Social Identity Theory: Relevance of Building

Employer Brands

Name a few successful

employer brands

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 BrandingDirector

ConsultancyHead – 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

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

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

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

Type of Metric Indicator for Successful /

Unsuccessful Brands

Externally focused metric

% of job offers

acceptedHigher 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Organizational Sucess

Employment

Construed External Image

Products or Services