How to Measure ROI from your Employer Brand Strategy

When I come across companies that don’t invest into building an employer brand online my only question is why, why, WHY?!?!
Often the answer is that companies don’t want to allocate employees time and company budget without knowing what the outcome would be – which is fair enough! But when it comes to measuring your Employer Brand effectiveness it can be difficult to collate tangible results to back your case to Directors.
There are almost endless positives to investing in an employer brand, so if you’re looking for some easy ways to measure the ROI from your employer brand strategy to get Director buy in then you’ve come to the right place!
We need to start by pointing out that there is no single way to measure the effectiveness of an employer brand, so the best thing to do is to define your key objectives at the start of your strategy plan and find a way to measure this. Here are some of the top examples:

Employee Engagement

Getting your employees engaged and acting as brand advocates is like hitting a turbo button on your employer brand strategy. This is possibly the quickest way to build trust in your employer brand (passive candidates are more likely to buy into what their connections on Social Media say about working for you than a shiny careers site full of marketing spiel). Want to know another great benefit of having engaged employees? Your potential Social Media reach sky rockets across their connections – meaning your Employer Brand will be seen by the majority of connections of your current employees, who are often local, likeminded and even in the same industry! This allows you to tap into potential candidate pools that recruiters only dream of! Luckily employee engagement is an easy one to measure through Social Media analytics so keep track of this each month to see how engagement is improving!
[bctt tweet=”Getting your employees engaged and acting as brand advocates is like hitting a turbo button says @Sheats25″ username=”ATCevent”]

Retention Rate

Remember, your Employer Brand strategy doesn’t stop once your candidates step into the office on Day 1 – you want to nurture these employees so that they will stay with you, progressing internally rather than exiting to go to your competitors. Measure your retention rate / rate of new hires / rate of employees leaving each month to see how effective the employer brand strategy is at keeping hold of those key team members.

Number of Applicants

This is a pretty simple one to measure – if your employer brand is showcasing your company as a great place to work then you should see a higher rate of applications and unsolicited CV’s. Not seeing a difference? You need to make sure you shout where people can hear you – so consider investing into building talent communities across Social Media or using paid solutions to increase your social media reach of the employer brand message.

Quality of Hire

Again a difficult one to measure in black and white terms but liaise closely with your department managers and try and establish a way to report how well new employees fit into the role – e.g. how well suited upon application, time to adapt to new systems, achievements from each hire etc. Over time you will be able to measure this against previous months and see how the quality of candidates hired has *hopefully* improved.
[bctt tweet=”Measure your quality of hire on a constant basis to gauge your ROI for your employer branding ” username=”ATCevent”]

Cost per Hire

Coming from a background in recruitment I know that the main reason people don’t invest in something, be it a recruitment agency or a new HR Technology is often down to the cost. Budgets are tight and companies don’t want to be forking out 20% fees every week to get new employees through the door. The great news is by adopting an employer brand strategy you can start to build awareness of your company as a great place to work, attracting a pool of potential candidates and increasing the number of direct applications – which will bring those hefty recruiter costs down!

Awards

Awards aren’t just a vanity project – there are plenty of opportunities to enter your company as the ‘Best Place to work’ etc. – what better way to measure your employer brand strategy than with a panel of judges and a swanky awards ceremony!

Referrals

Going back to employer engagement, it is important to measure the number of employer referrals for new candidates within your company. If your employees buy into the employer brand, they are more likely to recommend you as a great place to work for friends and family!

Improved business performance

An employer brand should help you to attract high quality employees in a quicker, more cost effective way and also help you keep your employees engaged and retained within the business. Happy, engaged and valued employees are generally more productive therefore business functions should benefit too! Also, those companies with a transparent positive employer brand are more likely to attract customers / investors than those who have a negative image within their industry.

Something Else to Consider: Big Data

Depending on the size of your company it may be difficult to keep track of everything that is being said about your employer brand online. If this is the case why not look into Big Data tools that allow you to search key words correlating to your brand, establishing the sentiment of each message (positive or negative). You can’t control your employer brand completely – people will always be able to say what they want but this way you are equipped to respond to and diffuse any negative messages quickly, before the negativity spreads!
Like we said, there is no single way to measure your Employer Brand effectiveness – my advice would be to define your key objectives (e.g. reduce cost per hire, increase your Employer Brand reach, engage employees etc.) and then use the advice above to start measuring! This isn’t something that happens overnight, but by mapping out a strategic approach at the start of your strategy puts you in a much better position to achieve your goals. Need some help with your Employer Brand strategy? Get in touch with a member of the Job Holler team today!
Images from: Shutterstock

This article first appeared on Some Hire blog on June 21st, 2016.