Rebranded REC puts “digital first” at the heart of operations

Following the launch of the Recruitment & Employment Confederation new brand last night, the trade body’s CEO has vowed to have members’ needs at the core of everything that the REC does by adopting a new digitally-focused approach.  

Following the launch of the Recruitment & Employment Confederation new brand last night, the trade body’s CEO has vowed to have members’ needs at the core of everything that the REC does by adopting a new digitally-focused approach.  

Neil Carberry told Recruiter that “off the back of 100s of hours of talking to members and non-members”, members would notice some important changes as the organisation focused on becoming “more member-centric”.

To prepare the ground, Carberry revealed how he had personally been involved in working with staff   through an internal initiative called ‘REC Staff’ “to develop some new behaviours about how we want the REC to be, and making sure that teams are working effectively together, always putting members at the heart of everything we do.”

Carberry said one of the aims of the rebranding was to make it easier for members to do business with the REC. “One of things members will really notice is how much more we make everything we do online,” he said. “We needed to think digitally first,” said Carberry, who announced that REC will be launching a new CRM before Christmas, with a plan to link this to its website early in 2020.

The way that the REC communicated would also be more reflective of the professional and skilled job that recruiters do. “The look and feel will reflect that as well as the new tone of voice we will be using. You ought to notice the REC speaking a little bit more like recruiters in how we talk about things, reflecting the industry in how we talk.”

Another strand of the rebranding was to enable the REC to be more persuasive to those outside the industry such as government and media.

Carberry said that recent content produced in the past few weeks, such as bite-sized content, the use of video, and the REC manifesto was about “telling stories in a more engaging way that was easier to consume”.   

This was not an end in itself said Carberry. However, “the more persuasive we can be in terms of how we sell the story recruitment has to tell, the more effective we will be in helping recruiters to grow their business and boost their contribution to the prosperity of the UK economy”.

Other changes as a result of the rebranding will be to bring the Institute of Recruitment Professionals under a new ‘REC Professionals’ brand, allowing more recruiters – both agency and in-house – to join the REC.

The Good Recruitment Campaign will also change its name to the ‘Good Recruitment Collective’ with the aim of strengthening the voice of all those in across HR and recruitment, who are committed to the REC’s Good Recruitment Charter.

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