December 2006/January 2007 Newsletter
Newsletter December 2006/January 2007
In this issue:
- Measuring Employer Brand Effectiveness by Brett Minchington
- PageUp People sponsors the 2007 Australasian Talent Conference
Measuring Employer Brand Effectiveness
Our Guest Writer this month is Brett Minchington, author of "Your Employer Brand attract-engage-retain".
In employer brand executive briefings and workshops, Brett has conducted with CEO's, HR Directors and their teams over the past year the most common questions asked are, "How do you measure whether your employer brand program is worth the investment?" and "What metrics should you use to track and report on progress?".
With the increasing global awareness of the benefits of developing an employer brand to
attract and retain talent it is critical that firms have clearly defined metrics to measure the ROI of their employer brand programs. With increasing demand for every department of the firm to perform at an optimal level and for all areas to make a tangible contribution to the firm's economic goals the use of relevant metrics enables your employer brand program to meet both of those requirements.
Firstly - Let's define Authentic Employer Branding
Put simply, Employer branding is a whole of business strategy for the effective and efficient management of people - it is not a slick communications campaign that boasts, "We are a great company to work for!" without the research to back up the statement. If the delivery of the employment promise falls short then high turnover rates and disengaged employees becomes the norm. The actions of leaders that support the employer brand vision and strategy must be supported at all levels of the organisation and it needs to be delivered consistently - no different to what positions consumer brands as leaders in their category.
Why are metrics important in employer branding?
Employer brand metrics are important to identify, track and report on costs involved in recruitment and retention activities such as:
- Attraction/recruitment costs e.g. Advertising, agency costs
- Pre-employment training
- Orientation/induction
- Initial and ongoing training costs
- Production loss
- Loss of knowledge
- Management time
Metrics are important in any business strategy. It is now commonly accepted in both the management and finance communities that the value of organisations is expressed by a mixture of tangible assets in the form of equipment, money or land or other physical objects and intangibles in the form of the employer brand, reputation, knowledge and of course people. As processes and systems are copied at increasing speeds, a firm's sustainable, competitive advantage rests in the collective capabilities of the employees attracted to and retained in the firm.
In the most recent Global survey on employer branding conducted by the Bernard Hodes Global Network which took in 507 HR, communications and other professionals across 25 countries, the survey found 62% cent of respondents formally support employer brand initiatives, but only 24 per cent actually have metrics in place to measure such efforts.
This demonstrates just how much work has to be done to identify the return on investment of an employer brand program!
Some suggestions for your employer brand set of metrics (dashboard):
Firstly, an employer brand set of metrics or dashboard needs to be aligned with business objectives so managers from all departments will need to be involved in the development process.
There is no set standard of measurements that fits every organisation, nor should there be - all organisations are different. Cost per hire, turn over rates, absenteeism, head count, engagement levels, time to fill, retention rates, time to productivity, total costs of labour to revenue, and candidate satisfaction rates are all examples of metrics that will assist managers to measure their ROI on employer brand programs. Other less traditional measures include promotion readiness rating, external versus internal hire ratio, quality-hire ratio, performance ratings of newly promoted managers and manager/executive failure rate.
If your firm is targeting university graduates as a new channel source of talent your metrics may include:
- Cost-per-qualified candidate by sourcing channel
- Cost-per-hire by sourcing channel
- Total yield by sourcing channel (quantity and quality)
- Diversity yield by sourcing channel (quantity and quality)
- Candidate retention by channel
- Interview-to-offer ratio among candidates by channel
- Offer-to-acceptance ratio among candidates by channel
Ultimately the depth of employer brand metrics will be determined by financial resources and human resource readiness and capabilities to support the collection analysis and reporting of metrics.
The PageUp People Management Reporting Module provides Analysis, Dynamic Cube and Raw Data reports that can be run at any time from the PageUp People system. As well as assisting managers to identify gaps and bottlenecks in the recruitment process, these reports provide advanced analytics that allow the user to see the "big picture"in the organisation's recruitment function including employer brand metrics. Please contact PageUp at enquiries@pageup.com.au for further information regarding our Management Reporting Module.
Brett Minchington is an International employer brand author and strategist. His recent book "Your Employer Brand attract-engageretain"is the employer brand book of choice and has been selling in Australia, US/Canda, UK and China. Brett is a regular speaker at corporate events and conducts executive briefings and workshops to assist firms to audit, design, integrate and evaluate their employer brand programs. Brett has a MBA and Bachelor in Business (Marketing).
PageUp People Sponsors Australasian Talent Conference
As Diamond sponsor of the 2007 Australasian Talent Conference, to be held in March in Sydney, PageUp People will have a booth and welcomes any attendees to join us for a quick break to discuss your talent management system needs. We hope to see you there!! For more details, visit: www.australasiantalentconference.com.au