Employer Branding Dimensions Research Articles

Factors influencing employer branding

PurposeCompanies have to consider people as one of the most important resources. Especially, the combination of demanding work and academic workers requires activities with regard to employer branding. An employer brand is an intangible asset that allows companies to look for motivated and capable employees (Hillebrandt, 2013). Consequently, the concept of employer branding can be used (Brickson, 2005; Heilmann et al., 2013). The purpose of this paper is to supplement the first empirical investigations with students as new employees (e.g. Daniel et al., 2015) by the perceptions of potential employees in less powerful, i.e. more rural, regions.Design/methodology/approachThis paper summarizes existing findings and enhances two empirical investigations of 431 students of a technical university in a medium-sized city and 211 students of a university of applied sciences in a rural region in Germany. The data collection and analysis will focus on different methodical alternatives of identifying important drivers and dimensions of employer branding, as well as identifying different groups of potential employees and gender differences.FindingsThe paper highlights the need of the underrepresented but successful consideration of group specific analyses and following strategies in case of employer branding. The existing approaches of the establishment of an employer branding concepts can be improved through more suitable strategy elements when the addressees are better known.Originality/valueThe findings allow new insights, especially to smaller regions and companies and the awareness of group-specific analyses in general and in case of the development of an employer branding concept.

Linking dimensions of employer branding and turnover intentions

PurposeThis paper aims to explore the impact of employer branding dimensions i.e. social value, interest value, economic value, development value and application value on turnover intentions (TIs) of employees working in Indian information technology (IT) sector organizations.Design/methodology/approachA total of 380 junior-, middle- and senior-level executives have been surveyed using a structured questionnaire to measure employees’ perception with respect to the dimensions of employer branding and TIs. Hypotheses have been tested using multiple regression analysis.FindingsEmployer branding dimensions are negatively correlated with employees’ TIs, and two dimensions (social value and development value) are significant predictors of TIs.Practical implicationsHigher perceived value in employer brand reduces the TIs. Higher employee retention rates further lead to reduction in the cost of hiring and training of new employees, thereby contributing to the profitability of any organization. Hence, practical relevance is there for handling employee turnover and theoretical importance is for further enhancing the talent management concepts.Originality/valueUniqueness of this study lies in its approach. The role of organizational-level factors rather than individualistic characteristics has been analyzed as predictors of the employees’ decision to leave their organization. Furthermore, the sample of progressive Indian IT sector executives adds to the originality of the work.

Employer branding and talent retention: perceptions of employees in higher education institutions in Uganda

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine, empirically the relationship between employer branding attributes of reward strategy, people orientedness and; leadership and development on talent retention in institutions of higher learning in Uganda.Design/methodology/approachIn a cross-sectional study, data were obtained form 218 respondents from two public universities. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modeling were employed to analyze the data.FindingsThe paper has two major findings: first, CFA maintained three dimensions of employer branding, namely; reward strategy, people orientedness and; leadership and development; and second, only reward strategy and people orientedness emerged as significant predictors of talent retention.Originality/valueThe results suggest that institutions of higher learning that embrace reward people orientedness strategies as measures for employer branding succeed in retaining their employees for longer.

Untapped Relationship between Employer Branding, Anticipatory Psychological Contract and Intent to Join

In the ever-changing business environment and fluctuating expectations of current generation from its employer, employer branding has become an important tool for organizations to establish themselves as the employer of choice amongst prospective employees. It is serving as the strategic tool for all the sectors to attract and retain the right pool of employees to gain strategic advantage and edge over competitors. The purpose of this article is to identify the dimensions of employer branding and its impact on the formation of anticipatory psychological contract (APC) and final intent of a candidate to join an organization. Using the qualitative data collected through semi-structured interviews from final year students of MCA and B.Tech., it provides an insight into how various dimensions of employer branding lead to the formation of APC and generates the final intent among the candidates to join an organization. It comprehensively analyzes the relationship between all three constructs, employer branding, APC and a candidate’s intent to join an organization in the form of a conceptual framework. The result reflects the direct relationship between employer branding and a candidate’s intent to join an organization and indirect relationship with APC as a mediator between the two. It also demonstrates the direct relationship between employer branding and APC. Managerial implications of the study are also discussed.

