I hear you.
I understand.
I’ve got your back.

When it feels like nobody gets you, can relate or extend a helping hand, it’s isolating. However, heartfelt and simple words like the above from another person can make a real difference.

Having an ally—a person who uses their own influence and makes a conscious effort to help another who is facing an adversity—is powerful. That power comes from knowing you are supported. It builds confidence that can be transformational and sow greatness, especially at work.

Building allyship between colleagues can only stem from an established foundation of mutual respect. In recent years, we’ve seen increased and purposeful efforts across organizations do just that through diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB) programs. A recent Pew Research report noted that while there were marked differences by race, ethnicity and age to survey questions about the influence of these programs, 72% of workers confirmed that DEIB-related policies and resources have had a positive impact where they work. Often, Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) play a very important role in that success as do the allies that support and advocate for them.

Inclusion and allyship go hand in hand. How else can the often-stated claim from organizations that employees can be their true selves at work ring true without a culture that extends a safety net for open conversations and active listening?

Microsoft has had an allyship program in place since 2020 and I particularly like how they describe it as a different kind of diversity program “inspiring people to be better allies—and be OK with making mistakes.” The stated goal of the program is to provide their team with the language they need to discuss different viewpoints and difficult things inclusively and with empathy. It’s a noble one and bound to be imperfect. And that’s even with a two-year runway to develop it with a team of neuroscientists. People will unquestionably make mistakes but that’s no reason to not encourage allyship.

Making progress rather than perfection can be a very achievable goal. Efforts can start by communicating some of the basics on how to be an ally like these:

Always be curious. Take the time to learn about cultures, experiences and identities that are different from your own. By gaining a deeper understanding, you’ll deepen your empathy for others. Even more so, this type of education will also help ensure that well-intentioned, but out-of-touch communication misfires can be avoided.

Don’t stay silent. Speak up when your microagression radar pings. And use that opportunity not just to correct, but to explain why some words are truly harmful.

Be the change. Actions speak, so think about ways to actively show support for DEIB and ERG initiatives or offer mentorships to underrepresented employees in an impactful way.

The investment in fostering a more equitable work environment is important. Think of the appreciation for that investment from employees who genuinely need more people in their corner. Plus, it is an investment in creating a more empathetic and engaging culture.

A 2023 study by the Harvard Business Review indicated that organizations that integrated allyship into their core values and provided ongoing training saw a 34% increase in employee engagement. By incorporating the stories of allies into your employer brand activations and advocacy program, you can reinforce to each other, as well as prospective employees, that you’re committed to building a diverse and inclusive workforce. These stories add authenticity and depth to your messaging, demonstrating that your organization isn’t just talking the talk—you’re walking the walk.

Your employee value proposition (EVP) is felt every single day. It’s built from that unique set of offerings as an employer—the culture, experience, rewards, and more—for the employee who brings their best self to work. On paper, your EVP should help you clearly convey that dynamic and by doing so differentiate you from your competition. In action, it should also help you accurately answer the question: Why would a person want to work for your company?

A great answer will connect with the people you hope to attract and retain and will leave others questioning if your company is the right fit (because it is not) and move on.

Your EVP acts as a North Star to your employer brand messaging both internally and externally and across every channel. And like any solid brand strategy, it needs to be validated and reevaluated on a regular basis to ensure its authenticity.

Is it time to rethink your EVP? Here are four reasons that point to a resounding “yes.”

1. Your EVP is a blast from the past.

If your EVP is from the pre-COVID era or even a couple of years old, things have most definitely changed. That doesn’t necessarily mean that your employee value proposition is wildly off base. It just means there’s a strong chance that the intel gathered to shape your current EVP and its supporting pillars isn’t necessarily a reflection of today.

2. There’s no back-up.

Knowledge is power and a powerful EVP is backed by research. Employee surveys, leadership 1:1’s, persona workshops, competitor reviews, external focus groups—insights from research along these lines is invaluable. Without them, how can you be so sure that what you’re saying is really and truly true? You can’t.

And put aside worries that you might be opening a can of worms once research findings start rolling in and get distilled to key stakeholders. Embrace the tensions. What you may believe or even aspire to be as an organization could conflict with reality. This level of knowledge will give focus to real opportunities for positive change and impact.

Inevitability, it will ground you and help craft stronger and more genuine messaging with your key audiences. Speaking of key audiences, another bonus is that nine times out of ten persona-based research also uncovers a treasure trove of great employee stories just waiting to be told.

3. The purpose is missing from the promise.

There’s emotional value in where we work. And that often stems from a shared purpose. Having a shared purpose feels right. It brings meaning to our work and a personal reason to be invested. When developing your EVP, challenge the language. Push harder and ask, “Does this clearly convey a connection between our company’s purpose and the employee experience?”

