Using original photography of actual employees for internal communications and recruiting materials is a tremendous factor in creating a meaningful employer brand. Employees and potential job candidates can spot stock photos a mile away - and it instantly undermines the authenticity of your brand. Now that we're beginning to see more employees in the office again. it's a great time to start planning shoots to update your existing photo library or to create one for the first time. You may not be able to shoot every global location right away, but you can establish a new library, one shoot at a time.
Here are five tips to get the most out of your employee shoots:
There's a lot to think through between booking a photographer and shoot day. What sorts of photos do you need most often? For instance, you might realize you need shots of young engineers or programmers for recruiting, or frontline workers in manufacturing facilities for internal communications. For a more efficient shoot day, you might also schedule employees so they're available when you need them.
Headshots and posed portraits certainly have a place in internal communications. but unposed shots of employees engaged with each other and in their work will help you share a story. Look for ways to make heroes of employees, whether that's collaborating on ideas at a whiteboard wall or operating heavy machinery on a plant floor. Top execs interacting with frontline employees tells a powerful story as well.
Your photographer is likely shooting in very high resolution, which creates opportunities for cropping in multiple ways. Ask him or her to shoot wider than they might ordinarily, so you could use shots as verticals focused on one employee or horizontals of a group. During the editing and retouching process, photographers generally crop shots, but you might ask that they skip that step to provide more flexibility later.
We like to have our photographers move quickly, capturing spontaneous moments as well as planned shots. But that can make it tricky later to connect the faces in the photos with individual names. By far the best method we've found for identifying photo subjects is asking for a quick shot of each individual's name badge held up next to their face - plus it ensures correct spelling.
The job's not done when the photographer delivers a hard drive of your photos. That's when the hard work of creating a well-organized catalog begins. Be diligent about establishing and maintaining an effective filenaming protocol. put some thought in folder organization, and consider including key words or adding values to the metadata. Be proactive about thinking through what users will be looking for when they search.
