How do you lead the people who lead people?
Challenge
In 2023, the more than 16,000 members of the Australian HR Institute (AHRI) found themselves in uncharted territory. The upheaval and challenges of the pandemic era had elevated HR leaders into new positions of influence within their organisations. As a result, Mahlab needed to pivot its content to help shift the profession’s focus from surviving to thriving.
Our approach
Mahlab shifted its entire content strategy during the COVID-19 pandemic, publishing practical guides, visual resources and updates on changing legislation, working to provide support that the membership were crying out for. Now, our content needed to cement HR practitioners as critical leaders within their organisations.
We started by diving deep into data to unearth insight and surveying our audiences to understand exactly where our content could best lift them up.
What we did next:
We set ourselves clear objectives:
- Position AHRI's publications HRMOnline and HRM Magazine as go-to resources for the HR profession
- Grow engagement and membership through practical, relevant advice
- Increase website traffic +15%
- Increase revenue +10%
- Grow the AHRI brand across additional platforms
- Monetise a new podcast channel
A refreshed content approach:
We've moved from providing quick, simple updates to cater to the busy HR reader in the early days of the pandemic, to providing more in-depth thought leadership content to support members in becoming influential voices helping shape the future of work, via a revamped HRM Magazine and Let's Take This Offline podcast.
“Excellent example of doing more with less.”International Association of Business
Communicators 2024 Golden Quill Awards judge
The Mahlab editorial team drove a 27% increase in online page views to the website in 2023 (2.7 million views) and delivered on its objectives to create a go-to resource for HR practitioners, with 80% of readers saying HRM is their go-to HR news source. Other results included:
Winner of the 2024 Best Publication in the International Association of Business Communicators Golden Quill and 'best of the best' categories
60% of AHRI members cited access to HRM as a reason for becoming and staying an AHRI member
HRM Magazine and HRMOnline are both rated in the top three most utilised AHRI member benefits
Let's Take This Offline podcast reaches top 40 business podcasts in Australia on Spotify charts and accumulates over 15,000 listens with only seven episodes published
The revamped program also resulted in commercial return for Mahlab, including:
A $30K podcast sponsorship deal secured before we had launched a single episode