Employer Brand Management conference

Welcome and opening address

The paradigm shifters: ForrestBrown

Award-winning employer brand case studies.

Throughout the day we will groundbreaking case studies from winners of the Employer Brand Management Awards.  There are few sectors that compete for human capital as much as professional services, and, as in the case of chartered tax adviser firm ForrestBrown, this is compounded when the services provided are seen as dry and dull. ForrestBrown met the challenge head on, effectively rebranding its talent attraction collateral. This included developing a new careers site that combined innovative features with fresh design to bring the employer brand to life in the digital space.  Results have shown this was an exercise that paid off: with a 1,488% increase in applications via the website, 259% increase in unique visits to the website and 13,032 views of the careers animation via YouTube.  It's no surprise ForrestBrown won large at this year's Employer Brand Management Awards, including the prestigious 'Best Creative Execution of the Employer Brand'.  Lizzie Barrett from Hodes (part of Symphony Talent) and Sara Brigden from ForrestBrown explains what made their employer brand stand out.

Does talent attraction dream of electric sheep? Artificial intelligence and the employer brand with Chatter Communications

Are recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) something to celebrate or cause for concern? As science fiction starts to become reality, AI tools are slowly infiltrating all areas of working practice. This panel discussion hears from companies pushing the buttons on machine intelligence and the employer brand.

The paradigm shifters: Hermes

Award-winning employer brand case studies.

Every Christmas, Hermes has to significantly ramp up its recruitment. It’s a commonplace problem among courier firms, and therefore the competition for talent in this sector is uniquely seasonal. 2017 saw Hermes forecast a need for 6,500 staff. This session highlights a talent attraction strategy that saw the use of a realtime reporting dashboard deliver constant insight to craft emotive messaging saw Hermes beat its target by 23%. We will hear from Caroline Hill and Dave Walstow from Creed Communications.

Tea and coffee break

1001 nights of talent attraction - storytelling and the employer brand

Increasingly organisations are using persuasive storytelling techniques to make their employer brand more authentic; crucial for anyone who recruits millennials or Gen Zs. This session presents results from PathMotion’s recent study on storytelling, and showcasing its effectiveness in a case study for global banking firm Citi. We hear from Alon Laniado, co-founder, PathMotion.

The paradigm shifters: Teach First

Award-winning employer brand case studies.

Teach First is a charity that finds and develops inspirational leaders in schools. However, Teach First is not immune to the current teacher recruitment crisis, and despite having a strong profile on campus and a well-established graduate recruitment brand, research had shown widespread misperceptions of the Teach First brand, programme and purpose.

Using Teach First’s existing research that identified the various audience segments within its target market and the dominating motivating factors for each of those groups, Teach First, and their agency Tonic, created communications that were tuned to each segment, delivering these both online and offline. Its strategy sought to appeal to those who had never considered teaching as a career option. This included a digitally led, content-driven campaign that made use of Instagram Stories, Facebook Canvas, user-generated content, and short films to provide candidates with guidance at different stages of the application process.

In this session, Tonic's Mark Horley, and Jo Denye, former Head of Recruitment Marketing at Teach First will share their impressive results and the ways they achieved them

Networking lunch

A great opportunity to meet the sponsors, speakers and your fellow delegates. 

Roundtable discussions

These breakout sessions will give delegates the opportunity to discuss their own approaches to employer branding, whilst learning from their peers. With several topics to choose from, each table will be chaired by an industry-leading agency representative.

Topics are as follows:

• Employer branding after a merger or acquisition
• Diversity, inclusion and the employer brand
• Onboarding
• Alignment of the employer brand
• Getting senior management buy-in
• Gen Z versus Millennials
• Alumni programmes
• Innovation in employer branding
• Developing a new employer brand strategy

Roundtable discussions

The second of these breakout sessions will again give delegates the opportunity to discuss their own approaches to employer branding, whilst learning from their peers. With several topics to choose from, each table will be chaired by an industry-leading agency representative.

Topics are as follows:

• Employer branding after a merger or acquisition
• Diversity, inclusion and the employer brand
• Onboarding
• Alignment of the employer brand
• Getting senior management buy-in
• Gen Z versus Millennials
• Alumni programmes
• Innovation in employer branding
• Developing a new employer brand strategy

FROM INSIGHT TO EPIC. THE ARVAL EMPLOYER BRAND STORY.

Arval is the wheels behind business. The people behind millions of safe journeys, business trips and happy holidays every year, Arval leases a fleet of more than 900,000 vehicles around the world and 145,000 cars and vans in the UK alone.

Over the past two years the business has gone through significant change and growth. Low awareness of the brand drove the need to create an employer brand to attract and retain the top talent to support this growth. 
The challenge was to communicate an authentic representation of life at Arval by involving every single colleague; to create an employer brand of epic proportions.
Tracey and Chris will share how they turned insight into action, engaging and exciting colleagues with the new employer brand. 

Tea and coffee break

The paradigm shifters: Care UK

Award-winning employer brand case studies.

Care UK, together with its agency, Dragonfish won gold in the 'Best Employer Brand Innovation' category for the way it used its digital channels to connect with its target audience. A life stage and key message matrix was developed to clarify its target audience and to create tailored messaging, creative executions and a targeted media approach. The real stories were chosen based on relevance and appeal to each target segment. After one month, the rate of applications had increased by nearly 330%. The judges thought the campaign brought the brand to life in a compelling and heartfelt way, and that it was an innovative way of connecting carers with their patients. One judge described the campaign as “original, dynamic and perception-changing.” In this session, Dragonfish and Care UK will explain why innovation has to take centre stage, and what it meant to them.

TAKE IT FROM THE TOP

A successful employer brand should start from the top of an organisation. Rather than hearing from employer brand managers, the final session of this year’s Employer Brand Management conference hears from those in the C-suites of their organisations. This session will be facilitated by Simon Barrow, creator of the employer brand concept. Each executive will speak first about their business and their own responsibilities for the key ingredients of their EB, in particular the employment experience. He will then lead a discussion covering their  involvement with this aspect of the business, the time this takes versus their many other responsibilities, how they understand how employees feel, the key measures of success, the issues they face, their delegation, achieving coherence across the functions and their opinions and advice on the career aspirations of HR and employer brand managers.

Closing remarks

Networking until 18:00