Recruiting nurses through social media: Effects on employer brand and attractiveness.

To investigate whether and how nurses' exposure to a hospital's profile on social media affects their perceptions of the hospital's brand and attractiveness as an employer. Since in many places across the globe hospitals are struggling with nursing shortages, competition is rising to be perceived as an attractive employer by this target group. Organizations are increasingly using social media for recruitment, however, little is known about its effects on potential applicants' perceptions of the organization as an employer. We thus examine whether these effects occur and rely on the media richness theory to explain the mechanisms at play. A between-subjects experimental design was applied. Three conditions were used: a control group, one condition that required visiting the Facebook page of a hospital and one condition that required visiting the LinkedIn page. The focal organization was an existing Belgian hospital which had a LinkedIn and a Facebook page. An online questionnaire was sent to nursing students and employed nurses over 5months in 2015-2016. Nurses' exposure to the hospital's Facebook or LinkedIn page had a significant positive effect on a majority of the employer brand dimensions, both instrumental and symbolic. In addition, nurses who visited the Facebook page felt more attracted to working at the hospital. Most of these effects were mediated by social presence. Nurses' perceptions of employers can be positively influenced by seeing a hospital's social media page. Hospitals can thus employ social media to improve their employer brand image and attractiveness.

Employer brand scale development and validation: a second-order factor approach

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to conceptualise, develop and validate a scale to measure the employer brand from the perspective of existing employees.Design/methodology/approachThe methodology entailed the compilation of a literature review and conduction of qualitative interviews to generate items. Five employer brand dimensions have been derived through exploratory factor analysis and further validated through confirmatory factor analysis by using a separate data of 313 employees. Also, the employer brand has been specified as a second-order factor that is determined by five first-order factors.FindingsA final 23-item EB scale covering five dimensions of the employer brand has been developed. The dimensions identified are: a healthy work atmosphere, training and development, work-life balance, ethics and corporate social responsibility, and compensation and benefits. Also, the higher order measurement model suggests that employer brand is most influenced by the “healthy work atmosphere” dimension. These dimensions reflect the perceptions of existing employees regarding their organisation. The scale is found to be psychometrically sound for measuring the employer brand.Practical implicationsThe scale is useful for both researchers and practitioners. A deeper insight into the dimensions may help managers to identify their impact on organisational outcomes like employee satisfaction, employee retention, commitment and productivity. Also, organisations can measure the perceptions of employees for identifying improvement gaps and developing effective attraction and retention strategies. The scale also provides researchers with a sought-after conceptualisation of employer brand.Originality/valueThe authors believe that the study is the first of its kind wherein the employer brand has been modelled as a second-order factor from the perspective of the existing employees.

Assessing the Relative Importance of Employer Branding Dimensions on Retention of Employees A Case of Private Schools of Karachi

This study explores several dimensions of employer branding in terms of their significance and assessing their impact on the retention capabilities of current employees with different job tenure within the private schools of Karachi. The concept of employer branding has gained significant popularity among the organizations where they are striving to attract and retain the high potential pool of employees for their success. The independent variables for this study are interest, social, economic, development and application values; and their impact on retention of employees as dependent variable. This study is quantitative in nature and encompasses the Post Positivism paradigm. The deductive approach is employed and survey method is opted for this research. Questionnaires were distributed to 400 school teachers in different private schools of Karachi. The quota sampling method has been used. The study entails descriptive analysis, Pearson correlations, t-tests of independent populations, and regression analysis. The results indicate that all factors of employer branding have significant impact on the retention of employees. However, the impact is greater on employees with 3-5 years of experience than employees with less than 1 year. The results also showed that “Social Values” are the most preferred factor by both populations. The educational industry can use the results for designing their human resource policies and practices for retaining the best talent pool and creating a great workplace as strong employer brand.