4. It’s generic.

If you give your EVP a read and your gut check is that it could easily be applicable to pretty much any company out there, don’t settle. What makes your company different is at the heart of what attracts and retains people who will thrive and drive outcomes for the business and themselves. That’s who you want to connect with and that’s not going to be everybody. It will be people who can confidently say, “I belong here.”

I hope your wheels are turning. I encourage you to engage in an ongoing investment in evaluating your EVP. Keep thinking, iterating, testing, and validating. Your efforts will pay off in many, many ways, especially when it comes to standing out from the crowd for all the right reasons.

Well, before I weigh in, let’s ask our new friend ChatGPT. Here’s the response I got:

“As of now, a person is generally better at writing a job description than AI. While AI tools can assist in generating job descriptions and even provide suggestions, they may lack the nuanced understanding, creativity, and context that a human can bring to the task.”

Yep. Can’t say that I disagree. But as you can plainly see, part of the intro to this very blog came courtesy of a quick prompt I entered into ChatGPT. The Pew Research Center reports that for those who are aware of ChatGPT, 16% are regularly using it at work. Generative AI tools provide a much-needed jump-start to speed up and streamline tasks. And when you look at any list of “great” use cases of AI for recruiters, the task of job description rewrites almost always tops the list.

Leveraging AI to boost productivity by automating time-consuming work that feels like pure drudgery makes obvious sense. Applications of smart automation in our tech stack workflows and sourcing engines have already been delivering efficiencies and hours back in our day for years. The boost of a job description rewrite in seconds especially when so many of our job descriptions could seriously use one, also makes sense. However, the rewrite you get back is really just that—a boost.

Today, there’s still a need for plenty of human oversight with a generative AI tool writing your job descriptions. Here are three very real reasons why:

Misguided prompts

Out of date, jargon-filled, too much information. Too little information. For all or some of these reasons, your job descriptions may have been riding along on the struggle bus for years. An accurate portrayal of the job itself and ideal attributes that sync to your company’s culture, values, and purpose might be sorely missing within them, too. So, if you want to get yours off that bus by running them through a generative AI tool, it’s not enough to ask “Hey ChatGPT, make this a better job description.” You will need to think about a well-constructed prompt before you begin.

Take a closer look at your EVP, employer brand guidelines, and personas. Tap into that treasure trove of informed research and include it in your initial prompt. Here’s a basic example of what I mean:

This [JOB DECRIPTION] for a [JOB TITLE] needs to attract a person with the following attributes [INSERT ATTRIBUTE LIST] that align with our [COMPANY’S VALUES] while portraying a concise and realistic overview of what it takes to thrive in this role based on the following [PERSONA OVERVIEW] and the [EMPLOYEE VALUE PROPOSITION] our company offers in return.

Even with a solid start, the resulting copy may warrant continued prompts for specific and necessary tweaks. Regardless, as you perform your review, there’s a very strong case to be made that you or another real live person invested in your employer brand messaging will want to invest in finalizing copy. Why?

Quality is questionable

Even AI is aware that there’s a lack of “nuanced understanding, creativity, and context that a human can bring to the task” when writing job descriptions. Without a solid set of training data (think minimally of the fill-in-the-blank intel in the example prompt), a great job description rewrite isn’t going to happen.

More importantly, the human touch is missing in action. And that’s a big miss. Style and originality that more powerfully convey your employer brand won’t be coming from parsed copy. It will come from the perspectives of people.

And speaking of parsed copy, there’s a real chance that over time using generative AI tools like ChatGPT may homogenize our writing. Not so great when you are trying to differentiate, is it?

Let’s talk about bias 

AI has been positioned as a bias-buster for job descriptions. Its ability to identify stereotypical language and recommend gender-neutral terms appears to be a wonderful advantage and there are solutions out there doing a great job of it. However, let’s not forget how a tool like ChatGPT gets its learnings. It gets them from existing data and language patterns. From us. That creates an imperfect solution. So again, enough said. Human oversight of what generative AI produces is a must.

While we’re strictly talking about copy creation here, there’s been plenty of examples of text-to-image models of generative AI playing into race and gender stereotypes, too. When reporting for Bloomberg Technology + Equality, Leonardo Nicoletti and Diana Bass prompted a text-to-image model to “create representations of workers for 14 jobs — 300 images each for seven jobs that are typically considered ‘high-paying’ in the US and seven that are considered ‘low-paying’ — plus three categories related to crime.”

After a review of the results, it is no surprise that their report is titled: Humans are biased. Generative AI is even worse. I encourage you to give it a read.

In the end, my answer to the question that this blog post poses isn’t a hard no. Not at all. Staring at a blank screen or looking at that three-page deep job description not knowing where to even begin is in itself a time suck you don’t need to suffer through. With some consideration to your prompts, personas, and people who know your employer brand, it’s a yes to having improved copy in a split second. Limit your reliance on generative AI to what it’s good at—a working draft—and tap into what only a human can bring to the written word for your job descriptions. It will be a winning combination for this very important task.