EBClub Community Guidelines

Welcome to EBClub.

EBClub exists to give in-house employer brand, talent acquisition, recruitment marketing, people, culture and communications practitioners a protected space to talk shop, share what actually happened, and learn from each other. Alongside them sits a paid layer of agencies, consultancies, platforms and specialists who are here to add value, not to sell.

That balance is the whole product. These guidelines are how we keep it.

1Who is in the room

EBClub has three kinds of member. What you can see, and who you can message, depends on which one you are.

Member type	Who they are	What it costs
Practitioners	In-house employer brand, TA, recruitment marketing, people, culture and comms professionals. The protected core of the community.	Free
Providers	Agencies, consultancies, platforms, vendors, freelancers and specialists serving the profession. Visibility and selected participation, not unrestricted access.	Paid
Partners	Organisations who fund or support the community under a separate agreement, reviewed for fit before approval.	By agreement

2The rule that makes EBClub different

This is non-negotiable and it is the reason practitioners are willing to be candid here. Three things follow from it.

• No pitching in the open either. Sales posts, unsolicited promotion and thought leadership that turns out to be a funnel are not allowed in Practitioner or general spaces, whatever your membership type.
• No going around it. Finding someone here and then approaching them on LinkedIn or by email is the same breach. So is asking a third party to make the introduction for you.
• No harvesting. Do not scrape, export, copy or collect member data, profiles, member lists or conversations. The directory is not a lead list.

3Be useful

• Stay on topic. Employer branding, talent and the work around it.
• Contribute before you promote. Especially if you are a Provider. Be useful in the conversation for its own sake.
• Answer properly. A specific, honest answer beats a polished one. What went wrong is usually more useful than what went right.
• Say when you have skin in the game. If you sell into the category you are recommending, say so in the same post.
• Do not repeat yourself across spaces. Posting the same thing everywhere is spam.

4Be decent

• Treat people with respect. Personal attacks, harassment, intimidation and offensive language are not tolerated.
• Disagree with the idea, not the person. Strong disagreement is welcome. Making it personal is not.
• Make room for everyone. Different backgrounds, markets, company sizes and levels of experience make the conversation better. Someone asking a basic question is not wasting your time.
• No discrimination or retaliation. Including against someone who reported a problem.

5Be careful with other people's information

• Do not share someone else's personal information without their explicit permission. That includes private conversations, contact details and screenshots.
• Do not post confidential or proprietary material. If you are not sure whether your employer would be comfortable, assume they would not be.
• Only post content you have the right to post. Credit the creator. Do not pass off someone else's work, and do not paraphrase without attribution.

6Be honest about who you are

• Your profile should make it obvious who you are, who you work for and what they do.
• Do not create a Practitioner profile if you are not in-house. Do not describe your role or employer in a way designed to get you into a room you are not entitled to be in.
• Do not claim results, clients, awards or capabilities you cannot evidence. We may ask you to substantiate a claim.
• One account per person. Do not share your login or let a colleague use your membership. If someone else at your organisation wants in, they need their own membership.

7Reporting something

If you see something that breaks these guidelines, or something that just feels wrong, tell us. Use the report option in the community, or email community@ebclub.app.

• Reports are handled by our team and treated confidentially.
• We will not tell the person who reported them.
• Nobody will be penalised for making a report in good faith.
• If you were cold-messaged by a Provider or Partner, please forward it to us. That is exactly what we want to know about.

8What happens if someone breaks the rules

Situation	What we do
An honest mistake or a first minor slip	A quiet word, and we may remove the post
Repeating it after a warning	Restricted access, then suspension
Spam, cold pitching a Practitioner, scraping, or misrepresenting who you are	Immediate removal from the community
Harassment or discrimination	Immediate removal
Severe or repeated breaches	Permanent suspension and ineligibility to rejoin

If we suspend or remove you and you think we got it wrong, you can ask us to review it. Someone who was not involved in the original decision will look again. Clause 13 of the Membership Terms explains how.

Where we remove a paid member for a serious breach, we do not normally refund the remainder of their membership year.

9Agreeing to all of this

Joining EBClub means you accept:

Document	What it covers	Applies to
These Community Guidelines	How we behave towards each other	Everyone
The Membership Terms	Your membership, eligibility, access, fees, renewal, cancellation and our respective liabilities	Everyone
The Privacy Notice	What personal data we hold, why, who we share it with and your rights	Everyone
The Cookie Notice	Cookies and similar technologies, and your choices	Everyone
The Provider Standards	Directory accuracy, participation, disclosure and content standards	Providers
Heartbeat's Content Policy	The rules of the platform the community runs on, published at heartbeat.chat/legal	Everyone

That last one is not ours. EBClub runs on a platform provided by Heartbeat, and Heartbeat has its own rules covering harassment, hate speech, impersonation, spam and similar. They sit comfortably alongside these Guidelines. Where the two differ, follow the stricter. Heartbeat can act on its own account, including removing content or an account, and we cannot waive its rules for you.

Each of these is linked from the join page, from the footer of every EBClub page and from your account. If we change any of them materially, we will tell you by email and in the community before the change takes effect, and we record which version you accepted and when.

That is all of it. Whether you are here to ask the question you cannot ask internally, or to share expertise that helps someone else get it right, the goal is the same: a room worth being in.

Thank you for being part of EBClub.