Assessing the relative importance of employer branding dimensions on retention of employees: A case of private schools of Karachi

This study explores several dimensions of employer branding namely work environment, social aspect, compensation structure, development value and knowledge sharing in terms of their impact on the retention of employees with varying job tenures within the private schools of Karachi. The results of descriptive analysis, Pearson correlation, t-tests of independent populations and regression analysis reveal that Social Aspect and Development Values are the two most preferred dimensions of the employer brand, followed by Work Environment. The results of this research can be used by the education industry in developing human resource policies and practices that cultivate a learning and growth oriented culture and resultantly strengthen the employer brand.

Employer Branding: A Brand Equity‐based Literature Review and Research Agenda

AbstractOver the past two decades, scholarly interest in employer branding has strongly increased. Simultaneously, however, employer branding research has developed into a fragmented field with heterogeneous interpretations of the employer branding concept and its scope, which has impeded further theoretical and empirical advancement. To strengthen the foundation for future work, this paper takes a brand equity perspective to review the extant literature and create an integrative model of employer branding. Using an analytical approach, the authors identify 187 articles, which they integrate along different employer brand dimensions and branding strategies: (i) conceptual; (ii) employer knowledge dimensions; (iii) employer branding activities and strategies. On the basis of this review, the authors develop an employer branding value chain model and derive future research avenues as well as practical implications.

The Effect of Employer Brand Dimensions on Organisational Commitment: Evidence from Indian IT Industry

The purpose of the present research is to explore the relationships between employer branding dimensions and organisational commitment. The reliability and validity of the model has been addressed through confirmatory factor analysis. Structural equation modelling has been used to determine the contribution of employer branding through organisational commitment. The results demonstrate that two dimensions of employer branding, namely development value and social value act as critical predictors of organisational commitment. The study understands the role of employer branding from existing employees’ perspective in a developing nation like India.

The effect of employer brand dimensions on job satisfaction: gender as a moderator

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to identify key dimensions of employer brand (EB) and empirically examine the impact of different dimensions of EB upon job satisfaction. A six-factor EB model has been tested for reliability and validity through confirmatory factor analysis. The study also addresses the moderating role of gender in the relationship between EB dimensions and job satisfaction.Design/methodology/approach– Structural equation modelling has been adopted to determine the contribution of EB dimensions towards job satisfaction of employees. Key dimensions of EB are identified through literature review. Item generation has been done through literature review and exploratory structured interviews with employees.Findings– The results demonstrate that EB acts as a critical predictor of job satisfaction. All the six dimensions of EB (training and development, reputation, organisation culture and ethics and corporate social responsibility, work-life balance and diversity) were found to be critical predictors of job satisfaction. Also, gender is found to have moderating effect on the relationship between EB dimensions and job satisfaction.Originality/value– This study avers that EB can prove to be an important antecedent of job satisfaction. The construct EB in this study reflects an understanding of EB from a newer lens from the perspective of existing employees of a developing country and also demonstrates the moderating role of gender.

A Study on the Correlation of Leadership Styles and the Political Behaviours of Employees in Workplaces

Contemporary companies are giving considerable importance to satisfaction of their internal customers as well as satisfying their exterior customers by their goods and products. In tis context, employer branding- an important concept developed by Simon Borrow- has been accepted as one of the most important developments of 1990s and myriad of companies has started to give importance to the mentioned point (Tüzüner, et al., 2009). Difficulties in finding talented employees, has made employer branding popular especially in service sector (Berthon vd. 2005; Knox and Freeman, 2006). According to information supplied from career portals, nowadays the highest number of job applications are being made to banking sector hence we were curious about this spesific sector in our study. Main sample of this study is composed of applicants that made job application to Albaraka Türk Participation Bank in the last three months prior to the design of this study. Aim of the study is measuring effects of employer branding dimensions in these applicant’s applicaitons behaviours and analyzing the relationship between their brand perceptions related to Albarak Türk Participation Bank and their levels of education and job experiences. With these purposes we used Berthon’s Employer Attractiveness Scale. Our survey has been applied to 500 job applicants from various education and experience levels and we used easy sampling method in choosing these applicants. Our survey, composed of 25 questions and Likert answer key with 7 answers has been brought to applicants via email and results have been analyzed by SPSS program. Our findings showed that rather than experience leves, education levels makes difference in appilicants perceptions about employer brand of the bank.

