Photo Library

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 begin to establish a new library, one shoot at a time.

Here are five tips to get the most out of your employee shoots:

Spend as much time planning as shooting

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.

Tell stories with candid shots

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.

Shoot wide so you have options for cropping

Seeing the faces and hearing the voices of colleagues in other geographies, brands or job functions helps create human connections with people across silos. Those human connections can help promote collaboration, shared pride in company accomplishments, and a sense of being part of something larger than one’s immediate work team.

Take a close-up of their employee badge

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.

Build a library that’s easy to search

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 file-naming 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.