Wates

For Wates, it’s crucial that everyone has fair access to development and progression opportunities to build a meaningful career of choice.

Identifying that they may be losing talent, particularly across administrative functions where career progression opportunities were limited, Wates developed a new internal mobility programme to support career transitions for employees in administrative roles.

The programme took a skills-based approach to support career transitions, giving employees the opportunity to utilise their transferable skills to experiment with a career in Wates’ surveying function. By offering diversified career routes and more opportunities to develop careers, Wates hoped to improve talent retention.

With the Internal Mobility Pilot Programme in place, an engaging communications campaign was needed to inspire employees to explore this new career opportunity and register their interest in the scheme.

Insights suggest that recruitment adverts become more appealing to those who have been in a role without progression opportunities for some time. Based on this, we developed an internal communications campaign that would help colleagues feel seen for their skills and inspired to explore a new career route through the programme – invoking the same feelings of possibility and excitement someone might feel when searching for a new role.

The creative focused on vision, encouraging individuals to see their future as a surveyor by using role-specific photography and future-focused copy. A split-screen visual approach took employees on a journey from where they are now to where they could be if they applied for the internal mobility programme.

Alongside visual assets, we created an email for Wates to circulate to around 400 colleagues who were working within the admin function. Within the email copy, we focused on recognising employees for the brilliant skills they use day to day – time management, organisation, project management, decision-making and attention to detail – to help them feel confident they have the right skills to apply for a ‘Starter Surveyor’ role.