Case Enfuce
New EVP and EB foundation work boosts qualified talent leads to over 29%
Finders Seekers x Enfuce
Enfuce called in the Finders Seekers EB team to help them create a strong EB foundation, launching to new talent markets in the Baltics, and validate their EVP messaging. Through deep strategic collaboration and an iterative approach, read on to find out how the teams worked together towards joint EB success.
Results
29% of talent leads were qualified leads generated from EB and Rec Marketing actions
(6 months period)
48% of job applications in the Baltics were qualified talent leads
EVP campaign generated 514 visits to Enfuce Career Site where 12.5% converted to quality job applications
50+ wild EB ideas generated with 3 conceptualized
further
Meet Enfuce 👋
A payment provider on a mission: Enfuce was born in 2016 when five co-founders with backgrounds in financial services came together to rebuild payments from the ground up. They went on to build a flexible, scalable, and secure cloud-based payment processing solution. Enfuce employs 130+ experts, with offices in Espoo, Mariehamn, and London.
Baseline
Mikko Aro, Head of People (formerly Team Lead People Ops), joined Enfuce in January 2020 as their 40th employee. Mikko is clear on why he decided to join Enfuce: “I really liked Enfuce’s ambitious goal of having a global impact in the area of payments. We are in the field providing a service that makes payments safer, more secure, reliable, sustainable, and meaningful. I also resonated with Enfuce’s women-led leadership and their commitment to our company values of doing something great that also helps people and the world at the highest possible scale.”
Sustainability is also close to Mikko’s heart: “It’s not just about sustainability from an environmental standpoint, but also about having a positive social impact, about building long-lasting success with people and tech in every sense of the word.”
“Some of the best aspects of working at Enfuce? The people: we are always learning from each other. We are a close-knit group of professionals with highly ambitious goals, who collaborate and take care of each other. This is a place where people can say they have learned more in the past five months than the previous five years. We have this culture of thinking big and innovating: go big or go home. This is really embedded in Enfuce’s people.”
Mikko has been instrumental in forging Enfuce’s talent acquisition and recruitment processes. As well as hiring two Talent Acquisition Specialists to work alongside Mikko, 2022 was the year when Enfuce wanted to invest in employer branding in a more systematic way, as Mikko explains: “We had not always been systematic with our EB strategy in the past, but we had always shared messages that we believed in, which resonated in the talent market. By always prioritizing being a good employer it has encouraged candidate referrals from our employees. Eventually, in 2022 we started looking at EB more closely. In essence, we were pretty good at defining the big picture, but we needed support when it came to how to actually get things off the ground, how to get things done.”
Enter Finders Seekers: “I already knew of Finders Seekers by reputation. It was always part of the plan to use an agency, so when the time was right, I knew we had to talk to them. I knew they had hired people who understood EB, who had that strategic level, but I also saw that they had hired people who could master modern marketing techniques. I knew Minea Leva had great skills with marketing automation and data. In general, the Finders Seekers EB team came across as a fun group of people who knew what they were doing. In fact, it almost felt like they were building their EB team capabilities around a customer like us.”
It was important to find an EB partner who could work with the brand’s marketing team, plus deliver on strategy and execution. ‘’This hybrid approach was something that made the Enfuce x Finders Seekers collaboration so successful.’’
Mikko Aro
Head of People, Enfuce
"They really understand the growth company target group: they were very proactive, kept things moving, helped us prioritize and showed results fast, ensuring we got stakeholder buy-in for our work. This culture of getting things done really appealed to us.”
Solution
The first pillar of the collaboration was an external EB audit delivered by Finders Seekers. Vivi Brooke, Head of EB at Finders Seekers explains that “we didn’t just look at the talent market competition, but also at brand competitors in order to understand Enfuce’s niche and narrow down the issues we were solving for. Without that baseline, you risk creating something inauthentic that won’t resonate.” A status quo analysis of the current state of Enfuce’s employer brand allowed Finders Seekers to really pinpoint areas where the most value could be made to, and created a structured timeline for the collaboration.
