Back of the envelope Employer Brand Metrics
A familiar setting for Carpediem – The branding company in Bangalore – warming up in the board-room of a client company in anticipation of the Management Committee trooping in. The agenda: a first glimpse of the Employer Brand identity we’ve painstakingly crafted.
The saints come marching in, each gracing their usual spot. The HR Head begins a pre – mumble. The impatient CEO quickly cuts in – “All this is fine, but what outcomes can we expect?” Pregnant silence, until yours truly takes a marker, dashes to the whiteboard and pipes in …
Cut to the chase. The client company is dealing with a ‘leaky bucket,’ so keeping people within for longer periods is central. That provides focus. While almost all consultants from the boutique consulting firms would have spontaneously responded by saying; “there are three things this initiative will achieve” and then proceeded to figure out what the three are – I happened to have scribbled five on a cheat sheet. A quick peek, and I’m ready to go. And the metrics in some kind of continuum are …
Engagement scores: The most apparent direction that companies look in is a delta in engagement scores to see if the employer branding effort is paying off. We advise caution against doing this blindly, because very often what is being measured in employee sat surveys is not sharply designed to capture specific diagnostics around the employer brand promises, e.g., if one of the value propositions is the opportunity to behave like an owner, often the survey may not even probe that dimension. In our experience, ESAT’s tend to be generic and templated.
The strength of Employer Brand (EB): So a ‘Great Place to Start’ is designing a specific EB survey that does a pre-post on how you are delivering vis a vis the value propositions. More focused and direct.
Plugging the leak: The proof lies in the pudding. If we’ve done a sterling job, then average tenure or longevity within the company should move northward. The caveat here is that it takes time, 12 – 18 months, to demonstrate a quantitative shift. Hence the EB diagnostic tool above becomes a good lead indicator.
Net promoter score (NPS): Once the current workforce is joined at the hip with the company, one would expect net promoter scores to escalate. In other words, a resounding ‘Aye’ in response to the question, “How likely are you to recommend your company as a place to work.”
Referrals: The final bastion is where ‘the rubber hits the road.’ It’s about going a step beyond being a brand ambassador to becoming an acquirer of talent for the company. If our EB efforts have been successful, then current employees should be willing to become our primary source of hiring and consequently cost per hire, time to hire, misfits should start declining sharply.
At this point, the CEO settles back in his chair, seems content for the moment, almost as if to say, “Let the ceremonies begin” and we shift focus to the presentation deck we were serving that day …