Log in to:

Author: David Rønne

ProMark – case

For ProMark, a Danish software company, the transition from product sales to cloud-based solutions required a fresh approach to branding.
In an era dominated by social media and online interactions, establishing trust and forging connections have become crucial for businesses. Negative reviews and feedback can significantly impact a company’s reputation, making it essential to showcase professionalism and reliability. Employee portraits provide a unique opportunity to humanise a brand and create a sense of authenticity. While traditional branding methods often revolve around products, ProMark understood that their new brand could serve as a powerful tool to involve all stakeholders.

An overlooked opportunity

While product-based companies have a tangible object to serve as a branding focal point, software companies face unique challenges. As software sales shifted from physical boxes to downloads and cloud-based solutions, a new approach to creating a cohesive brand identity became necessary.

One often overlooked opportunity for branding lies in the portrayal of employees. Employee portraits offer a chance to showcase a company’s culture, values, and professionalism to customers, partners, and remote colleagues. Through standardised photography techniques, effective communication, and respect for privacy, ProMark recognised the potential of employee portraits in strengthening their identity and brand.

“Getting streamlined, professional and uniform corporate portraits required an equally professional approach. Eikonice provided that – and saved time and resources in the process.”

Torkel Olrik,
CEO ProMark

Key takeaways from ProMark

Successfully building and implementing a portrait guide as part of the rebranding tought a few valuable lessons
Involve a professional photographer from the get go
Bold and strong? Calm and soothing? Corporate or wild? The valuable sparing and insights from a professional photographer, will form the important basis for the style and design choices that will eventually shape the portrait guide.

The guide starts before the first portrait is taken

To ensure uniformity, the guide should not only describe the final result, but also the way to achieve it. Distances, positions of lights and information about lenses, such as aperture and focal length, are all part of building a setup that can be replicated again and again, as new people join the organisation.

Automation and process is key

After the portrait is taken and approved by the person, a number of different images has to be created to meet the different needs of the organisation. This means different adjustments, crops, colour looks, backgrounds and much more depending on the usecase. Without proper automation, this can be a daunting task. A tool handling and automating the process, such as eikonice, is an absolute necessity.

“The Eikonice platform has given us a much faster, smoother and uniform handling of employee portraits — and greater employee satisfaction in the process”

Kirsten Malmborg Rønne,
Marketing Coordinator

Organisational commitment is a must

To achieve success, the decision to implement a portrait guide as part of the brand, must be rooted in top level management. It is a strategic decision and should be an integral part of the whole branding process. After all, why not include the organisation’s most important assets in the brand?

The people are the brand

As ProMark expanded its operations globally, corporate portraits played an important role in fostering a sense of unity among employees. By treating all employees equally and including them in the process, ProMark build a brand which included a shared identity, thus transcending geographical boundaries. Through standardised photography techniques, effective communication, and respect for privacy, ProMark ensured that every employee portrait reflected the company’s values and message.

Long-term benefits

ProMark successfully integrated employee photography into their onboarding process. By capturing professional portraits of all new hires from day one, ProMark emphasised their commitment to building a strong corporate identity and made employees feel valued as active team members. This strategic approach not only fostered a sense of belonging but also set the tone for a consistent and compelling representation of the team in the future. As ProMark embarked on its journey to become an international player, corporate portraits were an element in their success.

From local to global

Through consistent imagery, efficient processes, and a focus on their values, ProMark showcased their professionalism, reliability, and commitment to excellence. As a result, ProMark’s transition from a local Danish software company to a global workforce management leader was bolstered by including corporate portraits in their rebranding.

Case: ProMark

Building
a global
brand…

…ProMark focuses on their people on the journey from local to global

By fostering a positive company culture, attracting top talent, and empowering employees as brand ambassadors, we unlock a multitude of benefits. Simultaneously, our employees stand to gain from the advantages offered by a well-defined employee brand. From personal growth and development to a sense of belonging and pride. Our new employee portraits are the face of the new and stronger ProMark.
Torkel Olrik
CEO

In the rapidly evolving digital landscape, businesses face new challenges in establishing their brand identity and creating a cohesive visual representation.

For ProMark, a Danish software company, the transition from product sales to cloud-based solutions required a fresh approach to branding. 

In an era dominated by social media and online interactions, establishing trust and forging connections have become crucial for businesses. Negative reviews and feedback can significantly impact a company’s reputation, making it essential to showcase professionalism and reliability. Employee portraits provide a unique opportunity to humanise a brand and create a sense of authenticity. While traditional branding methods often revolve around products, ProMark understood that employee branding could serve as a powerful tool to connect with all stakeholders.

