First Transit Campaign to recruit, retain and highlight our diverse workforce

Target Audience: The target audience for First Transit's comprehensive internal and external workforce development campaign was two-fold: potential new hires and current employees. Our recruitment campaign has targeted all position levels – from bus drivers and technicians to managers and corporate support.

Strategy Objective:With the competitiveness of the job hiring market, our comprehensive strategy has highlighted the diversity of our local teams while also sharing the work they're doing in their communities. We took new photos and videos by highlighting our people and incorporated these throughout our websites, collateral, social media, and recruitment advertising. We streamlined our recruitment materials through branded templates and signage. We created a consistent "You" centered language in our messaging, making the candidate the focus and sharing how they will make an impact. We've created an employee spotlight campaign, #BehindTheWheel, and expanded it, where we now share employee testimonials around military branches' birthdays, heritage months, holidays, and important days of significance.

Situation Challenge: As a leader in providing mobility solutions across the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico, we understand our important role in connecting families and individuals to their loved ones, jobs, school, healthcare, and communities. Throughout the pandemic, our locations continued to operate for our partners. Once the labor shortage took effect, especially considering its impact on the transit industry and the essential work we all do, it became a company-wide effort to retain our workforce and attract additional qualified hires.

Results Impact: Through this comprehensive campaign, from 1/22 to 7/22, we had a 48% increase in the number of driver applications submitted and a 2.7% increase in driver staffing hires. From 1/22 to 12/22, our company's LinkedIn reactions increased by 616.9%, LinkedIn comments increased by 391.5%, and LinkedIn reposts increased by 601.4%. Our team members' stories are being heard and celebrated internally and externally through the employee spotlights. Team members are given a platform to share their culture and background or how they started in transportation and grew their career since starting at First Transit. We're proud to be a diverse and inclusive company. Similar to the communities we serve, our people make us who we are, and it's been an honor to highlight their diversity and journeys.

Why Submit: This campaign should win an AdWheel Award because of the comprehensive approach we took and the successes we've had since it launched. Instead of taking a single-minded approach, we took an in-depth look into recruiting and identified areas where we could improve employee retention and new applicants by becoming intentional with recognizing our teams' diversity. With leadership's support, employees' voices are heard, and local teams' successes and community involvement are celebrated. Whether you're on the West or East Coast, our recruitment materials now have a consistent, new look and follow brand standards. Lastly, we've increased the number of applicants applying to join our team through new templates, where the core focus of the messaging remains on the applicant.