This year saw Enhance Media host their 11th Online Recruitment Conference at the Royal Geographic Society in London.
As usual there were a number of insightful presentations from the likes of Nestle, Telefonica, LinkedIn & Virgin Atlantic, the latter of which I’ve chosen to highlight a little, as I thought the underlying theme is something a lot of organisations big or small can leverage.
Alex Merrylees, Head of HR for Virgin Atlantic Airways took to the stage in the morning to share his insights into EVP vs Employer Brand, and how Virgin Atlantic connects its “Brand, People & Social Media”. There was quite a bit of content, so I’ve only summarised part (from notes and memory)
Alex described their EVP as what they say about themselves, while the Employer Brand is reflected by what their employees experience of work, actually is. Furthermore although they may try to determine their EVP, the Employer Brand is determined by the voting rights of the employee not by marketing or the employer.
Talking about Brand in general, Alex referred to a company’s ‘Brand DNA’ as a sense of belief, something that creates a sense of expectation, that generates ‘emotional resonance’ – the perception of how strongly a brand resonates with people, which is often larger than the reality of the company.
Now apply this same concept to Employer Brand and the emotional resonance it generates reflects the whole experience of an employees work, and how strongly the brand resonates/telegraphs to them compared to the actual reality of their individual job.
Essentially your brand or employer brand generates emotional value.
So, how do Virgin Atlantic differentiate and bring their brand and employer brand to life? Simple, it’s all about the people, so they use stories of actual employee experiences to help drive social media engagement.
In terms of their ‘storytelling’, they have 3 layers.
1) Consumer Marketing
This is reflected in external marketing aimed at creating/maintaining brand awareness such as their “Flying in the Face of Ordinary” TV advert, an entertaining short film emphasising the customer centric approach of their employees. You can watch the video below:
2) Stories From The Inside
These are stories relating to the actual people that inspired the ‘Flying in the Face of Ordinary’ advert. The recruitment team produced a series of videos with a number of different employees talking about their experiences working at Virgin Atlantic. I’ve embedded one example below, but you can find other examples at their careers site or You Tube channel
3) Everyday Stories
These are stories about the people who ‘deliver the brand every day’. They have employee stories for every type of position from apprentices to pilots. You can take a look at these by navigating through the bar on the left hand side of their career site
At each stage the stories help to promote the employer brand a little bit further and bring the consumer/potential employee closer to the reality of day to day working life at Virgin, and the mindset they expect from their employees. The content is also cross posted onto social networks, facebook, You Tube etc to drive engagement.
It’s easy to look at this example and think, well it’s Virgin, it’s a big brand with a big budget etc…but ultimately, you don’t need TV adverts, or flash videos; the important element here that’s driving and promoting the employment brand is stories. If you can leverage the stories of your staff authentically, and use social platforms to promote them in an effective way, you can help generate that engagement and emotional resonance between job seekers and your brand.
Direct Recruiting 