Best Employer Brand: PacifiCare

PacifiCare realizes the tremendous impact that a great brand can have on recruiting in a healthcare industry that has all but ignored employment branding.

As a result, it has developed a formally managed employer brand that is fully integrated with the core business strategy and brand. The core business tagline is "Caring is good, doing something is better." This is supported by an employment brand tagline of "Envision, Innovate, and Accomplish."

Quick facts:

  • More than 85 percent of the candidates who received an in-person interview responded positively to the statement that PacifiCare was a "good place to work." This score is 26 percentage points higher than the norm.
  • When employees were ask to rate PacifiCare, as compared to other companies, 81 percent responded either "one of the best" or above average.

Best practices:

  • Full-time HR representatives work in the branding department and they drive internal branding and employment brand integration.
  • Full-time HR representatives in the talent acquisition department help to oversee all programs and messaging that affects the employment brand.
  • They negotiated a partnership between the brand team, the advertising team and the talent acquisition team.
  • They use external market research to gauge target candidates' perceptions in the marketplace in order to drive adjustments in program design and messaging.
  • Executives do not rely on the hard sell; they communicate honestly, disclosing that PacifiCare is sometimes "not an easy place to work."
  • The branding team participates in programs that demonstrate the brand by demonstrating results. A prime example of this approach is PacifiCare's development of the first-ever Quality Index of Hospitals.