Leveraging your employer brand to drive organisational success

Having built and launched employer brands for organisations all around the world, we know the incredible impact they can have, from attracting higher quality candidates to retaining the great people you already have. However, the CIPD’s ‘Resourcing and talent planning survey, 2022’ found that only 12% of organisations take any steps to measure the impact of their employer brand.  

The same report found that 75% of organisations have taken action to improve their employer brand over the last year. But without measuring its impact and relative strengths and weaknesses, how are those organisations making the right decisions as to which aspects of their employer brand to improve? And why is it important? 

A challenging labour market 

A reducing population, particularly of working age, will mean that a tight labour supply will continue to be a challenge for employers. Combined with a lack of volume of skilled workers in particular areas, such as technology and engineering, this will create a persistent gap between employer demand for new hires and the supply of candidates.  

Over the next decade, the number of people of working age (between 15 and 65), will decline in a variety of countries, according to World Bank projections: 

For example, in the UK deaths are projected to exceed births by 2025. While Canada and Australia will experience population growth, the share of people over 65 will rise rapidly in both countries. In Germany, the population is aging and the labour force is shrinking. Migration is still not back to pre-pandemic levels. And Japan’s demographic prospects are particularly stark, with the population forecasted to fall from 128 million in 2010 to below 100 million by 2050, while the share of those aged 65 and older soars.

So, not only will hiring be more difficult, but workers will have more power to demand changes and filter preferred companies based on their employer brand, culture, and associated factors such as approach to DEI, flexible working and wellbeing. Now more than ever then, it’s important that organisations have a robust and measured approach to developing or evolving their employer brand to ensure it aligns with what their prospective and existing talent value – nuanced by skill set/business area, geography and individual audience, e.g. Early Careers.

The benefits of a strong employer brand

There are some compelling stats around the advantages of having a strong employer brand:

• It helps organisations to attract up to 50% more qualified job applicants (Glassdoor)
• 72% of recruiting leaders worldwide agree that employer branding has a significant impact on hiring (LinkedIn)
• 82% of employees would leave their current job for a company with a better employer brand (Randstad)

A data minefield

To varying levels of detail, all businesses will gather data on their recruitment process and employee experience. For some it may be basic hiring data, e.g. applications to hires, and for others there will be feedback around all aspects of the talent lifecycle - candidate experience, conversions at different points of the candidate journey, data around internal mobility, promotions and employee referrals, and employee engagement feedback which could be gathered through hard statistics (e.g. engagement with ERGs, Glassdoor profiles) and/or softer measures gained through employee surveys and focus groups. The key is, how do you bring this data together to create measurable and actionable insights? And how can those insights then be leveraged to the benefit of the wider organisation?

HR driving business success

The demands of the pandemic dramatically accelerated the role of HR from a support function to one which has a strategic and operational role to play at leadership level. McKinsey & Company interviewed more than 80 Chief Human Resources Officers (CHROs) at some of the largest organisations in the United States and Europe and found that more than 90% predicted significant changes to the HR operating model during the next two to three years.

But stepping up to this new responsibility requires HR to transform itself, adopting the organisational principles and key performance indicators of core business functions. And if HR leaders are expected to drive more agile and fluid organisations, shift their role to one of business partner and drive the employee experience, then they need the data and measurement capability to evolve and improve their key asset – their employer brand.

Our proprietary employer brand measurement tool will help organisations bring together all of their data sources – hard metrics related to hiring and retention and softer metrics measured through experience and engagement surveys – to do just that. Taking over-arching facets such as attractiveness, authenticity, distinctiveness, appeal and advocacy to help inform an employer brand that will speak to candidates and colleagues at every point of their journey with your organisation.

Creating a great candidate experience

Over three-quarters of organisations experience challenges attracting suitable candidates, with senior or skilled roles being the most difficult to recruit, although around one in four also report challenges attracting low-skilled candidates. And there’s been a corresponding drop in the proportion reporting they have an excessive number of applicants to process (17%, down from 31% in 2021).¹

But an engaging employer brand that incorporates nuanced messaging frameworks to appeal to different audiences – by geography, skill and/or demographic where appropriate – can help drive successful attraction strategies. Our measurement tool can help you capture the authenticity and appeal of your EVP by understanding how your employer brand attributes and approach to flexible working, rewards, benefits, your culture, innovation, leadership, type of work and L&D for example, resonate with different groups, and therefore which messages to lead with. It can also gauge their current perceptions of your organisation against those attributes, to understand how distinct you are from competitors and which areas might require more work.

Optimising your recruitment metrics

Just 13% of organisations measure the return on investment (ROI) of their recruitment processes, although a further 14% say they plan to introduce measures to do this. The most common methods used to measure ROI are cost per hire, the performance of new hires and the turnover rate of new hires.¹

Collating your hard data to determine these key measures, alongside understanding the appeal of your employer brand and its impact on employee retention, will help to refine your approach to attraction and engagement to optimise these key financial measures.

Driving employee engagement

Only 17% of organisations calculate the cost of labour turnover. Understanding this can help organisations to be much more strategic in their recruitment and retention strategies and create business plans to remedy high attrition.¹

And 63% of businesses have not taken any steps to improve employee retention, despite the fact that 60% are finding talent more difficult to retain. Even among this group, just 47% had taken steps to improve retention.¹

Effective measurement of your employer brand can determine the right steps to take – e.g. your approach to hybrid/flexible working, remuneration, health and wellbeing initiatives, DEI, L&D, work-life balance – to ensure that you’re implementing the right initiatives, that employees value and that will drive the required impact.

Our measurement tool can also help you to understand employee advocacy, by tracking your Glassdoor and social media feedback but also by directly asking your candidates and colleagues how likely they are to recommend your organisation as an employer and calculating your eNPS.

Measure and tune

If you’re ready to see the impact of your employer brand, we’re ready to talk. Get in touch today or book an appointment and let’s get the conversation started.

Working with us to measure your employer brand will result in recommendations that are tailored to you – be that embracing new channels, tweaking your messaging, updating your visual style or even developing a new strategic direction to improve and refine your employer brand.

Whatever we do, it’ll make what’s brilliant even better.