SHL
Bringing a new perspective to transformation
SHL is the global leader in talent innovation, helping companies transform productivity through providing deeper insights into their people. Their offering pivots around assessment science, benchmark data and analytics which give businesses the ability to make confident, data-driven people decisions around their recruitment, management and development of talent.
SHL were in the midst of an organisation-wide transformation programme when we first began to speak with them in November 2020, a transformation programme which had needed to pivot quickly in the face of Covid but which promised to build an organisation even better set up to help businesses with their talent strategies in a post-pandemic world.
The brief
Great work was already in motion transforming the business internally and putting key building blocks in place for future growth. SHL wanted a partner who could help to move the dial externally helping customers and the market understand who the new SHL are.
The business was keen to bring in an external point of view that would help to validate or challenge some of the internal assumptions that existed about the market, the audience and their needs. And to then be advised on the key areas of focus to ensure the business projects a consistent face to the world.
Our approach
The benefit of bringing in an agency early on in your transformation process is that we can arrive to the project without any legacy bias that often – understandably – exists within a business. We come bearing only our expertise and our desire to help.
With SHL we began an intensive period of Discovery during which time teams across the company gave up their time to talk candidly about their areas of expertise. This dedication to the journey they were on was invaluable to us and allowed us to really understand the company holistically. Layering onto this some extensive market and audience research too, we were able to put together our recommendations for key areas of focus.
The website was central to the project, but in addition we recommended some work to strengthen the brand story and better align it with future SHL. And development of the visual identity alongside the website project to ensure the site we delivered also represented this consistent story.
It was also vital that the website provided SHL with a technical foundation that would carry them forward and allow them to build on the ambitions of the next few years. Our SEO work held the key to mapping how many regional sites were required (effort v reward) to best align with the business objectives - both globally and regionally – and how to keep these sites performing through optimisation of core pages and an ongoing content creation strategy. Our technical experience allowed us to rise to the challenge of setting up the site in China as one of the 8 regional sites planned.
The outcome
Starting the project at the beginning of 2021, by June we had completed the Creative phase of the work and delivered in the new brand model. This gave the Executive Team and brand and marketing a new story to share which built out the future ambitions of the business. We had also evolved the logo bringing a refreshed look to the brand, playing out across the colour palette and graphic devices we introduced.
In October 2021 we launched the new website bringing everything together in a brand new shop window, giving the Sales and Marketing teams a new venue to drive campaign traffic and prospects to. And the journey continues with the roll-out of the regions and our SEO strategy.
