Employer Branding

Executive Summary

Employee attraction and retention will continue to play an important role for companies. Vacancies needs to be filled with qualified and flexible talents which are limited available on the HR market. Thus companies have to create effective instruments for fighting for talents. Before compiling a strategy for initiating an Employer Branding development, this working paper analyzes the needs for Employer Branding as well as the elements influencing the attractiveness of an Employer. According to surveys mentioned in the following chapters, it is proven that a strong Employer Brand has a significant influence in the employees performance and that a strong product brand can essentially support the development of the employment brand. The attributes playing highest role in Employer Branding importance are reputation of products and services, corporate culture and work environment.

The practical roadmap for initiating an Employer Branding strategy consist of a four step system. Embedded system elements are (1) assess, (2) construct, (3) implement and (4) measure. In the phase of setting up an Employer Branding strategy as well as measuring its effectiveness, a benchmarking with other company’s efforts and best practices can be helpful. Some sources and success stories are listed later in this assignment.

A number of examples and numerous researches reflected in this paper allow to state

that an investment in a strong Employer Branding is a good investment in the company’s future.

Table of Contents

  Executive Summary  2

Table of  Contents  3

  List of abbreviations  4

  List of figures  5

1.  Introduction  1

2.  Definitions  1

2.1  Brand Identity  1

2.2  Employer Branding  2

3.  Why a company needs Employer Branding  3

3.1  Attract and retain talents  3

3.2  Effect on employee performance  4

4.  What influence Employer Branding  5

4.1  The Product and Employer Brands  5

4.2  Elements to define Employer Branding  7

5.  The Employer Branding process a practical roadmap  8

5.1  Process of Employer Branding development  8

5.2  Internal marketing  10

5.3  Challenges critical areas  10

5.4  Employer Branding success stories  11

5.4.1  Award for Excellence in Employer Branding  11

5.4.2  Most attractive European employers  12

6.  Conclusion  13

  Bibliography  15

  ITM Checklist 360 Analysis  17

  Declaration  19

List of abbreviations

  HR Human Resource  

  PR Public Relations  

  M million  

  DNA deoxyribonucleic  acid

List of figures

  Figure 1: The Brand Pyramid  

  Figure 2: The connection between a company s Product Brand  and

  Employment Brand  

  Figure 3: The most attractive Employer in Europe  

1. Introduction

The global market, the current demographical trends and other challenges will produce a shortage of talents. During the last decade, many labour markets had encountered a shortage of skilled labour. In fact, whole industrial branches have had serious problems to fill vacancies. Many have forecast horror scenarios for the labour market, whereas others have created strategic concepts to cope with it.

Employee attraction and retention will continue to be an important issue for many companies in the beginning of the 21 st century. The new up-coming competition for talents draws the attention on a new strategy, in order to deal with the future challenge

- Employer Branding.

What supports a company's effort to built a strategy for developing his Employer Branding and to motivate his staff in order to withstand this competition for talents? To answer theses questions, the next chapters focus on the relevance of employer branding and on a concept of strategic Employer Brand management.

2. Definitions

2.1 Brand Identity

A brand image refers to how the target market perceives the brand. A brand identity is

the message sent out by the brand through its advertising, product form, name, visual signs etc. But what image people have of the brand can be quite different from the message that the company is seeking to communicate. Management should plan the brand identity since this the key to acceptance in the market 1 .

Kapfferer 2 introduced the concept of the brand pyramid, consisting of three levels, 3 The fundamental code is the brand core in the top of the

further on used by Doyle.

pyramid which remains fixed over the time. The middle level of the pyramid is the brand style which expresses the brand core in terms of the culture it conveys, its personality and its self-image. The base level of the brand pyramid consists of the brand themes which are how the brand currently communicates through its name, advertising etc.

1 Doyle (2002), p. 163

2 Kapfferer (1997)

3 Doyle (2002), p. 163

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