Measuring Employer Brand Success

Key Metrics for Employer Branding: The Vital Signs of Your Talent Appeal

Measuring the success of your employer branding efforts is like taking the pulse of your organization’s appeal to talent. It requires a holistic approach, looking at various indicators that collectively paint a picture of your employer brand’s health. Here are the key metrics you should be tracking:

1. Candidate Quality and Quantity

The ultimate goal of employer branding is to attract the right talent to your organization. Tracking both the quality and quantity of candidates can provide insights into the effectiveness of your employer brand:

• Application Rate: Monitor the number of applications received for each job posting. An increase in applications can indicate growing brand awareness and appeal.

• Quality of Applicants: Assess the percentage of applicants who meet or exceed the job requirements. A strong employer brand should attract more qualified candidates.

• Source of Hire: Track where your successful hires are coming from. An effective employer brand should lead to more direct applicants and employee referrals.

Example: Google, known for its strong employer brand, reportedly receives over 3 million applications per year. More importantly, they track the quality of these applications, ensuring that their brand attracts not just many, but the right candidates.

2. Employee Engagement and Satisfaction

Your current employees are the living embodiment of your employer brand. Their engagement and satisfaction levels can be powerful indicators of your brand’s authenticity and strength:

• Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS): This metric measures how likely your employees are to recommend your company as a place to work.

• Employee Satisfaction Surveys: Regular surveys can provide insights into various aspects of the employee experience, from onboarding to career development.

• Employee Turnover Rate: A strong employer brand should contribute to higher retention rates. Track both voluntary and involuntary turnover.

Example: Salesforce, consistently ranked as one of the best places to work, regularly surveys its employees and maintains a high eNPS. They attribute this to their strong culture and employer brand, which aligns with their core value of “Ohana” (family).

3. Employer Brand Awareness

How well-known and well-regarded is your organization in the talent marketplace? Tracking brand awareness metrics can help you understand the reach and perception of your employer brand:

• Social Media Engagement: Monitor followers, likes, shares, and comments on your career-focused social media content.

• Career Site Traffic: Track visits to your careers page and the time spent on the site.

• Brand Recall and Recognition: Conduct surveys among your target talent pool to assess how well they know and perceive your brand as an employer.

Example: L’Oréal runs an annual employer brand awareness survey among students and young professionals in key markets. This helps them understand how their brand is perceived and where they need to focus their employer branding efforts.

4. Offer Acceptance Rate

A strong employer brand should make your job offers more appealing to candidates:

• Offer Acceptance Rate: Calculate the percentage of job offers that are accepted by candidates.

• Time to Accept: Monitor how long it takes for candidates to accept offers. A strong employer brand might lead to quicker acceptances.

Example: tech companies in Silicon Valley, where competition for talent is fierce, closely monitor their offer acceptance rates. A high rate is often seen as a testament to the strength of their employer brand and overall value proposition.

5. Cost and Time-to-Hire

An effective employer brand can significantly reduce your recruitment costs and time:

• Cost-per-Hire: Calculate the total costs associated with filling a position, including advertising, recruiter time, and onboarding.

• Time-to-Fill: Track how long it takes to fill open positions from the time they are posted.

Example: LinkedIn’s strong employer brand has reportedly helped them reduce cost-per-hire by 50% and time-to-hire by 50%. They attribute this to increased direct applications and referrals due to their strong brand presence.

6. Employee Advocacy Metrics

Your employees can be your most powerful brand ambassadors. Tracking their advocacy can provide insights into the authenticity and appeal of your employer brand:

• Employee Referral Rate: Monitor the percentage of new hires that come from employee referrals.

• Employee Social Sharing: Track how often employees share company content or job postings on their personal social media accounts.

Example: Cisco’s employee advocacy program, “Cisco Talent Brand Ambassador,” encourages employees to share their experiences on social media. They track the reach and engagement of these posts as a measure of their employer brand’s authenticity and appeal.

Tools and Techniques for Measuring Employer Brand Strength: The Employer Brand Toolbox

Measuring employer brand strength requires a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches. Here are some tools and techniques to consider:

1. Employer Brand Surveys

Regular surveys can provide valuable insights into how your brand is perceived both internally and externally:

• Employee Surveys: Conduct regular pulse surveys to gauge employee satisfaction and engagement.

• Candidate Surveys: Survey candidates at various stages of the recruitment process to understand their perception of your employer brand.

• Alumni Surveys: Don’t forget about former employees. Their perceptions can provide valuable insights and influence your reputation in the job market.

Technique: Use a mix of quantitative (rating scales) and qualitative (open-ended) questions to get a comprehensive view. For example, you might ask employees to rate their likelihood of recommending the company as an employer on a scale of 1-10, but also ask them to explain why they gave that rating.

2. Social Listening Tools

Monitor what’s being said about your company as an employer across social media and the web:

• Tools like Hootsuite, Sprout Social, or Brandwatch can help you track mentions of your company in the context of employment.

• Set up alerts for keywords related to working at your company, your culture, or specific aspects of your employee value proposition.

Technique: Don’t just track volume of mentions, but analyze sentiment as well. Are the conversations about your company as an employer generally positive, negative, or neutral?

3. Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS)

Your ATS can be a goldmine of data for measuring employer brand strength:

• Track application sources to see if more candidates are coming directly to your careers site (a sign of strong brand awareness).

• Monitor the quality of applications over time to see if your employer branding efforts are attracting better-fit candidates.

Technique: Set up regular reports from your ATS to track trends over time. Look for correlations between spikes in application quality or quantity and specific employer branding initiatives.

