A little background

2020 saw the launch of the new Anchor employer proposition, Transforming Lives Together. This was the creative articulation of the research, findings and definition of their employer value proposition carried out during the Autumn of 2020.

Through their housing for older people and care homes, Anchor care about people’s individual needs and their everyday lives. They now operate in 85% of local councils in England, with over 9,000 people working in across their 54,000 homes for older people and offices on Bradford and London.

Our approach

What Anchor needed was an employer proposition (employer brand) that:

  • Represents the culture of modern Anchor
  • Will resonate with job seekers across caring, housing, customer care and professional
  • Is warm, engaging and inclusive
  • Is centred on the people who work at Anchor
  • Can be adapted to the media that it is being delivered through

Ultimately, the objective of the new people proposition is to attract, engage and retain better people. So (in the short term) the success of the project would be judged on whether there was a clear rise in traffic to the Anchor careers website, an increase in applications received by the recruitment team, positive feedback from applicants, a noticeable impact on their employee engagement survey scores, as well as anecdotal feedback from line managers and a decrease in the number of people leaving within the first six month of employment.

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Our research

Anchor identified four core audiences – care, housing, customer care and professional services. It was these audiences that formed the foundation of both the internal and external research, playing a key part in the focus groups, online surveys and in-depth interviews. They were also used to sense-check the results of the research, to act as a sounding board for the initial draft of the key themes and proposition, and then to ratify the core messages that were designed to engage them.

Using this research an organisational employer value proposition (EVP) was drafted, shared and agreed by not only the target audiences, but also the recruitment and senior executive teams. But while an organisational EVP is useful to have it was really the four supporting themes that resonated most with the target audiences.

The proposition pillars

Each group saying that they saw evidence of these themes throughout the business. What quickly became clear though was that different themes resonated well with different areas of the business. This meant that these themes needed to be ‘dialled up’ or ‘dialled down’ depending on the target audience that Anchor were looking to engage.

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We have a clear purpose and meaning

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Our work is engaging

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We are a business with integrity and ambition

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We value each other, embracing everyone’s potential

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The creative execution

Anchor is all about communities. Communities of people who have the opportunity to live their lives in the way they want. And a community of highly committed and talented people who create welcoming, supportive environments where residents can thrive. Our message recognises the individual contributions that people make in their roles, while underlining the collective strength of people with different skills, working together to make people’s lives more enjoyable.

The visual approach underlines this by capturing natural, unposed moments, as our
people work together to improve life for residents.

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Tactical recruitment marketing

The Anchor marketing team brought all their search and social advertising in-house and launched a new attraction campaign. They created a monthly content calendar for its Facebook and LinkedIn accounts, experimenting with channels like Facebook Live. The business coupled paid social with Google search to target workers in retail, customer service and hospitality roles facing redundancy post-lockdown.

Active jobseekers were targeted with PPC, display advertising, boosted job board listings and Facebook advertising, while the brand opted for programmatic ads to attract passive jobseekers.

The results (so far)

The ‘Transforming Lives Together’ employer proposition launched in the autumn of 2020. But in 2021, the care sector was facing a recruitment crisis, fuelled by the impact of Brexit and Covid. The search and social media employer marketing campaign was live between April 2021 and March 2022.

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5,521

Additional applications from recruitment marketing activity

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29%

Increase in monthly visits to the careers website

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5.5%

Engagement rate for LinkedIn activity

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1.4%

Engagement rate with Facebook activity

In 2022, the employer proposition work, combined with the excellent results that you see above, saw Anchor (supported by That Little Agency) pick up the award for ‘Brand Innovation’ at the 2022 Marketing Week Awards.

The final word

Greg Hall
Head of Marketing at Anchor Hanover Group