An overlooked opportunity

While product-based companies have a tangible object to serve as a branding focal point, software companies face unique challenges. As software sales shifted from physical boxes to downloads and cloud-based solutions, a new approach to creating a cohesive brand identity became necessary.

One often overlooked opportunity for branding lies in the portrayal of employees. Employee portraits offer a chance to showcase a company’s culture, values, and professionalism to customers, partners, and remote colleagues. Through standardised photography techniques, effective communication, and respect for privacy, ProMark recognised the potential of employee portraits in strengthening their identity and brand.

Unlocking the power of employee branding in an international landscape

The argumhas been two dimensional for ProMark due to the fact that employee branding offers benefits to tents for employee branding, he company and its employees, both underscoring the mutual advantages and positive outcomes for all stakeholders involved.

Company benefits

Talent acquisition

Employee branding attracts top talent from around the world, making the company a magnet for highly skilled individuals seeking reputable and desirable organisations.

Competitive differentiator

A well-established employee brand gives the international company a competitive advantage by enhancing its reputation and distinguishing it from industry rivals.

Increased engagement

Employee branding fosters a sense of belonging and pride, leading to higher levels of employee engagement and motivation, ultimately driving increased productivity and performance.

Diversity

Building a positive company culture through employee branding creates a cohesive and inclusive environment that unites employees from diverse backgrounds, fostering resilience and adaptability during challenging times.

Employee benefits

Employer branding

A strong employee brand positions the international company as an employer of choice, offering growth opportunities, a supportive work environment, and a positive company culture.

Advocacy

Employees become brand ambassadors, representing the organisation both internally and externally. This provides them with a sense of pride and ownership, and the opportunity to share positive experiences, impacting the company’s reputation.

Get recognised

Engaged employees aligned with the company’s brand values experience a greater sense of purpose and fulfilment in their work, leading to higher job satisfaction and a more meaningful work experience.

Talent growth

Employee branding encourage collaboration, knowledge sharing, and a shared sense of purpose. This creates opportunities for personal growth, learning, and professional development, contributing to employees’ long-term career success.

Utilise employee portraits in building trust and connection

As ProMark expanded its operations globally, employee branding played a vital role in fostering a sense of unity among employees. By treating all employees equally and including them in the process, ProMark created a shared identity that transcended geographical boundaries. Through standardised photography techniques, effective communication, and respect for privacy, ProMark ensured that every employee portrait reflected the company’s values and message.

Long-term benefits

Recognising the long-term benefits of employee branding, ProMark integrated employee photography into their onboarding process. By capturing professional portraits of all new hires from day one, ProMark emphasised their commitment to building a strong corporate identity and made employees feel valued as active team members. This strategic approach not only fostered a sense of belonging but also set the tone for a consistent and compelling representation of the team in the future. As ProMark embarked on its journey to become an international market player, employee branding played a crucial role in their success.

By leveraging employee portraits and the innovative capabilities of Eikonice, ProMark established a strong corporate identity that resonated with their global audience.

  • Ensuring consistency: Uniform photography, setups, and backgrounds
  • Efficient processes: Streamlined communication and design guidelines
  • Showcasing values: Strengthening visual messages and employee involvement
From local to global

Through consistent imagery, efficient processes, and a focus on their values, ProMark showcased their professionalism, reliability, and commitment to excellence. As a result, ProMark’s transition from a local Danish software company to a global workforce management leader was bolstered by their strategic investment in employee branding.

The Eikonice platform has given us a much faster, smoother and uniform handling of employee portraits — and greater employee satisfaction in the process
Kirsten Malmborg Rønne
Marketing Coordinator
Learn more about Eikonice

An often overlooked branding opportunity lies in showcasing employees

Previously, ProMark would engage a local photographer every other year to capture professional images of the management and sales teams. These photos were used in presentations and on their website. However, in 2019, ProMark started collaborating with Eikonice to process employee portraits for internal newsletters. In 2022, they organised a company-wide photo event during a major meeting, where all employees were professionally photographed.

A new visual language

As part of their rebranding efforts in 2022, including a new website and updated visual language, ProMark entrusted Eikonice to handle their new design guidelines for employee portraits. Going forward, employee photography became an integral part of ProMark’s onboarding process, ensuring a consistent and compelling representation of their team. By providing a platform that enabled uniformity in photography, setups, and backgrounds, Eikonice facilitated a cohesive visual identity across the company. Efficient communication and the implementation of design guidelines ensured that every employee portrait aligned with ProMark’s values and brand message.

