Lindsay Brady, Senior Insights Manager, LinkedIn
Paul Maxin, Head of Talent & Resourcing, Financial Conduct Authority
As there is a strong relationship between knowledge of a company brand and knowledge of that company as an employer, there is a need to take an integrated approach to branding. How do you make sure your employer brand is as strong as your company brand in order to build a top notch reputation? Join us to hear all about the FCA's strategy to build their reputation as THE financial regulator in the UK and hiring top talent, leveraging the power of their employees. Check out the best of Talent Connect: http://bit.ly/1MBqz6m
7. How strong is the connection between your
consumer and your employer brand?
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%
They are the same
There is a connection
There is a small connection
There is no connection at all
Today Five years from now
*Find the complete report here.
8. Do you have a combined strategy for your
consumer brand and your employer brand?
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40%
Only one strategy
More or less same strategy
Somewhat combined strategy
Barely any combined strategy
Two different strategies
*Find the complete report here.
29. Investing time in your content strategy, is
time well spent!
17K
61K
March '14 August '15
LinkedIn Followers
30. Investing time in your content strategy, is
time well spent!
6%
7%
8% 8% 8%
10%
11%
12%
13%
17%
FCA
Talent Brand Index (August '15)
31. 1. Your company and talent brand are linked
2. Top talent attracts top talent
3. Content is key to achieving results
Reputation Rules:
Notes de l'éditeur
Lindsay
Thank you for joining our session. I hope you are all enjoying the event!
We all know that a strong reputation is core to any companies success. Today, we want to talk about how a coherent company & talent branding strategy can pay significant dividends.
In our session, I will share first with you some data based findings to demonstrate the power of aligning your brand strategies and then Paul will take you through his journey at FCA to show you how this can work practically in your company.
But first, let us introduce ourselves….
Lindsay
My name is Lindsay Brady. I am working in LinkedIn for almost 4 years building up our Insights team to a team of 10 supporting our largest clients in the EMEA region. My team use data from LinkedIn.com to help our clients make informed strategic decisions. My team have spent time looking at activity on LinkedIn to investigate whether there is a correlation between your company and talent brand. In this session, I will share with be releasing some of these findings. This is the first time we have shared these results so they are very hot off the press.
I am delighted to be joined on stage by Paul Maxin. Paul, would you like to introduce yourself…………..
Paul
Thanks Lindsay. I’m “still” Paul Maxin and am Head of Resourcing and Talent at the Financial Conduct Authority where I’m responsible for defining and implementing our talent and talent acquisition strategy to meet our organisational and statutory objectives. I joined in Feb 2014 and prior to that have had a career over the last 20+ years which has focussed on TA strategy, activation and employment branding.
I’m delighted to be hear today, and thank you for choosing to join our “conversation”
Lindsay
In the last 10 years, you are all aware the employer branding has become more and more of a hot topic for companies.
HR leaders cite employer branding as a high priority, but during a job interview, not even 10 percent of prospective employees know the key elements of an employer’s brand, according to one European survey from BCG.
Lindsay
As a result, we are seeing an increased focus on more closely aligning company and talent branding to achieve maximum impact.
Companies have poured massive resources into creating brand narratives that are attractive to both clients and potential employees as there are large overlaps between the two groups.
This can be complex and challenging at time, it relies on focus and teams working effectively together cross functionally. It’s not straight forward.
Lindsay
However, aligning your brand strategies can meaningfully increase your impact.
Today, I want share insights with you to demonstrate how powerful it can be to start to align your company & talent brand.
Lindsay
First some data to show the connection between brands.
Universum recently asked over 2,000 executives about this connection – how strong they feel it is today, and what they envision to be the case in five years.
What you can see here is there is a growing awareness of the need to align you company and employer brand. Of those surveyed, over 50% felt there was a connection or complete alignment between the two and in 5 years, over 80% of respondents felt there would be a connection or complete alignment between their company and employer brand.
This 30% increase shows a real trend emerging, more and more company execs are recognising the importance of aligning your brands.
Lindsay
In this same study, Universum also asked whether organizations have strategies in place to improve the connection today.
Do they have a combined consumer and employer brand strategy? The responses track fairly closely to those above with almost 70% of respondents saying they have at least a somewhat combined strategy but with clear room to move more towards one clear strategy in the future.
There is a clear change coming in the market. Employees have become an essential component of brands. Branding was once highly product oriented, but brand experiences are now largely shaped by the people on the front lines who interact daily with customers. Employees have become, in effect, brand ambassadors.
Lindsay
These findings demonstrate a growing awareness among execs in companies of aligning your brands.
However, I wanted to make sure you leave here feeling like this is also important to you by sharing the results we see on LinkedIn showing the correlation between your company and talent brand.
Lindsay
In LinkedIn, we have metrics to measure both the strength of you talent brand and your company brand which I am sure many of you are familiar with.
Content Marketing Score or CMS is the measure of your brand’s influence against it’s target audience
Talent Brand Index or TBI is the measure of how attractive an employer is to potential talent
Lindsay
We cross referenced these metrics to find out how strong the correlation is.
