Connect with the most important audience of all.
Your own people.
At Mercieca, as well as producing campaigns aimed at consumers and trade audiences, we help our clients truly engage, educate, inspire and motivate their own colleagues. And ultimately retain and attract more talent.
From video and social content, PR and advertising campaigns, our work not only brings company vision and plans for the future to life, it celebrates the success of your teams and the great work they do too.
With more companies working-from-home/hybrid, they have realised just how valuable and essential effective ‘internal comms’ have become. And a new approach to this discipline has emerged with many now considering themselves not just an employer but an employer brand.
So, what is employer branding?
Employer branding is the marketing of the whole employment experience. As opposed to a more corporate brand reputation, it should reflect an employer's reputation as a place to work and what it offers its employees. It should capture the essence of a company, its culture, benefits, and opportunities for career development.
What are some of the components of an effective employer brand?
To create a strong employer brand, it's essential we start by understanding the audience and organisation.
Then, as with any brand, an effective employer brand needs to visually and verbally differentiate itself from competitors and reflect its corporate vision, values and culture.
The message must reach its intended audience which should be considered as both existing and potential new employees.
LinkedIn, company inter/intranet sites, online recruitment ads, digital or printed comms for the office space and employee word of mouth are all effective channels to support an employer brand message.
How can Mercieca help?
Whether you’re a CEO or MD, Head of HR or Corporate Comms, Business Head or Team Leader, we know how difficult it can sometimes be for your business-critical messages to be heard and understood throughout your organisation.
At Mercieca, we apply our creative and story-telling skills built over 25 years working in advertising and PR, to all your business messages, which can otherwise easily seem dry, complicated and uninspiring to some of your people.
Our view is that, with the right creative approach, every message you share with your existing or future teams, can and should cut-through.
Whether that’s content for your internal comms platform, material for conferences, tools to assist your sales or ops teams, ambassador programmes or external employer comms campaigns, we’ll make them truly engaging, powerful and memorable.
For example, we’ve introduced high profile guest speakers to help a large construction company communicate its commitment to inclusion in the work place during Black History Month. We’ve enabled brands to shout about new product launches internally through creative displays, engaging their teams before going out to consumers. We’ve helped two companies attract more talent into their businesses through targeted PR and social content, despite them both being based further afield. We’ve created a series of videos celebrating the rising stars at one of the UK’s largest employers. And we’ve hosted a fitness workout during National Fitness Week with a Strictly dancer to encourage work life balance.
What problems can this approach solve?
A strong employer brand can play a key role in supporting HR/communications teams in their role and address a lot of the friction points they must deal with daily. These include:
Attracting talent
Companies with a strong employer brand tend to attract more applicants compared to companies with a negative perception. So, creating a positive Employer Brand that aligns with your values can attract better candidates that share the same values.
Improving employee retention
High employee turnover is costly and inconvenient for employers. Every time someone resigns, you lose talent, experience, knowledge and skills invaluable to your business. Having a positive Employer Brand can help reduce turnover making employees feel more satisfied and happier in their current position.
Team engagement and motivation
Keeping the people in all parts of a business engaged and motivated is challenging. A lack of awareness of company vision and road map for success can lead to poor commitment and a drop in productivity. Clear, regular and engaging content, delivered at the right time, on the right platforms or face-to-face at events or in team meetings, will help you keep your people on board.
How can employer branding improve business performance?
What is Mercieca’s process?
Our knowledge and experience mean that we keep things simple. ‘Not complicated’ is our approach and this applies as much to employer brand work as it does to all our communication services.
To start, we ensure that we properly understand what you want to achieve. This can be delivered through a face-to-face ‘get to know you’ session, at your place of work, in our Oxford Street office or virtually via Teams.
In many instances, we find our clients already have a clear view of the messages they want to portray and share, they just don’t know how best to do it. In this first session we’ll get you to talk through all your observations and the problems you’re facing and potentially start to give you some initial thoughts on how we can solve them. Whilst we can’t show you all our work in this area due to confidentiality, we can share some of our experiences and how we’ve solved similar issues.
Once we have the brief agreed, our process is like any other marketing campaign. We devise a strategy and plan, that leads into creative ideas and a transparent budget alongside KPIs that align to your business. We’ll share these with you, build in your feedback where required and then execute the work, keeping you informed and as involved as you want to be, right the way through to the final output.
For an initial consultancy session click here to get in touch.
Or see out top ten tips for successful employer branding here.
Sally West – Corporate Comms & Consumer Service Manager, Weetabix Food Company
[1] CareerArc
[2] Talent Adore
[3] TalentNow
