Solution: Employer Brand

Kent County Council: A Social Media Campaign Promoting a Career in Care

Posted on by edyson
Kent County Council: A Social Media Campaign Promoting a Career in Care

Social Media Recruitment Campaign

Kent County Council: A Social Media Campaign Promoting a Career in Care

PeopleScout developed a social media campaign for Kent County Council (KCC) to attract more home social care and healthcare workers.

51,000 impressions
1,000 click-throughs
75,000 views on YouTube in just 2 weeks

Support workers make a genuine difference to real lives, yet Kent County Council (KCC) was finding it hard to attract the right people to fill these vacancies. They approached PeopleScout to develop a campaign to reach an audience that may not realize they had the skills and attributes to become care workers and show them they could have a meaningful career, just by “being you.”

Scope & Scale

Kent County Council, along with over 1,400 partner organizations, 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.

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 criticized area for all local authorities.

Situation

With job openings 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 aimed 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.

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 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 through video, 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 video’s visuals were maximized, we used social media to push the video out to the target audience using geographic and behavioral targeting methods.

Results

The social media campaign ran for just over two weeks and in that time delivered over 51,000 impressions, converting to over 1,000 click-throughs – an impressive rate of 2.1%. Equally impressive, YouTube delivered almost 172,000 impressions and over 75,000 views.

At a Glance

  • COMPANY
    Kent County Council
  • INDUSTRY
    Government & Public Sector
  • PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS
    Talent Advisory
  • ABOUT KCC
    Kent County Council is a county council that governs the county of Kent in England including 1.6 million residents. Amongst its many services, the council provides health and social care for adults and children.
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Sainsbury’s: Getting More Vans on the Road

Posted on by edyson
Sainsbury's: Getting More Vans on the Road

Recruitment Media Campaign

Sainsbury’s: Getting More Vans on the Road

Grocery retailer Sainsbury’s turned to PeopleScout to hire drivers to support their growing online business.

6,200 annual hires
5 weeks to fill most roles
analytics informed approach resulted in reduced marketing spend
analytics informed approach resulted in reduced marketing spend

With online grocery shopping becoming increasingly popular, Sainsbury’s looked to PeopleScout to maximize the number of delivery slots that they could offer to customers. In a saturated marketplace, 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 locations-specific attraction campaigns.

Situation

Before engaging with PeopleScout, the client struggled to meet its hiring goals. Approximately two-thirds of candidates dropped out of the hiring process between the first two steps of the screening process. Many candidates couldn’t complete screening during traditional recruiting hours.  

In response to these challenges, PeopleScout provides a highly scalable delivery team to meet the client’s fluctuating hiring needs and address regional and cultural preferences during the screening process. PeopleScout’s centralized recruitment support ensures compliance and streamlines the process through innovative technology solutions. Positions in scope include 6,200 annual hires for warehouse and truck driver positions.

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 delivers fresh food, groceries, general merchandise and clothing from suppliers around the world, via 33 distribution centers, 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.

The online grocery 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 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.

Solution

SOLUTION HIGHLIGHTS

  • Marketing Intelligence & Market Analysis
  • Persona Development
  • Process Design
  • Creative Development
  • Integrated Media Campaign

AT A GLANCE

  • COMPANY
    Sainsbury’s
  • INDUSTRY
    Retail
  • PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS
    Recruitment Process Outsourcing, Talent Advisory
  • ANNUAL HIRES
    6,200 annual hires for warehouse and truck driver positions
  • LOCATIONS
    33 distribution centers
  • ABOUT SAINSBURY’S
    Sainsbury’s is a British supermarket and the second largest grocery chain in the United Kingdom. Since opening their first store in 1869, Sainsbury’s in focused on providing great value food and convenient shopping, whether in-store or online—as well as through their other brands Argos, Habitat, Tu, Nectar and Sainsbury’s Bank.
Contact Sales

Our first step was to leverage interviews and focus groups to understand the recruitment proposition for drivers at Sainsbury’s.

In addition to interviews, we utilized market mapping techniques to understand the labor force, reporting on salary benchmarks, competitor activity, and the socio-demographics of hard-to-fill locations.

Using the data collected from interviews and focus groups, 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 behaviors.

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.

Results

The campaign was so successful that the majority of roles were filled within the first five 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.

After speaking to hiring managers, existing employees, and those working for competitor organizations, we found that the majority of people eligible to be a Sainsbury’s delivery driver didn’t realize 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 focused on the core messaging of “All you need is a license” and “Where will your license 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. There we led with the messaging around the fact that Sainsbury’s offered guaranteed hours where other organizations did not.

Before the campaign, Sainsbury’s was 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.

“The success of the campaign so far has been unprecedented and as such after five 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. We’ve extended 131 offers, and 106 have been accepted so far.”

Client Testimonial

The AA: Ready for ANYTHING? An Experiential Event Drives More Applications

Posted on by skatz
The AA: Ready for ANYTHING? An Experiential Event Drives More Applications

Recruitment Events

The AA: Ready for ANYTHING? An Experiential Event Drives More Applications

The AA engaged PeopleScout to design and host big, bold recruiting events for their call center roles. Through a series of silly, messy tasks, we increased awareness of the AA’s roles and drove more applications.

