In a business that absolutely depends on the expertise of its people, UL Solutions invested in their employer brand–with results that paid off.
Employer branding is getting a great deal of attention and investment these days. That is because using a strong brand helps your company attract, motivate, and retain top talent, turning employees into real advocates who enhance the brand of your company overall, communicate their passion to customers, leading to a significant increase in sales, profits and financial value. Once a niche HR concept, employer brands have evolved into a valuable strategic advantage.
Here is how UL created an employer brand that speaks to and inspires the best talent to join and stay–significantly adding value to the company and those it serves.
TRANSCRIPT:
0:03
Employer branding is getting a great deal of attention and investment these days.
0:09
That is because using a strong brand helps your company attract, motivate and retain top talent.
0:16
Turning employees into real advocates who enhance the brand of your company overall.
0:21
Communicate their passion to customers, leading to a significant increase in sales, profits, and financial value.
0:29
Once a niche HR concept, employer brands have evolved into a valuable strategic advantage.
0:38
Just what is an employer brand?
0:40
Well, an employer brand is the company’s promise to employees.
0:45
It translates the company’s brand into a meaningful purpose for employees.
0:49
It focuses on what it’s like to work at the company and what an employee gains over and above a paycheck.
0:57
It encompasses culture, value, benefits, experience, career, and growth opportunities.
1:04
The company’s employer brand is a major driver for customer perceptions.
1:09
Your employees are the brand.
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They must understand and embrace their role in creating stakeholder experiences that authentically represent the brand in our transparent world.
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What you say must be backed by what you do.
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If your brand is not reflected in how employees interact with shareholders, authenticity and trust are jeopardised.
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Your brand will lose value and your sales will suffer.
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Major brands like Disney and Apple grow by creating distinctive customer experiences, but this is often an untapped source of distinction and growth for many organisations.
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The benefits of great customer experiences are clear.
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They create a tangible business advantage, resulting in a 16% premium on products and services, increased loyalty, willingness to try a new product, and openness with personal data.
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A strong employer brand also helps to attract, engage and retain employees, increasing their effectiveness and productivity.
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At a time where the war for talent is hotter than ever, you must treat employees as your first key stakeholder.
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If they do not embrace your brand purpose, no one else will.
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Henry Ford was about more than just any colour you want as long as it’s black, he said.
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Happy employees lead to happy customers, which leads to more profits.
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And the proofs in the numbers?
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Companies that invest in an employer brand are four times more profitable.
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Companies with highly engaged workforces outperform peers by 147% in earnings per share.
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For companies with a employer brand program, there are some useful spin offs.
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18% higher revenue, 20% more sales, 30% greater customer satisfaction and 10% higher customer engagement.
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17% more productive and 41% lower absenteeism.
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24 to 59% lower turnover and 28% less theft.
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UL Solutions is the world’s leading testing, inspection and certification provider across a range of hot industries, EVs, energy, AI and environment.
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The company operates in some of the toughest labour markets in the world.
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They’re always looking for top tech talent, but they’re competing for employees with Silicon Valley, the likes of NVIDIA and Google.
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They’re trying to lure people from San Francisco to Chicago.
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In a business that absolutely depends on the expertise of its people.
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UL Solutions needed an employer brand to speak to and inspire the best talent to join and stay.
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We started by investigating some of the strongest employer brands in the world, examining each company’s purpose and brand proposition.
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Every single one has a purpose driven brand proposition for employees which ladders down from a strong corporate brand.
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Purpose brands start with targeting the audience.
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Who do you want to have working in your company and what can you do for them to attract them and keep them?
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In these examples, we looked at what the companies were doing to appeal to a sub segment of their audience, young employees at the start of their careers.
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GE has AB2B brand, but to attract young talent they transformed it into a consumer brand, illuminating the work you could be doing and talking about it in a way that is humorous and engaging to counteract the image of GE as cold and monolithic.
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So what’s your news?
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I got a job.
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I’ll be programming at GE.
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Oh, I got a job too.
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Ex Zazzies, the app where you put fruit hats on animals.
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I love that guys.
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I’ll be writing code that helps machines communicate.
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I just zazzied you look at it.
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I can do dogs, hamsters, Guinea pigs, you name it.
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I’m going to transform the way the world.
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I programmed that hat and I can do cassava melons.
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I’ll be helping turbines powers.
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I put a turbine on a cat.
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I can make hospitals run more efficiently.
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This isn’t a competition.
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Microsoft captures talented young graduates with their internships, creating a campaign for attracting the best of them.
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Google appeals to this audience with its professional development offering, attracting people who want to constantly improve themselves professionally and with lifestyle enhancement offerings.
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In each case, the companies invested in campaigns which turned their employer brand purposes into themes designed to inspire employees, creating the future, leading the way, empowering employees and helping everyone in the world.
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Talking to employees is one thing.
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Getting employees to talk takes brand messaging to another level.
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It makes it real and the words are spoken by someone like them, someone they can relate to, someone of their generation.
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Messaging from actual employees is much more likely to be believed by potential recruits.
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These insights led to the creation of brand story options, complete with visuals, campaign messaging, and example communications.
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The idea was to test options that conveyed what makes UL Solutions a special and compelling place to work personally and professionally, and inspire them with the brand purpose.
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We tested UL Solutions employer brand options with employees across 4 continents.
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We spoke to young internal employees and to people who would make ideal potential employees.
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We uncovered what words and ideas resonated the most strongly.
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We explored the strengths and weaknesses of visual designs and we collected feedback on campaign elements.
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This is the idea that one they love.
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The tagline at the centre of safety is you.
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The purpose aligns with potential employees values.
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They feel they would grow with the company.
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It speaks to them personally and intrigues their interest.
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It evokes their sense of responsibility to society.
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They like the idea of contributing to safety and above all they feel it is employee centric.
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It speaks to them, they say about the visuals they draw them in by the sense of movement convey employee growth.
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The design for them is appealing, communicates, people working together stands out, they love the vibrant use of colour and the dynamism attracts them.
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The new employer brand proposition was brought to life by a complete redesign and rewriting of the website to ensure that all talent communications were consistent.
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The results gave UL Solutions detailed insights into creating and using an employer brand.
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They learnt to evolve the corporate brand purpose translated into benefits which are meaningful and motivational for employees and recruits.
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They learnt to balance messaging between the inspirational and the practical, how the employee could help the world, how they can improve their own lives by working for UL Solutions.
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They learnt to clearly target young techie people, don’t feature more experienced people and experts.
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They talk about what the company will do for the employee, not about what the company expects from employees.
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They use a distinctive tone of voice now talk simply and explain things.
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They devise specific UL solutions language which creates a sense of employee community.
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They create a bold, aspirational and future oriented campaign theme and tagline.
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They develop a communications architecture with messages for each function.
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They use actual young employees from diverse backgrounds, roles and geographies as ambassadors to communicate the employer brand proposition.
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They make YouTube the primary media channel.
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They have a dedicated channel for talent.