Surveys remain the most widely used means of measuring the employer brand
Most organizations (82%) evaluate or measure their brand in specific ways. The most common of these methods is employee surveys, used by 52%. Surveys are closely followed by the ability to engage people (50%). Engagement is, of course, an element that is often measured in organizational climate surveys (which may be why these two elements are so close together), but it can also be measured through many other means, from email open rates to social media likes. Third on the list are exit interviews, which can be helpful for understanding why employees are leaving the organization.
Far fewer use a tried-and-true metric that marketing professionals often rely on: referrals. Marketing professionals want their current customers to refer potential customers to them. However, only 33% of HR professionals say their organizations measure the number of employee referrals, and even fewer (25%) use Net Promoter Scores: that is, the likelihood that their employees will recommend their employers to others who may be seeking work.
Nor do many monitor their employer’s brand via ratings that employees assign via external websites. In fact, only 36% of respondents are monitoring their employer brand’s performance on employer review sites even though one in three workers have turned down a job offer after reading negative reviews about an organization online.
Seventy percent measure the impact of the employer brand on employee experience
In addition to asking about specific metrics, we also asked about what “buckets” of measurement respondents are using to gauge the employer brand. The biggest of these categories focuses on the employee experience. That is, 70% say their organizations measure their employer brand’s impact on employee experience.
The second and third largest categories of metrics are measuring the employer’s appeal to potential job candidates (62%) and evaluating the degree to which employees feel as if they can grow in the organization (58%). The least used category of measurement is the degree to which people know the organization actually exists (52%).
