This is one of the mantras spoken at Intuit. It’s a mantra because the company is on a mission: to be a premier innovative growth company. Brad Smith, Intuit’s CEO is determined to make it happen. His dream is for Intuit is to be remembered among the ranks of Apple and Google. And to do so, he maintains that it takes the right people, in the right jobs empowered to take risks, experiment, make mistakes and you guessed it – innovate.

So it was no surprise to learn that Melissa and the Right Talent team lead by Michael McNeal, took a “no fear” approach when they decided to re-brand Intuit as an employer. They weren’t going to let the recession stop them from rekindling their strategy. Especially one that was so near and dear to the company goals.

In April 2008 after Intuit launched its first-ever corporate brand initiative in an effort to help customers, employees and shareholders better understand the products and services Intuit provided, HR saw an opportunity to refresh the employer brand and ran with it. Their goal was to align brands, engage employees in telling the their story and get it out there to let candidates and employees know they are there for them – in good times and bad.  
  

Be smart.    

 They did their research, benchmarked and presented other companies that successfully rebranded in hard times but also drove home a firm belief. As Melissa stated: “People will remember who took care of them when they needed it. And companies who are loyal to their people during a downturn will be the brands that will have loyal customers and employees when the economy gets better.” 

When it came to leadership buy-in, having a CEO that understands that people are the heart and soul of the innovation engine provided no obstacles either.

“We are lucky that our CEO, Brad Smith, in almost all of his presentations to the company talks about the importance of attracting the right talent to Intuit…. We even have our CTO, talking about how we can make sure we have a strong employer brand in the engineering community. So gaining buy-in for our brand was not difficult to do here.”
 

Be real.

 The story Intuit set out to tell was not a new one. It simply needed an upgrade. In discussing their previous brand campaign Melissa spoke to its relevancy still today.

“People really liked it because its premise was, you're more than what you do at work and that at Intuit, you can bring your whole self to work. It was about diversity of perspective and everything that makes you unique is going to be valued at this company.

No matter who you are outside of work, you can bring that perspective here because it's that uniqueness that you bring that produces a better outcome and makes you valuable to our company. That's been our mantra from the beginning so when we wanted to do this employer brand refresh, the story was still the same.

One of our five corporate brand attributes is real. We are authentic and genuine in everything we do. So we include real Intuit people in all of our imagery to communicate that people can be themselves here, and it reinforces our brands’ focus on the whole people experience.”

From Spark to Flame

Intuit’s Right Talent team was inspired to move swiftly to partner with their internal creative group to articulate concepts and messaging that were fresh, simple and precisely aligned with their culture. They wanted it to stick. What they didn’t want was to complicate an already strong message. So when “Be yourself.” was presented for feedback to employees, it was met with resounding concurrence.

“We launched our first employer brand in 05/06 and it was about how you can bring your whole self to work and you're more than what you do at work. It was our first attempt at having an employer brand and the work that went into that included tons of focus groups, speaking to hundreds of employees and asking them why they chose Intuit over every other employer.

We really wanted to find out what made us different. And the fact that people said "I can really be myself here". That story's been true for the longest time. When we did our brand refresh we said, why can't we keep it simple and say 'You can be yourself here' because that's exactly what our employee’s told us they could do?  Then, when we did our branding checks with the new campaign, people were like "Yeah, that's exactly it!" because it's still true. And the reason it resonates is because we didn't create the brand – our employees created it. We just figured out a way to tell the story. It's not my story. It's not Right Talent's story. It's the employees' story told throughout the whole company.”

The campaign and its multiple elements were developed and launched in just four (4) months. Yes, that’s right. 4 months. "We're allowed to innovate and we're allowed to "move" so we didn't have to wait. Our atmosphere is very much a "try it and see what happens" and in fact one of our six mindsets is called "Fail fast. Learn fast." So if you're going to fail, that's ok! Move quickly, learn from it and figure it out. Rebuilding our web site is a great example of that."  The careers Web site took 9 months due to the necessary integration with their ATS and other hi-tech features involved but as you'll see in examples below, it was worth the wait.

Be engaging.

The examples Melissa provided showed how hard (and fast) the team worked to involve employees in this process and launch “Be yourself”. They exemplify the enthusiasm employees have for being involved and illustrate Intuit’s desire to engage and inspire candidates and employees alike.

They also proved that engagement is a journey and listening to the voices of their employees is something they do often – because it's important to leadership and it's important to the Right Talent team.

