The conversation is predictable.

There’s the hopeful beginning: 
“We’re really investing in our Employer Brand, we understand the long-term gains of becoming an employer of choice, and we’re ready to build a stronger talent pipeline” 

And ends with frustration: 

“We’re measuring success based on click-through rate to application, and number of hires” 

Now, there’s a reason why so many smart leaders are tripping up when it comes to measuring their Employer Branding ROI – and it’s usually not their fault. 

Companies have been trying to push modern day hiring and talent management into old-fashioned measurements, and it doesn't work. 

So what’s the better option? 

Think in a funnel

Marketers, the good ones anyway, think in funnels and journeys. Not in individual metrics. 
In marketing, you don’t just have to prove the important metrics are moving; you have to understand the forces that make those numbers move, and how to control them. That’s important. We’ll come back to this. 

A marketing funnel is quite simple: 

• Getting noticed: that’s your brand work, advertising, anything that grabs attention 
• Engaging your audience: organic socials, email marketing, your website
• Converting them to customers: conversion rates, return on investment and return on ad spend

The Employer Branding Funnel (EBF): 

• Awareness: This represents the number of people who are aware that your company exists, and who are starting to consider you as an employer they’re interested in
• Attraction: This represents a level of connection with talent, who have taken an action (big or small) to find out whether there’s a match
• Engagement: This is the deepest and most important part of the EBF, and is a clear indicator of the size, quality and makeup of your current talent pool. 

Now we’ve sorted our metrics, we have to understand what makes them move. Without this piece of the puzzle, it’s just a bunch of numbers on a dashboard that we can’t do anything about.

Develop contextual understanding 

You’ve got the lay of the land with your EBF, and should already be pulling out insights of where your Employer Brand is strong and where it could do with some work.

However, numbers without context are pretty useless to all of us. 

We need to understand why the numbers are the way they are, and what we can do to influence them. 

Implementing this system 

You’ve got everything you need. Here are the steps to implement the EBF measurement and finally get control of your data. 

1. Build out your EBF and share it with your team and managers across the business. Adding the context of your own business challenges and goals will double the impact of the funnel framework and help to cement the process internally. 
2. Identify your top 5 current challenges using the Employer Brand performance framework: Metric Status or Problem, Additional Data Required, and Insight and Strategic Outcome
3. Review this with the downfunnel HR team who are focused on hires (or with your manager) and agree on a clear separation between Employer Brand and Recruitment metrics. It helps to show the links between the two, but it doesn't help to blur the lines!
4. Create a regular update format (we recommend quarterly) to review the EBF metrics, and your challenges and opportunities.