How do you develop and deliver a new Employer Brand proposition for Irelands fastest growing county council?
We are very proud of our recent work with Fingal County Council, where we helped them to re-define and deliver a new strategy to drive their future Employer Brand and Recruitment Programmes.
FCC is a well-established and recognised Local Authority delivering on the needs of North County Dublin. The leadership of the council identified that it needed to make significant improvements in order to attract the best people. Whilst this is a challenge for all organisations, it is additionally challenging in the public sector because of the controls on salary levels and their people management policies etc. Their vision was to differentiate FCC as a great place to work through a developed and considered Employer Brand (EB).
The most successful employer brands are rooted in an organisations core purpose and are aligned with their established brand values (Patagonia is an excellent example, https://eu.patagonia.com/gb/en/actionworks/about/). Our team worked with FCC to define what they wanted their Employer Brand to be and we strove to ensure there was full alignment between their existing core brand and new Employer Brand.
Our project brought the Fingal team through a process of Discovery where we looked to examine data from current staff and stakeholders. This included a full staff survey assessing their opinions on the organisation including their views on the organisations;
We examined their communications and existing employee data. We looked at best practise in other county councils. We interviewed the Senior Executive Directors team and multiple groups of employees across the whole organisation and workshopped the different possibilities and outcomes that could be delivered.
We then set about working to develop a renewed and re-energised Employer Value Proposition (EVP). This sought to focus on what mattered most to their employees based on the intelligence we had gathered and what they valued most from their employer.
Strategically, we set about developing a central theme and proposition for the new Fingal CC Employer Brand. This meant dealing with how Fingal projected itself as a county? Understanding the major benefits of considering a career with FCC and looking to address their perceived legacy weaknesses as an employer. Tapping into the natural link between FCC and the community it serves. We looked to examine solutions focusing on their history, which was quite a challenge for Fingal CC as it only came into being in 1994 and has suffered from being seen as a constructed county sitting beside the natural geographic county Dublin. Hence there was a need to continually build and promote Fingal Inc. and to capture and communicate their unique Esprit de Corps.
Having established with the leadership team the essential elements of what makes Fingal different, our team developed a short list of taglines which reflected the positioning strategy we had identified and which would deliver a memorable message for the county and something the county council could use to drive their recruitment and induction programmes in the future.
Our final recommendation was...
Fingal Has It All
...which captured all of the positive elements of the county council in terms of scale, services and ambition. It also had excellent resonance with all audiences both staff, potential recruits and the wider public.
We wanted to established a new raison d’être for Fingal as an employer. One that sat alongside their exiting vision "Fingal - a great place to live, work, visit and do business."
The new employer vision became "Fingal - a great place to work, contribute and grow your career."
Once the Employer Brand Platform had been established, our creative team examined how it could be framed in a fresh creative treatment set within the template structure of the overall Fingal brand.
A new style of template layout was developed together with specific use of colour from their approved secondary colour palette. Imagery was going to be an important part of the delivery of a new Employer Brand proposition and we developed a suite of image styles which can be used. Iconography and illustration were also examined and developed. The whole package of creative delivered a consistent and fresh communications platform for the council.
The new proposition led recruitment campaign will be launched through all of the recruitment channels and Jobs Fairs. We can be confident that the segmented propositions will resonate with their target audiences as they have been so well tested and received in all of the Discovery and Proposition development work.
An essential part of the programme was to bring the employee voice to the fore. By involving all staff in the programme, we have ensured high levels of awareness and buy-in. The KPI’s indicate that staff feel proper ownership of an improved and evolving Induction process.
Fingal Has It All is a big and confident statement of intent and ambition for the fastest growing County Council in Ireland. A fitting proposition for their staff audiences both existing and future.