We hear a lot about ‘customer-centricity’, putting the customer at the heart of everything you do. For years, organisations have been using Net Promoter Score (NPS) to measure their customer experience and to generate feedback that boosts data-driven decision making. However, when it comes to measuring the candidate experience, companies are missing out on candidate NPS.
What is NPS?
Net Promoter Score, or NPS, began as way for organisations to measure customer satisfaction and loyalty. By asking one question—“On a scale from 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this product/company to a friend or colleague?”—organisations can gauge which customers are promoters, and which are detractors.
Overall NPS score can range between -100 and +100, and the higher the score the better.
Why Candidate NPS?
Why is NPS an important measurement for talent acquisition leaders? Our research into candidate experience revealed that:
Only 5% of candidates rated their experience excellent
But 66% of candidates have never been asked to provide feedback on their recruitment experience.
Yet, 9 out of 10 have provided feedback when asked.
With such a small percentage of candidates having an excellent recruitment experience, it’s imperative for organisations to start benchmarking their candidate experience in order to make data-driven improvements.
Yet, so few organisations are leveraging Candidate NPS. This week, we hosted the second part of our webinar series, “Early Careers Talent: How to Get Ahead in 2021.” During the broadcast we polled the audience, asking whether they currently use, intend to use or have no plans to use NPS to measure their candidate experience. Our attendees told us the following:
7% currently use NPS
21% don’t plan to
64% intend to start
7% have other plans
Getting Started with Candidate NPS
Consider adding a communication to your CRM after critical stages in your recruitment process like the assessment centre or hiring manager interview—regardless of outcome. By asking one simple question and the candidate’s reasoning for their rating, you can gather valuable data to drive continuous improvement in your candidate experience.
After gaining an initial benchmark, you can measure Candidate NPS overtime to see how your process improvements are impacting the candidate experience. Combined with other metrics, you’ll be on your way to understanding the impact of your talent acquisition program and improving your recruitment outcomes.
Until about 10 years ago, simply posting a job opening to a career site like Indeed or Glassdoor may have been enough to get you the right talent to fulfill your hiring needs. That’s because in economic climates where job-seekers are abundant, active candidates would search open positions, see your job posting, read the description and decide whether they wanted to apply. Often, that job posting might have been the first time a candidate engaged with or even heard of your brand.
Today, candidates can see and engage with your brand at hundreds of touchpoints before ever seeing a job posting or visiting your career page. And millions more people are looking for lasting employment now due to the pandemic. Whereas traditional in-person interviews declined, the importance of virtual hiring and an organisation’s online presence have drastically risen. While this may sound daunting at first, digital recruitment marketing and the rise of social media mean organisations today can spread their message and establish a strong knowledge of their employer brand with prospective candidates – often before those candidates even think about looking for a job.
Regardless of the economic climate and whether we are at the lowest unemployment rates experienced in decades or the highest, a strong social media presence is imperative to an employer’s recruitment media mix. Now, more than ever, we are all tuned in to what our networks are saying, sharing and recommending online.
In fact, according to a report by LinkedIn, 72% of recruiting leaders worldwide agree that employer brand has a significant impact on hiring. Moreover Jobvite research showed that 59% of candidates followed companies on social media to gain insight into their company culture – myself included! When I was considering joining PeopleScout, social media was one of the main ways I researched what it would be like to work here.
Specifically, I kept an eye out for engaging content, interesting comments and overall employee engagement. PeopleScout’s active social pages with relevant content and employees passionately sharing their work achievements were one of the deciding factors when I chose to come on board. After all, if an omnichannel recruitment marketing strategy were what I would advise to my clients, I had to work for a company that led with the best examples.
Building Your Brand
When it comes down to the critical moments throughout the candidate’s journey, what an employer presents online could be the deciding factor for whether a candidate joins an organisation. Truly, if a candidate is debating between two employers and one has a nearly nonexistent online brand presence while the other showcases personality, culture and industry-related insights, it’s clear who will win the talent.
And, it doesn’t just come down to one quick, last-minute Google search. To improve your employer brand in a candidate’s mind takes a persistent effort. For example, say you’re looking to hire a nurse, but the ideal prospect is located outside of your region. Attracting that candidate will be a huge undertaking that isn’t going to happen overnight.
It’s unlikely that the candidate will apply for a job at your hospital out of the blue, especially if they’ve never heard of you before. But, what if that candidate saw one of your Twitter posts about the “10 Things You Should Know as a New Nurse”? Or, maybe a friend sent them your Instagram post of an uplifting quote about providing patient care?
By reaching prospective candidates at multiple touchpoints throughout the hiring cycle with a consistent brand presence, you’ll have a much higher likelihood of establishing a positive impression of your brand. Then, when it comes time to apply, and eventually accept a position, the persona you portray online will have a huge impact on those decisions.
But, while your ideal nurse might be active on Instagram, not all candidates will be. For instance, if you’re looking for a C-level executive, you’ll have better luck on LinkedIn. Conversely, if you’re hiring an elementary school teacher, you might reach them best on Facebook. Determine which social media platforms make the most sense to engage your prospective candidates and focus your strategies there.
If You Want to Improve Your Employer Brand, Go Beyond “We’re Hiring”
Regardless of the platform, simply posting job openings isn’t going to cut it. Instead, think about how you can best show prospects what it’s truly like to work for your organisation – whether that means showcasing how your people engage virtually or what life is like when you’re all in the office. In addition to insightful thought leadership, share employee activities, first-person stories, and anything that shows a candidate how they can contribute and connect to your company in ways beyond their skills.
