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How Swarovski Empowers and Inspires its Employees With Smarp
About Swarovski
Swarovski is a family-run and independent business that was founded more than 125 years ago. The company designs, manufactures and sells highest quality crystal, genuine gemstones, created stones, and finished products such as jewelry and accessories. Today, Swarovski has 7 production sites worldwide, 3,000 stores in around 170 countries, and it employs more than 25,000 employees.
Throughout its history, Swarovski has been aware that the long-term success of the company is inseparable from the well-being of its customers, employees, the environment, and society. This is an integral part of Swarovski’s heritage, and it is embedded today in the company’s established global sustainability agenda.
Supporting employees’ professional growth by helping them build their thought leadership and personal brands on social media
The communication team realized that employees’ expectations have drastically changed in the past few years — they now want to enjoy a great employee experience, feel heard, and be supported in their professional growth.
The team knew the importance of investing in their employees to keep them engaged. To reach this goal, they decided to launch a program that would help their employees build their own world-class personal brands and connect with other industry experts.
They were looking for a solution that would make it easy for the employees to keep up with the latest industry trends, share their knowledge with their colleagues as well as their personal networks, and drive engaging conversations around the company updates and milestones. It is for these reasons that they decided to launch Smarp in 2015.
“We believe that our employees’ personal growth is key to our business success. They are passionate experts who are eager to grow as professionals and share their knowledge. We were looking for a solution that would help us support their thought leadership and personal branding efforts. Smarp was the answer — a place where our employees could start engaging conversations around the company’s milestones and the latest industry news”.
Diana Macovei, Senior Manager Global Employer Brand, Social Media and Communications
Strengthening Swarovski’s reputation as an employer of choice
The communication team wanted to further elevate Swarovski’s employer brand to keep attracting top talent in a highly competitive industry. They wanted to do so in an authentic way by encouraging employees to share their own stories externally, along with company news and content that reinforce the company’s values and commitments.
This resulted in a unique and authentic tone of voice that would amplify Swarovski’s core initiatives whilst highlighting its strong culture.
“For us, it is extremely important to encourage our employees to share their stories and what it’s like to work at Swarovski in their own words. We didn’t want to limit our communication efforts to the messages we share through the official Swarovski communication channels. As mentioned earlier, one of our top priorities at Swarovski is to empower our employees and support their personal growth. It is important for us to enable them to contribute to the development of our employer brand”.
Diana Macovei, Senior Manager Global Employer Brand, Social Media and Communications
Smarp in action
Personalized communications help employees build their own personal brands
The communication team knew that sharing enablement and educational content that is relevant to each employee's area of expertise as well as their roles within Swarovski would be key to help them become ‘Thought Leaders’.
They’ve decided to segment the content they deliver to employees by creating different channels on Smarp. In total, Swarovski has more than 20 channels on Smarp, split by topics of interest and aligned with the company’s goals and values — ranging from career tips, leadership and productivity advice to business trends, innovation, marketing, retail, jewelry, fashion, company milestones, sustainability and more.
To provide employees with the latest industry trends and highlights, the team leverages Smarp’s automatic import functionality to bring in third-party content such as blog posts, industry research reports and white papers from trustworthy sources. This method enables the process of informing employees in a timely, simple and efficient manner, whilst giving their people the most up-to-date information.
The team took the employee experience they deliver with Smarp to the next level by encouraging employees to personalize their news feeds by choosing the channels they want to subscribe to.
“We wanted to make sure that the content our employees receive in their personal news feeds resonates with their expertise and interest. By offering a wide range of topics and letting our employees decide which ones they want to follow, we make sure that we share the right content with them — the content they want to consume”
Diana Macovei, Senior Manager Global Employer Brand, Social Media and Communications
An employee app that helps employees stay on top of their game in challenging times
Smarp helps the communication team to share critical information and urgent company updates with employees in challenging and constantly changing situations such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
Right after the coronavirus outbreak, the team created a dedicated campaign on Smarp to inform their employees about the current situation, explain how the pandemic would affect their work habits, and share guidelines and company updates with them — from working from home tips to safety guidelines as well as the measures taken by Swarovski to protect them.
“Our goal was to offer our employees a dedicated go-to channel, easy to use and available on mobile, accessible from anywhere, anytime. This way, we can easily reach them, share important company updates with them in a timely manner, and make it easy for them to start insightful conversations around important topics such as COVID-19 with their networks on social media”
Diana Macovei, Senior Manager Global Employer Brand, Social Media and Communications
To measure the responsiveness to this initiative, the team has used the comprehensive analytics available on Smarp.
By analyzing this specific campaign, they managed to identify whether employees were reading the messages the communication team shared with them, what content influenced most reads, which pieces of content were shared the most on social media, and the company’s social media reach generated through this campaign.
“We are thrilled to see that our employees actively read and shared the best practices and updates we have been sharing with them through Smarp during the pandemic. Overall, they have reached more than 500,000 people on social media during the COVID-19 crisis. That means they are eager to help their networks find critical information and share best practices with them”.
Diana Macovei, Senior Manager Global Employer Brand, Social Media and Communications
Results Achieved with Smarp
Engaged employees build powerful personal brands in the digital space
Not only does Smarp help employees keep up with the latest company news and business trends, but it also helps them position themselves as industry thought leaders. They now use the platform on a daily basis to check the latest industry trends, share their knowledge with their social networks, and drive engaging conversations around Swarovski’s values, milestones, and commitment to sustainability.
Unsurprisingly, user engagement on the platform keeps increasing, reaching 88% in the first half of 2020.
“When we started using Smarp in 2015, not all our employees were familiar with personal branding on social media. We organized group training sessions, demos of Smarp and 1:1 sessions with our employees to help them build world-class personal brands. It’s fantastic to see how they’ve developed their thought leadership and how they inspire their colleagues and personal networks. I think it all comes down to the way Smarp has helped us segment the content we share with them based upon their expertise and interests”.
Diana Macovei, Senior Manager Global Employer Brand, Social Media and Communications
Furthermore, Smarp has helped the team improve employee engagement at Swarovski by building two-way relationships with the employees. Not only do they consume the content they receive in their news feeds, but they also actively propose new content they find interesting for their colleagues, from articles to videos and white papers.
“On average, 5 to 10 new pieces of content proposed by our employees are uploaded to Smarp every week. It is moving us away from just top-down communications and it helps us build two-way relationships with our employees. It’s great to see that our employees have now a proactive approach to personal branding. They know how important it is to stay informed of the latest industry trends, and they don’t hesitate to help their colleagues and personal networks improve their knowledge. At the end of the day, it’s all about sharing the same vision and inspirations”.
Diana Macovei, Senior Manager Global Employer Brand, Social Media and Communications
A solid and authentic employer brand built with the help of employees
By sharing the latest company news and their stories with their personal networks, employees naturally help develop Swarovski’s employer brand in an authentic way.
Along with helping to drive social recruitment through sharing job openings and content related to the company’s culture, employees were able to share key company initiatives related to Swarovski’s commitments to promote creative innovation, support human empowerment, and preserve the environment. Last year, employees reached more than 7 million people on social media through Smarp.
“We, at Swarovski, believe that our employees are the heartbeat of the company. We naturally decided to let them contribute to our employer brand by letting them share our story in their own words. We want to have a bigger impact on today’s society through our sustainability initiatives and all our different campaigns, including our annual campaign for International Women’s Day. Our employees play an important role in our sustainability strategy, and we couldn’t imagine not letting them share our commitments, inspiration, and the values we live by with the rest of the world”
Diana Macovei, Senior Manager Global Employer Brand, Social Media and Communications
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