Most leaders agree employer branding matters. Yet the majority still struggle to prove it. Recent research shows 78% of organisations invest in employer branding, but only 18% can clearly communicate the ROI to the business. That gap is why budgets stall, why initiatives get labelled “nice to have,” and why critical roles stay unfilled for longer than they should.
This Frostbite aims to provide some clarity. It shows how to define success, track it with marketing-grade rigour, and tie outcomes back to cost, speed and quality of hire, so you can secure bigger, bolder investment.
1) Reframe “ROI” into business questions everyone understands
When an exec asks, “What’s the ROI of employer branding?”, they often mean:
Is it working? Can you justify the budget? What will we get, when?
Start by agreeing success definitions in plain English:
- Cost: reduce cost-per-hire and paid media/agency reliance
- Speed: reduce time-to-fill and vacancy days
- Quality: lift offer-acceptance, retention (12–24 months), performance, referral rate
- Reach & Reputation: brand search lift, career-site conversion, Glassdoor rating
- That shift moves the conversation from abstract finance to concrete outcomes without dodging accountability.
2) Match metrics to the talent funnel (and design them in from day one)
Treat employer branding like a marketing system, then measure it like one:
- Top of funnel (Awareness): reach, impressions, video views, brand search lift
- Mid-funnel (Consideration): career-site sessions, content dwell time, social engagement
- Bottom of funnel (Conversion): apply starts, completed applications, source quality, cost-per-hire
- Build tracking into the brief, not as an afterthought. Agree baselines and targets before creative kicks off; this avoids “retrofit reporting” and makes attribution credible.
3) Use reputation signals that correlate with hiring performance
Not all “brand” metrics are vanity. Some have a measurable hiring effect. For example, employers that improved their Glassdoor rating by 0.5 points saw ~20% more job clicks and ~16% more apply starts on average, meaningfully cheaper, faster funnel growth. Glassdoor
Historic LinkedIn research also associates strong employer brands with lower cost-per-hire and improved retention, useful context when you’re building your business case (treat as directional benchmarks, not guarantees).
4) Prove impact with cohorts, not just dashboards
Dashboards show trends; cohorts show cause. Structure simple experiments:
- Region or role cohorts (pilot vs. control)
- Creative/message variants (EVP pillar A vs. B)
- Channel mixes (organic-first vs. paid-heavy)
- Career-site journeys (short vs. long apply forms)
- Track incremental changes in time-to-fill, cost-per-hire and offer acceptance against the control. That’s the difference between “activity” and ROI.
5) Connect Talent metrics to Finance outcomes
Translate hiring outcomes into pounds and risk:
Vacancy days saved × revenue or productivity per role per day
Agency/media savings from higher organic/referral share
Attrition reduction × replacement cost (often 50–100% of salary, depending on role)
Faster hiring = improved project delivery / reduced overtime / lower burnout
Package findings as a quarterly “Employer Brand P&L” alongside a narrative (“what we did, what moved, what we’ll scale”), not just a metric dump.
6) What to build (and measure) across six workstreams
EVP & Message
Deliverables: validated EVP, proof points, role-level value props
Metrics: message recall, content engagement, brand search lift
Creative System
Deliverables: modular campaign assets for priority roles/markets
Metrics: thumb-stop rate, view-through, CPM/CPC trends vs. benchmarks
Career-Site & Conversion
Deliverables: focused IA, SEO, lightning-fast pages, ATS-friendly apply flow
Metrics: apply-start rate, apply-completion rate, mobile conversion, bounce rate
(Career-site improvements often lower paid sourcing dependency; pair with cohort tests to show incremental savings.)
Community & Social Proof
Deliverables: employee stories, leadership POV, portfolios of work, Glassdoor response strategy
Metrics: follower growth, save/share ratios, review-score movement (remember: small rating shifts can move clicks and applies). Glassdoor
Employee Advocacy & Referrals
Deliverables: content kits, advocacy guardrails, referral nudges
Metrics: referral % of hires, referral time-to-fill, referral retention
Always-On Recruitment Marketing
Deliverables: channel mix, budget allocation rules, remarketing and nurture journeys
Metrics: source quality, cost-per-qualified-applicant, cost-per-hire
7) Avoid the four classic pitfalls
Vanity without velocity: social engagement up, offers down. Prioritise funnel movement (apply starts, completions, offers, acceptances) over likes.
No baseline: if you didn’t measure before, you can’t prove after.
Attribution theatre: candidates take non-linear journeys; use cohorts and triangulation, not single-touch myths. (Even The Conference Board warns attribution is tricky—context matters.) The Conference Board
Career site as brochure: treat it like a product with CRO and SEO, not a poster.
Case in point: Colas Rail
Your Colas Rail recruitment campaign is a clean demonstration of ROI thinking in action: a clear EVP built from real employee proof, targeted creative for priority roles, and a conversion-first career journey. The result: stronger inbound pipelines, reduced reliance on paid listings, and faster hiring in hard-to-fill categories.
The one-page checklist
- Agree success definitions with Finance and HR (cost, speed, quality)
- Capture baselines (last 12 months) for priority roles
- Pick 2–3 experiments with clear controls
- Build a measurement plan into the brief and the budget
- Report quarterly with an “EB P&L” and next bets
- Link results to revenue risk and operational impact, not just marketing KPIs
Why act now
Employer brands are visible in real time; candidates judge you before you ever meet. Teams that can show impact—not just claim it—win resources and fill the roles that move the business forward. Start by reframing ROI, design your measures in from day one, and tell a clear story with Finance-grade numbers. (If you need external benchmarks to support your case, draw on The Conference Board’s ROI findings and recent Glassdoor performance data as starting points.