Let’s look a little deeper into how you can improve your employer brand presence on each of the four largest social media channels and how you can utilise each of their unique features to your benefit.
LinkedIn
As the largest professional network, LinkedIn is unlike most other social media platforms. With more than 660 million registered users, almost half of whom are active on a monthly basis, it’s the number one platform to reach both passive and active prospective candidates.
Reach more candidates by:
Posting career advice
Promoting posts to employees
Targeting your posts
Optimizing your company page with keywords
Instagram
With more than 1 billion monthly active users, Instagram has seen a 43% increase in users since 2017. What’s more intriguing is the fact that 90% of users follow a business on the platform – users are likely to keep up with brands and see what people are saying about them. Plus, according to Sprout Social, Instagram is the leading platform when it comes to engagement, with a median engagement of 1.6% across all industries.
What does that mean for you? Essentially, Instagram is a great way to utilize employee brand advocates and visuals to showcase company culture.
Engage employees and candidates with:
Instagram stories
Story highlights
Creative grids
Instagram Live
Instagram TV
Comments and direct messages
Twitter
Twitter has about 330 million active users worldwide, and 79% of them like to discover what’s new. This fast-paced social network encourages the real-time sharing of engaging and relevant content, so post often and with timely responses to showcase your expertise.
Utilize:
Interest-based targeting
Twitter Ads
Twitter Polls
Retweets with comments
Tweet replies
Facebook
Facebook has 2.5 million monthly active users, and 66% of them say they “like” or “follow” a brand on the platform.
To showcase your industry expertise as well as your company culture, take advantage of:
Facebook Insights
Facebook Pixel for retargeting advertising
Page invites
Boosting posts
Social Media as a Recruitment Tool
By taking efforts to improve your employer brand on social media and taking advantage of what all the different platforms have to offer, candidates should already have a good understanding of your brand and what it represents by the time they’re on the job hunt. Ideally, they’ll have connected with some of your posts and already have a positive feeling about your company culture.
Then, when it comes time to create a targeted recruitment campaign, your social media presence will have done some of the work for you. To capitalise on this momentum and start generating a stream of qualified candidates, a trusted talent advisor can help.
When Vodafone came to PeopleScout in the UK, they asked us to: help position Vodafone with prospective employees at key universities as a youth employer of choice; change the perception of their target audience; and promote Vodafone as a technology company.
After researching the behaviour and interests of Vodafone’s target audience, we learned how Gen Z and Millennials want to engage with employers (through short and succinct videos) and what values drive their decisions. We found that they want to work for companies that focus on making the world a better place, as well as promote a social and fun work environment.
This led to Generation Possible – a social media campaign that speaks to Vodafone’s campus and graduate audience, as well as their desire to have a positive influence in the world. The Generation Possible campaign celebrates everyone’s individuality and empowers them to speak from the heart about how to make change for the better.
Vodafone Generation Possible Campaign Creative
Conclusion
It’s no secret that candidates are going to research your organisation prior to applying for any of your positions or even considering you as a potential employer. By balancing postings on job boards with social media and other touchpoints along the hiring process, you can create a well-respected online presence that accurately represents your employer brand and company culture. So, the next time a candidate researches your company, reads reviews or looks at what current employees are saying online, rest assured that a strong social media presence and strategic recruitment campaign will give you all you need to create a lasting impact in a candidate’s mind.
We worked on TfL’s entry-level talent employer brand and attraction activity to recruit a higher proportion of female and BAME applicants.
TfL values the importance of diversity and inclusion. Being representative of London is something their success is measured on, and the same standards apply to their apprenticeship and graduate schemes.
These schemes had proven successful in the volume of applications received but weren’t reaching talent from all walks of life – TfL needed a diverse pipeline that truly represented modern London. It was time to rethink their entire student attraction activity.
SOLUTION HIGHLIGHTS
CREATED A NEW DIVERSITY-CENTRED EMPLOYMENT BRAND.
DEVISED NEW OUTREACH PROGRAMMES TO APPEAL TO WIDER DEMOGRAPHICS.
REDESIGNED RECRUITMENT AND ASSESSMENT PROCESSES TO HELP FEMALE AND BAME CANDIDATES BETTER SHOW WHO THEY ARE AND WHAT THEY’RE CAPABLE OF ACHIEVING.
SCOPE AND SCALE
London’s population is projected to reach 10.5 million by 2041, and naturally TfL play a major role in contributing to London’s growth. Supporting this growth means recruiting, retaining, and developing a next-generation workforce but also giving Londoners a chance to take part in the design of their city.
SITUATION
TfL needed to recruit 32 graduate roles, five placements, and 109 apprenticeships. Our primary objective was to champion these fantastic opportunities to a broader apprentice and graduate talent pool in order to increase female and BAME applicants. To achieve this, we needed to challenge stereotypes and overcome negative perceptions. That meant not only changing TfL’s attraction and assessment processes but overhauling their entry-level employer brand as well.
SOLUTION
A NEW BRAND TO MAKE BETTER CONNECTIONS Together, we transformed the way TfL recruit diverse talent. Ensuring skilled people from all walks of life have a chance to shine in the application and assessment process, our creative team used their audience knowledge to build a dynamic unexpected youth brand, ‘The Next Move’, designed to better connect with female and BAME applicants. We then shaped a comprehensive outreach programme and a completely new assessment process with the aim of helping these candidates show TfL who they are and what they’re truly made of.
