The need to apply appropriate and actionable metrics to your talent pool activity is both increasingly more possible and increasingly more vital.

In the words of Mr Drucker, ‘what you can’t measure, you can’t manage’.

However, there are metrics and there are metrics. What is important to one employer has less heft with another. Are you recruiting in volume or niche markets? Where are your pain points? Does your challenge relate to attraction, talent pipeline, on boarding, or premature departures? Apply the wrong metrics and the learnings will be irrelevant.

(I’ve very recently written a blog on the importance of applying the right metrics to the right internal audiences – https://employerbrandingadvantage.wordpress.com/blog/)

Making the business case for an EVP isn’t without its struggles. What are the tangible outputs? What do I get for my investment? For the time taken up with my people? What examples do you have of organisations creating positive return on investment?

Tough questions but questions that increasingly have answers rather than awkward gazing-at-shoes moments.

The Conference Board suggests that organisations with an actively managed EVP can increase hiring pools by 50%.  LinkedIn, too, view this impact as benefiting employers even at senior levels – 83% of employers felt their employer brand had a significant influence on their ability to hire top talent.

My own research into this space points to some inter-connected wins that the EVP and its associated employer brand can create – 59% of employers feel their EVP investment enhanced engagement by a minimum of 10%; whilst 63% felt their EVP investment had enabled them to reduce third party recruitment spend by a minimum of 10%.

For Gartner, organisations that effectively deliver on their EVP promise can reduce employee turnover by 69%. 

There is too a clear connection between business performance and employee engagement – 62% of consumers have stopped buying from an organisation which treats its employees poorly, according to CareerArc.

Perhaps most important of all is the sense that such activities are not undertaken in isolation. Recruitment and retention are competitive sports. An organisation, whilst focusing on its own messaging and candidate experiences, needs to understand the offering of its competitor set.

Last year, LinkedIn made the case that 59% of talent leaders globally will be spending more on their employer branding. And the same source suggests that 72% of recruiting leaders feel that their Employer Brand has a significant influence on their capacity to hire. LinkedIn also makes the point that organisations with an exemplary employer brand can hire candidates between 100% and 200% more speedily than the average.

Conversely, according to the Harvard Business Journal, having a poor reputation costs, on average, an additional 10% for hiring organisations.

And this is no little matter but one whose outcomes will directly influence your employer’s ability to compete – for the CIPD, 76% of HR professionals feel that a shortage of talent is the biggest threat to the future of their organisation.

Metrics are more and more available but they have to be right for your organisation and the unique challenges it faces now and in the immediate future.

Choosing metrics has never seemed more like a no-brainer. What does exercise grey matter to a much greater extent are the particular metrics that will make the most difference to your organisation.