In 2014 the difference in employment rate between foreign-born and native-born was the largest in Sweden compared to all other OECD-countries. Lernia, an adult education and recruitment service provider, has witnessed how companies are missing out on talent due to excluding recruitment processes. Lernia has a product offering to solve this, but due to unconscious bias companies don’t realize they need it.

Our brief was to make society and key stake holders aware of the competence waste going on in our country by highlighting the problem and presenting Lernia as a sustainable and innovative solution.

Objectives:

- Make Swede’s aware and interested in the problem with excluding recruitment processes

- Broad reach in national and regional media.

- Give Lernia a reason-to-speak concerning excluding recruitment processes.

- Make Lernia’s local spokespersons and CEO visible in media.

We launched the initiative in three stages:

1) Teaser: Lernia suggested to change the standard language in a press release sent out to key national media and local media to get the buzz going.

2) Launch: Lernia releases a voice-sample of the “New Standard Swedish” together with information on how people are being excluded from the labor market due to their accent (not because they lack talent or competence). A broad media outreach is conducted with more voice-samples and a making-of video.

3) Follow up: Lernia’s key spokespersons talk to media and discuss how we all need to change how we listen, not how we talk. Continuous media contact was coordinated by us to steer the discussion and clarify any messages gone awry.

Lernia continuously posted news and answered questions on their Facebook-page. Lernia in only active on the Swedish market, so no international media were contacted for this campaign.