ENABLING CANDIDATES TO SUCCEED IN ASSESSMENT CENTRES From experience, we know that young people often need to build their confidence by filling gaps in their knowledge. To address this, we created ‘Route-into-Work’, a pre-employment programme for all candidates, that would help them succeed in assessment centres – and the results were astounding.
A MORE TARGETED APPROACH We also targeted universities with higher rates of female and BAME students, rather than promoting opportunities at all UK universities.
RESULTS
We achieved amazing results with the graduate recruitment campaign, comfortably filling all of the roles.
DOUBLE THE PERCENTAGE OF BAME GRADUATE HIRES Most importantly we doubled the percentage of BAME graduates from 27% to 54%, and we substantially grew the proportion of female hires from 18% to 29%.
GROWING FEMALE APPRENTICE HIRES BY 16% Similarly strong results were achieved in the apprentice pool, as we dramatically grew the proportion of female hires from 20% to 36%,
The Route-into-Work programme delivered 9% of the apprenticeship hires (12 individuals), of which 33% were female and 67% were BAME.
Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) for specialist Engineering, Transportation, Project Management and Support Function roles
Transport for Wales (TfW) were keen to engage a single recruitment partner who could provide a technology solution, expert resourcing services and expertise to help them not only go to market but engage and leverage their brand, while they built from a small entity to larger organisation with a plan to hire roles from apprentices and graduates to Directors with every level in between.
We’ve worked in partnership with TfW as their sole RPO supplier to build the workforce up from just nine employees to over 140 and growing, most of which are permanent with some temporary staff and contractors.
SOLUTION HIGHLIGHTS
FLEXIBLE AND SCALABLE RPO SUPPORT.
EXPERIENCED RESOURCING BUSINESS PARTNER ON SITE AND DEDICATED OFFSITE TEAM.
CREATING BRAND AWARENESS IN A COMPETITIVE MARKETPLACE.
LANDING PAGE, ATS SOLUTION AND REGISTER YOUR INTEREST PORTAL, WITH KEEP WARM STRATEGY.
PROVIDING RECRUITERS WHO SPEAK BOTH ENGLISH AND WELSH.
SCOPE AND SCALE
Transport for Wales (TfW) was created to drive forward the Welsh Government’s vision for a high quality, safe, integrated, affordable and accessible transport network that the people of Wales would be proud of. As a new rail franchise operator, their initial focus was to grow at speed, recruiting 100 or more key staff within challenging timescales, in preparation for a rail franchise switch over.
SITUATION
As a newly-created organisation, Transport for Wales had no recruitment expertise or technology to support their ambitious resourcing plans for roles at all levels. Our on-site Resourcing Business Partner helped shape the Transport for Wales solution and strategy. The immediate challenge was to identify and hire to key senior positions, starting with the Directors, and working with them to build their teams from the top down in order to deliver on their goals.
Another key requirement was an RPO provider who could work in both English and Welsh.
SOLUTION
A UNIQUE SERVICE MODEL PeopleScout consulted with TfW and using a nimble yet disciplined approach created a strategy and process to swiftly start recruiting key hires. We are client-first not process-first and a unique service model was created providing an on-site senior recruiter , with expertise and industry experience who could consult and provide solutions to market challenges and engage with hiring communities and other key stakeholders. We are focused on delivery and so alongside this, we provided regular updates and insights.
BEST-IN-CLASS SERVICE Our off-site dedicated recruiting team provided full sourcing to onboarding services, making sure that candidates received a best-in-class service right through to their first day and beyond.
ATTRACTING A WIDER DIVERSITY OF TALENT As an RPO provider with a creative flair and history of expertise, we were able to help TfW move away from more traditional marketing style to something which attracted a wider diversity of talent. As recognised leaders in employer brand and candidate experience this extended into a go-to-market broadcasting strategy that encompassed social solutions, community management and talent pooling. It also maximised the TfW brand and story, and reduced pressure on budgets.
RESULTS
95% offer fulfilment across all levels of roles
Rapid identification and hiring of specialist roles
92% of candidates who are delighted with their hiring experience
Reduction in time on recruitment by hiring managers
Talent pools created for future hiring
A developed and refined future-proof recruitment strategy
PeopleScout have been excellent in the delivery of the recruitment services into Transport for Wales. They are transparent, hardworking and qualitatively focused. All the team have been dedicated to our growth ambition and have represented our brand well to external candidates. I am delighted to work with the whole team as we share our continued success with our partners.
Lisa Yates, Director of People and Organisational Development – Transport for Wales
This week in the UK, many businesses are considering how to safely return their employees to construction sites, field work and offices in larger numbers. Schools, nurseries and—dare we hope—shops, bars and restaurants may follow in June and July.
What does your workplace look like today? Is it an empty office or a packed manufacturing facility? Wherever your employees and colleagues are, their health and safety have never been more important.
Post-pandemic, the vigilance around employee care will move from wellness to health. I don’t want to downplay a strong wellbeing policy, and it’s cool to have a yoga studio, but it’s essential to provide protection from harm. Government guidelines will likely mean it’s not a matter of choice, but it’s not legislation alone that will drive this cultural change.
Some new examples of business responses are highlighted in a recent article from the BBC, from onsite medical teams to implementing temperature checks for employees and customers.
“We used to say every business will be a digital business. But today we say every business will be a health business.”
