www.randstadsourceright.com
driving global and local
employer brand awareness
to attract great talent
by Ben Higgins
HR Director
Société Générale, London, United Kingdom
Employer brand is a dynamic force. Let's look
at this with a very recent example. If you
work in the automotive industry, you might
feel very differently about Volkswagen's
employer brand today than you might have
most recently.
I've been with Société Générale (SG) for over 10 years, so I lived
through the banking crisis that hit us in 2007 and 2008. It had huge
impact – not just on the brand image we conveyed to the market, but
also on our employer brand. In the quest for talent, it's very clear that
those organisations which promote an employer brand that is really
authentic, but very compelling at the same time, are the ones that
will survive, thrive, and prosper. That's why, three years ago, together
with Randstad Sourceright, our Recruitment Process Outsourcing
(RPO) provider, we embarked on a journey to give SG's employer
brand in the UK a significant boost.
global to local challenge
At SG, we have over 148,000 staff globally, making us the world's
15th-largest banking/financial services firm. We have 30 million
customers, lots of history, and we operate across the world. Within
our ranks, we have 122 different nationalities, so we're a truly
global organisation, yet with a very strong French heritage. Some
60,000 of our staff are in France, and we're the third-largest bank
there, with a huge retail presence. In the UK, we employ 3,000
people, but we do not have any retail, high street branches, so
we're not really visible as a brand. In terms of employer branding,
we're therefore clearly faced with a "global to local" challenge.
How can we ensure that what is determined at headquarters level is
equally authentic at the local level?
attracting the best talent
Data on LinkedIn shows that a company's employer brand is twice
as likely to drive job consideration as its company brand, and
