Key takeaways:
- Strategic Development of an Employer Brand Dashboard: Manuel Diaz and his team at Intel prioritized the development of an employer brand dashboard to comprehensively assess Intel’s employer brand health. They conducted extensive research, engaged with industry benchmarks, and collaborated with internal stakeholders to determine relevant metrics and data sources.
- Utilization of Industry Benchmarks and Internal Insights: By benchmarking against industry standards like the Talent Brand Index and incorporating internal data analysis, Manuel’s team gained insights into Intel’s employer brand perception and positioning. They leveraged Glassdoor ratings and aggregated data to understand their standing within the talent competitor peer set.
- Importance of Insights and Stakeholder Collaboration: The employer brand dashboard serves multiple purposes, including assessing brand awareness, benchmarking against competitors, and informing key stakeholders. Manuel highlights the importance of evolving the dashboard to provide specific insights tailored to different business segments and recommends collaborating with internal and external partners to develop comprehensive metrics and KPIs.
Manuel Diaz, Employer Brand Marketing Manager at Intel, has been working on employer branding — and the many programs and initiatives involved in its development — for the past 11 years.
But late last year, Manuel and his team made the decision to heavily prioritize the development of their employer brand dashboard.
“We knew we wanted to build a very cohesive, overarching, and comprehensive employer brand, and one of the main components that we needed as part of this broader strategy was to have an employer brand dashboard,” explained Manuel. “Something that tells us whether or not we’re getting a thumbs up or thumbs down based on what people out there think of us.”
So Manuel underwent the task to start finding out what was readily available out there, what the industry benchmark for measuring employer brand is, and what they should use at Intel.
“I wanted to figure out how we should inform, not only what these third party organizations can actually give us from an industry perspective, but also what should be important for us as a brand,” said Manuel.
“We’re a huge company and there’s a lot of people that do exceptional data analysis, and we have great data scientists within Intel that can help us assess the best way to interpret and present this data. Back then we knew there was a lot of goodness that could come from within and that could actually help complement this broader story with additional internal insights.”
So, Manuel started doing research, attending webinars, and speaking to vendors and key business partners to start determining how and what Intel should use to monitor and evaluate their employer brand’s health.
Once they got into those conversations, they started to think about what they could do with those pieces of data.
Manuel and his team started to assess the data themselves to see what would and wouldn’t work for their purposes. Then they started putting together their initial stepping stone. “We knew it wouldn’t be perfect right from the start,” Manuel explained. “But this is something that we’re going to be able to go back to and have as a reference point to know whether or not we’re moving the needle in our favor.”
To do that, Manuel and his team had to decide what metrics were important for Intel on various fronts. “First, we wanted to understand what the industry was using,” Manuel said. “And the reason why I say that is, part of putting together an employer brand dashboard was also defining a set of companies we wanted to measure ourselves against — because you need a reference point.”
With that goal in mind, Manuel started looking for ways to benchmark Intel against the set of companies he developed.
“One of the tools we used was the Talent Brand Index,” Manuel said. “These indicators have been useful for us because, while they don’t disclose which Talent Brand Index percentage belongs to which company, they do give the information that shows how you stack up against them.”
Manuel and his team also incorporated Glassdoor data into their dashboard. “If you go onto websites like Glassdoor, you can start seeing how former and current employees are rating these different companies,” explains Manuel.
“We had a subset of companies we wanted to compare ourselves against, and based on that, we started aggregating our own Glassdoor insights within our broader data analysis. With this ratings analysis, we could then not only identify where Intel stood within the broader talent competitor peer set, but with time we have been able to see how some of these have been increasing — which is always a good sign from an employee perception perspective.”
Once they uncovered those data points, Manuel and his team started having conversations around what the data was telling them.
By the beginning of 2018, they produced a proposed early draft of the baseline dashboard. “We saw the dashboard as something that would also help inform others within our organization who are working on employee-facing communication,” Manuel explained.
Then they scheduled some follow-up deep dive conversations that have been able to target what this dashboard would mean for certain regions and markets, which Manuel shared will be valuable for them moving forward.
At a high level, Manuel and his team know that having an EB dashboard is important for three main reasons.
The first is being able to assess their employer brand’s awareness and perception. “We want to be able to see how well Intel engages with both our external and internal audiences, and what the overall perception towards our brand is,” explains Manuel. “As well as the many KPIs that go along with it, for us to gain insight about the talent we’re trying to attract as a company, that continues to transform itself.”
Their second reason is to be able to see where they stand against the pack. “There’s a lot of folks we compete against from an employer branding perspective,” explains Manuel. “So we want to see how well we are positioned in comparison to the key talent competitors and whether or not there are positive trends in our favor as we continue to launch new programs and initiatives.”
Manuel shares that the third and final reason is to be able to produce, interpret, and share all sorts of different insights from the KPIs that make their dashboard which are then shared with other key stakeholders and management. “We need to find out when they will be opportunities for us to do better from an employer branding perspective,” says Manuel. “These insights can also help inform a lot of the messaging we will need to create specifically for our external and internal target segments — ensuring that we cover the key messages our audiences care most about.”
Their next step is working to evolve and expand the dashboard.
Intel’s current baseline employer brand dashboard has been in effect for the past few months, but now their team is keen on further evolving their current structure that will increase specificity and impact to their organization and key stakeholders.
“Now that we have established our current baseline, we know it needs to evolve to tell a broader story that will best serve the needs of those within our organization and our key business partners,” says Manuel. “The next natural step is to continue evolving the dashboard for us to be able to include a lot of further insights and think about how we segment the dashboard in a way that will increase the overall impact for us and our main business groups.”
Now that they have a good picture of Intel’s brand as a whole, Manuel plans to start looking at the various targeted segments — such as autonomous driving, artificial intelligence, and 5G — where Intel is investing the most. “And as we look at those, we are planning to evolve in a way that’s reflective of where we’re focused as a company from a diversity and inclusion perspective,” says Manuel.
As for advice he would give to people developing dashboards of their own, Manuel shares that he would not recommend going it alone.
“Reach out to a lot of the business partners you may have, and let them know what is it that you want to create,” Manuel said. “Once you start explaining your need and what is it you want to attain with the employer brand dashboard, you’ll end up being amazed by how many people have, not only ideas, but how many people out there can actually be the source of several KPIs out there.”
As a starting point, Manuel recommends reaching out to people both internally and externally to benchmark and ask for advice.
“Now that I’m part of the Talent Marketing Board, and I see these conversations going on, I can see how helpful it can be to reach out to other professionals within your field who may be working for other companies and see if some of them would be willing to share what they’re doing,” said Manuel. “I wish I could have joined the Talent Marketing Board much earlier in order for me to make my life a little bit easier.”
