The "REWE Group Voices" are 15 trained colleagues from all areas of the company who promote their employer and its topics on their private LinkedIn accounts - and thus attract the interest of potential applicants to themselves and the REWE Group. Paula Berg and Simone Hahn, heads of the project and "post-professionals" themselves, talk about the creation of REWE Group Voices and the appeal of corporate influencers for the company.
one: Paula, Simone, 15 employees were trained with you to become corporate influencers called "REWE Group Voices". Is such comprehensive training actually a prerequisite for being "allowed" to post about your job on LinkedIn with a private account?
Simone Hahn: No. The message is not: 'You have to do training to be part of REWE Group Voices'. Anyone who wants to report on job-related topics as an employee on their LinkedIn profile is welcome to do so. And ideally use the hashtag #REWEGroupVoices. Of course, you should think beforehand about the topics you want to post about and whether you have the capacity to do so. But nobody necessarily has to go through a training course, it's not the only way to achieve corporate influencing, so in theory there are 390,000 REWE Group Voices.
Paula Berg: Everyone is invited to get involved in the company as a brand ambassador. With Lunch&LinkedIn, we offer all colleagues low-threshold digital training formats (see info box), where everyone from LinkedIn newbies to advanced users can get "fit" for posting.
If you would like to get to know the REWE Group Voices: Here they introduce themselves.
one: Anyone can write about REWE Group?
Paula Berg: Yes! We have great confidence in all our colleagues, they do not have to have their text contributions approved. However, we recommend that you get a so-called "feedback buddy" among your colleagues, i.e. someone who pays attention to spelling and comprehensibility or gives an assessment of a post.
Simone Hahn: We mustn't forget that these are colleagues' private profiles - so we wouldn't get very far with bans. But we do offer support to make it easier to get started and provide security. For example, we have our own company social media principles that are available to everyone. As a kind of netiquette, they form the guidelines for how we want to interact with each other on social media - and how not. When selecting topics, we also appeal to common sense. My tip: Trust your gut feeling and never post anything that could damage the reputation of others or the company..
Paula Berg:... i like to say: anything you would say about REWE Group at a public bus stop, you can also post on LinkedIn.
Simone Hahn: Corporate influencing is a positive term, you usually only do it if you like your employer. If you are unsure whether a topic is sensitive or appropriate, you can contact your senior managers or, if necessary, ask the press department again - and talk to the aforementioned feedback buddy in advance.
one: REWE Group Voices is a joint project between Corporate Communications and Talent Attraction. How and why did the idea come about?
Simone Hahn: We see LinkedIn as a good channel for finding new colleagues and strengthening the REWE Group employer brand. At the same time, LinkedIn is changing from a pure job network to a medium that increasingly offers added value in terms of content and dialogue. Our REWE Group channel is developing well, but - as the development of LinkedIn clearly shows - people prefer to follow people rather than companies. This is where our REWE Group Voices project comes in: We want to strengthen the REWE Group brand, including the sales lines. And we see a lot of potential here to reach other target groups with our corporate topics in close cooperation with the corporate channel and the channels of our Management Board members active on LinkedIn.
Paula Berg: Some of our Management Board members position themselves on LinkedIn, which is great for the company's visibility. But let's put ourselves in the shoes of a talent. He or she would probably not approach our CEO Lionel Souque directly. With our REWE Group Voices, on the other hand, the inhibition threshold for potential talent is lower. I, for example, work in talent sourcing and my job is to actively approach talented people. My posts on LinkedIn have changed a lot: Talents come up to me and ask what it would be like to join us. Felix Becker, another one of our REWE Group Voices, was approached by an IT talent via LinkedIn. That's really something special, because it's challenging in the industry to recruit specialists for us. It's great that someone actively approached us. Our presence on LinkedIn also brings us requests for lectures, podcasts or book contributions. There is a great quote from me in a publication on the topic of family awareness in companies. That's free advertising for us as a work-life balance-conscious company. The Lebensmittelzeitung newspaper also reported on the project. All of this came about via LinkedIn.
one: What else characterises the REWE Group Voices beyond their quality as company ambassadors?
Simone Hahn: Everyone, really everyone, was keen on the project and was super motivated during the three-month training programme, which took two to three hours a week including homework. There was openness and trust between us right from the start. As the group is a good cross-section from all areas, it provides an exciting insight into the diversity of topics at our company.
Paula Berg: I found the individual writing styles and everyone's passion for their job interesting. They write about it with a lot of euphoria - which resonates between the lines. Nobody boldly says that REWE Group is the very best employer. But you can read it behind the words.
one: Does this resonance increase the credibility of the posts?
Simone Hahn: Absolutely. Because these are not extended corporate profiles, they are private profiles. We are not the LinkedIn police who dictate topics or writing styles. All Voices set their own topics. And in my opinion, that is one reason for the high level of motivation and the good response to the posts.
Paula Berg is Talent Sourcer & Talent Relationship Manager. She posts around four LinkedIn posts per month. What she appreciates about LinkedIn is the direct, uncomplicated contact with qualified talent on the labour market
Simone Hahn, Lead Social Media REWE Group, published her first LinkedIn post in 2021. What she appreciates about LinkedIn is the fundamentally respectful tone and the exciting topics.
In more and more companies, employees are providing insights into their day-to-day work on private social media accounts (LinkedIn, etc.) and writing about topics that affect them and their company. REWE Group was one of the first retail companies in the German-speaking world to launch its own corporate influencer project at the beginning of this year: 15 colleagues from the central and administrative departments of REWE Group/Holding, REWE, REWE digital, PENNY, toom Baumarkt DIY store, DER Travel and Tourism and Lekkerland were trained over a period of twelve weeks to become #REWEGroupVoices for LinkedIn. They learnt everything about corporate influencing in a total of 24 hours of training. The pilot is a joint project between Corporate Communications and Talent Attraction.
Corporate influencers
These are "normal" employees of a company.as corporate influencers, they give the company a face to the outside world and share content about their work area, projects or even personal favourite topics on their private channels. corporate influencers are also referred to as brand ambassadors who bring the values and culture of their employer, i.e. the employer brand, to life.
Employer branding (employer branding )
This includes all measures that a company can take to strengthen its own brand and present itself to potential applicants as a suitable and attractive employer.
Talent attraction
As an instrument for "employee recruitment and retention", it refers to the appeal of an employer to both interesting job seekers and existing employees.