How the Recruitment & Employment Confederation supports its members to promote their good work as part of ‘Jobs transform lives’ campaign.
Recruitment and Employment Confederation
Jobs transform lives, which is why we are building the best recruitment industry in the world. As the professional body for recruitment, the Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC) is determined to make businesses more successful by helping them secure the people they need. The REC is the largest trade association representing the UK’s recruitment and staffing industry.We are absolutely passionate and totally committed to this pursuit for recruiters, employers, and the people they hire. Only the REC gives recruitment businesses the mark of quality which tells their clients they strive to deliver the right people every time, that they care about what they do and have an unmatched level of professionalism.
September 2015 - Ongoing at the date of publishing
Project team
We created a cross-departmental project group to utilise key skill areas for our campaign. There are eight employees in total involved in the project. Broken down into job functions, this includes:
3 communications
2 marketing / digital
1 account manager
1 sales
1 policy / legal
Introduction
As the professional body for recruitment, we want to promote all that’s good about our industry to encourage favourable market conditions for our members. Our ongoing 'Jobs transform lives' campaign aims to reposition the reputation of the recruitment industry by showcasing the value recruiters deliver for businesses, individuals and the wider economy. This will instill pride in recruiters and ensure they get the recognition they deserve for their excellent work.
Discovery
The recruitment industry has come under scrutiny in the press and too often the great work of our members is overlooked. In response, we created a new messaging strategy for the recruitment industry to integrate 'Jobs transform lives' into its everyday language.
In September 2015 we found eight people to tell emotive tales of how a job changed their life on screen. The Telegraph collated these videos on their website with written case studies and features.
The communications toolkit, released in June 2016 is the next step. It is a call to action for our members: changing the language around the recruitment industry will only work if recruiters lead the way. Its messages are business focused, to balance out emotive messaging in previous 'Jobs transform lives' projects. Labelled a ‘client and candidate attraction toolkit’, we made the commercial value of talking up the industry clear to our members.
Activities
Our approach
‘Jobs transform lives’ aims to drive awareness of the impact of the recruitment industry on people’s lives, business and the wider UK economy. We want to portray positive messages about recruitment by effective use of multi-channel communications. We decided on the hashtag #jobstransform to tie this together.
Changing the language around recruitment would be most effective if recruiters led the way, building pride in their industry by engaging with our campaign. The toolkit specifically aims to engage smaller members and prompt them to use positive language, publicly.
A positive reputation needs maintenance: longevity is key. We built momentum by eliciting and promoting content from members in the week of launch and for several weeks afterwards. The toolkit contents also have the potential for expansion as they are based online.
Our activities
Example of image produced to be shared on social media
Extensive planning went into the toolkit. This included researching similar outputs from other organisations, getting member feedback on previous elements of Jobs transform lives, and having brainstorming sessions to produce the ideas that went into the toolkit.
We also road tested and refined the toolkit with the REC council and close members. Internal communication within our project group was vital. We created a timetable with tasks allocated to each person in the project group. We met monthly to keep on track and created an email thread for a more informal and quick way to keep up with tasks and for the team to support one another.
Before launching the toolkit, we briefed all REC staff so that they understood its aims and what it looked like and would feel confident talking to members about it. We planned for risks and how we would mitigate them.
To promote the toolkit:
Screenshot from the ‘Jobs Transform Lives’ toolkit
We sent out hard copies (a USB in a DVD style case with all toolkit contents uploaded) to 1,321 of our small, most engaged members.
We made assets available online so that all members can access them.
We sent ecomms to the rest of our target members with targeted language for SMEs.
We included a link in REC Weekly, an e-newsletter that all REC members receive.
We gave our communications toolkit artwork a carousel slot on the REC home page.
We tweeted and posted on LinkedIn.
We paid for advertising on LinkedIn.
We paid for advertising on Recruiter, a trade magazine for our industry.
We utilised our relationship with another trade magazine, Recruitment International, to get free banners on their website.
We posted a series of follow-up blogs: week 1 to explain what the toolkit is, week 2 with hints and tips on how to use it and week 3 from a recruiter with what they did with it.
What we produced
We’ve created something we think is easy to use and visually attractive and have provided written and visual instructions.
Twibbon for recruiters to add to their Twitter accounts.
Who was involved
The cross-departmental project team was key to input ideas for the communications toolkit during the planning stages. Expertise in different areas was invaluable. For example, an account manager talks to our members on a daily basis and a salesperson is well informed about what products work commercially. The cross-departmental team also allowed for feedback from across the organisation and greater staff awareness of how the 'Jobs transform lives' campaign was progressing.