Gianfranco Casati, Chief Executive for Growth markets, Accenture
Businesses with high-risk environments have recognised the importance of keeping employees safe and healthy for a long time. I worked with an offshore drilling company who set ‘Safety’ as a cultural objective for all employees. It’s sound reasoning—a payroll clerk doing their job with unerring accuracy gives someone on the drilling platform one less distraction on the job.
So, how does this impact recruitment and talent acquisition?
Candidate Experience
In your communications plan, information on health and wellbeing should be mandatory information, not just positioned as a benefit. Recruiters and interviewers must demonstrate higher levels of responsibility and care to candidates, including guidance on safely accessing your sites.
Technology
Implementing virtual hiring solutions can help to protect your employees and candidates by eliminating face-to-face interactions while allowing you to continue moving forward with your recruiting needs.
Employer Brand
In late 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, prospective employees who wanted to understand a company’s culture and values asked their interviewers how they and their colleagues were treated, and how well they were cared for.
In a way, that shouldn’t feel new. People and culture are most companies’ greatest assets. Leading organisations recognise this and demonstrate it to their employees and candidates. Protecting your people must be more serious now, but it’s likely always been a priority.
David Fairhurst is well known as an innovative HR leader and entertaining speaker. He was formerly Global Chief People Officer for McDonalds, one of the largest employers in the world, with 2 million employees covering over 120 countries. He has held HR leadership positions at many of the top global organisations including Heinz, GSK and Tesco. David is the founder of Orgshakers (Orgshakers.com), helping businesses shape their organisations to achieve short-term performance as well as long-term organisational health.
In this podcast David speaks with Robert Peasnell, Deputy Managing Director of PeopleScout UK, about the future of HR and how you can stretch your thinking to create successful HR strategies.
Listen to find out:
How to navigate change and create organisational readiness.
The importance of being brave in Employer Brand and EVP innovation
Understanding the cultural context for HR in other countries
How HR messaging can change organisational behaviour
The need to use tech to disrupt the market and win the best talent
With online grocery shopping becoming increasingly popular, Sainsbury’s looked to PeopleScout to maximise the number of delivery slots that they could offer to customers. In a saturated market place, it wasn’t enough just to target existing drivers, we also needed to find those with transferable skills and encourage them to apply.
The resulting strategy enabled Sainsbury’s to go to market with a number of highly targeted and location-specific attraction campaigns. The project was a huge success and exceeded targets.
SOLUTION HIGHLIGHTS
• MARKET INTELLIGENCE & SOCIO-ECONOMIC ANALYSIS • PERSONA DEVELOPMENT • PROCESS DESIGN • CREATIVE DEVELOPMENT • INTEGRATED MEDIA CAMPAIGN
SCOPE AND SCALE
Sainsbury’s business strategy is to respond to the changing needs of their customers, enabling them to shop whenever and wherever they want. Seven days a week, Sainsbury’s deliver fresh food, groceries, general merchandise and clothing from suppliers around the world, via 33 distribution centres to their store and online customers, meeting their requirements for flexible, convenient shopping. Drivers are a vital part of this strategy, ensuring that Sainsbury’s can make deliveries to millions of customers at a time that suits them.
SITUATION
The Grocery Online department is a fast-growing business for Sainsbury’s. When we started this project, one in five employees worked in the department but with changing consumer habits, this was soon to become one in three. Despite being one of the company’s largest employee populations, it experienced high turnover in line with the challenging wider driver recruitment market. Some locations, for example inner-city areas and affluent suburban locations, found it particularly hard to recruit. The level of attrition made it hard for the department to grow, and driver availability became the limiting factor when it came to processing orders. It was vital for the business to hire more drivers immediately but also have a robust strategy for the future too.
THE SOLUTION
We used interviews and focus groups to understand the recruitment proposition for drivers at Sainsbury’s
We used market mapping techniques to understand the labour force, reporting on salary benchmarks, competitor activity, and the socio-demographics of hard-to-fill locations.
By overlaying these two strands we developed distinct driver personas, each with its own messaging framework and channel strategy. We used these to develop highly targeted comms for each group, responding to their motivations and behaviours.
Secondary messaging included; flexible shifts where we knew there was a high student population and non-monetary benefits such as child-care vouchers in areas that had a high density of families.
After speaking to hiring managers, existing employees, and those working for competitor organisations, we found that the majority of people eligible to be a Sainsbury’s delivery driver, didn’t realise that they already had the skills to do the job. In fact, the role required skills like good customer service, time management, and self-motivation which we found to crossover with a number of different sectors. This led us to design a creative route that focussed on the core messaging of “All you need is a licence” and “Where will your licence take you?”, educating the audience around the training and development new joiners received.
This sat in contrast to another creative route which we used in locations that had high competitor activity where we led with the messaging around the fact that Sainsbury’s offered guaranteed hours where other organisations did not. Before the campaign, Sainsbury’s were engaging with candidates across multiple channels with different communications, which meant they ended up talking to the same audience in different ways, about different things.
By taking this insight-driven segmented approach, Sainsbury’s could instead talk confidently about the things that mattered to candidates, using the channels that they were most likely to respond to.
RESULTS
The campaign was so successful that the majority of roles were filled within the first 5 weeks of the 12-week campaign, meaning that Sainsbury’s could cut back on their marketing spend. More impressively, seven locations needed to pause their recruitment due to high application numbers including two of the locations that were identified as ‘hard to fill’ areas.
