If you work anywhere near recruitment, you must have come across the hype on employer branding during the past decade. Many organisations identify it as a priority, but are overly dependent on generic marketing campaigns or branding consultancies. If there are any metrics on the ambitious goal of “improve employer brand”, it’s usually a paid survey conducted by a third party research company.

In this post I will explain how I approach employer branding from an inhouse point of view, and how to easily measure the four pillars of employer brand. My dashboard consists of four elements with related metrics: internal employer brand, marketing and communications, networks and partnerships, and candidate experience. I will briefly explain the way we currently have set goals and metrics for these elements at Elisa.

The dashboard consists of four numerical values that are easy to follow and can be plotted on a timeline for data-driven decision making, and follow-up of the effect our EB activities.

Number 1 – Internal employer brand

Internal employer brand is a key element of the holistic employer brand: if your employees don’t see you as a good employer, it is very difficult to make any outsider believe it either.

The goal here is that “more employees would recommend us as an employer”.

We measure this quarterly in our employee engagement survey by a simple NPS question, on a scale from 1 to 10.

Number 2 – Employer marketing and communications

The core of any employer marketing and comms should be a well-defined employer value proposition. Ours is a combination of five factors that make us unique.

Our goal is that people in our target groups would recognize these employer brand elements and associate us with them.

The KPI here is the percentage of people who spontaneously mention these factors in our employer image survey, which is conducted twice a year.

Number 3 – Collaboration, networks and partnerships

Instead of using money on marketing campaigns, we have decided to focus our efforts on being active in relevant professional communities and efforts. We try to encourage our employees to be visible and active, so that their experitse would be better recognized.

The goal here is that a greater percentage of people who are aware of our existence as a company, would also consider us as a potential employer.

The KPI here is the awareness-consideration funnel conversion in percentages, measured twice a year in our employer image survey, aimed at the target groups we focus on.

Number 4 – Candidate experience

We communicate with thousands of applicants every year. Their experience as candidates is a key channel for communicating our employer value proposition, so we focus really hard on creating a positive reputation as a hiring organisation.

The goal here is that the candidates’ image of us as an employer would improve during the recruitment process, once they get familiar with our culture and way of working. Obviously the candidate communications during the recruitment process play a key role here.

The KPI is our monthly candidate survey where we ask whether their image of our company became better or worse during the recruitment process (on a scale from 1-10, 5,5 being neutral).

If you would like to get some coaching on how to simplify and measure your employer brand, my LinkedIn chatbox is always open 🙂