Employer Branding: A New Strategic Dimension

Jyoti Bahl1 Pallavi Gupta2 Neetu Kumari3

Abstract: The idea of branding originally derived from marketing to reveal the difference among products and services of varying brands. It remained an integral part of the organisational activities related to the marketing. In the last decade, however the idea of branding has also penetrated into the field of human resource management the term employer branding. Employer brand denotes an organisation's reputation as an employer. The employer brand establishes a companys identity as an employer. It encompasses the companys value system, policies and behaviour in relation to the objective of attracting, motivating, and retaining the firms current and potential employees. It is also the sum of companys efforts to communicate to existing and prospective staff that it is a desirable place to work or that the image of the employer brand defines the potential applicants attitude towards and the perceived attributes of a job or organization. Employer branding is determined by the varying features of the organisation that proposes to employ various deserving candidates. The organisation identity, organisational philosophy, organisation image and organisation culture define its branding. The fierce competition being faced by the firms in the sphere of obtaining suitable human resources has forced them to frame appropriate strategies to ensure desired human resource capable of meeting the challenges of business. employees. Key Word: Employer Branding, Human Resource Management, Organisation Identity, Organisation Culture, Potential Employees. Employer branding has been identified as a means to ensure access to potential

1 2

Assistant Professor in Commerce, Udhampur Campus, University of Jammu. Assistant Professor in Commerce, Udhampur Campus, University of Jammu. 3 Assistant Professor in Commerce, Udhampur Campus, University of Jammu.

Introduction: Winston Churchill once declared in his speech at Harvard University in 1943 that the empires of the future would be empires of mind. Truly, the present time is facing a battle of brains along with the battle of power. Companies are competing for human resources. There is almost a war for talent. In a recently conducted international poll it was found that threefourth of the total senior human resource managers declared attracting and retaining talent as their number one priority. The survey even found that one in every three employees was being approached by another firm hoping to lure them away. Employer branding has been identified as a means to ensure access to potential employees (Branham, 2001). Basically, the role of employer branding is to present before the potential employees the firm in such a manner that it is the best one to serve them with varying benefits they expect from their job (Branham, 2001). Therefore, it can be said that employer branding is concerned with the relation between the employer and the employee. The idea of branding originally derived from marketing to reveal the difference among products and services of varying brands. It remained an integral part of the organisational activities related to the marketing where the key point lies in winning the interest of the consumers (Murphy, 1998). In the last decade, however the idea of branding has also penetrated into the field of human resource management the term employer branding. Ambler and Barrow (1996) first introduce the term as a linking chain between branding and human resource, denoting it as a marketing approach to human resource. They have defined employer branding as the development and communication of an organisations culture as an employer in the market place. Barrow and Mosley (1996) defined it as the package of functional, economic and psychological benefits provided by employment and identified with the employing company. The employer brand establishes a

companys identity as an employer. It encompasses the companys value system, policies and behaviour in relation to the objective of attracting, motivating, and retaining the firms current and potential employees (Conference Board, 2001). Employer branding is also a companys image as seen through the eyes of its associates and potential hires and it is intimately linked to the experience of what it is like to work for a company (Ruch, 2002). It can be said that it is also the sum of companys efforts to communicate to existing and prospective staff that it is a desirable place to work (Lloyd, 2002) or that the image of the employer brand defines the potential applicants attitude towards and the perceived attributes of a job or organization (Collins, Stevens, 2002). Origin of Employer Branding Employer brand denotes an organisation's reputation as an employer. The term "employer brand" was first publicly introduced to a management audience in 1990 and defined by Simon Barrow, chairperson of People in Business, and Tim Ambler, Senior Fellow of London Business School, in the Journal of Brand Management in December 1996. This academic paper was the first published attempt to test the application of brand management techniques to human resource management. Within this paper, Simon Barrow and Tim Ambler defined the employer brand as the package of functional, economic and psychological benefits provided by employment, and identified with the employing company. By 2001, of 138 leading companies surveyed by the Conference Board in North America, 40% claimed to be actively engaged in some form of employer branding activity. In 2003, an employer brand survey conducted by the Economist among a global panel of readers revealed a 61% level of awareness of the term employer brand among HR professionals and 41% among non-HR professionals. The first book on the subject was published in 2005 and the second in 2006. In 2008, Jackie Orme, the Director General of the UK Chartered Institute of Personnel Directors confirmed the growing status of the discipline in her opening address to the CIPD annual conference.

