by Rainer Strack, Jean-Michel Caye, Carsten von der Linden, Pieter Haen, and Filippo Abramo
Deutsche Bahn, Germany’s leading transportation and logistics company, with operations in more than 130 countries and about 300,000 employees, recently implemented a very successful employer-branding campaign. In the past several years, employers have become subject to increasing numbers of requirements while talent pools have become smaller, and media connectivity has grown more pervasive. As a result, candidates’ expectations regarding potential future employers are now higher, and competition for talent is far more intense. To meet its future demands, Deutsche Bahn estimated it would need at least 70,000 new employees over a ten-year period.
To address this challenge, Deutsche Bahn began by analyzing the components of all its talent-acquisition-related activities—from employer branding to recruiting strategy, candidate recruiting, and onboarding—and then launched a portfolio of measures to strengthen its image and recruit new employees. The starting point was a thorough employer-brand audit, which analyzed both internal and external sources to develop an understanding of the current position and perception of the company among potential job candidates. The results were astonishing: although 99.7 percent of possible applicants knew the Deutsche Bahn brand, only 5 percent could imagine working for the company. These findings revealed that the high brand awareness did not lead to the right employer-brand perception. This needed to be addressed.
Next, the company developed a comprehensive target-group segmentation in order to identify applicants’ needs and define the criteria that applicants take into account when choosing an employer. Specifically, Deutsche Bahn segmented its applicant base into four categories: high school graduates, college graduates, professionals with an academic background, and professionals from a nonacademic background.
In the next step, Deutsche Bahn developed an employer value proposition and tailored employer-branding and recruiting activities to each of the four target groups, using the key brand messages it had identified. Besides aligning the employer value proposition for different target groups with their requirements and preferences, Deutsche Bahn also determined which information channels the different target groups used. This allowed the company to develop a media strategy and to adapt its cross-channel marketing campaign with tailored messages.
In order to secure long-term success in talent acquisition, Deutsche Bahn reorganized all talent-acquisition-related activities into one unit: employer branding, social media, university relations, and strategic recruiting are now bundled in the corporate center, while local recruiting activities are being carried out by seven regional recruiting teams.
Within just one year, the effort had yielded strong results. The number of applications had increased by 40 percent on average (and as much as 80 percent in specific target groups), contributing to the hiring of 11,000 new employees in 2012. Employer attractiveness improved significantly as well: in major employer rankings such as the Trendence School Leavers Barometer, Deutsche Bahn climbed 21 places in one year, reaching the top 30. Furthermore, Trendence recognized the campaign as the “Employer Branding Innovation of the Year.”
Internally, among Deutsche Bahn employees, the employer brand turnaround was well received. As Kerstin Wagner, Deutsche Bahn’s head of talent acquisition, put it, “Our employees are the essential part of our campaign. They authentically transport our image and tell potential employees why it’s worth working for DB. To become one of Germany’s top employers, it was vital to continuously inform, involve, and inspire our employees—to take them with us on the journey. We also created a ‘poster generator’ tool, providing them with a great possibility to create posters for their individual jobs using predefined elements from the campaign. All over Germany, more than 12,000 employees decorated their workspaces to proudly show their support for the campaign and our DB 2020 objective.”
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