“Over 71 thousand audiobook titles (were) published in 2020, a 39% growth between previous years”- Statista
“Employees have a deeper affiliation with the message through organizational storytelling due to aligning stories with their own experiences and understanding”- International Journal of Business and Social Science
“A focus on social responsibility is particularly important to attract, retain, and increase the commitment and engagement of Millennial employees and talented women”- Center for Creative Leadership
“Three uses for storytelling in organizations: (1) to motivate employees, (2) for education and (3) to consolidate corporate culture”- Journal of Marketing
“Online audio (podcasts, radio shows, music and audiobooks) has become more popular than ever before”- Publishing Research Quarterly
“The corporate world cannot ignore the demands and expectations of Millennials, who are devout in their desire to associate with companies aligned with their values”- Center for Social Impact Communication at Georgetown University
“Maximizing success through onboarding by storytelling during orientations, [helps employees understand] the company's culture and values [and] its goals and history”- Society for Human Resource Management
“A poor cultural fit is frequently cited as one of the main reasons [an employee] decides to leave an organization… defining the organization's culture through storytelling should start with branding of the organization and continue through the interview and onboarding process”- Physician Executive Communication Journal
“Spoken word audio listening is up 40% in the past seven years, and up 8% year over year”- National Public Radio Organization and Edison Research
“Brands can bring their CSR (corporate social responsibility) efforts to life through authentic storytelling [and] Millennials want to know what companies are doing to make the world a better place”- Center for Social Impact Communication at Georgetown University
“Audiobooks have had a big shift in popularity in 2018 where for the first time, “a full half of all Americans ages 12 and older have listened to an audiobook, up from 44% last year”- Forbes
“Corporate storytelling is suggested to help demonstrate the importance of the corporate brand to internal and external stakeholders… as well as help a firm to bond with its employees”- Product & Brand Management
“Researchers have shown that storytelling strengthens the connections consumers have to brands, so that to a great extent what a brand means to a consumer is based . . . on the narratives he or she has constructed that incorporate the brand.”- Journal of Business Strategy
“[the way employees are on-boarded] sets the tone for the culture of a place, the people, and the values of a new institution and can have a significant impact on employees’ sense of belonging”- Journal of Research, Assessment, and Practice in Higher Education
“Audio platform superiority was about the desire to use an audio platform that is perceived to be superior to other audio alternatives, including on-demand convenience (time and place) and content (vari- ety and uniqueness)”- New Media and Society Journal
“Audiobook sales revenue has been on a steep rise since 2018, reaching 1.3 billion USD in 2020”- Statista
“The storytelling process yields positive impacts on internal and external stakeholder outcomes including increasing employees’ thriving and meaningful work, as well as the attitudes and trust of multiple external stakeholders”- Journal of Strategic Marketing
“Should produce positive effects on key audiences, such as increasingly positive attitudes toward the company and eventually behavioral intentions to support this company”- Public Relations Review
“There are currently about 1000% more titles published since 2011”- Audio Publishers Association
“Storytelling that integrates a moral and spiritual component can transform an organizational culture so members of the organization begin to feel connected to a larger community and a higher purpose”- Journal of Business Ethics
“Employees have a deeper affiliation with the message through organizational storytelling due to aligning stories with their own experiences and understanding”- International Journal of Business and Social Science
“83% of Millennials would be more loyal to a company that allows them to contribute to social and environmental issues”- Cone Communications
“The audiobook market share shifted from 42% digital copy sales in 2009 to 87% digital copy sales in 2017”- Audio Publishers Association
“19% [of Millennials] say they have paid in the last year for a subscription service for eBooks or audiobooks such as Kindle Unlimited or Audible”- American Press Institute
“[onboarding] can also aid employees in identifying values congruence which is critical to career contentment and commitment which can significantly impact retention to both the field and the institution long-term” - Journal of Research, Assessment, and Practice in Higher Education
“When it comes to digital storytelling for branding, there is, a more positive attitude towards the company when the employer branding message is using digital storytelling”- Management Dynamic in the Knowledge Economy Journal
“The most recent era in audio entertainment… users are asserting power over the medium to select particular content at particular times”- Mass Communication and Society Journal
“The majority (79%) of Millennials want to work for a company that cares about how it contributes to society and 69% would refuse to work for a company that is not socially responsible”- Journal of Education For Business
“Millennials are more technologically advanced than any previous generation [and] survey data has shown a correlation between age and reading preferences [where] younger people listen to more audiobooks than older Americans”- State University of New York
“Storytelling is essential to successful branding, since your brand is the sum of all your corporate behaviors and communications that inform your customers’ experiences with your product or company”- The Journal of Business Strategy