And we found that LinkedIn’s Talent Brand Index (TBI) and its Content Marketing Score (CMS) are closely correlated: there are benefits in building a brand that resonates with both consumers and talent.
Our data shows that our top 100 companies by TBI have a CMS that is 5 times greater than the average companies Content Marketing Score.
Lindsay
I love this graph as I think it really clearly demonstrates the correlation between knowledge of a company brand and a talent brand.
You don’t need to understand the science behind it but just that when you plot Knowledge of company Brand vs. talent brand, we see a strong trend emerge!
Lindsay
Content Marketing can help position your firm as a strategic partner. By doing this, you can also engage the right talent via thought leadership or career-focused content.
In fact, when we looked at members who consumer company content, what we found is they are then much more likely to engage with your talent focused activities.
Our members who consume content from your company are almost twice as likely to apply for a job and their conversion to hire is also more than 3 times higher.
Lindsay
On the flipside, investing in advertising your talent brand has a positive impact on your business overall: targeting relevant jobs engages a qualified brand audience.
Our data shows that LinkedIn members who view a job at your company often then proceed to engage with your company content.
Lindsay
Talent attraction & brand credibility both rely heavily on employee engagement & advocacy. People are far more likely to trust a company based on what its employees have to say.
We also looked at the data on LinkedIn to quantify this and found that 6 employee shares with have an amazing influence driving 6 job views, 3 company page views, 2 connection requests and 1 more follower for your company.
Paul will share later tips on how they have leveraged their employees are brand ambassadors.
Lindsay
To finish, I wanted to share one more powerful finding with you to show that a coherent company & talent branding strategy pays significant dividends for a company.
We found that companies with a strong talent and company brand have a 35% higher 5 year sales growth rate on average to companies with a similar reach.
I hope these findings have been insightful for you. An integrated approach has a massive impact and if you don’t believe me or don’t know how to get started…..Paul is going to share his story about how having a combined strategy has worked for his company.
Paul
Who We Are:
Been in existence since April 2013, as a direct result of the financial crisis.
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) ensures fairness and enforces standards across the UK financial sector. But our horizons are much broader than that. As well as shaping domestic policy and supervising businesses of all sizes in the UK, we play a key role on the global regulatory stage.
As the regulator of the biggest financial market in Europe and the second largest in the world, we have an unparalleled outlook on the financial sector. We use that aerial view to work with our international counterparts to influence global regulations and contribute to helping keep economies stable and sustainable. Our proposition is that a career at the FCA offers exceptional development and the chance to make a real difference.
We regulate thousands of firms to improve conduct and fair treatment of customers, so your work will protect millions of people and have a positive impact on the wider economy.
We exist to protect everyone who uses financial services so it’s our role to make sure the firms we regulate put the customer at the heart of their business model It’s a critical role – one that sees us confronting poor conduct, helping bring innovative businesses to market, where necessary preventing businesses from entering the market, taking supervisory action, and intervening at a market-wide level to promote competition. We work closely with the Bank of England to regulate our market and although we’re funded entirely by the firms we regulate, we are a truly independent body, accountable to the Treasury and Parliament.
We also influence policy on an international scale; making sure the interests of consumers are represented as regulations evolve. Ultimately, we make sure the financial sector acts with integrity and fairness. We make a difference.
We’re often in the news!
Key Take away - At FCA, we don’t make things, people are our brand. “We are only as good as our people are” - reputation is key! That’s why we need the best people..
Today I will share with you how we have aligned our talent and company brand strategies to achieve maximum impact….
Paul
In our case, we understood that we are operating in a changing market
UK Labour Market Key points:
Strongest rise in permanent placements since March 2010
Permanent salary growth highest since October 2007*
Stronger rises in permanent and temporary appointments*
Vacancy growth holds near 15-year high
Permanent starting salaries rise at fastest pace in over six years*
Falling availability of staff increased from 25.1% to 33.6% in Q1 2015
Trend could cause a two-tier pay market, creating a significant divide between highly paid new starters and current employees receiving subdued pay increases
External market risk:
mismatch between demand and supply with recruiters reporting that they can’t source suitable candidates for vacancies (*Source REC/KPMG Report on Jobs April 2015)
with....
…….Greater emphasis on business and people leadership, as well as on functional risk experience
…….Outstanding risk leadership remains in short supply, and banks/ insurers/ asset managers are swapping talent rather than growing their own.…….Employer's work harder to attract the top talent
Take away - From understanding our market, we were able to build a strategy to attract top talent and strengthen our company's overall reputation.
We’ve succeeded - We now have a 97% acceptance rate on offers and the talent we attract to FCA is committed to our company's culture and values overall.
Paul
How did go from strategy to strong results?
Our strategy was built around two key principles…….
1. Top talent attracts top talent
2. Content is key
Paul
The FCA’s reputation is built around our employees as our people are our brand. This drives a close link between our corporate and employer brand.
We leverage our current employees to attract similar profiles of people. You can communicate your Talent Brand through people using authentic stories as a powerful brand asset.
