No matter what size of company you are, details of your registered address should be available on your site. This is a legal requirement here in the UK (reminder) – but is good practice anyway. Larger companies often also provide further details of their various locations – sometimes in the About Us section or in the Careers section.
Tell potential recruits what it is really like
Providing details about your locations can help potential recruits make their decisions. Successful applicants will not only have to work in one of your locations, they will have to live there too. No-one wants to hire someone who decides they don’t like the area you work in and leave; providing information about the area can help avoid losing a recruit later.
Examples:
Next provide a document with details about the area (Leicester in the East Midlands) in which their head office is based, though, being a retail chain, they have branches all across the country.
AstraZeneca provide details of the areas in which they are based (as well as 360 tours of all their locations).
Who else needs to know?
If you are an international company, many different groups of stakeholder such as investors, journalists, suppliers and perhaps customers, will be interested to know which markets you serve – and which brands in these markets are yours.
In the About section, companies that cover a wide geographical area, or have a range of different industries in different countries, often provide a map where information about each country or zone can be revealed by a roll of the mouse, and further levels of detail can be shown by drilling down from a global view to regions to countries to location.
Details to provide about your relation to the location could include: the brands or services that you market in that area; the address and contact details for the locations; and community projects that you are associated with in that area.
Examples here include:
To see a bigger screenshot, click on the thumbnail – click again to return
- SABMiller, who provide a drill-down map (using Flash). This doesn’t go so far as to give physical addresses within the countries, or contact details, though it does provide information about the brands produced in each country and the size of the market.
- Scottish and Newcastle, who focus on explaining which brands they market in which area, and how successful it is (again, using Flash). It is possible to drill down using this tool to find contact details for each location, together with physical details about each brewery and the brands produced there, and links to the product sites.
- International Power, who provide details on the CSR activities they carry out in each location as well as contact details and physical data about the plants in each location. (Also using Flash)
- BP, who are so widespread that they need to use dropdowns to narrow down the search – but once you’ve identified the country you are interested in, they provide a page explaining what they do there, giving contact details, and information about careers with BP in that country.
- Aviva, who don’t provide a map, but do provide a detailed contacts directory in a popup window, which for each country, outlines the businesses that Aviva conduct there, together with the products, contact information, websites and directions for finding the countries offices by various forms of transport.
Lucy is Editor at Corporate Eye
