Brand
Hive Tone of Voice
Our purpose
“Every voice has the power to change the working world.”
Description
Hive takes pride in its distinctive personality – we steer clear of jargon, prioritise a helpful and friendly approach, and ensure our brand reflects the real, relatable people behind it.
We’re not your typical industry players; we aim to be the approachable and knowledgeable team that stands out.
Hive brings awesome people onboard, and we celebrate the uniqueness of each member. We value individuality while maintaining a consistent tone of voice when wearing our Hive hats—setting the stage for each of us to authentically shine.
Traits
It’s easy to be formal. But that makes it harder to strike up a rapport and build trust with your audience. We want our customers and prospects to feel relaxed and comfortable—and enjoy every interaction with us.
We’re authentic, friendly, memorable and curious in the name of cultivating even better workplaces.
We don’t do corporate, but we At Hive, we steer clear of the corporate stiffness, finding a balance that’s not too casual. We believe in enjoying our work and sharing a laugh because, while not every job directly improves lives, we recognize the impact of our decisions. Our passion and enjoyment leave a positive, lasting effect on others.
We’re approachable, easy to get along with, and maintain a high level of professionalism. That’s how we roll at Hive.
We know our **it, and we’re always up for sharing our honest thoughts when it feels right. No pressure, though – we’re all about respecting different perspectives and never pushing our opinions too hard.
We listen, we empathise, we suggest, and we back it up.
We’re passionate about what we do and we’re proud of that. But at the same time, we don’t let ourselves get carried away in the excitement; we’re experts in our field, so we always consider what we say before we say it.
We’re optimistic, we’re excited, and we’re thinkers.
Ground rules
Standard structure
Whenever you’re writing, try to follow this simple structure (which you can find in the Google Docs template gallery):
Glossary
Employee voice (EV)
Employee voice covers pretty much everything your people express relating to themselves, their colleagues or the organisation that can influence decisions at work—either on a personal level or organisational level. So that could be an answer to a survey question, a concern raised in a 1-2-1, an idea in a suggestions box, a positive feedback email, or anything else that fits the description.
But amplifying employee voice isn’t a cuddly HR ideal; it’s a hard-edged agenda that directly targets the blind spots to efficiency and performance. By making it a priority, leaders get more high-quality information at the earliest opportunity to make better, data-driven decisions.
Employee experience (EX)
The employee experience is everything about a job, up to and including the impact it has on the non-working elements of an employee’s life. Organisations can have a direct impact on the employee experience, whether that’s through the remuneration package, the holiday entitlement, L&D, support, and the list goes on.
If you offer a great—and sometimes tailored—employee experience, then your people will be much more likely to be engaged.
Employee engagement (EE)
Employee engagement is a very difficult thing to define, because it’s different for everyone. But the essence of it is usually a bit of a combination of:
- Job satisfaction
- Motivation to perform
- A sense of belonging
- Intent to stay
- An emotional commitment to the organisational goals
These things can’t be prescribed—you can’t give an employee a sense of belonging—but you can build an inclusive culture that makes it more likely for that employee to feel a sense of belonging.
Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI)
Equality, diversity and inclusion are three related but different terms:
- Equality means making sure that everyone has the same opportunities, support and everything else—so nobody is given an advantage.
– Not to be confused by equity, which is all about putting people on a level playing field; we’re all different, and some of those differences make certain things easier for or harder compared to others. Equity is identifying any disadvantages and putting measures in place to mitigate them. - Diversity means a variety of people from all sorts of backgrounds and with different characteristics and identifiers, whether that’s age, gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, ethnicity, or anything else. More diversity means more perspectives, and more perspectives is key for creativity, problem-solving and avoiding the phrase “We didn’t think of that”.
- Inclusion is about making sure that every individual feels welcome, respected and valued by all their peers and the organisation as a whole. Some of that comes through making allowances for employees’ individual needs—like catering for all sorts of different accessibility requirements, for example. But a lot of it is wrapped up in an organisation’s culture, which makes it difficult to “do”—but it is something that can be encouraged by promoting and role-modelling the right behaviours.
Visit our jargon buster blog for the full A-Z of employee voice terms.
House style
Formatting
Spacing
Keep it to just a single space between sentences—no double spacing.