Paul
A great example we are proud of is we are world leading when it comes to our diversity splits focusing on gender and LGBT. How did we do this? Let’s start with gender:
We’re broadly 50:50 at Associate level. Although this drops to 37% at our Senior Leadership Team (Heads of Dept and above) 57% (4/7) of our ExCo are women including our acting CEO
Examples: Our Director(s) of Competition is undertaken as a job share between Deborah Jones and Mary Stark. Deborah is a lawyer, Mary is an economist by background.
This has been highlighted as a case study by Timewise, taken up as a story by the FT and one we’ve used directly and indirectly for TA.
Tracey McDermott, currently our Acting CEO has been on the Prospect / Evening Standard top 1000 influencers for Law. (4th in the list this year). Reputation made in Enforcement leading to significant fines, Tracey has been at the forefront of shifting culture change in the city akin to the change in attitude towards drink-driving.
People leading our staff networks groups: InsideOut (LGBT), Spectrum (BAME), Embrace, (disability and mental health network)
A Top employer recognised by Stonewall, and the following appear on OutStandings top LGBT 100 Business Leaders List
Other roles models include
Julia Hogget, Head of Investment Banks Department
Jacqueline Davies, HR Director
Spectrum (our BAME network) will be running a number of events celebrating multicultural month. I fully expect us to be tweeting about those in our FCA_Careers account.
Paul (Animated to show female first, then John/David, then Sir)
This is a really valuable asset for the FCA to leverage as it makes us stand out from the crowd to ensure we are front of mind for professionals in our industry.
To help you understand how valuable, I wanted to share a study that was released in The Guardian earlier this year showing that there are fewer women in the boardroom of FTSE 100 companies than men called David and John!!
Paul
As a result, you can see 48% of members attracted to our Glassdoor company page our female which is a great result
Paul
Glassdoor, as you know is a trip advisor for job seekers.
So if we can craft messages on LinkedIn to build a talent brand, based on talent to “passive” candidates
Glassdoor as a “Tripadvisor for job seekers” offers the opportunity to do the same for those actively seeking work
Latish adopters in claiming our profile on this, but by seeing what our employees are saying, also impacts the company's reputation so it’s essential to focus on this.
Take away - Leverage your employees as brand ambassadors. When building this into your strategy, consider the impact on both for company and employer brand
Paul
At the FCA, as we recognised that our people are our brand, we started to work with Comms as one team in order to make sure we were always sending the right messages to the right audiences.
You need to find organisational allies. You’ll have seen a great keynote earlier today from Keith Weed and Stephen Lochhead of Unilever outlining how hear how Unilever’s collaboration across marketing and talent has driven them to success in unleashing the power of purpose through people and brands.
As I said earlier, we don’t make things, we don’t have consumer brands, but we are regularly newsworthy. Often hear out people on the Today programme as I drive down the M11 to Canary Wharf each morning. So for us, our natural ally is our communications function. I and my team have developed very close collaboration with our Director of Communications and his team. We craft our messages and utilise the discipline of a content calendar for all communications and channels, be they corporate or our own authentic talent stories.
For instance, we have worked very closely with our communications team about the launch on the 12th October of an additional Twitter account FCA_Careers . Content is planned up to the end of December
Paul
Understanding our audience is key. As we are an academy organisation, graduate hiring is important to us. To engage this audience, we have just launched a dedicated Twitter page for FCA careers.. This is the first regulatory company to create a Twitter presence.
Tweet strategy: #careers thatmatter
All tweets in the content calendar will be loaded in Hootesuite
For the graduate campaign we post event tweets in the content calendar manually tweeted by Ciara, with event photos
On event days, reps will email our team photos with captions for to draft a tweet and post
All tweets will be monitored at 1000/1300/1500 and responded to according to our engagement strategy ..
Channel for 1:1 communication for experienced hires too. Not a glorified job board that adds no value.
Paul
Adopting your strategy on an ongoing basis is key to success for content. As we started to post content to our passive target audience, we assessed the results to gauge what was resonating well and what was not working. Overtime, we have learnt that the content that drives the most engagement is business focused content rather than job posts.
It is important to invest time in your content strategy. You should have a content calendar built out for the year with target audiences you plan to engage and content that will resonate well with these audiences. Of course, this plan will change all the time as you learn more about what content works best.
Paul
Mastering our content strategy in partnership with comms has been key to driving strong results for our employer brand. We have increased our follower base from 17k to 61k meaning our engaged pool is 3.5x larger than it was in March 2014
Paul
………..and now have the highest TBI of our 10 companies in our peer group. This strong position is driven by a +5.5x increase in engaged members since March ‘14.
Take away - When thinking about what content you are posting, it’s important to consider the impact this is having on our overall reputation as well as your employer brand. There is an opportunity to drive engagement with your target audiences in a way that will promote your employer brand and also, your company's brand overall.
Paul
So, to recap, the most important thing is that we want you to leave here today is recognising the importance of starting to think about your company and talent brand strategy together. As you saw in the findings Lindsay shared from Universum at the start of the presentation, in 5 years, ~80% of executives expect there to be a connection between consumer and employer brand.
It’s important you get started today to get ahead of the trend……..
1. Your company and talent brand are linked
2. Top talent attracts top talent
3. Content is key to achieving results
Thank you!