"We have an annual employee survey and also do brand pulse surveys once per quarter. We're currently doing something very specific for our engineering community since this is a focus for us right now. So yes, about once a quarter we do reach out and listen."

Be interactive.

Their largest undertaking was the interactive careers Web site that launched in June, 2009. As far they know, it’s the first of its kind because it offers candidates a unique way to explore everything Intuit has to offer, showing them that there is way more than meets the eye at Intuit. You could say it's a virtual playground where candidates can dive as deeply into the site as they wish and designed to pique the curiosity of candidates encouraging them talk to their recruiter to learn more. You can see how the “Be _____” messaging is woven throughout the interactive experience.

A very veryone featured on the website is an actual Intuit employee. More than 35 employees appear on the site in some way. Melanie, the receptionist at Intuit’s Mountain View campus, welcomes you as you enter the building. As you explore each room, the educational and interactive aspect of the experience leaves no stone unturned. In the grow room for example, you hear employees’ stories of growth and possibilities. Hear about leadership philosophy and how, at Intuit, you learn by teaching each other.  

Here are just a few images from the site that was built by animation company, Compass Rose Media, based in Santa Cruz, CA.

Be ingenious.

One of the questions I had for Melissa was: "Why did you decide to make this such an interactive world and vibrant space for candidates?" Her response captured the spirit of innovation and experimentation that is so organic to their culture:

“It's so funny. Like I said, we work in an environment where we get to constantly try something new. Our leader Michael McNeal, gets so excited about this stuff. He calls employer branding stuff he gets to do and not stuff he has to do. So he just loves it and we started talking about revamping our web site. It's a little stale, looks fine, fully functional, no one has had a bad experience but it's not knocking anyone's socks off. So we started working with Compass Rose Media, a small interactive media design firm, and we just wanted them to develop a really cool recruiting video. That's all we wanted to do. So we thought we'll put up a great video and the site will be fine.”

“All of the sudden we started talking to this team and the whole idea just started exploding into "What if the whole thing was interactive, what if it wasn't just the video?". What if it was like you said, a video game. And people can experience as much or as little as they like. But the more you dig, the more information you get and the more you're rewarded for digging! We thought that sounded amazing.

It was such a great partnership working with this company. They didn't have experience in creating recruitment web sites. Everyone that we talked to that created recruitment web sites could create really cool tools and we're lacking there so that may be phase II but we worked with an interactive multi-media company without experience in recruiting. We educated them on the nuances of recruiting to attract people. So everything that came out of it was so fresh and so new because no one was tied down to old ideas.

So again, what you see on our careers web site is an experiment in action. It probably needs some work for sure but it's been a great experiment, we've got some incredible feedback from people telling us they've spent an hour on the site just clicking around and learning different things.”

Be customer-focused.

Intuit's not sitting still when it comes to evolving the experience on their Web site.

Since they discovered that customers and candidates are often surprised when they learn everything Intuit offers, they’re working on the second phase of the interactive careers site, called “Main Street,” to showcase all the cool, innovative things we do to help consumers and small businesses manage their financial lives.

According to Melissa, “Main Street will include several interactive scenarios to teach visitors more about Intuit’s solutions for small businesses, consumers and financial institutions around the world."

Be inspired.

Their second largest initiative came at the end of 2009 as Intuit kicked off an employee video contest around the theme “Be inspired”. It got the company buzzing. Here what Melissa had to say when asked about any challenges they faced and how they inspired employees to get involved and have fun:

“It was easier then we thought it was going to be! It's one of the best things about doing something really grass roots like this. You just need to get employees to participate and so we did a lot of internal communications and we made it as simple as possible. They could use their own web cam or if not, we had video stations set up on site to shoot their videos for them. Or if they were really good at making their own movies at home, they were able to do something more creative and it was within their capability, that's great! We wanted to make it clear that anybody could participate, you know, you didn't have to go out and make this big cinematic production.

The premise was "Tell us how you can be yourself at Intuit." And all they had to do was hold up a sign with the word "Be" in it and whatever they could "be" was next to that word and they just had to shoot up to a two minute video about how that was possible here. We then took our favorite clips and created a montage.

One of the ways we inspired people to participate was #1 we made it very easy, like I said. The second thing was, for our top 15 finalists, they got, a spotlight recognition bonus so the reward amount varied on the ranking, and then in addition to they were also able to get a grant for their favorite non-profit through our We Care and Give Back Program. So we try to reward something for the employees and something for communities as well and that really inspires people.”

Below is the YouTube video montage that helped candidates see the "real" Intuit:



Be involved.