“Narrative presentation of corporate strategy, comparative advantage, is more effective at producing a consistent and confident choice of competitive advantage among an audience than a presentation of corporate strategy using a PowerPoint style, bulleted list approach”- Journal of Strategy and Management
“Story-telling is an important element… involving the sharing of experiences and creation of mental-maps of the environment in which people are motivated to perform to their full potential”- Leadership and Organization Development Journal
“There is value in a story that is, designed to drive the simulation and to elicit the [employee’s] best performance”- Society for Human Resource Management
“64% of Millennials consider a company’s social commitments when taking jobs and will not work for a company if they do not have strong corporate social responsibility (CSR) values”- Cone Communications
“Stories are a device… [that] provide managers with a form of social and intersubjective interaction that reflects belief systems, role expectations, interpersonal norms and conditions for work behavior”- International Journal of Management
“116% growth in spoken word listeners 13-34 years old in the past even years, with 18% growth in the last year”- National Public Radio Organization
“73% of the U.S. 12+ population (an estimated 209 million people) have listened to online audio in the last month, up from 68% in 2021”- Edison Research
“Storytelling that starts with the persona allows us to tap into these deeper recesses, where the influence of attitudes and emotions is greater… loyalty and trust are found there”- Journal of Business Strategy
“As technology evolves, people have more options available to them, which may explain why [reports] found younger adults to be more likely to opt for audiobooks and the multi-tasking they enable”- Forbes
“Audio narrative has recently benefited from profound cultural shifts in media consumption associated with on-demand television’s binge watching revolution and the advent of digital longform storytelling”- Journal of Radio & Audio Media
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“As of late June (2020), 42% of the US labor workforce was working from home, and a third was unemployed – making it a work-from-home economy.” That, according to Alexandra Marvar writing for Biznow. She goes on to add, “During that time, TopResume monitored job satisfaction factors, asking 118,650 job seekers: ‘What matters most to you when deciding which job to take next?’ The most prioritized factor reported was company culture.”
Falling Chips
Welcome to “The Brave New World!” Employees today are increasingly work from home as, like it or not, ready or not, companies are yanked, kicking and screaming into the 21st Century! It’s not like the transition to work-from-home happened at an incremental pace where unique problems associated with this new kind of work could be solved as we went along. No! The pandemic instantly forced us into it, and then, let the chips fall where they may.
Some of the big chips that are starting to fall center around increased isolation and insulation that remote employees feel from their companies. Other falling chips include attracting compatible employees. Company culture is increasingly important to remote applicants.
How do you convey your company culture to your remote employees and job applicants?
What Do You Stand For?
Bisnow interviewed TopResume Career Expert Amanda Augustine on this matter. “Recent events have spurred many professionals to re-examine their priorities, particularly when it comes to the type of company they want to work for. From the coronavirus outbreak to the death of George Floyd and the subsequent #BlackLivesMatter movement, many professionals are evaluating their employer’s response — or lack thereof — to these events and are searching for work with a new set of criteria for their next employer.”
How do you communicate where you stand on issues important to your existing and potentially new employees?
What is Your Culture Like?
According to Bisnow, Gensler Strategy Director and Senior Associate Susan Juvet explains, “Those job seekers will be looking for a sense of a new company’s workplace culture in the interview process, and that is tricky for HR personnel and hiring managers who used to convey their company’s collective attitude and values to newcomers through in-person tours and casual moments and quick hellos around the office, and now find themselves restricted to a series of emails and Zoom meetings.”
Is there a more efficient, compelling, and entertaining solution to this challenge?
A 21st Century Solution
We believe a big part of the solution is to get your employees and your potential employees to identify with the founder’s story, values, and principles. But not in a prescriptive text or some list in a manual. No! Something entirely different! An entertaining audio play, complete with seminal scenes, dialogues, action and outcomes, enhansed with sound effects and music. Sound like fun? It is!
Your people can experience the story of how your company started and grew, with all the cliff hangers and breakthroughs that eventually resulted in their jobs. Employees can witness the founder’s values in action as they solve the endless challenges they had to overcome. Employees and potential employees can identify with the founders as kind of heroes. They will find themselves identifying with and pulling for the founders as the story unfolds.
We call this process Busines Audio Theatre. It’s not unlike the Radio Theatre of the 1940’s where you were engaged in the action playing out in your mind’s eye. As award winning, Business Audio Theatre director, Matt Weinglass says, “We bring your story to life with a complete cinematic experience for your ears!”
Today’s new workforce is already quite familiar with podcasts and audiobooks. They love the freedom from the screen and the page that MP3 technology provides. Also, thanks to today’s technology, the entire production can be done remotely!
Why not have applicants listen to your story before they even apply? Why not attract and keep engaged employees who identify with your cause and support your principles? Why not make a one-time investment in a brand-building, legacy-preserving, and on-boarding tool that will last generations?
Interested? Check it out at www.businessaudiotheatre.com.