“ The success of the campaign so far has been unprecedented and as such after 5 weeks we are already in a place where most of our stores in the trial have filled all driver hours required. In total, we have received over 2,000 applications. 131 offers have been extended, 106 of which have been accepted so far.”
Support workers make a genuine difference to real lives and Kent County Council (KCC) were finding it hard to attract the right people to fill their vacancies. They approached PeopleScout to develop a campaign to reach an audience that may not realise they had the skills and attributes to become care workers and show them they could have a meaningful career, just by ‘being you’.
SOLUTION HIGHLIGHTS
• RAISING AWARENESS OF MISUNDERSTOOD ROLES • REACHING AN UNAWARE TARGET AUDIENCE • CREATING STAND-OUT FROM THE CROWD
Kent County Council, along with over 1,400 partner organisations, are committed to providing essential care and support, working with some of the most vulnerable members of the community. Their need to recruit was based on the requirement to alleviate pressure on nursing homes and hospitals by providing care in the clients’ own homes, therefore freeing up valuable beds elsewhere. Enabling clients to remain at home (when it is suitable) has been proven to be a good solution in healthcare pathways.
It was also important to demonstrate to the wider Kent population that KCC was taking positive and supportive action in what was a high profile and often criticised area for all local authorities.
SITUATION
With vacancies that aren’t clearly defined by specific skills or experience, it’s often challenging to convince potential recruits that a role is right for them. With ‘unskilled’ (in terms of qualifications) positions such as these, the lure of other opportunities, including retail, is often more appealing and the lack of visibility or explanation of support roles alongside a misunderstanding of what is entailed, compounds this issue. In addition to this, there was a lack of clarity about the genuine career potential that these jobs could offer potential candidates. KCC’saim was to raise the profile of the work they do in an area that is both sensitive and one that touches most people at some stage in their lives.
THE SOLUTION
To fully understand why existing support workers do what they do, we ran a focus group to investigate the motivators and to hear real life stories. Our creative team then set to work to produce a personal and appropriate creative identity; one that would put the empathy and natural caring skills needed for these roles, at the very heart of the campaign. We concluded the best way to communicate this was by film, showing everyday situations where people made a difference, doing everyday things and how this translated into a care workers job.
This was driven by the central campaign message of “You’d be surprised how qualified you are to be a support worker – just by being you’’. With a small promotion budget and to ensure that the power of the film’s visuals were maximised, we used our Social Media product, SNAP, to push the film out to the target audience; using geographic and behavioural targeting methods.
RESULTS
The SNAP campaign ran for just over 2 weeks and in that time delivered over 51,000 impressions, converting to over 1,000 ‘clickthroughs’ – an impressive rate of 2.1%. Equally impressive, YouTube delivered almost 172,000 impressions and over 75,000 views.
How could one of the UK’s best known and most trusted brands have no employer brand presence? It might seem hard to believe, but that was the situation the AA faced when they approached PeopleScout’s Talent Advisory practice to develop a new employer brand.
In the past, the AA had been affected by inaccurate perceptions of who they’d be as an employer. With 15 million members and more than 7,000 colleagues, they’re the UK’s largest motoring and breakdown cover organisation. However, being known for doing one thing very well was proving to be a barrier to candidate attraction. People thought the only jobs they had to offer were their famous roadside roles. That was far from the truth, but the AA was struggling to attract the talent they needed for their wide range of career opportunities.
The AA needed to challenge misconceptions and engage a much broader audience. And, with a bold new employer brand message at the heart of an ongoing series of innovative attraction campaigns, this is how the AA and PeopleScout did just that – with award-winning, record-breaking results.
Ready for Change
Back in 2016, the AA’s talent acquisition team faced a number of challenges.
Before the arrival of Craig Morgans as their Director of Talent Acquisition, Emerging Talent & Employee Experience, they had no senior talent expert at an influential level. There was no robust workforce planning, a lack of innovation in candidate generation, and an inconsistent approach to selection.
On top of that they had no discernible employer brand. And, at nearly four years’ old, their careers site suffered from a clunky candidate journey and outdated visuals, compounding their problems with engaging the right talent.
A change in thinking was needed. The AA had to find more imaginative ways to reach and engage with target audiences. At the heart of it all was a plan to develop the employer brand with a strong, authentic central message that would underpin all attraction and engagement activity.
The AA partnered with PeopleScout to develop their dynamic employer brand message. One that would challenge perceptions, do justice to their innovation as a business, and bring the AA culture and diversity of opportunity to life.
Getting The Message Right
We undertook in-depth research to analyse the AA’s culture, offering and opportunities, to articulate the “give” and “get.” Carrying out extensive employee interviews enabled us to understand the key differentiators of all roles in the contact centre, road operations and corporate job families. We also looked outside the company, to get a fuller idea of competitors’ market positions and understand what the public thought about the AA.
We developed the emerging themes into pillars that we could validate with real stories from the business, and that could support an engaging creative approach. We refined our thinking to a proposition that really encapsulated the spirit of the AA. Leading everything was a message that we’d heard over and over.
Working for the AA, people thrived on going the extra mile to help customers with unexpected challenges – and across a surprising variety of opportunities.
This insight became the AA’s employer brand core message, Ready for ANYTHING? It also acted as the perfect counterpoint to their corporate brand message to customers and members, Because anything can happen.
Putting Our New Platform Into Practice
As the gateway for people to understand the opportunities that might be right for them within the AA, the careers site was the obvious starting point for rolling out the new employer brand. And by launching with this digital shop window, not only could we get the brand experience right, we could also give the site a much-needed technical and UX overhaul.
