Nisbets Employer Brand

A little background

“The way we live and work would be very different without the Met Office. Every day, we help people around the world prepare for tomorrow. We gave the go-ahead for the D-Day landings. Aeroplanes don’t take off without our knowledge. We help people plan days out and we help businesses make future plans for the impact of climate change. We’re a global community of weather and climate science experts by nature – in our field, in space, on the sea floor and in the air.

The challenge is that nobody really knows this. We had to change our very own humble personality and become proud, and vocal, ambassadors for the Met Office – a true force for good in the world.”

Associate Director Communications and Engagement
Met Office

The guiding principles

From a brand point of view the Met Office needed the creative expression to meet the following criteria. It must:

Sit comfortably alongside their organisational brand
Reflect the modern Met Office
Resonate with their key recruitment and employee groups
Respect the needs of a hugely Neurodiverse audience
Be warm, engaging and inclusive
Embraces their purpose, vision and values
Can be adapted to the media that it is being delivered through

“Every message was validated with our key employment groups. Every word assessed against equality criteria. And the design was created in a way that created emotional connection through clear hierarchy and structure.”

Creative Lead
Met Office

The research

The Met Office identified six core audiences – Engineering, Meteorology, Project Delivery, Science, Technology and Corporate Services. As well as engaging graduates, apprenrices and interns. These were then further segmented into 12 key employment groups. It was these groups that provided the essential insight into what makes the Met Office a great place to work. To help identify the common themes that are universally experienced by everyone who works there.

Competitor analysis

We audited and assessed the employer brand impact and effectiveness of six key competitors for talent.

Insight review

We did a deep dive into the results of previous ‘Great Place to Work’ and ‘Internal Engagement’ surveys.

Internal survey

We collected the views and opinions of over 420 colleagues across the Met Office.

Focus groups

We carried out ten focus groups with a broad cross-section of employees.

Executive interviews

We conducted interviews with eight Senior Executives.

The overall proposition

We quickly identified three key themes that each key employment group highlighted – ‘Looking after your world’, ‘Looking after the world’, ‘A world of expertise’ and ‘Your world of development’. These key themes, or proposition pillars, became our main focus as we developed the overall proposition. Knowing that we could ‘dail up’ or ‘dial down’ these key themes depending on the target audience that the Met Office were looking to engage. Even more so, we’re able to articulate this in a simple phrase.

The Met Office careers website

You never get a second chance to make a great first impression, so the new Met Office careers website has been designed not only to be interesting and informative, but to have a real, lasting impact on the job seeker. To position them as an employer of choice to a wide range of meteorologists and engineers, scientists and project managers, as well as those fantastic people who work in professional services. The result is the new Met Office careers website.

Visit the Met Office careers website

That Little Agency - Employer Branding - Careers Websites - Content Marketing - Met Office Mouse Mat Image

That Little Agency - Employer Branding - Careers Websites - Content Marketing - Welcome Book Black

That Little Agency - Employer Branding - Careers Websites - Content Management - Met Office Train Poster Image

The impact

Having launched in January 2023, the ‘This is world-changing work’ employer proposition is still very much in its infancy with the messaging still being rolled out both internally and externally. But we can already see some very encouraging trends. All data has been taken from Google Analytics, the TribePad applicant tracking system and directly from the Met Office resourcing team.

126%

increase in website traffic (per month)

70%

of website traffic from non-paid-for sources (each month)

44%

increase in applications (per month)

89%

of recruitment now handled by the Met Office team

The final word

“Having launched in October 2023, the last seven months have seen a quite staggering shift in our approach to employer marketing and employee engagement. Our goals at the outset of the project were to reduce our spend, increase traffic and quality of applications. We hadn’t recognised how this piece of work would change the way we feel about where we work and the pride in what we do.”