Minea Leva, Employer Branding Specialist & Partner, mirrors Mikko Aro that “the Enfuce team wanted us to show them how to make things happen. We really appreciated how Enfuce was so open and keen to collaborate with us. Right from the beginning the then CMO (Mikko Bäckström) invited us in to present our findings from the EB audit to the entire marketing team, so that we would all be on the same page. We presented tangible ideas on how we could work together and co-create, as well as shared website and social media tips that would be win-win for both Enfuce’s employer brand and consumer brand. This allowed us to hit the ground running.” Vivi adds how important it was to have Enfuce’s CMO’s support in driving not only the marketing team’s involvement but also having the management team’s support.
After the audit and creating momentum with stakeholders, things moved forward rapidly, culminating in deliverables within two months of starting the collaboration. Minea Leva, explains how the timeline unfolded: “The collaboration kickoff was in the beginning of April, and by the beginning of June we had a landing page for the new talent market in Baltics and a revamped careers page. This meant that in addition to the EB audit, in two months, we did EB strategy work, EVP and talent persona workshops, as well as a career page project. Once these deliverables were live, we implemented an 8-week campaign sprint, starting with a campaign to attract new talents from Baltics, as well as campaigns aimed at testing our new EVP (employee value proposition) messaging. For these, we collaborated with the marketing team and worked together on the copy.”
Vivi underlines the importance of maintaining a collaborative approach and meticulous project management as multiple elements overlapped during the partnership: “We were mapping out talent personas, whilst simultaneously implementing an EVP sprint workshop. This meant lots of co-creation and ideation with employees on Enfuce’s selling points.”
Messaging was something that Enfuce and Finders Seekers worked closely on, ensuring that the EVP copy aligned and engaged current Enfucers, as well as, target talent audiences. “One of the campaign messages we were testing was “Take the ***** out of payments.” This was about being able to differentiate Enfuce from the competition – trying to tackle preconceptions some talents might have about the payments industry being ‘boring’”, Vivi elaborates.
Strategy
The goal was to create awareness within key talent audience segments in the Nordics, Baltics and London regions and test how new EVP messages worked for different talent groups. The key talent profiles we focused on were Software and Delivery Engineers, as well broader tech expert profiles.
Minea highlights “what an essential role the EB data measurement framework played in our strategy. We started by sitting down with Mikko and going through our own EB tool we have developed for data purposes, going through the results, and outlining a measurement plan for EB. This was then used as the basis for building EB data dashboards.”
“Another important element to our strategy is really providing teams with coaching on what a talent driven EB mindset looks like. We really wanted to bring in that human centricity from a candidate and talent perspective. Matching the outside with the actual experience was a key part of the strategy for us” Vivi underlines.
“When we started, Enfuce didn't have a defined EVP, so we did a first concept for it. In parallel, we also defined the most critical talent personas for tech roles. We really wanted to understand the different roles in terms of messaging. For us it was key to get EVP messaging out to different markets, test it out, and collect data on what to do differently, where to focus next”, Vivi breaks down the EVP process.
Some of the key messages that we wanted to highlight through our work:
Enfuce people are sought after thought leaders - yet few want to leave.
Our culture is what unites us.
Trust in our people creates psychological safety.
We share, learn, and do ambitious things together - no matter who we are or where we work from.
We excel in what we do by experimenting and just doing.
We grow rapidly but sustainably to ensure the well-being and different needs of employees.
In terms of the strategy, Vivi elaborates how, “rather than a big one-off that you sometimes see with these EVP campaigns, we went out with small iterative tests to see what would resonate, playing around with messaging and concrete examples, seeing what works for different talent personas. And this iterative process included both internal and external testing.”
Minea, Vivi, and Jarkko Dahlström (Senior Employer Branding & Talent Acquisition Strategist) worked on the collaboration, with Karelle Bélanger, Employer Branding Specialist, coming in after the summer, and Phuong Tran, Employer Branding Growth Marketing Specialist joining in the Fall. After EVP testing had ended, from August to October the following areas were prioritized:
Revamping the strategy and focusing on long-term impact
Planning for 2023, including securing budgeting for EB actions
Wild ideas workshop as a springboard for future strategy
EB data dashboard creation
Content creation: writing people stories
LinkedIn life page: copy and layout
Ambassador program kick-off.
