When Limbach Holdings began considering a shift in its go-to-market strategy a few years back, its leaders decided the business needed to be more intentionally focused on its brand.
Typically a chief marketing officer might oversee these efforts, but at the time the building systems solutions company, which is headquartered outside of Pittsburgh, didn’t have such an executive serving on its senior leadership team.
Melissa DiMuro, Limbach’s chief people and culture officer, raised her hand.
In 2023, DiMuro transitioned to a role overseeing both HR and branding efforts as Limbach’s first-ever chief people, culture, and marketing officer. In the position, DiMuro has focused on elevating employee stories for Limbach customers, as well as potential job-seekers.
The vision. The building owners supported by Limbach are “mission critical,” in that they can’t be turned off, DiMuro said—think hospitals, data centers, or manufacturing and industrial spaces.
Limbach used to work primarily with general contractors, meaning there was an intermediary between the company and its customers. But in 2019, the company decided to embrace an “owner-direct model,” selling its suite of services directly to building owners. As a result, “we knew we needed to change how we were going to market” to better reach these customers, DiMuro said.
At the same time, Limbach’s senior leaders realized they had a number of different stakeholders who were consuming content about the brand on any given day—from customers to employees to investors.
“We had investors that were listening to our employee podcast, and reading our blog…we had employees that were sitting in on investor calls. And so we started to recognize the importance of having holistic messaging and a brand that connected the dots regardless of the stakeholder,” DiMuro said.
Eventually, it became clear DiMuro was embedded in a lot of the day-to-day work of executing the change in Limbach’s strategy. Part of this strategy involved making a number of changes to the senior leadership team, including the appointment of a new CEO, Michael McCann. DiMuro stepped into the dual HR and marketing role around the same time McCann was promoted to CEO.
Elevating employee voices. Since taking on the chief people, culture, and marketing officer role, DiMuro has built out a team focusing specifically on the regions where the company has business, as well as areas like digital marketing, communications, and public relations for Limbach overall. The company employs 1,600 workers, and since DiMuro took on the expanded role, eight additional employees began reporting to her.
When developing content for Limbach’s media channels, DiMuro’s team leans heavily on stories from employees themselves. One month each year, the team asks staff to share their experiences with career development on social media using the hashtag #LMBLevelUp, for example. Employees often appear on a Limbach podcast called Limbach Unlocked, or may see their stories featured on company blog posts.
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Developing content that centers around employees works well for Limbach because many of the company’s customers interact directly with these people. “The value that we are selling to the customers is the talent that we have. The talent is an extension of their team—they’re on-site account teams that are dedicated to our customers.”
In its efforts to improve Limbach’s brand visibility, DiMuro said her team has tried to showcase stories that illustrate the company’s purpose, which she described as supporting “mission critical facilities so that they keep running seamlessly and their operations keep happening.” This might mean sharing stories about keeping a hospital online, or helping a customer prepare for hurricane season.
Being more connected to Limbach’s “value proposition” has helped DiMuro understand how the company’s employees can best deliver on this, as well. The dual role has “broadened my focus much more and helped me integrate the company’s strategy in a way that maybe, if these roles were separate, could feel more siloed.”
HR 🤝 branding. While it may seem like HR and marketing professionals work in two different worlds, the functions are increasingly intertwined at some companies—especially those that see branding as vital to recruitment. Portillo’s recently launched an employee influencer program in the hopes of reaching younger job-seekers, Chief People Officer Jill Waite told HR Brew. The San Francisco-based software company Autodesk sources its employees’ stories for targeted ad campaigns when it’s hiring, according to its senior global creative and marketing manager, Kassidi Sorensen. They see “a large volume of [candidate] referrals” come from these efforts, she said.
DiMuro similarly said recruitment is one of the areas where she sees the “strongest overlap” between the HR and marketing functions. The recruiting and marketing teams regularly discuss ways to align not only on what Limbach sells as a company, but also as “an employment opportunity,” she said. The marketing teams also train interviewers on how to represent Limbach to job candidates, and discuss how they could grow their careers as the company evolves.
It’s not hard to see how Limbach’s HR team sees marketing as an extension of its recruiting efforts. At the end of many podcast episodes posted online, listeners will see a link to the company’s job board. Before they click, they’re asked, “Interested in joining our team?”