Bradford Children’s Services needed to reduce their dependency on agency social workers. In the face of spiralling costs, a challenging Ofsted rating and a move to a Trust, they needed to take ownership of their employment story and build an employer brand that built an emotional connection with colleagues, partners, the local community, and qualified Social Workers across the UK.
Bradford Children’s Services needed to reduce their dependency on agency social workers. In the face of spiralling costs, a challenging Ofsted rating and a move to a Trust, they needed to take ownership of their employment story and build an employer brand that built an emotional connection with colleagues, partners, the local community, and qualified Social Workers across the UK.
Attract Qualified Children’s Social Workers (Level 3+) to be part of the journey. Create a strong proposition (EVP) that will cut through in an already crowded space. Develop a brand for the Trust (look, feel, tone of voice) and bring it to life through the lived experiences of colleagues. Build a careers website that enables candidates to engage with personal stories, explore the roles on offer and provide insight into living and working in and around Bradford. Move attraction from a ‘post and pray’ model to a ‘social first’ strategy that focuses on a consider, connect, convert methodology.
Through insight derived from focus groups, interviews with leaders, desk research and market testing, we developed a messaging framework that originated ‘Bring Heart’ – a proposition that targeted and appealed to those who joined the social work profession for the right reasons – to improve the lives and ‘life opportunities’ for children and young people. Through a series of creative sprints, we brought the sentiment of the position to life. Our creative platform ‘Bring Heart’ put emphasis on the courage of the people there delivering that promise. It is dually emotive and active – inspiring candidates to look deep inside themselves for a motive to join, while maintaining an edge of ‘doing’ and responsibility. The theme of courage also linked into the spirit of community and recognised the essential role Social Workers play in bringing hope and opportunity to the children and young people of Bradford.
Our creative content captured the diverse communities Bradford serves and emphasised the fact that there is no better place to put into practice what Social Workers trained to do. Where theory meets practice. It paired intriguing headlines with emotive imagery and employee stories to paint a fuller picture of what it’s like to work as a Social Worker in Bradford. Through a planned and managed content strategy, we made sure our audiences, both internal and external, discovered what Bradford Children’s Services was about. We brought ‘Bring Heart’ to life through film, print media, PR, social and digital applications and built a destination website bringheartbradford.co.uk where candidates could find out more, understand the realities of the roles on offer and explore the Bradford District as a place to live and work, as well as apply. Dedicated photography and film profiles brought relevance and authenticity to the story.
To date, our planned content strategy deployed across LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram has built a following of 1000+ in 3 months and continues to grow. Views to bringheartbradford.co.uk increased by 158% from the previous year, and effective collaboration with the internal Talant Acquisition team is seeing better outreach, candidate engagement and conversion in offer to acceptance rates.
