In recent years, research has increasingly pointed towards the role played by corporate social responsibility (CSR) not only in improving a business’s reputation and making consumers more likely to spend money with it, but in attracting and retaining invaluable talent.
According to a 2016 study by Cone Communications, 64% of US Millennials consider a company’s social and environmental commitments when looking for a job, while the same percentage would not take a job if a company did not have strong CSR. Eighty-three percent also said that they would be more loyal to a company that helps them to contribute to social and environmental issues. All signs indicate that Generation Z is even more strongly predisposed to prioritise these kinds of concerns.
The shift to remote working in the Covid-19 pandemic has opened up a new realm of opportunities for jobseekers, particularly young jobseekers who may not be able to afford to live in a major city or commute there for work. It now falls on employers to offer attractive opportunities and prospects that will attract the next generation of talent to work for them – such as by demonstrating their commitment to social good, and to their people.
RS Components, an electrical components supplier headquartered in the Northamptonshire town of Corby, is familiar with the challenges of attracting up-and-coming talent. However, since carrying out a major charitable initiative in 2018 and focusing on promoting its people alongside its products, RS has observed a significant uptick in the volume of applicants who are seeking it out – as well as a stronger company culture overall.
The recruitment benefits of CSR
“It’s not just about big brands any more, for candidates,” says Suzanne Hutchings, Recruitment Marketing Manager at RS Components. “People want to join a business that they can feel a part of – something they feel they can contribute towards, not just in a commercial sense. Candidates want to join a business where they can feel passionate about what it stands for.”
This became evident to RS in June 2019 when the business accomplished a major feat of charity fundraising: a cycle ride, dubbed the ‘Tour de Branch’, in which a group of cyclists from the company rode between RS Components’ local branches from Aberdeen to London, covering more than 1,000 miles in 12 days – and raising £250,000 in aid of Children with Cancer.
Amidst the social media promotion and internal excitement surrounding the campaign, RS Components saw a spike in both visits to its careers website and views to its job ads. Close to 6,000 people visited the RS careers website in June 2019, up 185% on the previous month, and 15,500 people viewed its job ads – a 97% increase on the month before. Notably, the majority of this traffic was coming from the main Electrocomponents website, instead of careers websites like LinkedIn and Indeed. “People were searching for us and then looking at our jobs, rather than searching for jobs and then finding us,” Hutchings sums up.
RS’ corporate social responsibility efforts started in 2017 with the adoption of Children with Cancer as its national charity, but it was the planning and execution of the Tour de Branch, beginning in 2018 and culminating with the cycle ride in June 2019, followed by the launch of a documentary about the campaign in August 2020, that truly solidified CSR as something core to RS Components as an employer brand.
“Seeing the employee advocacy that we gained from talking about the event, when we launched it and again when we launched the documentary – the benefits in employee engagement as well as candidate experience have been huge,” Hutchings says. “A number of candidates have commented on it and said, ‘I’ve really been able to get a feel for your people, what your company is about.’ It’s not just about the product; it’s about the brand, and the personal and career development opportunities.
“It’s definitely changed our way of thinking, knowing the value that an event like this can add to recruitment and talent acquisition. It’s been a real asset for us.”
From products to people
Promoting and creating content around the Tour de Branch unwittingly initiated a sea change in RS Components’ online and social media presence.
“Typically, our social media marketing has been very customer focused – very product-related,” says Hutchings. “This was probably one of the first employer brand marketing pieces we ran – without even really knowing that that’s what we were doing. I think it’s helped us discover the potential of what this type of content can do.”
This turned out to be a timely shift when the Covid-19 pandemic hit, as companies of every kind have now been forced to rely entirely on digital content to promote themselves, attract talent and engage their employees. RS Components was able to apply the lessons learned from the Tour de Branch, and the community spirit it had fostered within the company, during the pandemic.
“There is definitely now a much bigger conversation taking place around the split of our content on social media,” Hutchings explains. “Covid has helped accelerate that, as it’s been much more about talking about your employer brand than your consumer brand over the past seven months or so.
“And that feeling of togetherness, that feeling of community that was created out of this event – this year, when we needed to create that community again, we knew we’d done it before, and it gave us an idea of what we could achieve.
“When Covid hit, we looked at what type of employer brand content we could create to ensure that employees felt like they were part of a community – and also externally, to share what kind of company we are and what we care about. Which is people first: we’re a people-first employer, and that’s the message we’re trying to get across.”
Here at Electrocomponents we want everyone to bring their true selves to work each day. Marking World Mental Health Day, our colleague Elisa Weber shares her story. #WorldMentalHealthDay pic.twitter.com/uEGR35PSPL
— RS Components (@RSComponents) October 10, 2020
RS Components has shifted to focus more on people than on products with its online and social media content
Video storytelling and authenticity
Video content has become another key focus of RS’ employer brand marketing activity. While the company has been publishing short videos to YouTube for more than a decade, these were again historically mostly product-focused: product demonstrations, how-to videos, and reviews. However, over the past two years RS and its video team have embarked on some much more ambitious and people-focused video projects, beginning with a documentary about the Tour de Branch, which was released in August.
“My background is in television – so I’m bringing TV planning into the world of social for RS,” says Darryl Fernandez, Video Marketing Manager and Executive Producer at RS Components.
As part of a team of three videographers, he oversaw production of the Tour de Branch documentary, which was the first long-form documentary that he had ever created – and the first piece of long-form video content RS had ever put out. “With such a strong cause as this, I think we needed to tell a big story,” Fernandez says of setting out to make the documentary.
While the team had hoped to make more of an event of the documentary launch, complete with a ‘red carpet’ screening, and were unable to because of the pandemic, they are pleased with the success of the film, which currently has more than 2,000 views on YouTube.
“It’s relatively unheard-of for B2B businesses to create long-form documentary content that doesn’t promote their products,” says Adam Pridmore, Brand Campaign Manager at RS Components. “We wanted to bring to life the amazing people who work within the business, and give an insight into what it’s like working for such an enormous company.
“From a talent acquisition point of view – you can talk about your brand as much as you want, and you can say ‘RS is an amazing place to work, and there’s loads of benefits; the people are amazing’ – or you can show them,” he goes on. “We wanted to do something different, because we believe in video as a really powerful storytelling medium.”
Since the launch of the documentary, RS has begun airing another major video project: a ten-part series called SeaQuest that follows an attempt by three engineers, including the Head of Partnerships & Services at RS Components’ sister brand DesignSpark, to build a 3D-printed boat that will cross the English channel.
“It’s about making sure we have that combination of telling stories, educating people, and showing how we struggle,” Fernandez says as he explains the thinking behind the video content that RS is producing. “Being authentic is probably the most important thing on social media – if you’re faking it, you will turn people off.”
He also hopes that RS’ video content will connect with a younger generation of viewers. “I want to bring in new ideas, to inspire the Millennial and Gen Z generations. If you can build a rapport with your audience, educate them and entertain them at the same time – that will resonate with younger generations like Millennials and Generation Z for a longer period of time.
“It’s about making sure we communicate as best we can with our current audience, and our future audience, and telling them there’s more to come from RS in the future.”
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