The new site was launched in February 2017. Creating an engaging, interactive and easily navigable user experience, it’s built around rich content, inclusive photography and video interviews – enhanced with numerous responsive, interactive elements.
The site has evolved, with new elements added over time. As well as showcasing the Almost every role you can imagine employer brand video, the site engages and informs visitors with stories of current employees and realistic job profiles. All of which combine to bring the story of being Ready for ANYTHING? and working with the AA to life. Meanwhile the AA social hub also brings the worlds of social media and blogs into the site, providing an at-a-glance, continuously updated feed of all things AA.
More recently, we’ve added new features, to give site visitors an even more immersive experience – including an insightful 360° tour and assessment tool, plus some interactive 3D imagery to add depth to the visual impression. theaacareers.co.uk is a site designed to surprise, inspire and educate.
The Chatbot That Shows the Human Side of the AA
The Ready for ANYTHING? tone of voice was woven into the site and became the voice of the first-ever appearance of the innovative AAbot – a cheeky, wisecracking chatbot that guides users on life at the AA. Demonstrating technological innovation as one of the first of its kind, AAbot was an efficient way to serve visitors the content they were after – and equally importantly, he represented the playful side of the business, showcasing the fun culture that people hadn’t associated with the AA before.
For visitors to the site, this was an unexpected and charming way of bringing the employer brand to life, and together with the improved candidate journey and overall experience, was a rousing success. Site traffic increased 320% and applications increased 266% over an 18-month period. Visitors are engaging with the site for longer too, with page views up 12%, bounce rates dropping 8% and a 10% increase in pages viewed per session.
Tapping the Energy of the Internal Audience
As important as it is to engage an external audience, an employer brand has to reconnect and be embraced internally to mobilise the existing employees as active advocates. AAbot’s charm was used internally, featured on the walls and windows of AA offices and reinforcing the expect the unexpected messaging of the EVP. ReadyforANYTHING? also became increasingly popular with employees who were supported to play an active role in bringing in great new colleagues.
Did You Say Canine Consultants
This new sense of playfulness and surprise would then underpin our next step towards changing perceptions. Having effectively used honest video of employees to convey job opportunities, we wanted to now use video to grab attention of passive audiences, entertain and educate them.
We developed a script that highlighted the diversity of roles the AA offers, creating pretend roles such as Canine Consultants, Rapid Response Pizza Officers and Outer Ozone Patrollers to interrupt the long list of real AA roles. We shot the entire video in a single, continuous take within an AA office, and made sure to feature real employees. AA colleagues were enthusiastic advocates of the content, with more than half of the entire AA workforce watching the video and sharing it widely. The result? The video increased careers site visits by 16%
Getting Out Into the Community
With the success of the video, we became bolder. We’d learned that pushing boundaries helped us succeed in changing the perceptions of passive audiences. So, we decided to take our message to the streets.
We suggested an experiential event for a number of reasons. We wanted a way of raising general community awareness of the AA easily, effectively and creatively. Using a broad brush public approach, we knew that that anyone we engaged might also know others who’d be suitable and interested. We wanted to create an event to take the AA’s employer brand message and see just who was Ready for ANYTHING?. Whatever we did would have to be a great fit with the AA’s fun and friendly culture.
In September 2018, we ran two live events in Birmingham and Newcastle, UK city centres, areas where the AA has a big presence as an employer and lots of roles to fill. We grabbed attention of passers-by in the proud tradition of game shows, inviting audience volunteers on stage to take on a series of increasingly messy mystery challenges. Wasabi toothpaste, a barefoot Lego walk and gallons of slime came together with a celebrity host in a pop-up competition to bring the spirit of Ready for ANYTHING? to life.
There were lots of laughs, big prizes – and our strategy paid off. The communities local to our contact centres were made aware of the AA as an employer with a really fun culture, visits to the careers site surged, and month-over-month application numbers increased significantly. After the Newcastle event, applications rose from 576 to 1026, with 12 hires. In Birmingham, applications rose from 898 to 1341, with 13 hires. And this was all starting with completely passive audiences.
The Social Side of Talent Engagement
Before working with PeopleScout, the AA had no employment-specific social channels although research shows that candidates expect to be able to shop prospective employers on social. So, we launched separate social media channels for recruitment, recognising that both the audiences and messaging would be very different from the AA corporate and customer-oriented channels currently in place.
Based on the channel demographics and content structure, we initially selected Twitter and Instagram, and spent the early part of 2018 scoping out a launch programme with content pillars, content calendar, internal sponsors, and training for the PeopleScout social media team to give them full responsibility for managing and curating content.
The key advantage of having a team devoted to the AA careers social channels is being able to capture the immediacy that’s vital with any recruitment content – and with built-in knowledge of the AA’s employer brand and talent agend.
Social media has also played a key role in the promotion and delivery of our most recent projects: the augmented reality app-based #wheresbotbeen campaign and competition, as well as Ant Middleton’s 24-hour, live interactive challenge – our biggest, boldest campaign to date.
24 Hours to Prove You’re Ready for Anything
The Ant Middleton 24-hour, live interactive challenge was easily the most ambitious project of our partnership. Aligning with the AA’s long-lasting connection to the armed services, as well as embodying the Ready for ANYTHING? brand, this campaign was boosted by a relevant celebrity influencer and engaged the general public through live streaming and social media voting.
