it’s. People are really seeing. Learning about the company from her. But the most important thing, and she said it on a few interviews, is the only reason why, because no one asked her to do this, is because she genuinely loves working at Staples. So before you even think about EGC or how the campaign and all of these things, you have to make sure that you have a culture. Culture that people actually want to talk about.
09:22
Matt Alder
Yeah.
09:23
Matt Alder
And so I think a lot of.
09:25
Matt Alder
Employers might get what you’re saying, completely understand, you know, how this works, but be reticent because they feel that their employees might not want to do this or they’re worried about what their employees are going to say. They want to script it. I mean, even. I remember a million years ago when were taking. When I worked in recruitment marketing and were taking photos of employees for brochures and things like that, they were worried that employee might leave. And obviously a brochure’s got a very long shelf life. So that’s maybe a different. A slightly different concern. But how do you sort of talk to employers about those concerns that they might have with working like this?
10:03
Rhona Barnett-Pierce
The main thing I like to tell people is whether you want it to happen or not, it’s happening.
10:09
Matt Alder
Yeah.
10:09
Rhona Barnett-Pierce
So you might as well capitalize on it. And I hate the word capitalize, but you might as well leverage this and give your employees the tools. If you’re worried about what your employees are going to say, that’s also a bigger problem because you’re not your. Your internal comms and everything in there is not giving employees the tools that they need to know what to say. Right.
10:29
Matt Alder
Yeah.
10:30
Rhona Barnett-Pierce
If someone’s at Burger King, they shouldn’t be talking about, I’m loving it, but they should know that. Right. Like, come on. But that’s your job. And then controlling it’s like, yes, there’s always going to be legal. There’s always going to be these things. Don’t script it. Give people guidelines. Look, we don’t talk about proprietary information. We don’t talk about, like, our. Our secrets and stuff like that online, because we can’t. And you’ve probably already signed that NDA anyway, those types of reminders. But let people talk because they’re talking about it anyway.
11:05
Matt Alder
Yeah, exactly. And I think that, you know, coming back to that trust thing and now this kind of content economy that we sort of live and live and breathe. I mean, I saw, looking around transform. Never seen so much portable camera equipment. In fact, I saw someone yesterday walking around, being filmed by a Steadicam. And I was like a Hollywood movie in here. What’s going. What’s going on? So it’s very much the world that we live in. And I think for me, I’ve always been sort of fascinated by the research that goes. Goes on around things like podcasts and, you know, podcasts build trust like no other medium because the listeners or the people watching feel that they’re building a relationship with the, with the host. And I think it’s the same with these TikToks as well.
11:50
Matt Alder
And, you know, the other places that it appears, it is that sense that you’re forming a human connection with someone, you know, kind of, you know, by default because you’re not meeting them in person. But that’s a big part of it, isn’t it?
12:02
Rhona Barnett-Pierce
Yes, for sure. And I, I know we talk a lot about TikTok, but I want to say video on LinkedIn and EGC, video on LinkedIn also works on YouTube. That’s been around forever. And we know how good YouTube is with SEO and all these things and driving traffic to your thing. But, yes, this is in a few years. I believe saying things like, oh, we don’t do EGC or we don’t let our employees work would be the equivalent of saying, like, we don’t want to be on Google.
12:33
Matt Alder
We haven’t got a website.
12:34
Rhona Barnett-Pierce
Exactly.
12:35
Matt Alder
No, I think you’re. I think you’re right, because I think that there is just. That there’s a whole shift and there is a generation coming up that this is how they get their information and communicate. And it’s not just a generational thing either, because I’m certainly not a Gen Z or a Gen Alpha. And, you know, content is something that I do. And it’s kind of. It’s sort of really important in that, from that perspective. So who are the employers who are doing this? Well, who are you seeing doing good things?
13:02
Rhona Barnett-Pierce
Surprisingly, they’re mostly in Europe and they’re mostly companies that you would not like. PwC Switzerland. I know exactly. Like, really, they’re doing great. Ulta is actually paying their employees. They have a compensated program called Ulta Beauties where they treat it just like an influencer campaign. And they give. They pay their employees to create this content on the clock, but they get an extra payment for it. I’ve Done two episodes about the legal implications of how to do that with Heather Busing and with the compensation specialist Cynthia Abbot Kerr as well. And there’s also. Who else is doing this really well? Saks Fifth Avenue, we know how that’s going there. But yeah, like, yeah, lots of the retail companies of course have understood because they’ve been. And I think it’s the evolution.
