Unearthing the employer brand at FQM

First Quantum Minerals (FQM) was set up 16 years ago by Philip Pascall, a man with a clear vision: to do something different and apply his engineering skills to mining. Within two decades, he had built up a three billion dollar business and created an effective way of mining sites that others had walked away from. 

With an ambition to continue to grow, FQM asked blue goose to help define and codify its employer brand. Our first challenge was to uncover their unique culture and define a set of behaviours that captured the essence of FQM, set them apart from competitors and attract new people.

The power of three
That process revealed that Philip's ambition to build a team of people motivated with the same discipline, insight and enthusiasm from its early days was still key to the business’s achievements. Realising that what had driven Philip would be what would drive others, we defined three words – Bolder, Smarter, Driven – that characterised the behaviours the business was looking for in its people, but also described FQM as an organisation, its success and culture and reflected the environment employees would find themselves in. 

Those three powerful words at the core of the employer brand also inspired the associated communication strategy: the power of three in the ordering of things. 

Working from the inside out
Recognising that it would be critical for existing employees to relate to the behaviours, before going outside the business we ensured that ‘bolder, smarter, driven’ were accepted and adopted on the inside.  We then examined the process to attract new talent and developed an improved, more coherent, integrated and robust approach to support recruitment. A central narrative was defined to hold everything together, and we profiled the reality of working life at FQM through employees and their stories. 

Bringing it to life
Having established the key components of the employer brand, we expanded and codified them, developed an appropriate tone of voice guide and then applied the strategy and brand to employee touch-points, including a new careers website, recruitment advertising and advertorials to attract talent to a new Zambian mine, as well as social media channels.

Social power, social proof

Following the launch of the new careers website, FQM’s LinkedIn page attracted over 15,000 new followers in its first few weeks (and over 60,000 several months later). Their Facebook profile received over 11,000 'likes'.