Six brave employees were chosen to take part in this 24-hour challenge, living and breathing the Ready for ANYTHING?spirit – following the former Special Boat Service soldier through a series of grueling challenges in the Lake District wilderness.
The final lucky half-dozen were chosen from hundreds who responded to an internal communications campaign and applied to take part, in what was highest engagement level ever for a story on The Hub (the AA’s intranet).
We wanted the public and AA colleagues to really root for our chosen contenders during the event, so to get the interest level rising, we filmed their life stories, ready for sharing on social media. They spoke eloquently and compellingly on camera about their lives. We got first-hand stories of drama, heartbreak, courage and transformation.
These videos were posted across Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, and they clearly made a connection with people. At the start of the event, colleagues and strangers alike were rooting for particular contenders.
The event began at 4 p.m. on July 25, 2019. The next 24 hours were packed with unpredictable drama. Events were live-streamed, the pace was relentless, and the AA people got into it just as much as the watching public – commenting, voting, watching and sharing across social media.
We decided to involve the audience throughout. In an unusual twist, viewers could select tasks for the contestants while watching the live stream on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or on the dedicated site we built for the campaign, Ant24Live.com. Selections varied by type and toughness of tasks such as rafting versus quad biking, or a swim at dawn versus a planking marathon – keeping audiences engaged throughout the 24 hours (although we did allow the participants to sleep!).
The whole show was streamed to AA contact centres, garages and the corporate office, and thousands of AA employees tuned in, acting as social media cheerleaders and social media amplifiers.
Venturing Into Another Dimension
Using 3D animation and augmented reality (AR) technology, our next project took Ready for ANYTHING? into new territory, with a fun-packed, bespoke-built AR app launched at experiential events.
Keen to embrace new technology to develop innovative ways of boosting brand engagement, the AA asked us to create a fun, unexpected and interactive experience that would help them reach a new audience.
So, we looked at the increasing use of AR to change the way audiences connect with brands. And, we considered how we could use it to engage a passive audience – mainly families, as flexible working patterns at AA contact centres can work around their lives – and increase the AA’s potential talent pool.
When it came to what we’d build our AR experience around, there was a clear direction to take – the AA chatbot, aka AABot, seemed like the perfect character to take us to the next level. Until now, AABot had existed only as a 2D cartoon head. So, we gave him a 3D animated body and made him the star of his own AR app – AABot Drop – compatible with both iOS and Android devices.
We created a fun, interactive installation featuring the AR trigger images, in the form of postcards from AABot, at the Manchester Trafford Centre and Birmingham Bullring shopping centres – close to the AA’s Cheadle and Oldbury contact centres.
Using the AABot Drop app, people could see AABot’s animated postcards come to life – either on their own phones, or the iPads we supplied. AABot lives up to the spirit of the AA’s EVP, Ready for ANYTHING? in six animated AR adventures, from space and deep-sea exploration to crowd-surfing his own rock gig. Animations end on a careers message, driving to theaacareers.co.uk.
Downloading AABot Drop also gives users interactive, animated images of Bot to play with and position in fun and unexpected places. Sharing their images using #wheresbotbeen, people could enter a competition to win holiday vouchers. Promoting the app and competition across social media got more people involved – and amplified our message. Bot’s postcard trigger images and #wheresbotbeen photo gallery are now housed on the AA careers site –along with app download links – supporting longer term engagement beyond the initial competition.
Both events saw good interaction with both young people and families – two key AA contact centre demographics. The Manchester event boosted careers site visits by 869%, with applications up 40% week-over-week. After the Birmingham event, careers site visits increased by 535%, with applications up 820% week-over-week.
With hundreds of app downloads and ready for more, we plan to run further AABot Drop-based campaigns with updated AABot scenarios. So, much more than a one-off AR adventure, this can help promote the AA’s employer brand and opportunities to an even wider audience during a longer period of time.
Taking the EVP 2,620 Miles Further
The AA also sponsored adventurer and influencer Anna McNuff’s Barefoot Britain challenge. As someone who champions the idea of being Ready for ANYTHING?, Anna undertook the mammoth task of running the equivalent of 100 marathons barefoot through all kinds of terrain, weather and unexpected challenges to inspire young women. She wants to encourage them to have the confidence to step out of their comfort zone – to see just how much they can achieve when they reach for what seems impossible.
A series of short videos sharing her adventures, along with Anna’s own social posts and support from PeopleScout, have helped to raise brand awareness and promote AA careers to more female talent.
Groundbreaking Activity Leads to Record-Breaking Results
Since the launch of Ready for ANYTHING?, the AA’s internal employee and social media engagement, site visits and application numbers have soared across all brand-led activity. This strong employer brand, combined with a desire to innovate and brave campaign execution, has enabled the AA to move from 60% agency use to less than 5% in 30 months, saving nearly $9 million per year. Meanwhile, the AA’s Ready for ANYTHING? attitude helped it to win 17 recruitment industry awards in two years, including Best Employer Brand at the Recruitment Marketing Awards 2019. And, of course, the AA is always ready to do more.
“This is transforming how we engage candidates, and it wouldn’t have been possible without a true partnership. PeopleScout has risen to our challenges with some genius, wacky thinking!”
– Craig Morgans, Director of Talent Acquisition, Emerging Talent & Employee Experience
Hi. My name is Vanessa, and I have an
addiction to 1Rebel.
Despite having no real desire to exercise
five years ago (beyond a very self-indulgent, free yoga class at the Hoxton
hotel every Saturday), I joined 1Rebel as a founding member after just a
handful of classes.