14:04
Rhona Barnett-Pierce
Retail companies have been doing influencer marketing and they’ve been doing user generated content like from their customer base.
14:11
Matt Alder
Yes.
14:12
Rhona Barnett-Pierce
So they’ve been able to adopt EGC way faster.
14:19
Matt Alder
It’s interesting as well because I was using that sort of life in a day example. They’re quite sort of surface level in terms of content. You get to kind of see things. But I’ve also seen companies who’ve really done really deep dives. So I’m thinking of a pharmaceutical company that set up a podcast series and the series was like two of their scientists talking about science stuff and the science stuff that they did and you know, completely incomprehensible other than by people who did that job and a, you know, offering something out to the world, some insights and some things like that. But also what a brilliant way to showcase the work that you will be doing. So this isn’t just about people working in retail or kind of quirky jobs like working on oil rigs or in theaters.
15:03
Matt Alder
It’s giving that sense of, you know, what you’ll be working on at kind.
15:07
Matt Alder
Of every level, isn’t there?
15:08
Rhona Barnett-Pierce
Yes, yes. And it’s just, it’s such an easy way to like really showcase the thought leadership, even though we hate this word that is within your company. But how else would you get out into the world, the caliber, the quality of the employees that you have other than letting them talk about what they do and what they know best. And then yes, you’ll definitely attract the people that you’re wanting to attract, which is the entire point.
15:37
Matt Alder
So you talked about lots of different ways of doing this. What would your advice be to employers listening who aren’t going all in on this at the moment, but see the value and really want to get started? Where should they start with this?
15:49
Rhona Barnett-Pierce
I think the easiest part is everyone always says, oh, we don’t know if our employees are going to want to do this. I promise you probably have some content creators inside your company. They’re probably not telling you, but you probably have them. So start with them. Because even if they do written content, they will be more like they’ll know how to create content. So if you’re wanting to get them into video, they would be the easier ones to do it. And if you want to start with written content with written ejc, that’s also valuable. Like I’m not going to discredit any other form of any other medium of content.
16:26
Matt Alder
Yeah, absolutely. So let’s just talk a little bit about the show that we’re at. It’s very busy and very, very noisy. There’s a huge amount going on. What have you seen? What have you seen as interesting? What conversations have you had? How’s it, how’s it been? Has it been for you?
16:40
Rhona Barnett-Pierce
I think the thing that’s been the most interesting to me is I’ve been asking a question, I’ve been doing street interviews and I’ve been asking people on a scale of what’s AI to I, I’ve handed my job over to AI, how much have you integrated into your workflow? And people are using AI, but people aren’t like it’s not what the tech bros are saying that AI is taking over everything. Even the companies that have a lot of AI and are using a lot, there still has to be a lot of human oversight.
17:14
Matt Alder
Yeah.
17:14
Rhona Barnett-Pierce
So all of these headlines about AI replacing and all of that, I think it’s just a lot of hype. Talking to the people here on the ground about what’s really happening is yes, AI is being used, companies are being smarter. By the way, I asked this question last year, so I’m comparing the answer comparison. And more people are using AI this year than they were last year and more people are interested in learning even on their own.
17:44
Matt Alder
Yeah, it’s interesting. I think that, that kind of sums it up quite well because I was at another conference last week also in Las Vegas and listening to Ethan Mollick do a keynote about AI, but also about AI in the context of HR and work. And he said something that really kind of resonated which was AI is being built by 20 year old tech bros who have no idea about how it works in a work content, in a work context. And that is HR’s job and that is what HR and talent needs to be now be doing. It’s like it’s not a technology project, it’s a people project. And how do you contextualize it and what does it mean and how does it all work? And I think that is what I’m starting to see conversations around now.
