Newell Brands' Plan for A Red Carpet Employee Experience
There’s no question that a big focus for companies this year is Employee Experience. Of particular importance? The ability to empower employees to own their career paths so they can grow and move to relevant roles within the organization. The challenge for enterprises is doing this efficiently and at scale, without adding yet another disparate system to the fold. Consumer goods leader Newell Brands tackled this complex goal using the same AI-powered talent experience technology that fuels their first-class candidate and recruiter experiences. Get a firsthand look at the diverse capabilities they now have — from AI skills matching and career pathing to referrals and ERGs — with Newell’s Ashley Blackmore, Director of North America Talent Acquisition & Operations. Blackmore wanted to take Newell’s internal career site from what she admitted was a bit of a “data dump” to a red carpet experience that would replicate that of external candidates. “Consistent feedback we’d gotten from our internals is that they don’t have visibility to all of the openings,” she noted. “It also wasn’t a great view or experience, especially with referring friends.” Another goal was to leverage a solution representative of Newell’s core values — truth, transparency, teamwork, and trust — to provide: Already a thriving Phenom Talent Experience Management (TXM) customer, Blackmore saw a demo of Phenom’s Employee Experience and knew immediately it would support Newell’s internal mobility goals through: Related Case Study: How Kuehne+Nagel Leverages Phenom to Empower Employees As with any tech adoption and rollout, Blackmore knew that securing cross-functional buy-in was paramount. Key stakeholders across the organization — including TA, HR, HRIT, and business unit leaders — immediately recognized the platform’s potential benefits after a product demo. Then it was time to hit the gas pedal on a global launch. The team put together a multichannel communications campaign designed to generate buzz. A combination of flyers, TV banners, in-office presentations, emails and, of course, some good old-fashioned swag for employees got the excitement going. Easy site navigation & apply. Their refreshed internal career site solves one of the main challenges Newell experienced previously: Employees had a tough time navigating the system to view and apply to open jobs, make referrals, and join ERGs. The result was less applications and engagement and more questions for the TA team to answer. Post-implementation, it’s easy to see how to browse and apply for jobs, complete a referral, and set up job match alerts, said Blackmore. Other indispensable features include an internal chatbot that immediately answers FAQs and provides other essential information, and the ability to share open positions with social media networks. AI-driven skills matching & job alerts. Employees can also choose to receive relevant job alerts on a regular basis. According to Blackmore, this represents a huge improvement since previous jobs alerts were often irrelevant to experience, skills, or desired career path. A major benefit of AI? The algorithms will get better at recommending relevant information over time. “It will continue to learn more as the candidate does more in the system — so as they apply to more openings, or they refer more friends. We feel like they really will have more control over their own career,” Blackmore explained. Related — The Role of AI in Skills Management and Career Pathing With their enhanced referral capabilities, Newell can fill critical roles faster by tagging specific positions in the CRM, which are then fed into the referral system. Just 48 hours after launching their new EX suite of TXM features, Blackmore was thrilled with the results generated by Phenom’s talent analytics: “For us to have 26 internals find and apply to 26 jobs in that amount of time is huge for us,” Blackmore shared. “Now our internals are getting the great same experience that we have been able to give our externals.” What’s next after a successful phase 1? Continuous optimization with an eye on the data (particularly analytics around profile activity). Newell also plans to explore additional products including Phenom Gigs and Phenom Mentoring to round out employee career pathing capabilities. Stay tuned!
Top Goals
Why Phenom for Internal Mobility?
Steps To Launch
Newell’s New EX Functionalities
Personalized job search & recommendations. Internal candidates can now look for positions based on the skills, experience, and preferences they put into the system via their profiles. Even better? They get personalized job recommendations based on the same information…just like candidates do on their external career site.
Enhanced referrals. “We’ve always gotten referrals at Newell,” Blackmore said, but “this referral program … takes it to the next level.” Now, referring employees can see where their referred candidates stand in the interview and hiring process — and they can track their referral bonuses as well. (Pro tip: Incentives work, so spotlight them!)
Transparent ERGs. Diversity, inclusion, and belonging (DI&B) is a top priority at Newell. And while their external career site did a good job highlighting resources, Blackmore wanted to strengthen internal enablement of ERGs to help employees form connections. Their internal career site does just that, complete with a calendar of events and the option to sign up for alerts on related news and events.
Early Results
What’s Next?
See how Phenom’s Employee Experience can simplify internal mobility for your team — Request a demo!
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