EMPLOYER BRANDING - OVERVIEW

The City of Temple is a great place to work alongside great people, and we aim to be an employer of choice. Our employees are proud to work here, and our City offers much more than candidates imagine. Therefore, we believe it’s important we tell everyone what it’s really like to work for the City of Temple through this employer branding guide.

In an increasingly competitive market, our reputation as a good employer influences candidates’ choice to work for us. A strong employer brand helps us to stand out to attract the best candidates for the job while also reducing hiring costs and lowering turnover rates.

When we work as one, our voice is heard beyond just the name of our organization. By presenting ourselves as a consistently great place to work, we allow our organization to succeed in every area. The City of Temple’s talent attraction messaging strategy will help audiences to learn more about who we are and what we stand for as well as by how we communicate our brand consistently across all channels.

WHAT IS IT?

A brand is how your audience feels about you – it is a visual, emotional and physical representation of your business or entity. An employer brand is how your organization appears to potential hires. It is the most important (non-financial) factor people consider when applying for a job.

To understand our employer brand, it was imperative we first understood our workforce and how best to convey our brand, as it aligns with those who are dedicated to the City. An effective and data-driven marketing strategy to attract and recruit qualified candidates to careers in the City of Temple starts with knowing the individuals that make up the City’s workforce.

Through knowing our own people, we can better understand the identity, strengths and values of our employer brand. Employer branding consists of a systematic, accurate method of measuring the interests and needs of our diverse and dynamic workforce.

With this, the City of Temple’s employer brand reflects the experiences and stories of our employees and our reputation as an employer. It is directly connected to our brand and shares the same values and vision. Through consistent messaging and visuals, our employer brand enables potential employees to truly understand what it’s like to work for and live in our great City.

WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?

By telling an authentic story about who we are as an employer, we attract those who share our mindset, our values and are motivated to contribute to our success. This means we hire and retain more committed people and who are more likely to fit our organization culture. Our employer branding helps to establish purpose and makes employees feel part of something bigger.

Our employer branding also allows us to connect with our existing employees to understand how they genuinely feel about working here. Employees who feel they are treated well and are proud to be part of our organization are our brand ambassadors. They create good impressions through word of mouth, which helps us attract new candidates and ultimately improve our employer brand.

Most importantly, a strong employer brand supports our goal to become top-of-mind employer for candidates by strengthening our reputation as a great place to work and encouraging top talent to choose us over others.

OUR EMPLOYER BRAND

EMPLOYER VALUE PROPOSITION

The City of Temple is a dynamic organization that is leading the way toward a better Texas. We are a team-driven workforce that is committed to improving our community and providing exceptional service without exception.

KEY THEMES & PERSONALITY ARCHETYPES

At the City of Temple, we want our employees to work for and with great people. So, to position ourselves accordingly and to ensure we continue to attract and retain the right talent, we’ve developed a strong, genuine employer brand. Our employer brand describes us as an employer and is based on our values, our community promises, and our overall strategy.
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To develop this brand, we surveyed our workforce to gather valuable insight into who we are to help distinguish what sets us apart from other cities and identify what makes us special as an employer.
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Through this survey, we identified three key themes about working for our City:

1) Strong Teamwork/Family Environment
2) Service Driven Organization
3) Strong Opportunities for Growth
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We also concluded that City of Temple’s two personality archetypes (using Aeker-Jungian marketing) were:
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1) Regular Person/Everyperson
2) Caregiver

Personality Archetypes Breakdown:
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Regular Person
Regular Person seeks connection and is supportive, faithful and down-to earth. They are part of the team and blend in as a “supporting actor.” They have ordinary solid virtues and are friendly, humble and empathetic. There is no pretension in Regular Person. You might hear this archetype say, “One of the sincerest forms of respect is actually listening to what another has to say.”

An organization with this archetype is focused on serving the general public. It offers services and products that can be used by the average consumer. It strives to make its offerings available to the widest audience at reasonable prices while maintaining quality and style that competes with higher end brands. It is there to support its consumers; it is on their side. It is commonly an ambassador for humanitarian causes.

Caregiver
‍The Caregiver wants to make a difference. They are more concerned about helping others than for their own benefit. They are selfless and do not need anything in return. They want to protect others from harm and prevent any danger or risk from threatening others’ happiness. The Caregiver is compassionate, nurturing and generous. Also known as: the saint, mother, altruist, supporter.