18:28
Matt Alder
Which is, which is great to hear. Definitely. So yes, so yeah, Interesting times and I suppose just sort of. Fine, let’s talk about the content creators at events like this. So we are, for people not watching the time lapse video that Ron has set up. We’re kind of in the podcast area. So there are four sort of booths. We seem to have the one with the worst furniture. I’m not quite sure why, but I’m not videoing, so that’s fine. Lots and lots of content being created. Everywhere I look, I saw the person with steadycam. Still can’t work out what that was about, but lots of filming, lots of things going on. And it’s interesting because I don’t see this very much at conferences in Europe, but I see a lot at conferences in the us. What’s your take on it? Why is this happening?
19:15
Matt Alder
What’s the.
19:17
Rhona Barnett-Pierce
I think I would love to say it’s because of all of my content. Talking about how HR tech really needs to start leveraging what’s happening, the conversations that are happening here past the event. But I think really we’re living in a world where everyone understands that culture. Content marketing is how you. It’s a huge part of marketing. So, yes, you’re spending all this money on a booth, but you’re only reaching the people that come to your booth at this event that has a limited, huge but limited amount of people. Yes, there’s 4,000 people, I think here, and maybe a thousand will come to your booth, let’s say that.
19:58
Rhona Barnett-Pierce
But if you create content and you have conversations about what your customers are saying, what prospects are saying, and just what you’re doing, you can reach millions if you want, depending on what your distribution of the content. And it can last forever. It can last past these three days.
20:17
Matt Alder
Yeah. And I think it’s so important because LinkedIn these days is just. It’s like everyone’s writing with the same AI and even people who are writing about people who shouldn’t be writing with AI, are still using it because you can see all the phrases and stuff like that. I mean, as a side issue, I think we’re getting to the point where we’re all starting to talk like an AI because it’s all we read. But I get really frustrated because there are so many great stories, there are so many different types of content that people could put out there. And, you know, an AI post that is just not really telling us anything new or creating any kind of human connection. I just don’t, I just don’t get it.
20:52
Matt Alder
But it appears to be what everyone’s doing at the moment, which is not good, is it?
20:56
Rhona Barnett-Pierce
I just really hope. And I don’t want to be a Debbie Downer, but I’m seeing a lot of. I like to call it solo videographers with no producers around. So lots of people are like, yes, we’re going to get content. Film, film. And what we mostly see is people doing recap videos. And that’s amazing. I’ll do a recap video too. But there’s so much more you can do with the cost content. So I encourage anyone who’s in HR tech who’s listening to this show, who’s going to go to an event, who’s going to make the investment in content. Please have a plan.
21:31
Matt Alder
Yeah, yeah.
21:32
Rhona Barnett-Pierce
Other than we’re creating a recap video, amazing recap videos, but, like, what else can you do? That’s really where you’re going to get your roi.
21:42
Matt Alder
And I think also it’s really important to say that good content just doesn’t happen by accident like that. So much goes into. So much goes into this. I think if you look at some of the best tiktokers or the best YouTubers, if you haven’t seen what they do behind the scenes, the amount of work and expertise that goes into creating content that just looks natural and spontaneous. And I think it’s important people. People realize that, isn’t it?
22:07
Rhona Barnett-Pierce
Yeah. And we are so friendly. There’s so many HR creators nowadays. Hrnta and I love it. We’re all friends and we all know each other and we all talk about it. When. If you’re in HR tech, if you’re at a conference, talk to us. Look at what we’re doing, all of this. There’s a plan. Like, everyone’s like, oh, you’re walking around with a mission. Yes, I have my shot list on my phone.
22:29
Matt Alder
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
22:30
Rhona Barnett-Pierce
There’s a plan.
22:32
Matt Alder
No, it’s funny because I’m trying to do more video, but the amount of, like, planning that’s this involved is interesting. So I’m very much sort of audio centric at the moment, but I’m kind of moving into other media. Rhona, thank you very much for talking to me.
22:46
Rhona Barnett-Pierce
Thank you for having me on the show. It’s always a pleasure.
22:49
Matt Alder
My thanks to Rhona. You can follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts on Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcasts. You can search all the past episodes at recruitingfuture.com on that site. You can also subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Recruiting Future Feast. And get the inside track on everything that’s coming up on the show. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next time, and I hope you’ll join me.
