1. With your extensive experience in communications and marketing leadership, could you share some key strategies for building a strong employer brand in today’s job market?
This depends on the phase your organisation is in. Are you growing massively? Or are you in a more consolidated phase of the journey? What are your company, brand, and people goals? And what is your mission? Alignment with your company and culture is key to setting your strategy for the employer brand.
Our team has a holistic, strategic approach, linked to our overarching mission. We built and used our EVP as the backbone for everything we do. We deliver flexible solutions given the fast-changing nature of our business.
We add value within 3 strategic pillars.
A) Increase employer brand awareness and consideration – focused on brand consistency, authentic storytelling, and differentiating campaigns.
For example with our experiential activations such as our food truck for campus and longest-European bike delivery tour connect engagement and attraction in one 3100 km epic summer bike ride.
➔ The longest European food delivery tour
➔ Our Food Truck activation for campus
B) Bring high-quality candidates to the table – through full-funnel campaigns and series-based content strategy.
We built and used our EVP as the backbone for every story we tell. For example through our leadership podcast, social content strategy, DEI activations, office tour reels and tech meetups, events, and blogs.
➔ Podcasts
C) Retain our people through unique experiences.
An example is the recent activation of our sponsorship deal for our people organising 18 events around the world for our people to join in and win amazing prizes.
➔ Activating our football sponsorship for our people
2. Could you share some examples of key performance indicators that are essential for tracking the success of employer branding and recruitment marketing efforts?
3. What advice do you have for HR professionals looking to enhance their company’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives?
I have learnt a lot from our DEI team over the years. They have introduced a holistic approach, including strengthening global ERG’s, increasing awareness, and introducing targets. Our team supported and increased visibility for these initiatives with a global comms strategy aimed at both internal and external audiences.
4. How can these initiatives positively impact an organization’s reputation?
Companies that have a diverse workplace are often perceived as better employers. Potential employees want an employer who accepts and is tolerant of all backgrounds and who treats their employees fairly. And on top of that, having different perspectives at the table makes perfect business sense when developing products and business strategies.
5. How can HR leaders effectively position themselves as thought leaders in their organizations and the wider industry?
Like anyone keen to develop their personal brand. Talk about topics you care about, keep it authentic, and relate it to your personal or professional experiences.
6. Can you share some insights into the role of HR in shaping a company’s reputation?
I believe HR has a largely supportive role in most companies. What I have seen is when a company has business leadership that champions the people’s agenda and sees people as a key part of their success, the HR team thrives. When they don’t, HR becomes more of a services team. In Employer branding, having HR buy-in is never enough to make it successful. Strong business, brand, and comms buy-in is key to being visible as a differentiating employer, both internally and externally.
7. How does employer branding intersect with overall corporate image?
People choose to work for a company (organisation) based on 3 main components, the company, the culture, and the career opportunities.
The company’s reputation answers questions such as: what does the company do, do I believe in their mission and leadership? Does that fit with my personal goals? The culture sparks questions like: can I be successful in this culture, or with this team and this manager, do I belong here? And career opportunities answer questions like, can I grow and develop here? Employer branding can showcase and influence culture and careers definitely and when closely collaborating with leadership and communications, also impact the company’s reputation. The key is to collaborate across the company and find sponsors everywhere.
8. Recently, Great Britain has introduced a pilot project of a 4-day working week. What’s your opinion about it? What advantages and disadvantages do you see both for employers and employees? Would you take part in the experiment, and why?
Personally, I believe flexibility is always better than having one way of being able to deliver your best work. So while for some 4 days works great, others thrive when they work a few hours every day. With increasing technology and remote working, flexibility increases and therefore also the need to create a cohesive culture that does not just rely on people seeing each other in real life.
I think it also depends on the tightness of our labour market and the kind of work you do. Still a bit hard for a surgeon to operate from home, but collaboration across hospitals is so much easier now than it was ten years ago.
9. Finally, as the Head of Employer Branding, what do you envision as the future of HR and employer branding, and how should HR professionals prepare for it?
As to the future of HR, I cannot speak to that. For employer branding, I believe this will continue to develop into a more integral part of people, reputation, and brand strategy. The strongest campaigns and experiences are the ones only that one brand can do and are therefore closely related to the company brand and reputation. I hope that in a few years’ time employer brand will be an integral part of brand and comms teams and work as well as part of HR.
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