We consulted a small sample of members about the contents of the toolkit as we were in the planning process. It needed to be usable for them so we valued their input. Members also fed into the messaging, as we took on their feedback that they wanted it to be more business focused than our previous work in the Jobs transform lives campaign.
Members also helped us create materials: we went to several members’ offices to film our promotional video and to take photographs to appear in the e-book.
We informed a few close members of the launch date so they were ready to help us promote the toolkit on social media. Their prepared tweets started an immediate discussion. We also had a couple of blogs written in advance by members as another promotional tool.
How much work went into this?
The overall ‘Jobs transform lives’ campaign started in September 2015. The communications toolkit took shape at the end of 2015 as part of the overall campaign strategy. After a series of planning meetings from the beginning of 2016 and an intensive period of content creation in May, the toolkit and was launched at the end of June 2016.
Innovation
We've put REC members at the centre of the project. We involved some of our closest members at every stage of the toolkit, from planning to creation to promotion.
Challenges
A positive reputation needs maintenance so longevity is key for Jobs transform lives. Now that recruiters are using the messaging themselves, we need to keep the momentum going.
We are in planning stages of the next phase of Jobs transform lives, building in elements of gamification. We are creating a ‘Buzzfeed style’ short online quiz in order to engage recruiters, clients and candidates. This is a fun way for recruiters to categorise their business and gain a ‘badge’ depending on their attributes, which they can promote on social media or their websites. Employers and candidates will have a similar quiz to match them to recruiters.
We will continue to promote the toolkit and use #jobstransform on our social channels. We have promoted case studies sent in to us on Twitter and are planning how else can use them most effectively. This might include promotion through REC blog or the press.
Achievements
Our positive messaging has created a way for recruiters to talk up their industry, helping to improve its reputation.
On launch day there was an immediate discussion around Jobs transform lives on social media channels. Recruiters used our hashtag #jobstransform and the content from the toolkit including drafted tweets and social media images. Some tweeted photos of their toolkit and voiced their support of the campaign.
Targets & Statistics
We beat our overall download target of 500 with a total of 650 downloads for different elements of the toolkit. Most popular were the digital banners, closely followed by social media images and the explanatory e-book titled ‘How to champion your good work’.
As of August 2016, the toolkit homepage had 1,261 page visits. The top performing individual pages within the toolkit were ‘Social media buttons’ (250), ‘Web banners’ (225) and ‘Printed materials’ (195). Total views on all toolkit pages surpassed our target of 1,500.
On LinkedIn, our sponsored post:
Beat its target of 30,000 impressions by more than half, reaching 46,565 impressions
Had 134 clicks, beating our target of 100
Was liked 53 times
Gained the REC LinkedIn page 62 new followers
Member engagement on Twitter is ongoing and we are still seeing #jobstransform being used on a daily basis by recruiters. As of August 2016:
46 companies/individuals are tweeting using #jobstransform
19 companies are using and retweeting REC images
5 companies are creating their own materials (images or case studies): a particular achievement.
The fact these businesses are willing to commit resource to creating their own content using 'Jobs transform lives' messaging shows they see its value. It also shows the toolkit has acted as an effective promotional tool and has done its job in enabling our members to get involved in promoting Jobs transform lives.
The communications toolkit has already impacted the way our members are talking about the recruitment industry and has given them a sense of pride in what they do. It is now common to see our members talking positively about their work and the difference they make every day.
What would we do differently?
Our initial promotion of the toolkit was targeted only towards small members. When members from larger businesses have come across the toolkit they have said it is a useful tool for their business too. While our targeted approach towards small business was useful, it may have been limiting. If starting again, we would have widened our promotion to be more inclusive of larger businesses too – this could be as simple as sending another email.
We are putting efforts into promoting the toolkit again in mid-November, including a social media push and sending out the toolkit via email. Our second wave
of promotion will include examples of how members have already used the toolkit, to prompt others to do the same and to aid their understanding of how it works.
Feedback & Testimonials
‘We love looking back at our candidate testimonials, it really motivates us! #jobstransform #recruitment #lifeofise’.
@ISEPartners, tweeting a candidate testimonial
‘List has been transforming lives for over 40 years! #jobstransform’
@ListJobs, tweeting about their company’s birthday with accompanying social media image from our toolkit
‘Mondays are always good when you get to call a candidate and tell her she got the job she really wanted!! #NXT #JobsTransform #recruitment’
@EmmaLindsayNXT
Wider impact
We met our numerical targets, but more importantly members have adopted our language around Jobs transform lives into their own brand messaging. This everyday positivity about the recruitment industry is exactly what the REC hoped to achieve through the communications toolkit.
