Talent analytics is more than a buzzword—it’s the driving force behind employer branding at forward-thinking organizations. It’s also the subject of our latest eBook, Talent Analytics for Dummies®, Glassdoor Special Edition.
With that in mind, we gathered six employer branding leaders in Chicago on Tuesday for our Power Panel: A Deep Dive into Talent Analytics.
In her opening keynote, Kirsten Davidson, senior director of Employer Brand at Glassdoor, spotlighted telling statistics on why measuring and managing your employer brand matters. According to a Glassdoor study, public companies on the Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work list outperformed the S&P 500 by 122%. Meanwhile, job seekers are now job shoppers. On average, they use 18 sources when searching for jobs, according to a 2015 Inavero study. And when they use their smartphones to look for a job, 52% look at jobs in bed, 37% in the office.
The expectation of transparency means that job seekers are more empowered than ever before, and that recruiting is everyone’s job.
Because every company has a different brand, every company will take a slightly different approach to talent analytics. Read on to learn how how five companies leverage talent analytics to strengthen their employer brands.
Cisco: Let employees tell your story
“You don’t own your employer brand, it owns you,” said Macy Andrews, global director, People, Culture & Talent Brand at Cisco.
Andrews shared the perspective that employer brand and company brand are fraternal twins; the job of the employer brand is to amplify the people-related aspects of the corporate brand. To that end, Cisco focuses on empowering its people—from the candidate to the employee level.
Cisco even built an app that gives candidates LinkedIn profiles of interviewers and Glassdoor ratings prior to a interview, solicits interview feedback and progresses through offer and benefit information as candidates turn to hires.
Recognizing that culture is fluid, Cisco has eliminated the annual performance review in favor of an app-based performance tracking system. This weekly feedback mechanism allows team leaders to address issues as they arise.
“Culture is not an HR program,” Andrews said, emphasizing that culture largely occurs within teams. The key to a strong employer brand is to “unleash your people and let them tell your story.”
Going a step further, Cisco offers LinkedIn profile training, encourages employees to share work-related content on social media and recently successfully piloted a “Day in the Life” Snapchat program.
Uber: Take action on feedback
The line between your employer brand and company brand is “incredibly blurred,” said Andrew Levy, Global Careers Brand lead at Uber, adding that candidates expect their experience to be as seamless as their experience using Uber.
That’s why it’s so important for the company to collect and listen to feedback. Armed with regular surveys and sentiment analysis from Kanjoya as well as feedback and data from Glassdoor reviews, Levy and Uber’s recruitment coordinator will nudge hiring managers when actionable feedback comes in.
The company conducts a recurring culture survey that addresses each of its 14 values and presents results in an online portal, allowing the data to be cut by relevant team-based factors. Like Cisco, Uber also invests in empowering employees to increase referrals, harnessing the power of mobile technology for recruiting. In top hiring markets, Uber recruits from the Uber app using geofencing technology.
As a parting thought, Levy said, “Pay attention to what’s been said about you and make a concerted effort to do something about it.”
Motley Fool: Empowering the positive
Nate McMahon, senior vice president, People and Technology at Motley Fool, noted that revenue-per-employee is his company’s most important talent analytics metric. As a representation of quality-of-hire, this measure reflects the value employees deliver.
As part of fulfilling employee development needs, Motley Fool encourages people to pick the projects they work on and focuses on how much they contribute, more than fitting particular roles. To that end, the company has built many of its HR analytics systems in-house, relying on its business intelligence team to analyze talent data and its engineering team to build the tools to access it.
“The technical people are excited to be involved, they want a say in how to run the organization,” McMahon said. Having a 360 feedback tool and a talent analytics dashboard built in-house means it’s easy to use because it’s tailored to the way the organization works—versus an off-the-shelf system that may contain irrelevant categories.
“Focus on awesome employees,” McMahon advised. “Think about who you are retaining, and unleash those people.”
LaSalle Network: Invest in your people
“Data isn’t culture,” said Tom Gimbel, chief executive officer, LaSalle Network. “Culture is culture… and culture starts at the CEO level.”
Gimbel advised that HR should report to the CEO, not finance. But managers should be held accountable for culture of their teams, because while “people join companies, they quit managers.” To that end, LaSalle’s culture focuses on developing its people, and encourages a dialogue between managers and employees about the training they want and the training necessary for job-related improvement.
Staff retention is an important measure for LaSalle. “We want to be seen as a stable home,” Gimbel said, unlike other recruiting firms that exist in “tumble-dry mode.”
Glassdoor: Do more of what’s working
When it comes to metrics, “you can’t focus on one more than another,” said Davidson. “They all work together.”
Glassdoor leverages data from its own platform, enlisting help from its data science team to surface insights from internal data sources. The company relies on managers to capture feedback from teams. “Each team dynamic is different,” Davidson said, echoing the comments of other panelists.
Davidson also shared details about a program that’s worked well: new hires have a 90-day check-in with one particular person. “Now we’re looking at how we can scale that as we bring on more people,” she added. Not surprisingly, Davidson’s parting advice was, “find what’s working and do more of that.”
Missed Power Panel live stream?
To watch a replay of the panel, go here. And for a complete deep-dive of your own into talent analytics, download Talent Analytics for Dummies today!
