A world-renowned event that focuses on employer branding, the World Employer Branding Day takes place once a year. Our team traveled to Amsterdam 2 weeks ago to advise major organizations such as Coca-Cola, Mercedez, LEGO and Amazon on HR marketing. The goal of our sold-out workshop was to be a moment of action to commit to making the world of work better.
Our monthly article brings you on this journey with us.
Let’s go!
Canada leading the way in HR Marketing
After participating in 8 workshops and 16 conferences, we return home with a sense of pride. Proud that despite all the employer branding innovation deployed by major companies around the world, sept24 and Canadian businesses are at the forefront of the best practices in HR marketing.
Our methodology, our creativity and above all, our personality have everything to appeal to industry big players. Still today, we have the opportunity to push the boundaries of employee experience by remaining attentive and relevant to our people.
What is clearer than ever is that to succeed and stand out, our tactics and strategies must be simple, authentic and bold. Let’s lean away from being beige (unless we are genuinely beige!) and let’s dare to step off the beaten path to create impact. We’ve said it before and we will say it again: for our company values to be truly lived, they must be experienced at the highest level. You’re flexible? Okay… Now, are you genuinely flexible? Leave the office at 1:30 pm in front of everyone. At 2:30 pm, post a photo on social media of yourself at the top of a mountain in your area or with a glass of wine in hand at a little bistro. Would you dare to do that? If the answer is no, flexibility might not be experienced intensely enough in your organization.
We are all marketers
If there’s one thing that we take away from World Employer Branding Day, it’s to what extent organizations put emphasis on ambassador programs. They do everything that’s possible to ensure their employees share with their friends or on social media what they experience on a daily basis in their organization.
Several systems and sofware are even developed to make sharing news on social media easier.
What you need to know is that social media platforms like LinkedIn have algorithms that favour employee shares rather than those of companies. While the latter spend huge amounts on sponsoring posts to increase their reach, there is a much simpler and less costly way to go about it. That is to use YOUR employees to share the desired information and thereby reach a target that goes far beyond those that follow your company page.
What must be understood here is that everyone is doing marketing! Gone are the days where the marketing and communications department would bare all the weight of sharing the latest news. Today, it’s everyone’s responsibility. This is what we mean by “everyone is doing marketing”. By being an ambassador and sharing what’s going on within our organization, we become, in a certain way, a marketer.
Have you put a plan in place to incentivize your ambassadors to share your employer brand?
What does a week at the World Employer Brand Day look like for the sept24 team?
Day 1:
We are seconds away from missing our Montreal-Amsterdam flight that was taking off at 10:30 pm. That’s what happens when the bubbly is too good in the YUL bistros! The journey is definitely underway!
We board the plane, feeling fatigue taking over… It’s time to sleep (which didn’t really end up happening).
Jour 1
Day 2:
We land in Amsterdam around noon. We have a coffee, visit the city and jet lag really starts kicking in
Jour 2
Day 3 and 4:
It’s time to work! The workshop we are leading is on day 5. We must be well prepared. We settle into a coffee shop, we practice, we work hard and we reward ourselves with a delicious glass of wine in the evening at a local restaurant.
Jour 3 et 4
Day 5:
Workshop day! Eight workshops during the day and it’s sept24 that has the honour of closing the day! What did we talk about? The importance of changing employee perception regarding certain advantages (or disadvantages) of the employee experience by improving communication and recognition. We then asked the 210 participants to commit to improving the world of work. In total, the attendees represented over 3.4 million employees in their organizations! We accomplished our mission of inspiring people to make the world of work a better place.
Jour 5
Day 6:
Conference day! 16 conferences in total including some of the biggest names in the industry: LEGO, Siemens, Activision, TikTok and more. We took copious notes! A lot of great learnings but what we are seeing more and more is that organizations are prioritizing their people!
Jour 6
Days 7 and 8:
We relax and enjoy Amsterdam!
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