Kerry O'Neill
Aug 13, 2019
Employer branding advice from the top of the supply chain
In the fight for talent in the supply chain, employer branding is becoming a key focus for main organisations. But what strategies are those leading the field adopting? We looked to Gartner’s Top 25 Supply Chain list.
We figured that talent is what drives a business to success. Where better to look than the companies named by Gartner as rocking the best supply chain and logistics practices? So we’ve picked out the best tips and strategies from the top ten companies.
Read on for top insights - from how your EVP message needs to adapt to every battle and market, to where employer branding should lie in the organisation and which content format wins the war for talent.
1. Unilever
In a recent LinkHuman Employer Branding podcast, Unilever’s Head of Global Talent Attraction and Employer Brand, Anuradha Razdan, had these nuggets of advice:
“ There is no one employer brand campaign or message. Of course, there is a core EVP but other than that; you can’t have one global employer brand and rest on that. Every employer brand battle, every talent challenge is won in the market, that’s where the moment of truth is. That’s at the heart of our employer brand strategy
……
Talent is everywhere, and there are conversations about you, around you that you don’t control. Therefore the employer brand strategy has to be something which is very consistent with the real employee experience. And thus it’s not an outside-in, but an inside-out employer brand strategy.”
Get your step-by-step Employer Branding Checklist here.
2. Inditex
In Inditex’s Annual Report 2018, the opening letter of Chairman, Pablo Isla makes it clear that they put their people at the heart of their success:
“I will never tire of saying that our people are the most important part of that entire process...Indeed it is the diversity of our team that makes our Company what it is.”
They “promote a culture that is centred around diversity, humility, collaboration, innovation and sustainability” and the stats show that the measures they take to get there are working.
So how do they attract the best people?
They strengthened their social media presence on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Wechat and Weibo (the last two target the Chinese market) in 2018 and focus on “Inditex employee stories to local and international news and projects”. And it’s obviously working - they have over 1.3 million followers and published an astonishing 1,900 original contents throughout the financial year, all helping to drive traffic to their careers site, Indetix Careers. This is ‘their main source of contact with potential candidates, attracting over six million visits from 217 markets in 2018 alone”.
3. Cisco
Imagine admitting that as the social media brand manager for the talent team, an employer branding consultant advised you that your initial social efforts were “stinking up the joint” and “bring to light an outdated view of talent brand”?
Well, that’s what Cisco’s Carmen Collins did in her LinkedIn Pulse article, How Cisco Completely Turned Around Its Employer Branding on Social in Only 6 Months. However, it took us on a journey of how they turned it around to a roaring success.
It’s well worth a read, but here’s a brief summary of their employer branding strategy.
1. They gave their social channels a human voice and “got real”.
“What I mean by “real” is that we stopped posting like we were a 70K+ person company, and we started posting like we were 70K+ people working for the company.
Always choose human. Always.”
2. They put their best advocates – their employees – first.
“We started to post photos of our employees and repost what they say – this way we became an amplifier of their words versus a marketer of what WE wanted to say.”
3. They started a recruiting blog focusing on their employees.
“Our team does some of the blogging (not everyone is a writer, we get it) but we empower employee bloggers to contribute as well. We ask them what makes them excited to work at Cisco.”
4. They encouraged the conversation with a few select company-wide hasthtags.
5. They showed we can have fun, whilst staying true to the Cisco brand voice.
4. Colgate-Palmolive
In 2018, Global HR social media strategist Pooja Rattan for Colgate-Palmolive shared with HR Exchange Network how they created an employer brand to improve their talent attraction strategies.
They started by engaging with employees via focus groups and interviews (clocking an impressive 500 interviews in the process). They also partnered with college campuses for content research, showing it to students, adapting and optimising their strategy based on feedback. They also started an employee ambassador campaign, which has gained traction in the U.S., so they are thinking of expanding it out to other countries.
Here’s a couple of our favourite insights:
Where employer branding should lie: “You need somebody sitting in that space that can either learn about marketing or HR or essentially has knowledge of both.”
On the content that is driving the most traffic to their website, video: “I asked why is that video so much better? He said, ‘Because you are curious as to what is going to happen next.’ That was a big moment for us. We were like, ‘Okay. Curiosity. They want to know what happens next.”
[It’s not just video content we’ve noticed being adopted by the Supply Chain’s Top 25. Video interviews are also adopted by many of the Supply Chain’s Top 25. They help improve the candidate experience by removing barriers and establishing cultural fit early on, with less hassle. Discover more about how our video interviewing software, Broadcast, can help improve your employer brand here]
5. Intel
Manuel Diaz, Employer Brand Strategist at Intel, has nearly 15 years of experience in the field. In a 2018 blog on Indeed he spoke about how to build a compelling—and authentic—employer brand.
Here’s our favourite takeaway message:
“We’re moving away from the ‘content is king’ phrase to ’employee-generated content is becoming king.’”
The result? Rather than be defined by an out of date employer brand, companies can highlight who they are today, communicating this through the voices of employees who are living it every day. And the companies that are able to spread the message about the humanity, fun and impact of their organizations will be better positioned to attract talent in today’s competitive hiring market.”