2 recruitment events
60,000 career site visits
78 % increase in applications

Thousands more careers site visitors. Hundreds more applications. And how did we do it? With 64 fake spiders, 15 liters of custard and one tube of wasabi paste—among other things. This is the story of how we created a fun, conversation-sparking event that captured the essence of the AA employer brand, raised awareness of their call center roles and helped them make the successful hires they needed.

Situation

The AA has two large call centers in Oldbury (near Birmingham) and Newcastle, England. With ambitious hiring targets to meet, they’d used a range of attraction methods, from job boards and paid social media, to taxi wraps and ads at cinemas. They weren’t getting the results they needed, so it was time for something bigger and bolder.

Solution

We discussed and planned the objectives carefully with the talent attraction team and local stakeholders. We wanted to raise general awareness of the organization in local audiences and encourage them to spread the word, so we needed a way of reaching a large number of individuals easily, effectively and creatively. The AA also wanted us to showcase their fun and friendly culture.

Highlights

  • Raising awareness of roles
  • Reflecting a fun and friendly culture
  • Boosting social media activity
  • Increasing careers site visitors
  • Record-breaking application figures

At a Glance

  • COMPANY
    The AA
  • INDUSTRY
    Roadside Recovery Services
  • PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS
    Talent Advisory
  • LOCATIONS
    2 call centers in England
  • ABOUT THE AA
    The Automobile Association (The AA) has been supporting motorists in the United Kingdom since 1905. With over 14 million members, breakdown cover is always their number one priority, but the AA has branched out into finance, insurance, leisure and lifestyle services.
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A BRAND MESSAGING-ALIGNED EVENT

The “Ready for ANYTHING?” strapline is the central message in all of the AA’s recruitment communications activity, so it made sense to take this message and see just who was Ready for ANYTHING? among local audiences.

FUN TO TAKE PART IN. FUN TO WATCH.

With a big prize to incentivize contestants, the event was built around getting volunteers on stage to take part in a mystery challenge. We built The Random Challenge Generator—a big screen flashing through a series of silly, messy tasks. The contestant pushed a big yellow button to stop the screen, which brought up their challenge. We also engaged a celebrity host to help draw the crowds, engage with the audience and keep the fun moving. We ran two of these shopping center-based outdoor events—one in Newcastle, the other in Birmingham.

PROMOTING THE OPPORTUNITIES

Maximizing social media activity before, during and after the event, we also live-streamed the challenges. Filming on the day enabled us to create short videos for follow-up content to promote the AA’s call center roles. On the event days, we gave out flyers encouraging people to get involved and driving to the AA careers site, while digital screen and on-stage announcements also highlighted the AA’s local career opportunities.

Results

UNPRECEDENTED CAREERS SITE VISIT FIGURES

Social media and event build-up activity drove 60,000 career site visits across the weeks events were held. Before, 1,500 to 2,000 people visited the AA careers site each day. For the Newcastle event, this increased to 5,000 in just one day, with a record high of 7,100 in one day for Birmingham.

RECORD NUMBERS OF APPLICATIONS

While the AA saw a huge increase in applications for their call center in Oldbury, they had record breaking figures for Newcastle. With a month-over-month increase from 576 to 1,026—a 78% increase!

Surrey Police: A Video Call to Action for Detective Constables

Posted on by akessler
Surrey Police: A Video Call to Action for Detective Constables

Recruitment Video

Surrey Police: A Video Call to Action for Detective Constables

PeopleScout created a compelling call to action to attract Detective Constables for Surrey Police with documentary-style video.

Situation

With Surrey bordering the Greater London area, Surrey Police are often in the shadow of The Metropolitan Police in the capital. There’s a perception that only detectives serving in the big city get the chance to work on big cases and solve serious crimes, and that Surrey is quiet and boring. The truth is that Surrey offers that opportunity, plus the training, career progression and work-life balance detectives looking for.

It’s complex. It’s challenging. And it’s rewarding.

Surrey Police needed to recruit experienced Detective Constables from other forces. They engaged PeopleScout and our industry-leading in-house creative team to challenge perceptions about crime fighting in Surrey.

Solution

Surrey Police asked us to create a video that would show experienced Detective Constables from other forces that they could have the career and development they wanted while reassuring the public that Surrey is a safe place to live.

A Research-Based Proposition

Conducting research to understand why detectives worked for Surrey Police, we developed the underlying proposition, “Be the detective you have always wanted to be.”

Compelling Visual Approach

We wanted something that would stand out and resonate with our target audience, inspiring them to uncover the truth in Surrey. So, adopting a compelling TV documentary trailer style, we worked with the filmmaker behind the groundbreaking BBC2 series The Detectives to shoot it—making the result truly cinematic.

Authentic Content

It was crucial to involve real detectives in the video, and at every stage, we worked with the detective team to ensure our film was as close to reality as possible. By conducting audio interviews with the detectives, we were able to match powerful, authentic, statements with the visuals.