An organization with this archetype conveys security, support and caring to its consumers. It helps its consumers feel nurtured without patronizing them, while softly appealing to their conscience.
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These personality archetypes represent the overall feel and brand that our City embodies. They give us an idea of who our City attracts and what these attracted individuals believe is the City of Temple’s brand.

Overall, careers and job positions appeal to the general public as service for the general public. Any person can apply for a position with the City and will likely have many options of career paths to choose from. Consecutively, the work is marketed as for the broader community of Temple, TX, and as such, will help and serve those in their neighborhoods and environment.
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Through this same employee survey, we were able to identify the City's brand personality as one of selflessness, altruism and change-orientation. The workforce stresses the opportunity to make a difference for their community as a top priority in their jobs and careers. They also said working with the City feels like a family and noted that growth within the City is possible.

This illustrates how compassionate and team-driven our workforce is.

OUR VALUES

The City of Temple’s top values, as identified by our own workforce, were customer satisfaction, accountability, teamwork, communication and community building. This aligns closely with the City’s core values: commitment, innovation, accountability, integrity and collaboration.
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We communicate all of these values to our workforce and our community through our words and our actions, and now through our employer branding.

OUR HISTORY

Established in 1881, Temple is located between Austin and Dallas on the I-35 corridor and offers the best of both worlds: the conveniences of big-city dwelling with the atmosphere of a small town.

A home to visionaries and dreamers who saw the fulfillment of their aspirations, Temple offers a bright future to those fortunate enough to live within this community of growth and opportunity.

Career opportunities thrive in Temple. Temple is the place to find a lucrative job in an affordable, safe and welcoming community.

The City of Temple believes that our employees are our most valuable resource. Our employees take pride in the services they provide to the residents and businesses of our community. We believe our employer brand must meet the particular needs and expectations of all of them: from janitors to police officers to city administrators.

CREATIVE CONCEPT

CAMPAIGN ELEMENTS

Through our insightful workforce research study, we began to develop taglines, key messages and creative concepts to emphasize what the City stands for and is proud of and to help promote our organization to prospective candidates.

However, an important first step in finalizing our creative concept was to share different style schemas and messages with a focus group of City employees to see which of the proposed designs and messages aligned with their beliefs, departments and/or careers.

We uncovered that our team enjoyed bright, eye-catching colors on marketing materials versus our typical darker tones. The City's workforce also preferred ad imagery that highlighted action shots and work being displayed to convey a more natural, team-building, interactive tone.

The City's workforce also gravitated towards key messaging that aligned with "Community" such as: "Serve Your Community" and "Improve Our City for Our Community." However, and rightfully so, each department selected unique messaging that aligned with their organization (and some reworded their own messaging).

This notion of unique messaging was helpful in adapting our employer branding communications–to help us cater to these different needs and expectations accordingly. By adapting visuals and wording we learned we can focus on the attributes that matter to each target group and interpret them so that the candidates feel addressed.

Thus, we ensure that our messages about what it means to work at the City resonate with everyone.

MESSAGING

Our target groups each have different motivations and needs that align with their beliefs, departments and/or careers. With all of this information, we developed the following taglines and key messages for our messaging strategy:

Taglines:

• Leading the Way
• Work Reimagined
• A Career That Cares
• We Make It Happen
• Do What Matters

Key Messages:

• A Career with Advancement Opportunities
• Work You Can Be Proud Of
• A Career with Competitive Pay, Great Culture and Excellent Benefits!
• Let’s Build A Better Temple Together

As you can see, we aim to communicate with each target group in a way that’s relevant to them and supports their respective aspirations. Our tone of voice is always positive, inspiring and relatable.

The Everyperson archetype appeals to the average person and how attainable a job is at the City. Not only are there various choices of careers for everybody, but these careers are for anybody. The Everyperson archetype does not target one specific type of individual; it targets a blanket appeal so as to include all skill types in the marketing content. The City’s goal is to encourage the target candidate to see themselves as part of the Temple team, as well as to instill the idea that the candidate will be a viable asset to the City’s workforce.

By eliciting themes of pride, joy, mission and teamwork, we address our target audience directly. The taglines highlight how important the meaning of working with Temple is and the difference your work can make. The call-to-action of working for the City is connected to feelings of pride in the potential and future work of the attracted candidate.

The Caregiver archetype appeals to a sense of community and how an individual can inspire change for the better. Our goal is to promote a sense of progress in a wholesome and collaborative way. By highlighting the idea of togetherness and belonging for all, this marketing personality is achieved.