4. Website Analytics

Your careers website can provide valuable data on the effectiveness of your employer brand:

• Use tools like Google Analytics to track visits to your careers page, time spent on the site, and the path visitors take through your content.

• Monitor bounce rates on job postings to see if your employer brand content is engaging candidates.

Technique: Set up goals in your analytics tool to track specific actions, like completing a job application or signing up for job alerts. This can help you understand how well your employer brand content is converting interest into action.

5. Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS)

This simple yet powerful metric can give you a quick pulse on employee satisfaction and advocacy:

• Regularly ask employees: “On a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to recommend our company as a place to work?”

• Calculate your eNPS by subtracting the percentage of detractors (those who answer 0-6) from the percentage of promoters (those who answer 9-10).

Technique: Don’t just look at the overall score, but analyze the reasons behind the ratings. This can provide actionable insights for improving your employer brand and employee experience.

6. Glassdoor Analytics

Glassdoor can be a valuable source of employer brand data:

• Monitor your overall rating and how it compares to industry benchmarks.

• Track the percentage of employees who would recommend your company to a friend.

• Analyze the content of reviews for recurring themes, both positive and negative.

Technique: Pay attention to trends over time, not just absolute numbers. Are your ratings improving? Are negative themes becoming less common in reviews?

Analyzing the ROI of Employer Branding Initiatives: Proving the Value

While the impact of employer branding can be far-reaching, it’s crucial to demonstrate its tangible value to stakeholders. Here’s how to approach analyzing the ROI of your employer branding initiatives:

1. Define Your Objectives

Before you can measure ROI, you need to be clear about what you’re trying to achieve. Common objectives might include:

• Reducing cost-per-hire
• Improving quality of hires
• Increasing employee retention
• Enhancing overall brand perception

Example: If your primary objective is to reduce cost-per-hire, you would focus on metrics like recruitment advertising spend, time-to-fill, and the number of direct applicants vs. those coming through paid channels.

2. Calculate the Costs

Tally up all the costs associated with your employer branding initiatives:

• Direct costs: Advertising spend, event sponsorships, content creation costs
• Indirect costs: Time spent by employees on branding activities, technology investments

Technique: Create a comprehensive spreadsheet that captures all costs associated with your employer branding efforts. Be sure to include both one-time investments and ongoing expenses.

3. Quantify the Benefits

This is often the trickiest part, as some benefits of employer branding can be intangible. However, many can be quantified:

• Reduction in Cost-per-Hire: Calculate the difference in recruitment costs before and after implementing your employer branding strategy.

• Improvement in Time-to-Fill: Quantify the value of filling positions faster in terms of productivity gained or revenue not lost.

• Increase in Quality of Hires: This could be measured through performance ratings of new hires or their time to full productivity.

• Enhanced Retention: Calculate the costs saved by reducing turnover.

Example: Let’s say your employer branding efforts have reduced your average cost-per-hire from $4,000 to $3,000, and you make 500 hires per year. That’s a saving of $500,000 annually.

4. Use ROI Formulas

Once you have your costs and benefits quantified, you can use standard ROI formulas:

ROI = (Gain from Investment - Cost of Investment) / Cost of Investment x 100

Example: If you spent $200,000 on employer branding initiatives and saw a benefit of $500,000 in reduced hiring costs:

ROI = ($500,000 - $200,000) / $200,000 x 100 = 150%

This means for every dollar invested in employer branding, you gained $1.50 in return.

5. Consider Long-Term Impact

Remember that employer branding is often a long-term investment. Some benefits, like improved brand perception or increased employee engagement, may take time to translate into tangible financial returns.

Technique: Use a multi-year analysis to capture the full impact of your employer branding efforts. This could involve projecting the cumulative benefits over 3-5 years against the initial investment.

6. Tell the Full Story

While ROI calculations are important, they don’t capture the full value of employer branding. Be sure to complement your quantitative analysis with qualitative insights:

• Share anecdotes from employees about why they joined or stay with the company
• Highlight improvements in Glassdoor ratings or other external recognitions
• Showcase how your employer brand has contributed to overall business success

Example: Unilever not only tracks the ROI of its employer branding efforts in terms of recruitment efficiency but also ties it to broader business metrics. They’ve found that strong employer branding contributes to higher customer satisfaction and, ultimately, better financial performance.

In conclusion, measuring the success of your employer brand requires a multi-faceted approach. By tracking key metrics, utilizing a variety of tools and techniques, and conducting thorough ROI analysis, you can gain a comprehensive understanding of your employer brand’s strength and impact. Remember, the goal isn’t just to prove the value of past efforts, but to continuously refine and improve your employer branding strategy for the future.

As you embark on this journey of measurement and analysis, keep in mind that employer branding is both an art and a science. While these metrics and techniques provide valuable insights, they should always be balanced with an understanding of the human element at the core of your employer brand. After all, at its heart, your employer brand is about creating a meaningful connection between your organization and the talented individuals who will drive its success.

Further Reading and Sources

1. Mosley, R., & Schmidt, L. (2017). Employer Branding For Dummies. John Wiley & Sons.
2. Theurer, C. P., Tumasjan, A., Welpe, I. M., & Lievens, F. (2018). Employer Branding: A Brand Equity-based Literature Review and Research Agenda. International Journal of Management Reviews, 20(1), 155-179.
3. LinkedIn. (2020). Global Talent Trends 2020. Retrieved from LinkedIn Talent Solutions.
4. Glassdoor. (2019). Mission & Culture Survey 2019. Retrieved from Glassdoor website.
5. Harvard Business Review. (2016). A Bad Reputation Costs a Company at Least 10% More Per Hire. Retrieved from HBR website.