Results

The video and accompanying campaign were highly successful in attracting Detective Constables to the Surrey Police.

Significant Increase in Hires

Surrey Police hadn’t expected the campaign to be so successful—they thought a handful of people might apply. But, with 24 hires in 9 months (up from 5 hires in 13 months), the results have really impressed them.

Cost Effective Campaign

With the typical cost to train a new starter as much as £100,000, this campaign built around attracting experienced detectives proved dramatically cost effective at £1,250 per hire.

At a Glance

  • COMPANY
    Surrey Police
  • INDUSTRY
    Government & Public Sector
  • PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS
    Talent Advisory
  • ABOUT SURREY POLICE
    Surrey Police fights crime and protects communities in the country of Surrey, the third most densely populated county in SE England.
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Sellafield: Transforming an Employer Brand to Engage Emerging Talent

Posted on by akessler
Sellafield: Transforming an Employer Brand to Engage Emerging Talent

Sellafield: Transforming an Employer Brand to Engage Emerging Talent

PeopleScout’s Talent Advisory revamped Sellafield Ltd’s employer brand for early careers talent.

Situation

As part of an ongoing transformational journey, Sellafield Ltd had redefined its values and strategy for the future. In response to this, they also needed to expand their schemes to attract and hire more graduates and placement students than ever before. They engaged PeopleScout to develop a new employer brand and visual identity that told their story across a range of channels—one that significantly increased applications.

Sellafield needed to hire 55 graduates and 50 students for placement. They were keen to reimagine their employer brand to reflect the opportunities that their organizational changes would bring.

Solution

The client agreed with us that a relaunch of the graduate and industrial placement schemes was required, to tell the story of their transformation and engage candidates across the breadth of disciplines.

We worked with Sellafield to develop an engaging employer value proposition (EVP). Using the EVP as a platform, our employer brand messaging and design conveyed the new vision and strategy, and what that meant for our target audiences, across a range of attraction materials.

This included careers fair materials, such as stands, leaflets and posters, and collateral for their online attraction strategy—social media, search engine pay-per-click ads and digital content for their careers website. We also supported our client with their approach to media channels and advertising on relevant job boards.

Results

The new Sellafield EVP has had just under 1 million views across all channels. With almost 30,000 people clicking to their careers website from social media, Sellafield now has a higher number of visitors to their website—up 8% from the previous year. And, with around 1,500 applications, they’ve gained greater interest across all disciplines.

At a Glance

  • COMPANY
    Sellafield Ltd
  • INDUSTRY
    Industrial
  • PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS
    Recruitment Process Outsourcing
  • ANNUAL HIRES
    55 graduates and 50 students
  • ABOUT SELLAFIELD LTD
    A pioneer for the UK’s nuclear industry, Sellafield Ltd is a global center for nuclear engineering management. They set international standards in high-hazard reduction as they work to create a clean and safe environment for future generations.
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Bombardier: Moving the World’s Engineering Talent with a Global Employer Brand

Posted on by akessler
Bombardier: Moving the World's Engineering Talent with a Global Employer Brand

Bombardier: Moving the World’s Engineering Talent with a Global Employer Brand

PeopleScout helped Bombardier Transportation with a global employer brand and toolkit to help them recruit hard-to-fill roles and meet diversity objectives.

Situation

A worldwide leader in rail technology, Bombardier Transportation had no global employer brand presence. They approached PeopleScout and our in-house creative to develop a employer value proposition (EVP), not only to be used to push out the overall brand message, but also to underpin specific propositions for, and support recruitment activity in, each of their territories around the world. Launched initially in the UK, and now rolling out to other territories,

The new employer brand needed to tackle a negative market misperceptions of redundancies and lost orders. The truth was that they had a full order book and some new and exciting contracts to deliver in the future. With this positive story to share, they realized they had a great opportunity to enhance their position within the market.

Solution

Research & Discovery

We began with extensive research in all key Bombardier Transportation global territories. We conducted interviews with a mixture of senior stakeholders and employees from the main talent groups they needed to recruit from and also carried out external sessions with relevant talent groups.

Foundation & Framework

Using the insights we’d gained, we developed a set of EVP pillars capturing the key themes from the research. This provided the framework for creating our global messaging platform and design.

Guidelines & Toolkit

Working closely with Bombardier Transportation’s Branding and Communications teams, we produced a set of guidelines and a toolkit of materials that could be used globally and tweaked for each individual territory.

Results

Initially launched within the UK, the EVP was rolled out to other territories around the world.

Bombardier Transportation launched its first-ever media campaign using the EVP, using a combination of digital and outdoor media in key hiring locations in the UK. Across the whole campaign, they received over 500 applications and made hires into critical roles that they had struggled to recruit for previously. They were also able to recruit several women into these positions addressing their global diversity objectives.

At a Glance

  • COMPANY
    Bombardier Transportation
  • INDUSTRY
    Manufacturing
  • PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS
    Talent Advisory
  • ABOUT BOMBARDIER
    Bombardier Transportation is a global leader in rail technology, with headquarters in Berlin, Germany. They specialize in rail vehicle and equipment manufacturing and servicing.
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