The target audience will ideally be attracted to work that matters in a family-oriented sense. The City’s attraction will then align with candidates who see a job as more than just a means-to-income; rather, the candidates envision a community-oriented workforce in a field that allows the satisfaction of being part of the reason people call Temple, TX home.

AD HEADLINE FORMULA

OUR HEADLINE FORMULA (v1): “YOU CAN BE PROUD OF”

Our “You can be proud of” headline formula is applied to our main employer branding communications. By eliciting themes of pride, joy, mission and teamwork, we address our target audience directly. This headline highlights how important the meaning of working with Temple is. The call-to-action of working for the City is connected to feelings of pride in the potential and future work of the attracted candidate. And by directly addressing “YOU” in this headline, we emphasize that it’s our employees who are the key to our success while encouraging the target audience to apply.

The Everyperson archetype appeals to the average person and how attainable a job is at the City. Not only are there various choices of careers for everybody, these careers are for anybody. The Everyperson archetype does not target one specific type of individual; it targets a blanket appeal so as to include all skill types in the marketing content. The City’s goal is to encourage the target candidate to see themselves as part of the Temple team, as well as to instill the idea that the candidate will be a viable asset to the City’s workforce.

OUR HEADLINE FORMULA (v2): “IMPROVE OUR CITY FOR OUR COMMUNITY”
The Caregiver archetype appeals to a sense of community and how an individual can inspire change for the better. This additional headline formula achieves this goal by using the inclusive possessive pronoun, “our,” in order to show the City’s team-driven orientation. The Caregiver archetype that was indicative of the personality of Temple’s workforce is expressed through the action word, “Improve.” Our goal is to promote a sense of progress in a wholesome and collaborative way. By highlighting the idea of togetherness and belonging for all, this marketing personality is achieved.

Using “Improve Our City For Our Community” in ad copy allows careers and jobs that focus on service and cityscapes to emphasize the appeal to city morale. The target audience will ideally be attracted to work that matters in a family-oriented sense. The City’s attraction will then align with candidates who see a job as more than just a means-to-income; rather, the candidates envision a community-oriented workforce in a field that allows the satisfaction of being part of the reason people call Temple, TX home.

LAYOUT ELEMENTS

The City’s brand withholds a modern and clean image, and therefore, design elements and photos used in any medium of marketing must be high-quality, aesthetically pleasing and professional.

Our layouts are well structured, never crowded and have a clear visual order. Our designs showcase real, diverse photos of our workforce with bright, eye-catching brand colors, clear calls-to-action, and logo variations that stand out.

IMAGERY

As shown in the Brand Guidelines, the City of Temple expects employees to adhere to our core values — commitment, innovation, accountability, integrity, collaboration — we also hold high expectations for our photography.

The images used in our recruitment communications highlight our diverse workforce in action and focus on how YOU (the individual) can make a difference by working for the city and community. The team member(s) in each photo are actual employees, and more often than not, are shown looking engaged, confident and prideful to help inspire a new workforce. These images make it easy for the viewer to see people they relate with and help correlate the imagery to the corresponding message(s).

COMMUNICATION CHANNELS

The way we communicate with potential employees is not limited to our job ads and career page. We want to connect with applicants on the broadest level, so we share our employer brand in a variety of ways.

WEBSITE

Website

• The City of Temple website is another crucial part of our image where our online presence will match the hard work to create a cohesive brand. Web design and ease of navigation are crucial to providing services and other important information to our residents in the most convenient way possible.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Add us on social media!

• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Instagram
• Twitter

#cityoftemple, #workwithus #publicworksweek2022, #templestrong

OTHER CHANNELS

• Digital advertising
• Email signatures
• Email marketing
• Public relations
• Job fairs
• Print materials
• Swag/Merch
• City office buildings and vehicles

CONTACT US

CITY OF TEMPLE
MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS DEPARTMENT
2 N Main Street, Suite 209
Temple, TX 76501
254.298.5605

ASSETS FOR DOWNLOAD

BROCHURE TEMPLATES

SOCIAL MEDIA POSTS & ADS

VIRTUAL CAREER FAIR BACKGROUNDS

GUIDELINES

As part of the City of Temple’s marketing efforts, we are launching an authentic brand ambassador program to help generate positive buzz for the City in a relatable way, with the ultimate goal of encouraging prospects to want to live and work for our beloved City.

More information coming soon!

Download the City of Temple - Brand Ambassador Guidelines below.