Yes — I said talent acquisition.
The benefits of an engaged workforce on employee retention are well known. Engaged employees are happier, stay longer, and perform at higher levels than their less-engaged counterparts.
Just as interesting is the impact of employee engagement on your employer brand, and how that impacts your ability to attract great people to your organization. And there is perhaps no better measure of your brand as an employer than Glassdoor. For anyone who’s not aware Glassdoor gives potential employees the ability to see quantitative and qualitative information about what it’s like to work at your organization.
At Glint, we help our customers collect, understand and act on employee feedback, helping them retain their top talent, develop their people, and drive results. We recently took a look at how our customers’ aggregated engagement scores correlated with different business outcomes like stock performance and Glassdoor ratings. The data showed that the level of employee engagement and the specific drivers of engagement have a strong correlation with an organization’s Glassdoor profile. When compared to organizations in the bottom quartile, organizations in the top quartile of engagement scores had:
- 35% higher Glassdoor ratings (4.2 vs. 3.1)
- 34 percentage points higher Glassdoor recommendations (83% vs 49%)
- 27 percentage points higher CEO approval (93% vs 66%)
Organizations with high levels of engagement have much stronger employer brands than their low-engagement counterparts.
Potential candidates, whether they’re active job seekers or passive candidates being lured to make a job change, are likely to look to Glassdoor as part of their qualification process. The same way they look to independent sources for reviews on movies (Rotten Tomatoes), restaurants (Yelp), and products (Amazon), candidates look to Glassdoor for feedback on what it’s like to work in your organization. Looking good on Glassdoor means more candidates applying for your open positions and a higher likelihood of landing top candidates. The talent acquisition cost savings associated with a favorable Glassdoor profile is significant.
What’s even more important than the correlation itself is the ability to look at the employee engagement drivers that were most correlated with a strong employer brand. From the study:
Employees at organization with favorable (top quartile) driver scores on Growth (learning and development opportunities at work) and Prospects (positive outlook on company future) have an 87% recommendation rating versus 46% for their lower-scoring counterparts.
This is the part I love — and also often the most confounding piece of the puzzle to HR and leaders: getting to the diagnostics, moving toward an effective course of action. Typically, although organizations have every intention of understanding and improving upon the nuances that drive engagement, employer brand, and the associated business outcomes, they rarely find themselves in the position to take quick and effective action to do so.
So many organizations today look to improve engagement or employer brand by looking at teams and organizations from the outside. They look at the visible signs of culture (activities, behaviors, benefits, employee communications), rather than the invisible but powerful signs (the internal motivation and outlook of the employees themselves) that often impact engagement. This is where a consistent, nuanced stream of data regarding the employee experience becomes critically important.
Without the data to help understand the drivers that fuel a great culture, employers are at risk of investing in the wrong programs and perhaps even demonstrating to some employees that the organization isn’t really listening. Creating a work environment full of top performers that love their work and share that feedback inside and outside the organization is difficult, but having the data and insights to point you in the right direction makes it a whole lot easier.
Employee engagement isn’t just about retaining your top talent and helping them succeed, it’s about understanding what fuels the success of your people and how that affects your ability to attract the best. Start today by looking at the data you’re collecting about the employee experience. Do you know how your people feel about drivers like Growth, Prospects, and many other facets of employee engagement? And does the data help you take quick action? If not, it may be time to re-evaluate your people data strategy.