A description of employer branding- based on research papers

1. Social Identity Theory:
Relevance of Building
Employer Brands

2. Name a few successful
employer brands

5. Methodology
 Asked whether terms “successful”
and “unsuccessful” applied to
branding
 Asked to characterize successful
and unsuccessful brands
 Name firms with successful and
unsuccessful brands
 Clarify and further explore their
characterization
Area Of Expertise Position Company
Employer Branding
Director
Consultancy
Head – Branding Team
Internal/ External
Employee
Communications
Director
Manager Internal
Communication
Employee
Communication
Consultancy
Employee Attraction/
Retention
Director and COO
Director HR, Asia Pacific
Head of Practice
Improvement
HR Consultancy
Fortune 500 Firm
Data collection and analysis
Expert industry panel –
17 semi-structured interviews in 6
months – 13 industry participants
Diversity of experience across
companies, industries and
countries

6. Verbatim transcripts of interview
and field notes were coded
countries
Common themes were identified – closely
related themes were merged
Final check to find that interpretations were
resonant with data captured
Constructs were compared for establishing
relationships
Themes grouped to form constructs
Methodology

7. Characteristics Consistent with
consumer and Corporate Branding
Being known and noticeable
even if you have a brand, how do people understand the brand?
Does the recruitment team deliver the brand on the outside?
the supermarket Aisle example
Being seen as relevant
company knows what its employees value, carry and
communicate it effectively
bad brand is when it doesn’t translate into potential hire’s
perspective
Being differentiated from direct competitors
are you saying the Unique things?
you need to look at emotional reasons why you are different
bad brands are soulless; they tell nothing about identity or
character of organization

8. Additional characteristics
Fulfilling a psychological contract
a good employer makes you want to work, and gives you an accurate
idea of what it is about.
brand is an on-going promise – your HR and line must be on the same
page.
Employees have many interactions with firms’ values, culture and
policies
Unintended appropriation of brand values
employees cannot distinguish an employing firm prior to employment
like it can experience a McD or Pizza Hut
An employee thinks like a consumer before joining. They like the
honeymoon period of 3 months - the logo attracts them to work
Later , only the work matters – the people, processes and the thought
matters

9. Type of Metric Indicator for Successful /
Unsuccessful Brands
Externally focused metric
% of job offers
accepted
Higher than industry average
= attractive brandApplicants /
Role
Internally Focused Metric
Average Length
of Tenure
Higher than industry average =
attractive
Average Staff
turnover
Lower than industry average =
contract fulfilled
Level of staff
engagement
Higher than industry average =
contract fulfilled

10.  Alignment of HR and Marketing
Employee behavior and customer
satisfaction are aligned
Employer brand impacts expectations and
experiences at every stage of employee life
cycle- even after separation
 Employment experience as a product
Firms culture, policy are core product.
HR acts as the exchange between product
manager and the developer
Change management, manages the
intangible and emotive aspects of
experience

11. Strategic considerations
1. Communication
Breakdown
- Employee not attracted
- Contract fulfilled
4. Sustained success
- Employee attracted
- Contract fulfilled
3. Long term
disconnect
- Employee not attracted
- Contract unfilled
2. Strategy
Mismatch
- Employee attracted
- Contract unfulfilled
Strategy

12. Employer Branding: Employer attractiveness and the
use of social media
A study aimed to investigate the factors employers should focus
on in their employer branding
Tested EmpAt and analyzed relationships between dimensions of
the scale and use of social media in relation to corporate
reputation and intentions to apply for a job
In order to improve the reputation and increase attractiveness,
employers need to strengthen the company’s name as a brand,
and this is labelled as employer branding

15. EmpAT
Interest Value which
encompasses innovation and
interest in product/services
Social value which refers to the
work environment and relations
to other employees
Economic value which relates to
economic benefits
Development value which points
to the possibility for future
opportunities
Application Value which
encompasses the possibility
to use what has been learnt
already
Developed by Berthon (2005) and derived from Ambler and Barrow’s
dimensions for psychological, functional and economic benefits, it
consists of 25 items across 5 dimensions