To help employees get involved and see other video examples they developed an internal site for their team members so they could learn more about the contest, view finalists’ videos and watch a ”behind the scenes” video.

Having had a chance to explore the site for myself, I found it evident that the project did more than just re-ignite engagement. It got people involved. The spark in the eyes of employees proved that inspiration and empowerment are living and breathing traits of this innovative culture.

Be social.

The Right Talent team takes Intuit’s online presence far beyond the careers website and employee videos. They are building communities on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter for starters.

Wherever Intuit’s talent is, they’re there too. Getting to know them, sharing insights about their culture, participating in discussions, sharing and learning with each community. Since joining the conversations Intuit doubled their percentage of social media hires in 2009.  While it is still a low percentage of their overall hires, according to Melissa, they know they’re heading in the right direction.

“…In today’s socially transparent world, the truth is going to come out. So we can either contradict it or we can speak the truth. If we're saying something different then what our employees are saying on these social sites then it's going to be very obvious and it's not going to take people very long to figure out you're not a very genuine company. So we can be honest about who we are and say, "We're not perfect. We have a lot to learn! Join us and help us learn!”

Melissa also pointed out the importance of responding to candidates where they spend their time. Because there are more places than Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, they often check and respond to candidates on sites like Indeed, SimplyHired or others who are powered with candidate feedback.

Be on-brand.

As with every company, brand strategy is a constantly evolving process. Intuit plans to continue infusing the brand strategy through communications but plans to implement some type of employee brand education program to help employees understand inherently what the brand is and what on-brand behavior looks like. I asked Melissa how they are reinforcing and rewarding employees for performance and their contributions on a daily basis? Here’s what she had to say about present and future state:

“I don't think we're doing anything too formal right now. To be honest with you, two years ago with the corporate brand launch, we talked about doing a brand champion program at that time. But due to everything else that was going on, we decided not to. Now we're looking back thinking maybe we should have done it anyway. Because even with all of our efforts, through the brand surveys we do, there are still employees who don't necessarily understand what our brand is. They know what it feels like and the gut feeling is consistent. That's how we know it's the right thing but they may not be able to tell you exactly what the brand essence is or be able to rattle off the five brand attributes, so we're not quite there yet.

We are planning later this fiscal year is to start a more formalized brand education program throughout the company, maybe activating some brand champions, and try to figure out how we can do a better job at reinforcing on-brand behaviors. I think it's in our DNA and we're so close to it that I think if we just enabled it a little more, we'd see some great results.”

Be united.

While “Be yourself” is still a fresh brand for Intuit, the results so far have been promising.

“It's been really successful so far. I can't tell you how great it's been to see this trickling in to the organization and now it touches almost all of the communications our employees see. Through "We care and give back, which is our employee volunteer and philanthropy program, our employee network events, diversity and inclusion, communications, it's included in all of that. Which is great because it really helps employees understand that all these things aren't separate. They go together – it’s who we are – our culture. And it's about being able to be yourself at Intuit and it's one of the ways that you can be inspired. It brings it all under one umbrella and helps make sense of it all for employees.

Internal communication has been great, employee engagement has been great. How it's impacted hiring? It's probably too soon to tell but what we do know is that the quality of candidates we're seeing is really high. So that tells us that we are attracting the right people…the people we really want to know who we are, know who we are… I think we're going to see even greater improvement in the months to come.”

Be successful.

As a company driven to “Go Beyond Innovation” countless peer-reviewed journals and associations have recognized their success time and time again. Most admirably, Intuit has been named among the “Top 100 Companies to Work For” by Fortune magazine for nine years running.

While Intuit’s positioning on the list did drop during the process, what Fortune and its readers didn’t know was how HR was simultaneously working to re-engage its employees and drive a brand strategy and that would help them re-ignite employees’ passion for innovation and Intuits’ culture of empowerment.

When I asked Melissa how Intuit keeps the spirit of motivation alive, she focused on recognition over rewards. Eluding to the proposition that loving what you do and being recognized for your work can often be more motivating than the stick and the carrot approach.

“Be yourself”

I asked Melissa, “if there was one thing that you could say about Intuit and why it’s such a great place to work, what would that be?” She responded:

“This will sound cliché because it’s our brand but its true. I would say, “I can be myself and what I bring to the table is valued.” No one tells me how to do my job or prevents me from doing it. There’s freedom. You’re free from risks and from fear. You can take risks and see what happens. People trust your judgment and appreciate everything you bring to the table."