Uncubed Approved: The Kimpton Hotels LinkedIn Profile
The employer branding tool we’re loving lately is the Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants LinkedIn page. Kimpton is a hotel chain under the IHG Hotels & Resorts brand, headquartered in San Francisco.
You likely saw them in the news last year when they launched their in-hotel book lending program, or lately, when they announced their dog-walking services for guests. Their marketing and branding teams do a tremendous job setting the chain apart from other major hotel brands, which are oh-so vanilla, so we thought we’d check out what they’re doing with their employer brand. We found strong work here too.
LinkedIn is a social media platform for business, of course, so Kimpton uses its profile to recruit new staff and drum up interest from business travelers. As a tool for employer branding, Kimpton’s LinkedIn profile does three things well:
It fluidly combines their customer-facing and candidate-facing brands
It links employee care to customer care (i.e., the “consumer-grade” employee experience )
And it uses its CSR initiatives to establish the company as a socially conscious brand and introduce prospective candidates to current employees
Combining customer-facing and candidate-facing brands
Because Kimpton’s page is pulling double-duty, they have to be really thoughtful about balancing content that matters to travelers and content that matters to job seekers. All of it has to feel like it comes from the same place, but address the unique needs of two different segments.
Though it tends to lean more customer- than candidate-facing, they match tone, style, and imagery across both. In some posts, they thank their workforce for earning them a spot on Forbes’s list of the best places to work, and in others they’re thanking their guests for nominating them for Condé Nast’s readers’ choice awards.
The tone is consistent, and we get good vibes from both.
Linking employee care to customer care
The hospitality industry places great importance on the customer experience, of course, and Kimpton makes it clear that they value the employee experience as well. Effects of COVID on the workplace and job market have created a demand for a consumer-grade employee experience, and that’s what Kimpton is trying to deliver.
The hotel brand does this on their LinkedIn page, like with this video that announces Kimpton’s partnership with online therapy tool Talkspace, which provides access to online therapy for their employees and their hotel guests—how cool is that? The message: We care about our staff as much as we care about our guests.
Introducing prospective candidates to company culture
Job seekers want to know what it’s like to work at your company and who they might work with if they do.
To let candidates peek inside, some companies profile individual employees (which we really like), some highlight team projects, others include interviews with leadership. There are an endless number of ways to do this.
Kimpton has gone the CSR route. That’s corporate social responsibility and it refers to the ways in which a company and its employees give back to the community and to the world through things like volunteer time, financial giving, social justice initiatives, eco commitments, etc.
That’s what we see in this post that touts Kimpton team members who participated in a charity bike ride.
Kimpton also uses LinkedIn to highlight its ESG programs. ESG stands for environmental and social governance, and it goes hand-in-hand with CSR; in fact, the two are often overseen by the same team(s).
In both cases, Kimpton is showing job seekers what’s important to the company by identifying the ways they support their workforce—their identities and personal values.
Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza writes about workplace culture, DEI, and hiring. Her work has appeared in Fast Company, From Day One, and InHerSight, among others.
ABOUT UNCUBED STUDIOS
Launched in 2016, Uncubed Studios is a full-service creative agency with a client list representing the most influential employers on earth along with the high growth tech companies.
The team that brings the work of Uncubed Studios to life is made up of award-winning experts in cinematography, journalism, production, recruitment, employee engagement, employer branding and more.
Interested in speaking with Uncubed Studios? Email us at studios@uncubed.com