Conceptual & theoretical foundation of employer branding Employer branding is the process to communicate an organisations culture as an employer in the market place. An employer brand is the sum of all the characteristics and distinguishable features those prospective candidates and current employees perceive about an organisations employment experience. The employment experience serves as the foundation of the employer brand and includes intangible features such as salary, rewards and benefits, but also extends to intangibles such as an organisations culture, value, management style and opportunities for employee learning, development and recognition (Newell & Dopson, 1996; Hendry & Jenkins, 1997). Determinants of Employer Branding Employer branding is determined by the varying features of the organisation, which proposes to employ various deserving candidates. The organisation identity, organisational philosophy, organisation image and organisation culture define its branding. Besides, employer image and employer brand loyalty can also be regarded as the determinants of employer branding. According to Corporate Leadership Council (1999), a firms employment brand is ultimately based on its actual employment offers and its ability to deliver on its promises. Components of Employer Branding Company Brand Strength Company Culture and Environment Work Life Balance Work Environment Compensations and Benefits Importance of Employer Branding

Employer branding has been a very popular concept with HR professionals, branding consultants, and market researchers in the recent past. While attracting the right talent and retaining them becomes a critical aspect for business success, research has shown that right brand for an employer can really help in this regard. An employer brand represents the corporate identity to its current and prospective employees, headhunters, and other stakeholders who get associated with the people side of the corporate. Employer branding has external and internal aspects. The internal factors are the culture, HR practices, and the overall employment experience that a current employee has. The external factors are what a prospective employee feels about the organisation. Employer branding is a holistic process once the core value propositions are clear. Myriad of possibilities exist for spreading the employer brand. Current employees are clearly the first brand ambassadors. The benefits of having a right employer brand and conveying them effectively are many folds. First, we will get the right talent to join the organisation and the right talent to stay. The clear measure of a better employer brand would be the ratio of number of offers given to people to the number of people who finally joined. The recruitment costs and time will come down as the organisation becomes more lucrative to join and lesser effort is needed to recruit people. In the long term, the right brand will definitely help people stay and the reasons will be more than monetary considerations. The employee engagement measures will also have higher scores as the organisation itself embodies the image they want to convey resulting in a better psychological contact with the employer. The other outcome could even be that your organisation is featured as one of the best places to work! The key aspect of employer branding is to understand that it is not just about advertisements or communication collaterals it is the reflection of

what is the reality present or future that the employees experience in the organisation. Conclusion The fierce competition being faced by the firms in the sphere of obtaining suitable human resources has forced them to frame appropriate strategies to ensure desired human resource capable of meeting the challenges of business. Employer branding has been identified as a means to ensure access to potential employees. The employment markets are facing everincreasing competition and the need is to explore certain mechanisms by which potential employees evaluate prospective employers and the employee-based brand equity inherent in these evaluations.

References:
Ambler, T and Barrow, S. (1996), The employer brand, Journal of Brand Management, Vol. 4, pp. 185-206.

Barrow, S. (1990), 'Turning recruitment advertising into a competitive weapon', Paper delivered at the CIPD Annual Conference, Harrogate, UK. Barrow, S. and Mosley, R. The Employer Brand, Bringing the Best of Brand Management to People at Work, John Wiley & Sons, Chichester. Branham, L. (2001). Keeping the people who keep you in business: 24 ways to hang on to your most valuable talent. New York: American Management Association.

Collins, C.J. and Stevens, C.K. (2002): The relationship between early recruitment related activities and the application decisions of new labor market entrants: a brand equity approach to recruitment, Journal of Applied Psychology, 87(6). Pp 11211133.

The Conference Board (2001). Engaging Your Employees through Your Brand, Report no. 1288. Corporate Leadership Council (1999): The Employment Brand: Building Competitive Advantage in the Labour Market, Washington DC: Corporate Leadership Council.

Hendry, C. and Jenkins, R. (1997): Psychological Contracts and New Deals, Human Resource Management Journal, 7, pp 3844. Kotler, P. et al (2005), Principles of Marketing, Fourth European Edition, Pearson, Harlow, England. Lloyd, S (2002), "Branding from the inside out," Business Review Weekly, Vol 24 No 10, pp 64-66. Murphy, J. (1998). What is Branding in Brands: The New Wealth Creators, ed. Hart, S. & Murphy, J., 11, Inter brand. Macmillan Press Ltd. London. Newell, H. and Dopson, S. (1996): Muddle in the Middle: Organizational Restructuring and Middle Management Careers, Personnel Review, 25, pp 420.

Ruch, W. (2002). Employer Brand Revolution: a guide to building loyalty in your organisation. Retrieved January 23, 2007 from http://www.versantsolutions.com.