16. Social media has opened a new
way for organizations to attract
talent
Advertisement of job vacancies has
become common
Internet has also enabled employers to find
passive job seekers along with active ones
This helps organizations to find and
evaluate candidates at lower costs
Social Media

17. Hypothesis used
H1: Potential employees’
perception of the five dimensions
of employer attractiveness has a
positive relation with their
perception of a good corporate
reputation
H2 : Potential employees’
perception of employers’ use of
social media has a positive
relation with a good corporate
reputation
H3 : High corporate reputation
has a positive relation with the
potential employees’ intention to
apply for a job
H4 : Potential employees’
perception of employers’ use of
social media positively
moderates the relationship
between corporate reputation
and potential employees’
intention to apply for a job

18. 1. Participants: Norwegian
engineering students
2. Three firms students had to
choose from were Statoil, Aker
Solutions and Kongsberg
3. Link for a web based survey
was made available
4. Respondents were asked to
state how familiar they were
with the firms and answer only
the questions related to the
firms they had knowledge about
5. 184 engineering students
responded with a total of 366
answers

19. 1. Employer attractiveness: Measured
using 25 indicators of EmpAt on a 7
point Likert scale
2. Corporate reputation: Measured using
a scale developed by Turban (1998)
consisting of 4 indicators such as ‘I
have heard good things about the firm’
and were measured on a 5 point scale
3. Intentions to apply for a job: Was
measured using a scale developed by
Highhouse (2003). 5 items such as ‘I
would accept a job from this company’
on a 5 point scale
4. Social Media: Measured using a scale
developed by Collins and Stevens
(2002).4 indicators such as ‘I have
seen advertising of jobs on social
media by this organization’ on a 5 point
scale

20. Results
• There was a significant positive relations between innovation
value and corporate reputation, psychological value and
corporate reputation, application value and corporate
reputation
• No relation was found between social dimension or economic
dimension and corporate reputation. Therefore, H1 partly
confirmed
• No interaction effect was found of social media between
reputation and intentions to apply. Therefore, H4 is not
supported
• Social media linked positively to reputation and there was also
positive relation between reputation and intentions to apply,
supporting H2 and H3
• There was a significant relation between psychological value
and intention to apply

21. Implications
• Findings show how monetary questions are less important in
attracting and retaining employee compared to non-monetary
factors
• Potential employees, who feel they are going to feel better
about themselves and feel more self confident if they work in a
specific organizations, are also more likely to think about
applying to those organizations
• Use of social media in employer branding can be helpful in
building good reputation
• Corporate reputation has a significant effect on the intention of
someone to apply

22. Social Media: Harnessing the power of word of
mouth for employer branding
Today, word of mouth, both externally and internally, can spread
stories faster and wider through social media. The results can be
both positive and negative for the reputations
55% of employees do not see the business benefit in using the
social media
Only 15% of employees think that personal and work accounts
should be the same
Only 15.6% of employees know how to represent their employer’s
brand on social media platforms

23. 1. Organizations need to realize how
different portions of workforce use
different social media channels in
different ways
2. It’s crucial that organizations
create an effective social media
strategy from which they can
formulate policy
3. That way, everyone will be more
aware about what they are
publishing via social media
4. Companies need to remember the
power of getting internal
stakeholders to advocate their
brand via word of mouth

24. We have looked at how social
should an organization’s social
media channel be and who
should an organization be
engaging with and how
Social media represents a
golden opportunity to engage
employees and create brand
ambassadors. Social media is
about sharing and
recommendations. 65.1% of
employee have no involvement
with their organizations on social
media
Using social media,
organizations can shape and
determine their employer
branding to create one unified
voice for all internal and external
communication
In spite of a lot of buzz around
hiring via social media, very few
organizations seemed to be
really doing so and truly
harnessing these channels for
recruitment. This needs to be
changed

26. Organizational
Sucess
Employment
Construed
External
Image
Products or
Services