Bold, italics and underlining
Use bold sparingly to emphasise certain key words, phrases or sentences.
Use italics to refer to the title of something, like My Unhealthy Obsession with Basset Hounds, by John Ryder, or to separate out a bit of text from the main body, like the examples on this page.
Don’t underline. It looks **it
Font
Never use less than 11-point font. Otherwise it becomes too difficult to read.
Our brand fonts (National 2 and Maax Rounded) aren’t available on the Google suite, but the next best is Karla. And if you need an extra font for some reason, go with Nunito.
Numbers
Use words up to and including ten, and numerals for 11 and above—unless it’s date or time, in which case stick to numerals.
If you’re writing a range, then use words if all numbers in the range are under 11, but numbers if one number is above ten.
Write quantifiers from million and above out in full.
Date and time
Write dates out in full, as you would say them out loud—but no need to include the year if it’s obvious.
Write times out using the 12-hour clock with am or pm.
Bullet points
Bullets should always start with a capital letter, even when they’re a continuation from the previous sentence.
If they are a continuation of the previous sentence, then end the final bullet point with a full stop.
You’re eligible to an extra day’s annual leave if:
- You can drink a gallon of milk in 10 seconds
- Your first or last name (or both together) is a palindrome
- You’re the last person standing.
If they aren’t a continuation of the previous sentence, then don’t bother with full stops.
Some items to bring on your first day:
- Compass
- 12-gauge shotgun
- Body armour
- Percy Pigs
Unless one or more of the bullets contains more than one sentence—in which case all should end in a full stop.
There are a few exceptions:
- Putting pineapple on pizza. You would be immediately thrown out.
- Starting a sentence with “So”.
- Using the word “irregardless”.
Web and email addresses
Include “www.” at the start of web addresses (because hive.hr isn’t obviously a web address to most people), but delete the “https//” or the slash at the end when copying and pasting.
Spelling, punctuation and grammar
Hive-specific stuff
Use title-case for our five core features and anything else that gets branded.
Acronyms
These should always be spelt out in full when they are first used, with the acronym in brackets.
Unless it’s a well-known acronym
Abbreviations
Don’t use abbreviations unless it’s how you would say them out loud.
But for those that you would say as abbreviations, like “etc” or “i.e.”, try to use other words or phrases that you would be more likely to use in speech.
And if you must use “Etc”, then don’t bother with a full stop after it–unless it’s the end of the sentence.
Ampersands
Don’t use ampersands unless it’s the name of a company or somebody’s job title. Just write out the word “and”. It’s only two characters more and you don’t have to faff about holding the shift key down.
Contractions
Always use contractions rather than writing out the two words in full.
Dashes and hyphens
Use em dashes (shift + option + – on Mac, or Ctrl + Alt + – on Windows) with no spaces either side to replace commas as “surprise endings” to sentences, or to add “notes” in the middle of a sentence.
Use hyphens in compound words.
Don’t use dashes or hyphens to replace the word “to”
Full stops
Don’t use full stops after initials.
Don’t use full stops after abbreviated titles.
Don’t use full stops after corporate suffixes.
Job titles
Capitalise specific job titles, but not generalised.
Oxford comma
We like the Oxford comma. It helps to avoid confusion in certain situations.
Without the second comma in the example above (the Oxford comma), you could read that as “We said hello to the dogs, who are named John and Al”.
Quotation marks
Use double quotation marks—rather than single quotation marks—when quoting someone, or referencing a specific word, phrase or letter.
Seasons
Capitalise the seasons
Semicolons
Semicolons are tricky and unnecessary, so unless you’re confident in how to use them, don’t bother. Better that than to use them incorrectly and look foolish; nobody wants that.
Slashes
Try not to use slashes. Just write “or”. But if you must, then don’t put any spaces either side of the slash.
Vocab
Employees or people
Rather than “staff” or “workers”, because it’s more human.
Organisation
Rather than “company” or “business”, because we work with plenty of organisations who might not class themselves as a business or company—like non-profits, housing associations, councils, and universities.
Make sure
Rather than “ensure”, because it sounds more natural.
Work-life balance
Rather than “work/life balance”
1-2-1
Rather than “121”, because some would read it as “one-hundred-and-twenty-one”