This people leader wrote a company story to improve the candidate and employee experience

When Michael Stopps joined Justworks as the VP of people in January, he did what he always does when starting a new job: He started writing a story.

The story, Stopps told HR Brew, outlined the ins-and-outs and the who’s-who of the company, as well as the new-to-him world of HR tech.

“There was an absence of it [a company story], and selfishly, I was new to the organization as well. I wanted to know, ‘What is the story?’” he said. “If I was hearing different stories as I was going through my personal onboarding journey at Justworks, I would then hold a mirror up to the organization and say, ‘Hey, I don’t think it’s very clear.’”

He eventually shared it with his 60-person people ops team to help the recruiters and candidate experience coordinators in their roles.

“Whenever we’re scaling, it means that we’re hiring new folks, and they are becoming interviewers too, and so the necessity to have a singular source of truth that the right people have weighed into” was there, Stopps said.

Source of truth. The document, Stopps said, is internally referred to as the “pitchbook” and has chapters explaining Justworks’ mission as an HR tech platform for small businesses, what the company offers as a professional employer organization (PEO), and plans for future growth.

The book is now shared outside of the people ops team, with hiring managers, customer service representatives, and executive leadership, so that the entire organization has “clear and consistent messaging” around the candidate and employee experiences, he said. Each chapter is written by a different author, the expert on that information.

The pitchbook has also helped improve transparency and clarity around organizational structure and priorities for Justworks’ 1,400 employees, Stopps said.

Everything from how the platform is engineered to the company’s stance on DEIB and sustainability to executive leadership’s AI strategy—“whether it’s the AI story that we’re building for the Justworks platform, or whether just our stance on enabling it, and how people can learn and grow along their AI journey here”—is in the pitchbook.

Clearer experiences. What started as a personal playbook for Stopps has transformed into a tool for improving company communications and talent strategies.

“If we’re struggling to articulate it, or we’re articulating it in different ways internally, then how are we going to take that candidate on a cohesive journey? And, indeed, are we taking our employees from an engagement perspective on a journey that makes sense?” he said.

Stopps said the pitchbook is a Google Docs, so he’s able to update it and have those changes reflected to employees instantly. The company has also added the information to its internal chatbots to help answer candidates’ questions faster.

“When you’re doing a lot of hiring and there’s a lot of candidates coming through, that’s our brand. That is our brand, that’s getting our brand out there in the market,” Stopps said. “I always want to make sure that I am delivering the right messages to folks, so then they can choose whether to opt in or opt out to our funnel.”