Apr 24, 2012 0
By Joao Araujo
Number crunching has become a part of our daily routines. Measuring what we do, how quickly we do it and the quality of what we do has become a norm in most companies and departments. Employer Branding won’t be able to swim against the stream… so how can we measure the work within the field?
Jan 4, 2012 0
Lovisa has a background as a management consultant with McKinsey & Co. and was the global director of research and consulting at Universum.
By Lovisa Öhnell
So far I have focused on external measurements of employer attraction and employer brand here. But it is equally important to track your internal EB, what we call your Employer Identity. There are two reasons for this. First, you need to ensure that what you communicate externally is in line with your employees’ perception. Your employees are your strongest brand ambassadors. For example, employees are seen as a more trustworthy source of information by a potential jobseeker than HR professionals or corporate communication material. So in order to build a strong external brand, you need to track your Employer Identity and align it with your external communication. If your employees communicate a different story than yours, you are “in effect” throwing away your money.
The second reason why it is important to track your internal brand is that there is a strong connection between brand affiliation and satisfaction. In Universum’s Professional Survey, we ask how satisfied the respondents are with their current employer and which of 40 attributes they associate with them. Respondents who are satisfied with their employers also associate them more closely with the 40 attributes than the employees who are not satisfied. In the US Professional Survey, the average association for all attributes was 52 per cent, compared to only 39 per cent for the less satisfied employees. The biggest differences between the groups were for the attributes “Leaders who support my development” and “Good work/life balance”. Thus, these attributes are tightly linked to employee satisfaction.
Almost every employer tracks organisational health and provides feedback to managers. Universum’s survey is instead an employer brand survey, asking employees about their perception of the employer, rather than about their immediate surroundings in the organisation. This information about your Employer Identity should be tracked continuously, compared both to your peers and to your external image. The results should be used to develop the employee value proposition as well as enhance communication, both internally and externally.
Oct 18, 2011 0
by Lovisa Öhnell,
I often get asked by clients how they should handle all the various rankings that they appear in. Many of them point out that they are surprised (and sometimes a little annoyed) when their manager asks them about why the company has fallen in ranking A, risen in ranking B, and why they are nowhere to be found in ranking C. It is clear to me that companies often feel that they are not in control, of how – or why – the company is portrayed in various rankings. So let’s look at how you can map out your path through the ranking jungle.
Sep 12, 2011 1
by Lovisa Öhnell (for Universum Quarterly)
Regardless of industry, country or position, it seems those that work with employer branding have at least one thing in common: the need for solid measuring tools for their employer branding activities. This need is particularly pressing now, since employer branding has gone strategic. Not having good measuring tools has an adverse effect on budgets, number of recruits and the quality of the recruits. But the suffering is unnecessary. There are plenty of tools you can use to correctly measure the results of your work.
Apr 29, 2011 0
By Lovisa Öhnell
Global Director of Research and Consulting, Universum
Regardless of industry, country or position, it seems those that work with employer branding have at least one thing in common: the need for solid measuring tools for their employer branding activities. This need is particularly pressing now, since employer branding has gone strategic. Not having good measuring tools has an adverse effect on budgets, number of recruits and the quality of the recruits. But the suffering is unnecessary. There are plenty of tools you can use to correctly measure the results of your work.
Measuring employer branding (EB) is to your strategies what regular health checkups are to your body. Even if you don’t feel sick, you should do regular checkups to confirm your good health, and to catch potential problems early. Only if the initial tests indicate a problem does the doctor send you for an MRI or a CAT scan. It’s the same thing with EB strategies. A simple dash board of three key performance indicators should be used annually to gauge the overall health of the employer brand.
• Attractiveness
When measuring your attractiveness, make sure you do it amongst relevant target groups. Second,
set a goal for the ranking. Being number one is not realistic for most. But perhaps being amongst
the Top 20 or Top 10 is. Third, changing rankings take time. So when you do set the goal and define
your target groups, make sure that reflects future recruitment needs beyond six months.
• Brand Perception
Proper brand perception reflects your Employer Value Proposition (EVP) in the right way. You have to define what characterises your employment offer, and in what ratios. If the brand perception and your EVP aren’t aligned, you may run into a similar problem as a global soft drink company did whilst recruiting staff to a manufacturing plant in Asia. The company’s brand is strongly associated with international atmosphere. But the manufacturing plant had none of that global flair. It was basically a local, independent, factory. Hence, the plant required a completely different set of recruits than the company as a whole did.
• Conversion
Measuring your conversion means measuring the strength of your relationship with your target group. How well they know you, and how strongly they want to join your organisation. At Universum, we have a funnel to illustrate this. At the widest point, we have those who are familiar with you. Further down are those who consider working for you. On the next level in the funnel, we find those who think of you as an ideal employer. And at the narrowest point are those that have also applied. Defining where you want to be will help you track your communication with your target group and also measure progress in a clear way.
Following this health check ABC will hopefully generate a clean bill of health for your EB. If there are problems, they will be discovered early. And early detection increases the chances of effective treatment. In addition, if ailments are discovered early, the treatment will be considerably cheaper. So when you sit down to measure your EB, do as your doctor. Start with checking your vitals.
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Christopher Van Mossevelde
cvm@universum.se
Joao Araujo
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