ISE award winner Lloyds Banking Group explains how its Virtual HQ has reinvented student attraction.

The pandemic forced students everywhere to stay home and miss out on real life experiences with potential future employers. However, ISE Award winners Lloyds Banking Group (LBG) successfully instigated more in-depth conversations and connected with a wider audience virtually, than ever before on campus.

They achieved this through their immersive Virtual HQ. This successfully showcased LBG’s culture and values by connecting students with employees in meaningful ways that broke down the barriers of isolation and disconnection within a Covid-19 world.

The Virtual HQ went on to win the ISE student attraction award for Best Single Purpose Attraction Activation.

What is the Virtual HQ?

The Virtual HQ is essentially a platform offering an online ‘campus’ experience without replicating the talent website.

Students could book one-to-one chats with graduates on their scheme of choice, ask questions about life at LBG and any personal questions they may not have asked face-to-face.

Themed employer presentations included colleague speed networking, Q+A panels, group challenges and games.

Gamification ensured students invested free time exploring the uniquely styled, immersive zones. To drive re-engagement LBG ran a competition in which students were required to visit each floor to find the hidden letter and decipher the anagram:

• The Helping Britain Recover zone encouraged discovery of how LBG is working towards this purpose with an interactive quiz feature.
• Students explored the skills required to build the Bank of The Future through gamification and a colleague video.
• Within the 360-degree Mental Health and Wellbeing zone, students explored the forest hideaway, practised breathing exercises, learnt about the LBG wellbeing pillars, or read messages of positivity on the Tree of the Future, whilst adding personal messages.
• The Sustainability zone brought to life how LBG plans to become a Net Zero business by 2050.
• A library of videos from LBG employees in the Inclusion & Diversity zone celebrated differences and asked students to input messages answering, ‘What makes you, you?’
• Students could easily register for employer presentations or one-to-one chats in the Events Zone.

The Impact

The design of the Virtual HQ not only clearly represented LBG’s culture and values, but also appealed to a wide audience with its breadth of career opportunity information and games. Consequently, LBG had phenomenal results and the impact of The Virtual HQ far exceeded expectations.

• 52, 177 people interacted with the Virtual HQ, which was a 43% increase from the previous year. Through the multiple advertising touchpoints and liaising with a larger number of universities there has been an increase in brand awareness, evidenced by 4x higher engagement with students than face-to-face campus activities.
• Utilising the technology of the Virtual HQ has reached a wider range of students, including those who may have not considered Lloyds Banking Group as a prospective employer.
• 247 students over six weeks attended the one-to-one sessions. It was interactions such as these that have created a different perception of LBG, for instance by reaching students who were previously interested mainly in the FinTech industry.
• By shining a positive light on mental health and wellbeing during a difficult year for students, LBG received overwhelming positive feedback, with 9, 619 messages on the platform. One student effectively summarised The Virtual HQ as a “fantastic way to get an insight on what the firm is about and what they believe in!”.

Given the high success of the Virtual HQ, LBG has continued to create virtual interactions and experiences for students, alongside bespoke campus attraction activity.

The Virtual HQ has been updated so that it is future-proof. It is now mobile-friendly so it can be accessed on-the go, has more animated designs throughout, and the event registration processes has been streamlined.

Essentially, what was previously a one-off virtual event is now a key feature within the LBG Early Careers website.

Read more case studies from ISE members