WRITTEN BY: Jorgen Sundberg
EVP activation is a difficult goal to achieve for employers brand professionals. You need to make sure that people feel the brand and its positioning statements. Authenticity is important.
In this episode, we speak with Neil Daly, Global Head for Employer Brand & HR Communications, RWE. He explained how his team activated its EVP across the organization by placing people at center stage of employer branding stories.
Global Brands with Diverse Talent Problems
RWE was founded in 1898 and is now one of Europe’s largest renewable energy firms. It employs approximately 19,000 people worldwide. The global business is divided into individual operating companies with specific areas of focus. Onshore wind, off-shore wind, solar, batteries, energy trading and supply, and research on new technologies such as hydrogen generation are all included.
Daly’s team faces a variety of challenges in balancing the talent requirements of each operating company. Others are more concerned with retention, while some are focused on recruiting. Some may be looking to fill a niche position or increase staff in a particular location or region.
Daly and his staff worked closely with the operating companies to fully understand their needs in order to create their EVP. They already had a relationship with the operating companies and were able to give them the ball at the time of activation.
What we do in the context of employer brand
Daly has a lot of experience in the area, having been responsible for employer branding at EDF Energy as well as Baker Hughes prior to joining RWE. He’s seen a shift in the way employer branding is perceived throughout an organization over the years. It used to be seen simply as another form of marketing to recruit new employees, but now it is recognized as a tool to help employees better understand the context and importance of the work that they do each day.
Daly’s perspective on employer branding is a key point to take away. Daly said, “We all know that the company has goals and values but what do they mean to me?” Employer brand helps employees and potential talent understand their role in helping the company achieve these goals and maintain those values. You can do this by telling a human-centric tale about their work.
Employer Brand Stories that are Human Centric
RWE’s revamped social media strategy is a good example of how this philosophy of employer branding in action was put into practice. Daly was already part of the organization when it adopted a single-channel strategy. This gave them great control over the voice and tone of their communications, but it also made them sound corporate and formulaic.
Daly and his crew set out to tell stories with a human-centric focus. In place of a news release about a wind farm being built in Ohio, a video is produced about the local contractors and businesses that RWE worked with to construct it. Instead of a generic leadership statement about the importance diversity in engineering there are interviews of engineers from underrepresented groups about their work.
This all comes back to Daly’s question: What are the company’s values and goals for me? This human-centric employer brand storytelling approach allows people to visualize themselves at RWE. The company has also been recognized externally, winning three Awards for Employer Brand Management in 2024. These included “best communication of employer brand to internal audiences” and “best strategy on social media.”
Measure Results With the EBI
Daly uses a variety of metrics to measure results. These include the churn rates, social media and website engagement numbers as well as the ratio of applicants to interviews. Link Humans, the Employer Brand Index and Link Humans are also used to gauge sentiment and provide him with insights about what people say about RWE. Even if someone does not understand what an EVP or what it means they can still see the benefits of the EBI by looking at the 16 attributes scores.
Daly explained that successful EVP activation is a self-sustaining engine. The more you succeed with your employer brand, and the more the organization knows about what is going on, they will want to be involved.
Follow Neil on LinkedIn to keep up with his employer brand work. Talk to us about our Employer Brand Index if you’d like to see how your employer branding compares to other companies in your field.