About ProMark and the journey behind

ProMark was founded in 1981 when 3 engineers built the first data collection box.

Today, ProMark is one of the most innovative vendors of Workforce Management software – built on decades of experiences within the world’s most complex labour market rules. ProMark help some of the largest and most well-known brands in the world and more then 300,000 employees use their solution daily.

A commitment to professionalism

Through employee portraits, ProMark achieved several key objectives. Firstly, they strengthened their visual messages by treating all employees equally, from top management to entry-level staff. Secondly, by offering structure and functioning processes, ProMark showcased their commitment to professionalism and created a sense of unity among employees. Finally, by respecting employees’ privacy and involving them in the process, ProMark fostered a culture of respect and empowerment.

From local to global

In conclusion, ProMark’s journey from a local software company to a global market player was supported by leveraging Eikonice and its innovative platform. ProMark transformed their employee portraits into a powerful branding tool. With consistent imagery, efficient processes, and a focus on their values, ProMark succeeded in establishing a strong corporate identity that resonated with their customers, partners, and employees alike.

Case: Merger – Jyske Bank

Always focus
on people

Portraits have always been prioritised as an important part of onboarding at Jyske Bank

Our focus is on establishing a new culture among the many new Jyske Bank employees and ensuring consolidation of Jyske Bank as a corporate brand both internally and externally. It's about welcoming the new employees and making them feel part of the Jyske Bank team as quickly as possible
Jens Skov
Director, Head of Events & Partnerships

Mergers represent an enormous change for employees and the corporate culture is often neglected.
That’s not the case for Jyske Bank

Jyske Bank is the 2nd largest Danish bank and in December 2022 Jyske Bank and Handelsbanken announced the agreement on the acquisition of Handelsbanken’s activities in Denmark.

The work of integrating  Handelsbanken Danish activities into Jyske Bank was initiated immediately. Jyske Bank aimed at implementing their standards, procedure and systems as quickly as possible. In this process, – and as one of the first things – Jyske Bank has prioritised the making of new portraits for over 600 employees at 42 locations in Denmark – all former Handelsbanken employees.

These portraits are incorporated on all Jyske Bank’s internal and external platforms, the website, business cards and much more. Portraits shot by a professional photographer, is a part of the onboarding process for all the new employees.

For Jyske Bank, corporate branding is increasingly about establishing a common culture, where onboarding is an important tool to ensure the retention and recruitment of employees. Likewise, it is of course also about the more classic arguments behind the establishment of a corporate brand, such as securing a good image and corporate governance.

A clear focus on the employees in the merger between Jyske Bank and Handelsbanken

The arguments for prioritising the employee portrait early in the phase for Jyske Bank, has been twofold. Rational technical advantages, such as efficiency, branding and systems, as well as the softer emotional values focusing on the employees.

Rational arguments:

Identification:

When the new employees see their co-workers’ faces, it will help them identify and connect with their team members. This will make it easier to navigate the organisation and find the right person to contact for specific tasks.

Branding:

The employee portraits is used on all Jyske Bank’s platforms, and they will thus help create a unified culture where all employees feel part of the same organisation. It will also strengthen the bank’s branding, as it sends a signal that all employees are part of Jyske Bank.

Efficiency:

Having all the employee portraits in a standardised form will make it easier to integrate the former Handelsbanken employees into Jyske Bank. It will also make it easier for customers and business partners to understand their personal contact is now part of Jyske Bank.

Emotional arguments:

Inclusion:

By prioritising the employee portraits, Jyske Bank shows that they value all employees in the organisation equally and that the former Handelsbanken employees has checked in to the bank. This creates a sense of cohesion and belonging among all employees.

Respect:

By making new employee portraits, Jyske Bank also shows respect for the former Handelsbanken employees and their individual identities. This shows that Jyske Bank wants to get to know them and that they are willing to invest time and resources in integrating them into the organisation.

Culture:

The employee portraits can also help to create a positive culture in the organisation. Seeing the faces of the people you work with can create a feeling of being part of a team. It can also help break down prejudices and create a more open and inclusive work culture.

Over 600 new employees in 42 different locations

Over the past few years, Jyske Bank has used the Eikonice platform in their monthly onboarding activities with a high degree of employee satisfaction. It was therefore natural for Jyske Bank to use Eikonice to solve the task of photographing their new employee and have the portraits delivered quickly and efficiently to Jyske Bank’s systems, as well as to the employees.

