Not only does it help guide employees like an internal compass, calibrated to your company culture, purpose and values, but it’s also a powerful recruitment tool. But how exactly can you tell whether it’s fulfilling its potential or not? 

As fantastic as you may think your EVP is on paper, you need to be sure that it’s working in practice. Otherwise, it may in fact be working against your other strategies – retention, recruitment, or even employee engagement as a whole. That’s why it’s essential to establish relevant key performance indicators (KPI) so you can keep a constant eye on how effective your EVP and employee experience strategies are. 

We’ll be running through the core KPIs you can measure your proposition against, so you can make sure your employee value proposition is doing what it needs to so your business can thrive. 

How to match KPIs with your EVP strategy 

Before you start getting into the realm of metrics, you’ll want to clearly define what you’re trying to achieve through your employee value proposition. An initial review comparing your EVP with your organisations mission, values and strategic goals might turn up some misalignment – which could already be hindering its effectiveness. 

Does it effectively communicate your unique value proposition? Is it connecting with employees' career aspirations? And what about their personal values? These are all worthwhile questions to make sure your strategies are all synced up before measuring their performance. 

Once you’re sure of that, you can start to think about the specific goals you want to achieve through your EVP initiatives. These will typically fall into one of four categories: 

1. Recruitment – Attracting top talent to your business 
2. Retention – Ensuring a positive employee experience 
3. Engagement – Keeping employees actively engaging with the organisation  
4. Sentiment – Promoting a positive employer brand 

There may be elements of all of these within your goals, but they could be weighted differently. You might prioritise sentiment and engagement, feeling these naturally filter through into the other two. Alternatively, recruitment might be top of your list to grow your business.  

Whichever objectives make up your goals, you can then shape your KPIs around these to get an accurate measure of success for your organisation. The model below gives you an overview of how this all comes together, but we’ll expand on each segment to give you a better idea of what these employee value proposition KPIs look like. 

Establishing baseline values for each proposed metric is integral to conducting a comprehensive EVP analysis. These baselines serve as benchmarks, enabling a comparison of current performance against historical data. 

By monitoring the KPIs over time, you’ll be able to identify trends and gain deeper insights into what’s working for your business and what isn’t. From there, you can make more informed decisions and iterate on your employee value proposition approach to drive continuous development. 

Key performance indicators for your EVP 

1. Recruitment 

Tracking recruitment metrics can reveal insights into how effectively your EVP attracts top talent. Many of these are quantitative metrics, looking at time or costs associated with each role you need to hire for: 

• Time-to-fill: How quickly you can fill vacancies, with a shorter time suggesting your EVP resonates well with candidates as you’re attracting top quality applicants at the required volume. 

• Cost-per-hire: The total expenses for filling a position, including advertising, agency fees, assessments, travel costs, and hiring personnel expenses. This typically goes hand-in-hand with time-to-fill, as quicker hiring will save money as well. 

• Source-of-hire: Where your successful candidates come from, e.g. word of mouth, job boards, recruiters, etc. This helps you evaluate which recruitment channels work best and optimise your budget accordingly. You can also assess the quality of hires via your EVP program for performance and tenure to see how effective your EVP is at retention. 

• Time-to-productivity: How quickly new hires reach full productivity, reflecting the effectiveness of your onboarding processes and quality of hire. 

There is also a qualitative measure in applicant satisfaction, with candidates providing feedback about their recruitment experience. Positive applicant satisfaction suggests a smooth and engaging candidate experience, confirming your EVP's attractiveness. To gather meaningful EVP metrics from these candidates, you can create avenues for them to share impressions throughout the recruitment process: 

• Post-application surveys about initial impressions 

• Candidate experience feedback forms (with questions related to your EVP) 

• Feedback options on career pages 

• Social media monitoring for EVP mentions 

• Third-party review site monitoring 

2. Retention 

Analysing retention metrics will give you an accurate assessment of how your EVP keeps talent in place: 

• Turnover rate: The percentage of employees leaving within a specific period, which can be calculated by dividing departures by total employees and multiplying by 100. You can also look at specific types of employee turnover. 

• Voluntary turnover rate: Percentage of employees who choose to leave. 

• Involuntary turnover rate: Percentage of employees terminated or dismissed. 

• New hire turnover rate: Percentage of recently hired employees who leave quickly. 

• Retention rate: The percentage of employees staying, the inverse of turnover rate. 

• Average tenure: The average time employees stay with your organisation, which can also be divided by role type to see how seniority affects this. 

