Benchmarking is a best practice employed by top organizations to garner information on how well they are doing. Like all critical business strategies, we strongly recommend that organizations conduct benchmarking to measure how effective their employer brand is. The information gleaned from benchmarking will allow organizations to evolve their strategies so that they can achieve a sustainable top employer brand (making a measurable impact to the bottom line!).
Our recommendations to most effectively benchmark your employer brand are as follows:
When benchmarking your employer branding strategy, there are several groups you can compare yourself to externally, including your competitors, top employers and employer brands. You should also be benchmarking internal talent data sources.
Although benchmarking can cause some challenges due to lack of comparable data, with employer branding there are several sources you can use:
1. Social Media Sites
What are the common social media channels used within your industry and amongst your competitors? When looking at your presence versus your competitors on social media sites, compare the number of followers/likes /engagement as well as the content strategy of their brand (is it original? Varied? Is new information posted daily?)
2. Website
How would you rate your website compared to your competitors? Do you have a clear Employee Value Proposition on your careers site? Is it easy to apply for jobs and navigate employment information on your site vs. your competitors? How do your job descriptions compare to your competitors? Do you engage with job seekers on your website vs. your competitors?
3. Search Engine Results
For general search terms related to your company, where do you rank? In addition, for common job titles within your industry where does your company rank as a place to work versus your competition?
4. Awards
Has your organization been recognized as a great place to work? What about your top competitors? If you don’t participate in Great Place to Work studies, we strongly encourage you to do so as it will provide some incredible insight into how your people practices and employee engagement compare to your competition and other top employers.
5 Employee Forums
Glassdoor has quickly become a popular employee forum to rate their employment experience. How do your employees rate their employment experience at your organization vs. your competitors rankings? In addition, how is your overall interview experience rated at your company vs. your competition.
6. Customized Surveys and Research
Working with an employer branding consulting firm to gain insight from external stakeholders including prospective candidates can also provide your organization with incredible insight on how your employer brand is perceived.
7. You can also garner a lot of information by benchmarking internally current state vs. historical data.
How do current state metrics compare to historical data for the following:
Job Applications
Retention
Engagement Scores
Net Promoter Score
Employee Referrals
There are some great tools out there designed specifically to measure your employer brand including comparing it to other leading employer brands. LinkedIn and Glassdoor have both developed analytics to measure your employer or talent brand. Furthermore, our global partner, EBI has developed a customized EBI Employer Brand Attributes Index Survey allowing you to assess the current health of your employer brand vs. global benchmarks.
Benchmarking provides the insights required to determine what works, and where to course correct. It provides you with a roadmap to meeting business goals and ensures sustainable success. Blu Ivy Group encourages you to start now, as it will help you refine your strategies as well keep you abreast of best practices, trends and what your competition is doing.