Your employer brand isn’t just a set of fluffy words that make the company sound like a cool place to work. It’s the foundation of an engaged workforce that helps your company attract and retain the right talent.
Just as with any other branding activity, it’s important to measure the awareness and effectiveness of your employer brand, whether the real-life brand matches up to the company’s on paper values.
But how do you measure your success and monitor results to know if everything you’re doing is resonating with employees and candidates?
- EMPLOYER REVIEW SITES
Employer review sites like Glassdoor are very helpful for understanding your company’s reputation as an employer. Your overall rating is one of the first pieces of information Glassdoor users see. You can track progress on key measures by looking at all the ratings available, including: the opinion ratings, what percentage of people approve of the leadership or would recommend you as an employer and more detailed ratings such as culture, values and career opportunities.
It’s also a great window into how your company stacks up against the competition.
- MONITORING RECRUITMENT AND RETENTION METRICS
The goal of any recruiter is to attract the most suitable talent in the most effective way possible. Having a strong employer brand means you’re much more likely to attract candidates who clearly understand the business, the role they’re applying for, the company culture, values and what it’s like to work for you. It’s also useful to keep track of the number of quality applications it takes to find a candidate qualified for an interview and to accept the role.
- SOCIAL LISTENING
Another great way to measure your employer brand awareness is to monitor mentions and interactions on social media. There are many social media listening tools that you can use to monitor your employer brand on social media.
- SHORT PULSE SURVEYS
By measuring employee engagement, satisfaction and happiness on a monthly, or even weekly, basis using short pulse surveys, you will be able to spot both positive and negative trends and take appropriate action swiftly.
- ASSESSING EMPLOYEE RETENTION
Measuring how many employees stay and leave your company (and average length of service) will help identify staff retention trends. For example, do people tend to leave once they reach a certain level in your company? Or after two years? Or is staff retention in one particular area of your business worse than others?
- REVIEWING PERFORMANCE REVIEWS AND EXIT INTERVIEWS
Whilst staff retention metrics are useful for identifying trends, they won’t necessarily tell you the underlying reason for those trends. To get the “why”, you’ll need to analyse and take note of exit interviews, focus groups and performance reviews. Why are people leaving? Is it because there aren’t enough opportunities to develop or perhaps it’s the leadership style etc?
- NEW WAYS TO MEASURE YOUR EMPLOYER BRAND
There are now exciting new tools that can deliver unprecedented insights into your employer brand and culture. Artificial intelligence (AI) are beginning to transform how companies can understand their employees and employer brand.
One example of this is the continual feedback app Glint, that asks employees for feedback on important changes or events, such as a change in leadership or a new project launch. By using tools like this, your company can gain insights on your internal employer brand and identify trends in what employees think of your business as they occur, rather than waiting for the results of the dreaded annual survey!
