In 2022, every business owner already knows that a strong employer brand is one of the most important elements of a well-functioning business. Employer branding (both external and internal) is being talked about more and more in Poland. Conscious building of a positive employer brand image is slowly climbing to become one of the priorities of companies employing Polish employees. But how to properly measure the effects of such activities? And is it even possible?
Table of contents:
- The state of Polish employer branding from the perspective of performance measurement
- External employer branding – key KPIs
- Internal employer branding – key KPIs
- Where to start to measure employer branding effectiveness in Poland?
The state of Polish employer branding from the perspective of performance measurement
Every year, foreign brands with branches in Poland allocate exorbitant budgets to employer branding activities aimed at both potential and existing employees. And although the concepts of KPIs (performance indicators) or ROI (return on investment) are increasingly frequent in the vocabularies of HR departments, unfortunately spending money usually ends there. According to data from the latest Employer Branding in Poland report, only 17% of employers operating in Poland declared that developing methods to effectively measure the effects of EB is on their list of priorities. This is a serious omission.
Activities aimed at building an employer brand are undertaken to achieve specific goals (or at least they should be). Without systematic performance measurement, we will never be able to assess to what extent we have achieved a given objective. Measuring the effects of employer branding allows a brand to easily check whether what it is doing is profitable at all and to take a more appropriate direction in time (e.g. which activities to abandon).
So what to measure? Here … there is no clear answer. There is no one-size-fits-all measure of EB, as each type of activity requires slightly different metrics. Indicators for measuring the effectiveness of a single campaign aimed at the outside of an organisation will look completely different; and a long-term process of measuring the effectiveness of an existing employee will look different.
However, let’s try to identify the indicators that we, as an agency specialising in Polish employer branding, use most often when working with clients. To do so, we need to divide employer branding into two key types: activities outside the company and activities inside the company.
External employer branding – key KPIs
Before starting any activity, it is useful to define its purpose. It is a good idea to ask ourselves a few questions and then consider what indicators will allow us to answer them:
- What is the brand recognition among candidates?
- How is the brand perceived by candidates?
- Are a sufficient number of candidates applying to the job advertisements?
- Is there a lot of spontaneous recruitment in the company?
- Do the applications we receive come from the people we want?
- What is the company’s overall image among potential employees?
- Are we reaching the right people with our content?
- Are we reaching them through the right media?
It is worth making another distinction: between general activities (i.e. long-term activities that are undertaken throughout the year) and temporary employer branding campaigns. These, too, will require different indicators to be defined.
General external employer branding activities – what is worth measuring?
- Monthly number of spontaneous applications
- Monthly number of hits on the careers tab
- Monthly number of ad clicks (assuming a fixed budget) and their conversion
- Level of recognition within the targeted candidate group
- Level of engagement with social media content
- Number of positive mentions of the employer brand online
- Number of quotes in publications (especially industry-specific publications)
- Presence in rankings (e.g. Business Gazelles or Forbes)
- Ranking position in surveys and rankings of top employers
One-off campaigns or single employer branding campaigns – what is worth measuring?
These will include, for example, a recruitment campaign for a single position, a temporary employer branding campaign or participation in an event or trade fair.
- Conversion from advertising
- Number of hits on the landing page or careers tab
- Overall activity on the website or social media
- Number of CVs collected
- Cost of acquiring one CV
- Number of email addresses collected
- Cost of acquiring one email address
- Quality of applications submitted
- Number of mentions of the campaign in the media (national and professional)
Internal employer branding – key KPIs
Most of the firms operating on the Polish market and employing Polish employees focus mainly on the performance of internal employer branding. Key indicators worth looking at include:
- Employee turnover rate
- Average time to hire an employee
- Average cost of employing an employee
- Employee referral rate (number of people hired e.g. from a referral scheme)
As the latest figures show, as many as 49% of employers consider the level of turnover in a firm as the most important indicator to measure ROI, while 47% consider the level of employee engagement. And just as the former seems easy to measure, how do you go about measuring employee engagement itself? This is where tracking surveys come to the rescue, thanks to which we can measure employer branding activities over a longer period of time. Their prerequisite is a systematic quantitative survey using a questionnaire with a response scale (and it must be the same questionnaire).
Tracking research indicators can be taken as:
- Level of employee satisfaction
- Level of commitment at work
- Level of trust in the employer
- Level of employee loyalty
- Identification with brand values
Where to start to measure the effectiveness of employer branding in Poland?
It will probably come as no surprise when we say – from a strategy. It is always good to start from the baseline. How do the current employer branding activities translate into the quality and quantity of employees attracted, as well as the engagement of those present? What results do we want to achieve in the future and what steps do we need to take to get there? It is worth considering what kind of candidate profile is necessary for this and what measures can be put in place internally to retain key employees. It is imperative to analyse the current level of employer brand appeal and how this image translates into candidate numbers.
Once we have the key objectives established, it is time to identify what we want to improve and how we will measure this. Based on this, we build an employer branding strategy, i.e. we outline specific actions (either long-term or in the form of a one-off action). It has to be divided into two parts – activities directed outside and inside the company (interestingly, in Polish companies most EB activities are directed outside; but the most important indicators of measuring EB effectiveness reported by Polish companies are those measuring internal activities!). The most common mistake in measuring employer branding effectiveness in Poland that we notice is that there are too many monitored variables. Many companies on the Polish market also forget that this game is not about measuring per se. After all, what the brand does with the data it acquires is key.
Are you looking for an experienced agency that specialises in employer branding in Poland? If you need to consult the effectiveness of your existing activities with EB experts or are just planning to start sourcing employees in Poland and want to build an attractive employer brand from scratch, contact us. We will be happy to talk to you about your business and discuss the opportunities available!