A unique workflow

The Eikonice automated workflow is starting with the planner – it handles all the planning of photo sessions, no matter how many people or locations, for that matter. The planning tool ensures that the process is efficient and involves the employees in all steps of the process.

The Eikonice planner has flexibility at its core and employees have the opportunity to plan their portrait timeslot to match the rest of their workday. They can book, cancel and change their timeslot as the need arises and any free timeslots are immediately available to those, for employees who have not already booked. All the necessary communication is handled automatically and the planner informs about any changes and sends calendar bookings and SMS reminders to all employees. The icing on the cake – the planner can send the final photoplan with all necessary information directly to the photographer. It doesn’t get any easier.

It has been very smooth – there is really no reason not to get started
Nathalie Puvis de Chavannes
Direktionssekretær (former PA, Handelsbanken)

Eikonice support the onboarding process

Employee portraits have always been a high priority for Jyske Bank. It has been a regular part of the onboarding process, that all employees were photographed in connection with the onboarding program for new employees. During the Covid-19 shutdown, Jyske Bank had to rethink the onboarding process, including how employee portrait should be processed in the future.

In this connection, Jyske Bank was presented with Eikonice, a solution that provides greater flexibility around the photo session and at the same time a faster and more efficient processing of all the portraits. And Eikonice, ensures an integrated workflow in accordance with GDPR – with photo planning, automatic colour correction and cropping according to company guidelines with an automatic upload to all digital platforms.

Overall, the prioritisation of the employee portraits will help to create a more efficient and cohesive organisation, while at the same time creating a positive and inclusive culture in Jyske Bank.

Learn more about the planner

Important portrait basics

Employee portraits has a great potential for organizations to visualize and demonstrate their values and the corporate identity – and get everybody to feel a part of the team.

All to often employee portraits are overlooked as an important and strategic part of showing how an organisation appreciates and values its employees. Eikonice optimize large scale handling of employee portraits into one smooth digital operation. Our innovative platform ensures a lean process from even before the photo session – and all the way to automatically up-load of high quality portraits on all digital platforms, while always staying GDPR compliant. With our AI powered platform we empower the synergy between Facility Management, Marketing and Human resource. Eikonice means minimum of coordination, no handling time and an executive overview for all stakeholders. What not to like?

See our quick guide on how to shoot a portrait on your smartphone like a pro.

Efficiency through automation

We streamline workflows through the automation of all processes relating to employee portraits. Beginning  before the first photo session and going all the way to the final upload of a colour adjusted and cropped High-Res photo on all company platforms – internally as well as externally. All while  ensuring complete  GDPR compliance.

Our cloud based solution eliminates all manual  processes  in the  continuous handling of employee portraits –  while cutting costs at same time, since the editing and adjustments normally associated  with handling portraits are completely automated by our advanced AI.

A cloud-based solution automatically distributes portraits in the right format to the right location

But most importantly, Eikonice enhances employee satisfaction, dedication and team spirit by giving each person direct involvement in the choice of their own portrait.

Never compromise

Our efficient integrated workflow enables instant delivery of high quality portraits to all company systems – from any camera, smartphone or photobot.

We offer a ready-to-go cloud solution to all organisations who stand by the belief that their employees are truly their most important assets.

Contact us

Eikonice.com
Roskildevej 16
4030 Tune
Denmark

CVR: 36082909

Mail: info@eikonice.com

Visit us on social media
Facebook Instagram Linkedin

Privacy, data ownership and achieving GDPR compliance from day one

eikonice ensures that you always protect your employees’ privacy and provide full autonomy of their own data adhering to GDPR. 

Portraits are considered personal data, and with the easy tagging and filing system you can easily delete any portrait upon request. You can even have the portrait be deleted automatically when the employee no longer works at your company. 

Get in touch

We look forward to hearing from you…

Please feel free to contact us should you have any questions or inquiries.


Free e-book

Learn how to take great corporate portraits

We have gathered the most important tips and tricks in an easy-to-follow guide – dedicated to helping people who need to take great pictures of their co-workers or employees for ID-cards, newsletters or SoMe-purposes. Absolutely free.

Yes!

I’d like to get the free e-book “How to shoot a portrait like a pro”

Yes!

I’d like to know more…

Please provide your contact information and we will get back to you regarding a free webinar with a demonstration of the most efficient way to handle corporate portraits.