To attract top talent, you don't just need stellar recruitment strategies – you also must position yourself as an employer of choice. Over 70% of professionals are passive job seekers, making it especially important to demonstrate your company's appeal.
While there isn't a single metric that measures the success of your employer of choice strategy, there are significant indicators that you are on the right track. Let's take a closer look at a few of them.
Becoming an Employer of Choice
An employer of choice is an organization candidates choose to work for when given various employment opportunities. These companies usually don't have a problem attracting top talent despite fierce competition.
An employer of choice:
- Creates a positive work environment
- Builds an impressive workplace culture
- Provides top benefits
- Fosters employee loyalty
- Focuses on employee satisfaction
- Drives better productivity
- Encourages innovation
By working on their brand, employers make it easy for top talent to find them instead of fighting the competition for each candidate. Meanwhile, the right approach to employee recognition and retention helps these organizations turn existing talent into brand ambassadors.
Companies that invest time, money, and resources in becoming an employer of choice take advantage of lower recruitment costs, higher productivity, and better retention.
Signs Your Employer of Choice Strategy Is Working
Since all companies want to become employers of choice, the competition is always high. To understand whether you are on the right track, you need to pay attention to several important indications.
Positive Employee Feedback
Employee satisfaction is a critical factor that makes a company an employer of choice. You can measure the changes in employee satisfaction rates by arranging regular surveys. Employee surveys and questionnaires that can help you gain insight include:
- Climate surveys – Helps identify employee views, attitudes, and perceptions of your company.
- Culture surveys – Evaluate the employee perspective and show how it aligns with the organization's culture.
- Engagement surveys – Gauges your employees' levels of commitment and motivation.
The insight you gain from these surveys can help you determine what changes you can make to improve satisfaction, engagement, and culture even further. You are on the right track if you notice consistently positive changes in employee feedback.
Recruitment Metrics
If you are tracking standard recruitment metrics, you can evaluate the success of your employer of choice strategy.
- Time to fill – times it takes to fill an open position
- Applicants per role – how many people apply for an open position
- Offer acceptance rate – how many candidates accept your offer
- Cost per hire – the cost invested in recruitment related to the number of hires
- First-year attrition rate – how many employees leave work within the first year with your organization
If you notice that filling a role takes less time or see the number of applicants growing as retention improves, it shows your strategies are working. Employers of choice enjoy low churn rates, lower costs per hire, and many quality applicants.
Strong Retention Rates
Retention rates are a significant indication of your organization's recruitment strengths. If you create an excellent work environment and increase employee satisfaction, the workers will likely stay with the company for a long time. Meanwhile, they can promote your brand and attract passive job seekers.
During the Great Resignation, retaining employees can be challenging as millions of people switch jobs. It's not enough to become an employer of choice and hire a professional – you must keep them. High retention rates demonstrate your ability to remain an employer of choice in the long run.
Great Employer Brand
Building an excellent employer brand is a great way to increase visibility and attract top talent. That can include digital brand-building tactics and recruitment marketing strategies.
You are making significant brand-building progress if you notice positive employee feedback on job review websites and social media. Successful brand awareness strongly indicates your company is an employer of choice.
Recognition in Your Field
If other companies in your field recognize your achievements, you are taking major steps toward becoming an employer of choice.
When your competition and partners start noticing and complimenting your progress, it means you are growing and developing into a major industry player. Such organizations often become employers of choice without making an extra effort.
Streamlining Your Employer of Choice Strategy
Becoming an employer of choice can significantly boost your company's performance by getting you the best talent and helping you keep them within your organization. By monitoring how well your comprehensive employer of choice strategy works, you can make changes in real time while tweaking your workplace culture and environment.
Many HR departments lack the time and resources to improve workplace culture because they are busy with manual administrative tasks. Delegating this work to a professional employer organization (PEO) can free up sufficient time to focus on employee needs.
