Croatia’s Best Employer Brand Awards 2019 was a complete success for Atlantic Group, who managed to win five awards, including the Grand Prix award and the employer branding award.
Atlantic Group’s senior employer branding and culture specialist, Tina Miličić, gave an interview, in which she tried to explain the organization of work and how the employer branding activities are performed within the Group. Ms. Miličić initially said that they’ve been working on employer branding within the Group for the past five years, initiated by Ivana Đorđević with most of the initiatives directed towards the current employers. That strategy led to the high involvement of the workers and reduced unwanted fluctuations and non-attendance at work since the company has started.
When asked what has changed since the early days of employer branding in Atlantic, she says that it’s a lot. Once the initial enthusiasm wore down, as it usually does, and just when things were starting to slow down, the company underwent extensive internal reconstruction. One of the projects of that process allowed them to further the employer branding tactics at the highest level within the company. Ms. Miličić was stationed in Belgrade, working in two departments, and it all took a lot of energy. Then, when it was time for her to return from Belgrade she just wanted to continue working on serious employer branding. In her current role, she reports to both the HR and Corporate communications, as she realized that a significant level of synergy is needed for that role to be successful. She highlights the example of having to fill 90 positions in Serbia, quickly and at a tight budget, and receiving 2400 applications and completing the project in less than three weeks. And she adds that the reason for that success was not having done lovely visuals and advertising, instead it is the fact that the company took the comments to previous similar campaigns seriously and worked hard to fulfill the expectations of the current employees.
Within the company, the situation is such that promoting the topic of employer branding towards the higher management is unnecessary, as the market has made sure everybody understands the importance of the principle. These days, the employee can define what they want from the company, and the company needs to adjust to those desires, and that’s not easy. So, while continually improving the salaries, benefits, and other conditions for the employees, the company needs to stay profitable – which makes it more efficient.
Ms. Miličić doesn’t see working on numerous markets as a particular challenge when it comes to employer branding, as the Atlantic Group is used to working on many markets in all aspects. And so it’s not out of the ordinary that in Slovenia the topics that are discussed are LGBT certification and beehives in the yard of the company building. At the same time, in Macedonia, they need to communicate the most elementary things, such as a regular and guaranteed paycheck. The importance of employer branding for a company such as Atlantic Group can’t be denied, and almost all big companies understand the importance of this concept for their success. That leads the company to start thinking in more specific terms, and Ms. Miličić states that the critical thing they understand now is that Atlantic Group is not right for everyone, nor is everyone right for the Atlantic Group. The relationship between the company and the employer is just as intimate as any close relationship you have in your life, and you need to feel like you fit in somewhere. The company wants employers to feel comfortable in the company, as that is the only way for them to realize their full potential. That’s why, during the selection process, they put a lot of stock into the so-called Cultural Fit, determining how much someone would fit in with the culture and the values of the company. It’s not about hiring the greatest expert, but the expert who’d enjoy working in the Atlantic Group.
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