The second edition of Lundquist’s Employer Branding Online Awards is officially under way. So we wanted to provide some further details about how this year’s research is organised and some major developments.
The research aims to measure how well companies use the web to present themselves to current and potential employees. We are evaluating companies using a protocol of 57 criteria, which give a total of up to 100 points. The protocol has been revised based on input from more than 300 people who have answered our questionnaire (announced in April) about their expectations and experience when searching for work online.
Our first major innovation is to go beyond the idea of the corporate website as the main point of reference for users: the online corporate presence now encompasses mobile and social media, and our employer branding research reflects that reality. We have added a new section to assess these aspects specifically.
Secondly, we have devised a system of penalty points to better reflect website usability. Rather than judge a company’s online employer branding by simply counting all its “positive” aspects (through the 57 criteria), we are taking score away for “negative” elements (-0.5 per criterion). This can happen for two reasons:
>>Problems
of information architecture and menu structure that mean information is
hard to find or located in an illogical or inappropriate place
>>Problems
of usability in consulting the
website content or its functions.
We aim to extend this penalty system also to this year’s CSR Online Awards.The new employer branding evaluation protocol is therefore organised into four sections:
>>Proposition, covering information about
the company, employee benefits, ethics and responsibility (16 criteria totalling 28.5 points)
>>Application process, ranging from
information for those planning to apply, presentation of vacancies all the way
through to the application itself (20
criteria amounting to 41.5 points)
>>User experience, which measures aspects
such as navigation, visual communications and interactivity (15 criteria offering a maximum of 19 points)
>>Social and mobile experience, including
the company’s LinkedInpage (5 criteria giving up to 10 points).
A final point is available for any commendable informationor functionality not covered by our criteria.
The rankings that are currently being conducted are:
>>Europe 100 (Europe’s top 100 listed
companies based on membership of the FTSE Eurotop 100 index)
>>Italy 100 (the biggest 100 listed,
non-listed and state companies in Italy)
For a full list of companies included, please see the documents below. Further country rankings will be announced at a later date.
To have your say and get further insights about our approach to online employer branding, take the 2012 Employer Branding Online Awards survey: it takes 5 minutes of your time and consists of 25 questions (your data will be available to us only in anonymous and aggregated form, though if you leave an email address we will be happy to send you a summary of the results). You can access directly here.
Related documents for download:
Components of Lundquist Employer Branding Online Awards Europe 2012 (PDF 225 Kb)
Components of Lundquist EmployerBranding Online Awards Italy 2012 (PDF 225 Kb)