Vivi details the wild ideas workshop and how it fed into future strategy: “The idea behind the wild ideas workshop is that people really come together both from Enfuce and the Finders Seekers EB team to get inspired – the key is to really zoom in on the talent personas and consider what challenges they are facing. Using a design thinking approach we go out and harness new innovative EB ideas. It all starts with some rapid brainstorming and ideation around EB: how can we succeed using differentiation? After throwing some ideas into the mix, we actually take some of those ideas further and conceptualize them, selecting robust low hanging fruits in terms of our strategy. We then develop some of the ideas even further, trying to find ones that hit the spot in terms of differentiation, effort, and impact. Wild ideas are really a pillar to creating long-term strategy”.
Coaching talent driven EB mindset and cultivating wild ideas
EB data measurement framework: auditing EB data and creation of custom dashboards
EVP: workshop & validation of EVP messaging with the talent market
EB campaigns & content creation: validate EB messaging and raise awareness with key talent
Impact
Mikko appreciated how Finders Seekers came in and “clarified the initial things we needed to solve and create. As we moved forward, Finders Seekers facilitated in order to keep things focused. This clarity was something we needed.
Minea reflects on the bottom-line impact of the EVP and Baltics campaigns: “We were running these campaigns across a wide range of talent markets – targeting globally, across Baltics, London, the Nordics etc., and we reached a 29.3% conversion rate of quality applications across all these different EB campaigns. Quality job applications here means that the candidates in the recruitment process moved forward to the interview phase. We focused on tracking and data analysis to ensure we could show value, and we provided Enfuce with some high-value campaigns that led to a large number of qualified applications. This eventually led to for example 15 hires.”
Mikko is well-versed with the growth company landscape and what can realistically be achieved in EB within that framework. This was also another strength of Finders Seekers: “They really understand the growth company target group: they were very proactive, kept things moving, helped us prioritize and showed results fast, ensuring we got stakeholder buy-in for our work. This culture of getting things done really appealed to us.”
Mikko feels like Finders Seekers were especially good at making things feel tangible: “Like with many things that are a little abstract such as EB, high-value facilitation is needed, and the Finders Seekers team were really great at that. They helped make things much more concrete and tangible. The EB team were really good at using Miro, which is a great tool if you know how to use it. For example, during the workshops where people from the tech team participated, I could really see how people got energy from the session. How the tool was used enhanced the session, it was really well facilitated”.
Why we loved working with Enfuce?
Finders Seekers really appreciated how wholeheartedly Enfucers embraced EB across the board. “The Enfuce team was great when it came to including multiple people in the project. It was really a testament to how EB works best as a true collaboration. Enfuce was a great example of how EB is about utilizing the people who are already in your company, being strategic about using resources, and collaborating across multiple departments” Vivi highlights.
Minea feels that support from marketing was also key to shared success: “It was great to have such a collaborative approach with the marketing team, and we worked with so many people. Enfucers were really open to data automation and the possibilities it presents, something I really appreciated.”
Vivi concludes “the future for Enfuce is looking bright, and we’re looking forward to implementing some of the wild ideas workshop outcomes. It’s really a testament to how well something has worked when there is that continuity in the relationship.”
Minea Leva
Employer Branding Specialist & Partner, Finders Seekers
“It was great to have such a collaborative approach with the marketing team, and we worked with so many people. Enfucers were really open to data automation and the possibilities it presents, something I really appreciated.”
What Enfuce thought about working with us?
For Mikko, the success of the collaboration lay in the Finders Seekers EB team’s ability to understand Enfuce’s needs.
“In terms of the collaboration, there were really no big challenges. Finders Seekers had an excellent grasp of the big picture and got on with the plan. They were able to move with it when priorities changed. What was great was that everything was rigorously documented: what we were doing, and what we will do next. It was always easy to change tact and go back to the drawing board if necessary – we could always switch focus nicely. That flexibility was awesome.”
Working with Finders Seekers allowed Mikko to focus on the essential and delegate. “Finders Seekers has a good system in place to understand exactly what is needed. There was a lot of alignment and clear deliverables. The EB team outlined the work, got marketing involved, and worked towards joint goals. We had these great joint ways of working I really appreciated. The process was very iterative, with really honest feedback. Over the summer we had good results with our first campaigns, so that set us on the right path.
In terms of EB right now, we are growing the People team and getting new people to deliver on EB. We are in a good position, currently hiring, with a good outlook. We are actively going global and expanding into London in 2023. The focus for this spring will be recruitment marketing, but also alignment. As we all know, our employer brand is not a separate silo from the company brand”.
