Promises in action: The role of employer brand, employee value proposition and employee experience in delivering on psychological contract expectations

Abstract

The shifting world of work and the resultant impact on organizations has fundamentally changed the relationship between employees and employers. With the reality of changing workforce demographics, gig-workers, nomad work and evolving talent marketplaces placing organizational talent supply processes under pressure, there is a need to evaluate the effectiveness of people management practices to access talent pools. In particular, the impact of employer branding, the employee value proposition, and the employee experience on attracting and retaining talent has to be re-evaluated in light of shifting expectations. We propose that traditional human resource (HR) practices, which have predominantly been focused on procedural elements of the employee lifecycle, have to evolve to intentionally create more human-centric working environments. This implies incorporating principles from design thinking and servicebased design, which positions the human being as the focal point. A shift towards a more human-centric perspective should not be disconnected from the contextual realities of the organization and its objectives while also taking the dynamic nature of the evolving psychological contract into account. The purpose of this article can be described as follows. First, we aim to discuss the psychological contract as the focal point for aligning employer brand, employee value propositions and employee experience. Second, we propose an employee-centric design methodology for human resource practices and third, we illustrate the use and application of this method by applying it to the off-boarding process in a global organization.