Customer Stories 
Summary
Henkel, a global leader in consumer brands and adhesive technologies with a diverse portfolio spanning household and industrial products, implemented Avature CRM globally to source and engage the talent they needed.
With rising candidate expectations in a competitive market where talent is scarce, Henkel prioritized candidate engagement as a core objective of its sourcing strategy. Ultimately, the organization created rich and diverse talent pools filled with candidates engaged for the long term, establishing themselves as an employer of choice and providing an exceptional recruitment experience.
About the Company
With a legacy of 147 years, Henkel boasts a global presence in 124 nationalities and 79 countries and a workforce of approximately 48,000 employees. Renowned for iconic brands such as Schwarzkopf, Persil and Pritt, Henkel leads the way in adhesive technologies, hair care and laundry detergents.
Offering innovative and sustainable solutions, from consumer goods to industrial applications, Henkel enables the transformation of entire industries, giving customers a competitive advantage and providing consumers with a unique experience.
The Challenge
In the face of a global talent shortage and increasing candidate expectations regarding how recruitment processes are handled, Henkel recognized the need for a new approach to their sourcing strategy and decided to look at these challenges from a different angle, turning them into opportunities.
Recognizing that waiting for candidates to apply was no longer enough to attract top talent and keep them engaged, Henkel realized that a more personalized, marketing-style approach would help them stand out from competitors and secure the necessary talent to keep up with evolving business demands ahead of time.
The war for talent, the workforce shortage and changed candidate expectations are already very well known to the broader recruitment world and concern all regions and countries where Henkel is recruiting. Therefore, we decided to look at these challenges from a different perspective and try to turn them into opportunities.”
Kim Schuster
Global Recruitment Manager, Henkel.
Their new vision would require a CRM solution with best-in-class recruitment marketing, sourcing and employer branding capabilities. The goal was to enhance the screening process, allowing more time to build meaningful relationships with the most promising candidates, regardless of immediate hiring needs. This approach would also enable the creation of segmented talent pools based on skills and interests.
In this context, Henkel observed the trends in the recruitment market and set out to answer the question of how to better engage with candidates and win them for present or future opportunities.
The Solution: Active Sourcing and Candidate Engagement
Kim Schuster, Global Recruitment Manager at Henkel, explained that the organization started to outline a holistic recruiting strategy based on two focus points: active sourcing and candidate engagement. The ultimate goal was to bring job seekers closer, streamline processes and deliver an outstanding recruiting experience.
To achieve this, they needed a solid strategy underpinned by a technology solution that ensured seamless and personalized communication with candidates, global scalability and adaptability across regions and multiple stakeholders. Avature’s sourcing and recruitment marketing solution provided them with a comprehensive toolkit to realize their vision, from employer branding tools to powerful segmentation and campaign capabilities. Sealing the deal was the solution’s configurability, which would empower Henkel to activate a centralized approach that could be adapted to ensure impact and relevance across the board.
The organization wanted to deploy a strategy to source talents, focusing on building rich and diverse talent pools filled with different kinds of candidates, thus supporting DE&I ambitions.
Schuster pointed out that one of the organization’s most important objectives was to maximize the candidates’ time and attention. To this end, they prioritized building qualitative candidate pools, selecting profiles from trusted and diverse sources like referrals and tapping into previous silver medalists, alumni, interns, working students and event attendees.
This enabled Henkel to focus efforts on more qualified talent and made it more manageable for stakeholders to review candidates than a quantitative approach might have taken.
By creating the Henkel Talent Community, they invited candidates to join from different sources via user-friendly processes, create their full profile upon consent and thus be automatically linked to different talent pools according to their preferences. This also opened the door to building sustained connections that can last years.
To craft a memorable talent experience at every touchpoint, Henkel started curating and sharing compelling content that showcased their employer brand and culture, captivating candidates and fostering brand affinity by targeting communications. Through Avature’s holistic CMS toolbox, which allows recruiting teams to manage brand narrative and visual identity, Henkel designed unique, eye-catching landing pages and e-mail templates for different purposes, showcasing employer value proposition.
Henkel managed their global content strategy while allowing regional teams to tailor engagement for a more personalized touch. They leveraged e-mail campaigns to inform candidates about the latest developments, insights on hot topics, invitations to events and opportunities for networking and connecting with organization representatives, like the Henkel Job Speed Dating initiative, designed to source interns.
The Power of Data-driven Insights and Flexible Workflows
For recruiters worldwide, flexible workflows tailored to the unique needs of each market empowered them to nurture candidates in a localized and relevant manner. Ultimately, this initiative reduced the time and cost of sourcing and hiring.
We chose Avature for the effective communication measures, the easy templates, the possibility to scale it up globally, and the adaptable workflows.”
Kim Schuster
Global Recruitment Manager, Henkel.
Henkel also harnessed the power of data and analytics to track engagement metrics, identify trends and optimize recruitment strategies for maximum impact and efficacy. Through the platform, they measure vital KPIs, such as how many candidates are approached and where. They can also gain insights on click and open rates for e-mail communications.
The Results
Schuster highlighted that Henkel’s success with Avature was underpinned by robust change management initiatives, comprehensive training programs and user-centric design principles to ensure recruiters had a deep understanding and support when using the Avature platform, keeping them on board with a solution tailored to their needs. Moreover, seamless integration with their existing ATS facilitated agile data flow and enhanced the recruiting experience.
With the help of Avature CRM, Henkel was able to tailor processes for different regions and quickly evolve the recruitment strategy to allow for global deployment in response to changing needs. By actively involving recruiters in the implementation process and prioritizing their feedback, Henkel ensured effective adoption and utilization of the CRM solution, driving sustained value and impact.
Implementation takes time. First, we concentrated on the system setup to ensure recruiters have all the needed functionalities. Then, we moved to user onboarding, with various training sessions and change management. Finally, after our go-live, we could start growing the pool. Only after we reached a stage of having thousands of talents in the pool could we start recruiting entirely, leveraging the potential of our CRM solution in Avature.”
Kim Schuster
Global Recruitment Manager, Henkel.
Recognizing the dynamic nature of modern recruitment, Henkel prioritized staying on top of industry trends and developing a holistic strategy to enhance the sourcing process accordingly. The efforts paid off. For example, they achieved an impressive 70 percent engagement rate with silver medalists through email communications.
Additionally, by delivering an outstanding recruitment experience based on transparent communication and personalized engagement initiatives, Henkel is better placed to meet hiring demands and secure the top talent they need.
