Tips on measuring the impact of your employer brand

It is important to ensure that the impact of your employer brand and the measurements you take will have a bearing on your employee satisfaction, engagement and ultimately, retention. It should also impact your employer branding and how you utilise your employer brand for talent attraction. Essentially, you can’t have employer branding without an employer brand. 

Retention rates 

Though similar, retention rate and turnover rate measure different things. Turnover rate measures the number of people that leave within a period and your retention rate measures those who stay for a certain period. 

The importance of tracking your retention rate is that it gives you insight into employer brand and the initiatives that influence your employees to stay or leave. From here you can see areas that your employer brand is working, or not working, taking action accordingly. 

You calculate your retention rate using this formula:

No. of employees on the last day of a set period / No of employees on the first day of a set period x 100 = employee retention rate

This is not to say that the turnover rate isn’t very important. An advantage of turnover rate is that it will give you insights on potential issues within your hiring process, internal training as well as individual departments and managers. If there is a glaringly obvious turnover issue in one department, it will become apparent when calculating your turnover rate. 

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Employee reviews 

Much like consumer brands, customer reviews are a true representation of your brand, as it is straight from the source. This is the same for employee reviews. If an employee is compelled enough to leave you a review it demonstrates their true feelings about your brand, positive or negative. Sites like Glassdoor and Indeed facilitate this really well, making it easy for an employee to review your company. 

Carry out an audit of sites where you have reviews, marking down recurring trends. This will give you insights on how your brand is perceived by employees and where there are potential areas of focus required. 

If there is a lack of reviews for your site, run an initiative encouraging your employees to fill out reviews. This is much like asking for customer feedback and reviews, though you might run the risk of some negative reviews, you’re more likely to receive fair and honest reviews from your employees. 

Employee referrals 

Much like the previous point, if employees are happy enough within your company to recommend a job to a friend, it is an excellent demonstration of your brand and positive employee experiences. You will also have an instant employee ambassador that can be used for recruitment marketing campaigns, candidate content and testimonials. Keep track of your referrers and their recommended hires retention rates. Using software with data reporting can help you to do this easily. 

There are many additional advantages to employee referrals, for example, better retention rates and a faster time-to-hire. In fact, it has been reported that retention rate is 46% vs. 20% higher for employees that were referred into the business versus those from job boards and time-to-hire can be reduced by 55% (Career Arc).

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Employee experience surveys

Your employee’s experiences should be the driving force behind your employer brand. It relates to how a person feels about working for your company i.e. their satisfaction, well-being and happiness. The pillars that make up an employees’ experience are: 

• The work environment
• Tools & Tech
• Well-being
• Performance management
• Employee development 
  

You want to ensure that your employee’s experiences are aligned with your vision of yourself as a brand and company, the best way to do this is through surveys or more recently, net promoter scores (NPS). 

Net promoter scores easily answer top-line questions and obtain a company-wide reaction to your well-being initiatives. For more in-depth feedback, surveys are the way to go. With new technologies like Peakon or Survey Monkey, you can capture insights on a weekly or monthly basis, allowing you to easily see trends and act accordingly. Both have their merits and it may be worthwhile investing in both. It is important to remember that your employee experiences should be holistic and that no two experiences are going to be the same. 

Another way to do this is through exit interviews. Exit interviews are an excellent way to establish where you stand with outgoing employees in an honest and open environment. Create a section in all exit interviews that focuses on your brand and company culture, using these insights in combination with your NPS and surveys. 

Employee engagement

Are your employees embracing your company culture, your well-being initiatives and employee engagement strategies? If not, this might be a reflection of your brand and its impact on your employees. 

It is good practice to breakdown each of your employee engagement strategies by department, looking at the success or failure of your strategies over a certain time frame. Employee engagement is not a sole HR initiative and monitoring these strategies might demonstrate where there are leadership gaps that need to be addressed. All employer brand and employee engagement initiatives should be led from the top-down, promoted by managers and embraced by employees. Software like Glint is an excellent way to monitor your engagement strategies. 

Your onboarding process

Your onboarding process is your first chance to promote and instil the importance of your employer brand to your new employees. 

Ensure your employer brand is front focus on all your onboarding processes, as your employer brand demonstrates what you promise to your employees. A good onboarding process will not only affect your individual employee’s performance but also the overall company performance as it directly impacts, culture, team integration, speed of learning and employee engagement, all crucial for your brand and employee satisfaction. A good onboarding process also demonstrates a vested interest in your employee's future and involving them into the company.

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