Creating Employer Brand

Contemporary companies are giving considerable importance to satisfaction of their internal customers as well as satisfying their exterior customers by their goods and products. In tis context, employer branding- an important concept developed by Simon Borrow- has been accepted as one of the most important developments of 1990s and myriad of companies has started to give importance to the mentioned point (Tüzüner, et al., 2009). Difficulties in finding talented employees, has made employer branding popular especially in service sector (Berthon vd. 2005; Knox and Freeman, 2006). According to information supplied from career portals, nowadays the highest number of job applications are being made to banking sector hence we were curious about this spesific sector in our study. Main sample of this study is composed of applicants that made job application to Albaraka Türk Participation Bank in the last three months prior to the design of this study. Aim of the study is measuring effects of employer branding dimensions in these applicant’s applicaitons behaviours and analyzing the relationship between their brand perceptions related to Albarak Türk Participation Bank and their levels of education and job experiences. With these purposes we used Berthon’s Employer Attractiveness Scale. Our survey has been applied to 500 job applicants from various education and experience levels and we used easy sampling method in choosing these applicants. Our survey, composed of 25 questions and Likert answer key with 7 answers has been brought to applicants via email and results have been analyzed by SPSS program. Our findings showed that rather than experience leves, education levels makes difference in appilicants perceptions about employer brand of the bank.

IS EMPLOYER BRANDING A CHALLENGE FOR HIGH-CONTACT SERVICE INDUSTRIES? INSIGHTS FROM THE HOSPITALITY SECTOR IN POLAND

High-contact service industries involve close and direct customer-employee interaction for a prolonged period; consequently they rely on the knowledge, skills and abilities of their staff. Growing recognition of the significance of this interaction for service organisations‘ performance has led to the need to increase efforts to attract and retain high-quality human recourses. Effectiveness of these efforts can be supported by applying employer branding practices. To develop a sound employer value proposition, company needs to examine internal employer brand image first. The purpose of the paper is twofold: first, to identify the hospitality industry‘s strengths and weaknesses in the context of employer branding, second, to investigate the differential effects of selected factors on perceived industry attractiveness as a workplace. The research was conducted on the group of 331 hospitality workers in Poland. Data were collected through self-administered questionnaires. The study revealed that the best perceived employer brand dimension was social value, the worst – economic value. There was a significant negative association between the willingness to recommend the sector as an employer to others and all of the employer brand dimensions under investigation, with job content yielding the strongest relationship. The analysis further showed that perceptions of rewards received in the workplace were higher for men, selfemployed or having indefinite contracts, occupying managerial positions, and working in micro entities and in accommodation services. Results of the investigation prove that it is a challenging task to position hospitality firms in the minds of potential employees as a great place to work. Organisations that try to attract human recourses by presenting an overly positive picture of their employment experience are likely to encourage unrealistic expectations in newcomers with subsequent disappointment and decreased job performance.

Employees' commitment to brands in the service sector: Luxury hotel chains in Thailand

In the past, many service brands have applied a consumer-goods approach to branding to respond to a more competitive environment. This approach emphasises the role of advertising in building a strong brand, but underestimates the role played by employees in developing the brand during their interactions with customers. More recently, the development of models that provide an understanding of the process of building a powerful service brand has emphasised the role of employees and their contribution to enhance brand equity. The role of employees in building the brand and making the brand ‘come alive’ is seen as essential. Employees must be committed to demonstrating the brand values (as expressed by top management) each time a customer interacts with the brand. The present research explores employees’ brand commitment in the hotel industry in a highly competitive market (the 5-star hotel category in Bangkok). Employees’ brand commitment is defined as the extent to which employees experience a sense of identification and involvement with the brand values of the company they work for. The dimensions of employer brand (the organisation's image as seen through the eyes of associates and potential hires) are used as independent variables for explaining the level of employee's commitment to their company's brand.