Employer Branding communication
About Richter
Richter is a significant pharmaceutical business in Central Europe, which was established in 1901 and now has 12,841 employees in almost 50 countries. Its international headquarter is situated in Budapest, and it also operates a factory in Dorog and an innovation centre in Debrecen.
The Richter Gedeon Nyrt. is constantly developing through new investments. In 2006, Richter’s management decided to develop and manufacture medicine in the field of biotechnology. The main focus is on innovative, original research; their most essential product is an antipsychotic called Cariprazine.
Pharmaceutical manufacturing illustrated step by step on our flowchart
The challenge
Richter has more than 5000 employees in Hungary, with highly educated, experienced researchers and managers, but also highly-trained manufacturing workers among them. This, and the diversity of the disciplines in Richter, produces the continuous need to recruit employees. In the past decade the main recruitment sources were carrier expos, Profession.hu and employee’s recommendations, but by 2019 it had become clear that new channels were needed. The biggest challenge was to reach physical workers and fresh graduates. That became the focal point when Richter’s management decided to pay closer attention to employer branding.
Employer branding strategy
Our work with Richter started in the fall of 2019, we created their employer branding strategy together with the team of Impact Works. As a first step, Impact Works conducted research among the employees of Richter which gave us a detailed picture about the current situation: what they thought about their workplace and their supervisors, and what were the advantages and disadvantages of Richter. Based on this research, 5 main messages were identified on which to build employer branding communication:
- Local formula – global impact
- Continuous development gives us stability
- Complete life – our commitment
- The science of cooperation
- Our profession: innovation
As part of the strategy, we studied the job searching habits of white and blue collar workers. We conducted industry analysis in which we examined the demand and supply side of the pharmaceutical job market. We also analysed the career site of Richter and suggested some changes to its structure, design and texts. In addition to this, we created a one-year employer branding communication strategy including the platforms, messages, frequency of the communication, advertisement activities and KPI-s.
It was clear from the beginning that stock photos should be replaced with Richter’s own professional photo material, and that colleagues needed to be part of the employer branding too. That is how the Ambassador Programme was born, with 12 employees from different fields who actively participated in the online and offline communication.
Creative employer branding communication
Right after the employer branding strategy was approved, we immediately started the communication phases. We created a new, career-focused Facebook page for Richter, and also took over the LinkedIn communications. The newly created employer branding communication was also supported with a minimal advertising budget.
Our aim was to represent Richter in a creative, colourful way on social media by not only posting jobs, but also painting a picture about everyday activities at Richter, its team and structural units, the tasks behind these jobs, the team-building and the benefits. We wanted to show everything that may be of interest to those who are looking for a job.
As there are relatively few educational institutions, where pharmacists or chemists are trained, the competition on the job market is quite important to them. Therefore, our main focus was to reach fresh graduates and seniors within the universities.
To illustrate to them the youthful, 21st-century side of Richter, we began to communicate on platforms where they are most active. We created Spotify playlists with tracks that can be linked to Richter’s value and slogans. For the slogan Local formula – Global impact, we created a playlist of songs which had been made famous by Hungarian musicians. We also collected famous duets for the slogan The science of cooperation; check it out:
The results of the employer branding communication
Thanks to the consistent work, the regular photoshoots, the collected internal documents and the high level of engagement on the social media platforms, we succeeded to achieve our goals in a short period of time.
The Facebook page has over 16.000 followers in a year, and we also got 4500 new followers on LinkedIn. Half a year later when our cooperation ended, the Facebook page had 18.700 followers and there were 14.300 followers on LinkedIn too.
The new communication channels and our advertisement solutions proved that more and better qualified employees can be recruited through precise targeting and micro-segmentation.
Richter’s prizes during our cooperation:
Director of Human Recources, Erdei Katalin with the first prize of PwC
