“You can’t improve what you don’t measure.” Often attributed to Peter Drucker, this quote has elicited plenty of admiration and plenty of ire.
Thus, the same applies to every effort put into building an employer brand. Missing to measure the employer brand’s success means directing your brand toward a road that takes you out of the competitive landscape.
A strong employer brand can help you attract and retain top talent, improve employee engagement, and boost your bottom line. But how do you know if your employer brand is successful?
Just as Rome wasn’t built in a day, neither is your employer brand, indicating the time required to produce a favourable output. And by tracking the right metrics and KPIs, you can get a clear picture of how your employer brand is performing and make necessary adjustments to improve it. To ensure the success of employer branding, understand what are the key metrics you should be tracking down to measure the effectiveness of your employer brand.
The Must-track Employer Branding Metrics
- Employee referral rate
Current employees usually recommend you to their circle only when they are happy working at your organisation. When employees refer people within their network, they trust your brand and add resources to the pool of qualified candidates.
Analyse the employee referral data and check whether your existing workforce is willing to advocate for you.
High employee referral rate = High employer branding success rate
- Cost-per-hire
The cost to make a new hire consists of recruitment fees, pre-employment assessments, advertisements & promotions, and more. Organisations enjoying strong employer brands incur low cost-per-hire, and even the cost comes down to almost half in some cases. This is the power of the brand.
A company that has earned a reputation over time will attract more candidates, who turn out to be better fitted. If your organisation has more quality candidates applying for jobs, you can spend less time and money sourcing ideal candidates.
The lower the cost-per-hire, the more the chances for the employer brand to grow.
- Quality of candidates
The metric is considered the most powerful yet difficult to measure, encompassing several other metrics. Undoubtedly, a strong employer brand attracts high-quality candidates because present-day job seekers also prefer working with established brands.
Simply put, determine the quality of candidate profiles and check how experienced and competent they are to match the vacant positions.
Is the quality of applications below average? Well! It means you need to work on employer branding.
- Employee engagement rate
Employee engagement rate is another robust metric to measure how well your employer brand is performing. To name a few, learning and professional development opportunities are the ones that boost the employee engagement level.
To measure the level of engagement, you can conduct employee surveys and ensure the questions cover all aspects like leadership, learning, peer relationships, and more.
Scan the employees’ responses and conclude whether your efforts are reaping benefits.
Learn about the Importance of Continuous Learning and Professional Development
- Social media engagement
Tracking social media engagement requires you first to set social media goals. For example, if you want brand recognition, track the number of followers, impressions, and reach. If you want to boost interaction with potential candidates, check likes, comments, and shares on the posts.
Results do not reflect overnight. Therefore, look at the performance over a period of time and observe the trend. If employee engagement on your social media handles is also high, there are chances of generating more tremendous employer branding success.
The more people engage with your employer brand, the more they can relate to it.
- Employer brand index
Employer brand index involves checking what employees say about your company online. The platforms to check their online reviews are employer review sites, social media platforms, and online forums.
Based on the opinions shared by employees online, EBI focuses on specific parts of the employer value proposition having the most positive and negative impact.
The metric also indicates the overall health and performance of your employer brand.
How to interpret your results and make improvements?
Once you have collected data on the metrics and KPIs you are tracking, you need to interpret your results and make improvements. Here are a few tips for interpreting your results:
- Compare your results to previous periods: This will help you see how your employer brand is performing over time.
- Compare your results to other companies: This will help you see how your employer brand is performing relative to the competition.
- Set benchmarks: Set targets for each metric and KPI. This will help you track your progress and make improvements.
- Analyze your results: Look for trends and patterns in your results. This will help you identify areas where your employer brand is weak and make improvements.
- Make changes: Based on your analysis, make changes to your employer branding initiatives.
By measuring the success of your employer brand, you can ensure that your efforts are effective in attracting and retaining top talent.
Summary
The trickiest part about measuring employer branding success is that there is no industry standard to follow. Moreover, each organisation is creating and using different metrics without the intent to create a benchmark. Nevertheless, it is important to identify and use the most useful, easy-to-read KPIs to facilitate quicker identification of optimisation for making improvements.
Consistently measuring your employer brand over time will help you see how your efforts are working, and you can identify areas where your employer brand is weak and make improvements.
The world is already battling against a talent shortage, and it’s high time for organisations to level up their employer value proposition. Thus, by measuring the success of your employer brand, you can ensure that your efforts are effective in attracting and retaining top talent.
Read more about The Talent Shortage Crisis
Why choose CGP Singapore to attract top talent?
Sourcing suitable candidates is arduous and becomes even more challenging when your business is niche-specific. Cornerstone Global Partners can help you find candidates for hard-to-fill roles in these situations. We are one of Asia’s most prominent recruitment solutions providers, with 19 offices worldwide and over 500 team members delivering exceptional
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