The triple concept gym that offers Ride
(spinning), Reshape (weights and running) and Rumble (boxing) from 6 a.m. each
day was – and still is – the only thing that gets me up before dawn. When you
consider how unmotivated I was before, this is no small feat. So, what is the attraction?
While the next-level equipment and the opportunity to take your morning shower
with the Spice Girls blaring through the surround sound was noteworthy, the real
pull was the employees. From a front of house team who remember your name and
sign you in before you get to the front desk to the instructors who can make
you feel like you’re the only person in the room, there’s a real sense of
belonging.
Over the years, instructors have become
friends and the space itself has become a place of emotional significance –
especially for my sister and I, who, with busy and often conflicting schedules,
sometimes only find time to sit next to each other on a bike on a dark Wednesday
morning.
I should note that in 2015, Casper ter
Kuile, a Ministry of Innovation Fellow at Harvard Divinity School, co-authored
a report titled “How We Gather,”
which looked at how brands like SoulCycle and CrossFit have replaced the role
of traditional religious institutions, particularly among younger people who
feel isolated in their digital lives. I get it. 1Rebel trainers have changed
over the years (I still mourn the loss of some of my favorites), but the brand
ethos and loyal community have remained constant, and that’s what makes it
works.
A
recent study by the research firm YouGov found that one in five millennials
believed they had no friends. Similarly, a new report published by the American
Psychological Association showed that depression in 18- to 21-year-olds had
climbed more than 46% between 2009 and 2017. Brands are wise to be aware and
tap into this, and it explains why inclusive group exercise is leaving
exclusive “no pain, no gain” gyms in the dust. “Don’t side-eye the person on
the bike next to you; you don’t know what their journey was to get here,” said
a 1Rebel trainer in one of her classes.
I am confident that 1Rebel will continue to be
a success as the brand lives and breathes its values. But, what happens when
the brands we feel a deep-seated connection to behave “off-brand”?
There are plenty of examples of companies that rally the troops through their brand . For instance, there are the Chinese makers of air conditioners, Broad Group, who still chant their daily anthem, “I love our clients and help them grow their value,” and Japan’s Yamaha with their 1980s company song.
Along the same lines, the 2019 article “Is Your Corporate Culture Cultish?” published in Harvard Business Review described the weekly get-together of a leading U.S. tech company. Company-imposed “cheer” pops up again here – although, this time, it was a bit more contrived, with employees chanting the name of the company three times, all dressed (like the CEO) in matching black and gray. The author, curious about the employees’ enthusiasm, was prompted to explore the lived reality of the people working there. It became clear that people didn’t really have a life outside of their work. Many were divorced or separated. “One executive said that he only went home to change clothes, adding that he might just as well stay at work using the facilities in the wellness center,” the author wrote.
It’s the perfect example of a company that is externally portrayed as an employer of choice, but the internal the reality is something quite different.
If a brand is leveraging an emotional
connection, it needs to practice what it preaches.
This
is possibly even more important for employees of a brand than it is for their
consumers. After all, they are the people influencing, creating and building
your product. There’s no shortage of research proving the relationship
between company culture and performance. By hiring employees based
on their ideological alignment to your company mission rather than their raw
skill set, you can begin to build a brand loyalty seen in the consumer world.
This is something that IBM has a legacy of doing well. A 1973 global survey of IBM found that, despite national and regional nuance, employees had more in common than they had expected; they behaved and acted similarly. The researcher Geert Hofstede concluded that organisations had a personality, meaning that the character of the organisation was constant even when employees come and go. This “character” – which exists to a greater or lesser extent at all organisations – is what we now refer to as company culture, which, in its simplest form, describes “the way things are done around here.”
So,
what can employers learn about company
culture from cult brands?
Develop
an employer value proposition (EVP) that shows everyone the give and the get
for being part of your mission, as well as an employer
brand that brings it all together.
This helps candidates and employees understand the emotional contract of your organisation and get a feel for your company culture. It helps the wrong people self-select out of applying and gives your employees something to believe in – whether that’s encouraging more people to exercise, bringing healthcare to millions or developing the technology solutions of the future.
Assess
candidates against the company vision and values, rather than just competency.
When values are well-embedded in an organisation, they help people make decisions that are right for the business and encourage the behaviors that will help you achieve your mission. It’s easier to up-skill employees than to change what they believe in, so recruit those who have the right behaviors to succeed, rather than those who have done a role before. Even though colleagues and managers will move on and new people will join, if the ethos and values are embraced, the company culture will remain.
Shape
your incentives and benefits to reward mission-related achievement, reinforcing
the behavior.
Benefits and rewards typically recognise individuals for personal achievement. If your business success is reliant on entrepreneurship or collaboration, find ways to identify and recognise those behaviors instead of arbitrary targets.
Build
a community around your brand.
At a time when trust in corporations is declining and social media algorithms make it more difficult for your followers to see your content, employee advocacy is vital. On average, employees have a network that’s 10 times larger than your company’s follower base. What’s more, brand messages are shared 24 times more frequently when distributed by employees as opposed to the business account. Engaging employees throughout your EVP process naturally builds brand champions who can leverage your brand. Encourage them to share examples of your brand values on social media and be advocates when talking to suppliers or clients, or attending conferences and events.
But, above all …
If you are going to stand for something as an organisation, make sure your actions align with your words.
Just as believers can build a brand, they can also tear it apart.
