To do a thorough job, Robin and his team had to consider all macroeconomic conditions and forces at play and how they could impact both Morrisons’ future hiring and growth strategies. Morrisons leveraged LinkedIn to shape recruitment best practices and influence content strategy.

“We use LinkedIn in three different ways,” commented Robin. “Primarily, we use it to grow our employer brand by showcasing our culture, generate insight, and identify, attract and engage talent.”

Employer branding sits at the heart of Morrisons’ recruitment strategy. Every Morrisons recruitment team member is empowered to generate content that external audiences can relate to. They generate the themes and create content using images and videos that showcase life at Morrisons and the various careers available across the organisation.

“Everyone knows that LinkedIn is a big source of information,” continued Robin. “It is a massive platform that enables us to tell authentic and engaging stories about our culture.

“For example, recently, we ran a campaign for store managers, so we went out to the business and asked colleagues to talk about their careers with Morrisons. We featured the campaign for a whole week, and it completely dominated news feeds on LinkedIn.

“This type of authenticity drives great engagement and traction,” Robin added. “By asking our store managers to record themselves on their phones, the content was more genuine compared to producing a corporate video. The content truly depicts a life and a career in our organisation.”

It is the job of Morrisons’ in-house recruitment team to consult and advise the business on talent strategies and how to attract the best people. To do that, Robin and his team must ensure they have the right knowledge to have the trust and credibility with both their stakeholders and external candidates. LinkedIn data and insight enable Robin and his team to understand market trends in retail, including non-food retail, and learn from other organisations and industries. “The role of the recruiter is much more than filling vacancies,” Robin explained. “Our recruiters are subject matter experts and have in-depth knowledge of their own specialist areas. They are experts in their field and share their knowledge about areas such as competitor strategies, organisational design, and diversity and inclusion. All of these things help further support the development of our future talent strategies.

Robin explained further: “Rami Baitiéh – our new CEO – has introduced lots of great new methodologies in how we think and operate. One of those is about where we get our insight from. He says that, as a business, we should never assume we know more than 20 per cent. The other 20 per cent we get from our colleagues, another 20 per cent from our customers, another 20 per cent from our suppliers and the final 20 per cent comes from our competitors. These new approaches have led to a shift in our culture and where we get our insight from.

“How does this translate into LinkedIn? You have at least 40 per cent – competitors and customers/candidates – sitting right there."

Morrisons’ in-house recruitment team takes this insight and uses it to inform strategy. How can it learn from the information that is there? What can Morrisons learn from other companies’ organisational structures? From a DEI perspective, how is Morrisons performing against others? How does that insight inform Morrisons’ attraction strategy?

“There’s a lot of information on LinkedIn that provides amazing insight,” Robin declared. “It’s not just a recruiting tool, it’s an insight tool and it’s of massive added value.”

Advocates of LinkedIn recognise the huge role that the platform plays in searching for and attracting talent. Yet, Morrisons believes it adopts a more considered approach, being careful to ensure meaningful content is relevant to candidates and the individuals it is looking to attract.

Robin continues: “All of the work the team does around building our employer brand and generating insight means that when it comes to attraction, we should be reaching a more engaged audience. We're careful to ensure the approach we take is relevant to that individual. This has resulted in higher response rates from candidates interested in exploring opportunities with us, even if it's just for an informal exploratory conversation.”

Morrisons’ recruitment team is focused on the future. It is keen to build talent pipelines. Whilst filling immediate vacancies is important to the business, Morrisons is also aware that it needs to remain at the forefront of grocery retail.

“It’s about building talent for the future,” Robin adds. “So whether it's a conversation for today or just to make a connection and to learn a bit more about life at Morrisons, the team are always happy to connect with potential candidates, support the businesses’ goals and make preparations with one eye on the future.”

Morrisons’ recruitment campaigns have achieved high levels of engagement and organic growth. Content created from concepts and ideas devised by the in-house recruitment team receives the most interaction. It is reviewed on a month-by-month basis to gain a deeper understanding of what resonates with prospective candidates, and what doesn’t, but it’s clear that “real-life stories” that depict Morrisons culture are a big hit.

Robin added: “Our people ‘Make Morrisons’. Highlighting their stories and their achievements in engaging posts and videos enables potential candidates to see what we are like as a business. We will continue to shine a spotlight on our colleagues because we know genuine stories are valued by our target market.”

The authentic content, depicting Morrisons as an employer of choice, and the heightened awareness of the employer brand have resulted in significant outcomes. For instance, 49 per cent of direct hires at Morrisons’ head office can be attributed to LinkedIn and in the last 12 months, the number of people following Morrisons’ Company Page has increased by 21 per cent.

“Whilst LinkedIn is our single biggest annual investment in terms of recruitment, the payback is justified,” concluded Robin. “It’s a brilliant tool.”