• Absenteeism rate: Average days employees are absent, which may indicate morale issues if certain trends are present. 

• Exit surveys: Feedback from departing employees about EVP-related issues. 

Retention also works like the ying to recruitment’s yang, as the two typically impact on each other – which is why having an EVP that balances them both is essential. High turnover is costly and disruptive, as you then have the expense of recruiting for that vacancy and absorbing the workload in the meantime. 

Promotion metrics also provide a helpful measure for assessing its effectiveness. Given that career development significantly impacts retention, it’s useful to view these two areas together to get a sense of how your EVP embraces employee growth and development: 

• Promotion rate: Percentage of employees promoted within a given period. 

• Percentage of promotions from within: Internal promotions versus external hires, indicating your commitment to developing existing talent. 

• Promotion frequency: How often employees are promoted, reflecting your organization's value on growth. 

• Time to promotion: Average duration before an employee advances. 

• Internal mobility rate: Percentage of employees moving to different roles or departments internally. 

3. Engagement 

Having a company culture that embraces active involvement usually creates a more positive atmosphere – and it all starts with your EVP connecting people to an overall fulfilling employee experience. Given that’s more of a sentimental indicator, you’ll want to look at two main metrics to measure emotional commitment and motivation: 

• Employee Engagement Index: A holistic score combining job satisfaction, motivation, commitment, and discretionary effort. Measured through regular surveys while looking for correlations with specific EVP components. 

• Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS): Measures employees' likelihood to recommend your organisation as a workplace (e.g. "On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend our company as a place to work?"). Calculated by subtracting the percentage of detractors (0-6) from promoters (9-10). 

You can also look at employee referrals within the recruitment process as an additional metric to show high engagement and positive sentiment, as your EVP is likely motivating advocacy around your employer brand. 

In terms of gathering employee feedback about your EVP, you can use a mix of digital and offline channels to make use of different methods for feedback: 

• Employee pulse surveys on specific EVP topics 

• Focus groups with diverse employee representation 

• One-on-one confidential interviews 

• Anonymous feedback mechanisms 

Within these, you can include questions or topics which relate to common EVP metrics, including reputation, company culture, personal growth, nature of work, financial rewards, and employment benefits. Each of these will point to an area of your employee value proposition that’s resonating within your organisation. 

4. Sentiment 

Your employer brand reflects how you're perceived as an organisation among current employees, potential candidates, and the market. A positive reputation goes a long way, with the linchpin at the centre of it all being your employee value proposition. While brand sentiment is harder to measure definitively, there are many metrics you can monitor: 

• Brand awareness: Measure your reach, brand recall, and brand associations. 

• Brand perception: Analyse sentiment in online mentions and conduct perception surveys. 

• Brand engagement: Track social media engagement, website traffic, and event participation. 

• Brand reputation: Develop a reputation score based on media coverage, reviews, and awards. 

• Competitive benchmarking: Evaluate your market share and brand strength versus competitors. 

• Customer loyalty: Measure NPS and analyse customer testimonials. 

• Media presence: Track mentions and share of voice compared to competitors. 

• Partnerships: Evaluate growth and quality of organisational partnerships. 

Comparing your organisation’s EVP against competitors or industry benchmarks can also identify areas of strength and places to improve, such as compensation and benefits, career development, work-life balance, workplace culture and more.  

External benchmarks are typically established by industry research firms or similar, who conduct wide surveys to create reports. Some recruitment marketing platforms also benchmark using their aggregated client data, but these may be more skewed. External recognition is another area to keep an eye on, with ‘Best Places to Work’ nominations and industry-specific awards validating the sentiment around many employer brands.  

Fine-tuning your EVP so it works for you 

By tracking the metrics we’ve covered, you can regularly review how well you EVP is aligning with employee expectations and your organisation’s goals, then iterating to build a better business. If metrics drop below a certain level, these can also serve as warning signs for organisational health. Tracking these carefully allows you to adapt internal communications too, taking into account current sentiment around your EVP to resonate with their needs and concerns. 

While your EVP will influence these KPIs significantly, it’s important to remember there are factors outside of your control - the job market, shifting with candidate preferences, economic fluctuations and more. But investing in employee value proposition monitoring allows you to be more competitive, ensuring you offer the right elements to secure the best candidates. Over time, you can become an employer brand of choice with a resilient team that’s ready to build sustainable growth – and it all starts by making sure your EVP is working for you.