Employer branding

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The term employer brand was first used in the early 1990s to denote an organisation’s
reputation as an employer.[1] Since then, it has become widely adopted by the global management
community.[2] [3][4] Minchington (2005) defines your employer brand as “the image of your
organisation as a ‘great place to work’ in the mind of current employees and key stakeholders in
the external market (active and passive candidates, clients, customers and other key
stakeholders). The art and science of employer branding is therefore concerned with the
attraction, engagement and retention initiatives targeted at enhancing your company's employer
brand." [5].
Just as a customer brand proposition is used to define a product or service offer, an employer
brand proposition (otherwise referred to as an employer value proposition, employee value
proposition or EVP) is used to define an organisation’s employment offer. Likewise the
marketing disciplines associated with branding and brand management have been increasingly
applied by the human resources and talent management community to attract, engage and retain
talented candidates and employees, in the same way that marketing applies such tools to
attracting and retaining clients, customers and consumers.

Contents
[hide]
• 1 Origin and adoption of the employer brand concept
• 2 Employer branding
• 3 Employer brand management
• 4 Employer brand proposition
• 5 Relationship between employer branding and internal marketing
• 6 Role of employer brand management in brand-led culture change
• 7 References
• 8 External links

[edit] Origin and adoption of the employer brand concept

The term ‘employer brand’ was first publicly introduced to a management audience in 1990,[6]
and defined by Simon Barrow, chairman of People in Business, and Tim Ambler, Senior Fellow
of London Business School, in the Journal of Brand Management in December 1996.[7] 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.[8] 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.[9]
The first book on the subject was published in 2005,[10] and the second in 2006 [11]. 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, with the observation that: “When I started out in the profession, nobody talked about
employer branding. Now it's absolutely integral to business strategy - resonating well beyond the
doors of the HR department”.[12] Similar recognition of the growing importance of employer
brand thinking and practice has also been recently in evidence in the USA,[13] Australasia,[14]
Asia,[15][16][17] and Europe,[18][19][20][21] with the publication of numerous books on the subject.
[edit] Employer branding
While the term ‘employer brand’ denotes what people currently associate with an organisation,
employer branding has been defined as the sum of a company’s efforts to communicate to
existing and prospective staff what makes it a desirable place to work,[22] and the active
management of a company’s image as seen through the eyes of its associates and potential hires.
[23]

[edit] Employer brand management

Employer brand management expands the scope of this brand intervention beyond
communication to incorporate every aspect of the employment experience, and the people
management processes and practices (often referred to as ‘touch-points’) that shape the
perceptions of existing and prospective employees.[24] In other words, employer brand
management addresses the reality of the employment experience and not simply its presentation.
By doing so it supports both external recruitment of the right kind of talent sought by an
organisation to achieve its goals, and the subsequent desire for effectiveemployee engagement
and employee retention.
[edit] Employer brand proposition
As for consumer brands, most employer brand practitioners and authors argue that effective
employer branding and brand management requires a clear Employer Brand proposition,[25] also
regularly referred to as an Employer value proposition or Employee value proposition (EVP).
This serves to: define what the organisation would most like to be associated with as an
employer; highlight the attributes that differentiate the organisation from other employers; and
clarify the ‘give and get’ of the employment deal (balancing the value that employees are
expected to contribute with the value from employment that they can expect in return). This
latter aspect of the employer brand proposition is often referred to in the HR literature as the
‘psychological contract’.
[edit] Relationship between employer branding and internal
marketing
Internal marketing focuses on communicating the customer brand promise, and the attitudes and
behaviours expected from employees to deliver on that promise.[26][27] While it is clearly
beneficial to the organisation for employees to understand their role in delivering the customer
brand promise,[28] the effectiveness of internal marketing activities can often be short-lived if the
brand values on which the service experience is founded are not experienced by the employees in
their interactions with the organisation.[29] This is the gap that employer brand thinking and
practice seeks to address with a more mutually beneficial employment deal / Psychological
contract.
[edit] Role of employer brand management in brand-led
culture change
Compared with the more typically customer centric focus of Internal marketing, internal
branding / brand engagement takes a more ‘inside-out’, value-based approach to shaping
employee perceptions and behaviours, following the lead of the highly influential ‘Built to Last:
Successful Habits of Visionary Companies’ study published in the mid-90’s.[30] This sought to
demonstrate that companies with consistent, distinctive and deeply held values tended to
outperform those companies with a less clear and articulated ethos. While brand-led culture
change is often the stated desire of these programmes their focus on communication-led,
marketing methods (however, involving or experiential) has been prone to the same failings of
conventional internal marketing.[31][32] As Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, asserts: “One of things
you find in companies is that once a culture is formed it takes nuclear weaponry to change it”.[33]
You cannot simply assert your way to a new culture, no more can you assert your way to a strong
brand, it needs to be consistently and continuously shaped and managed, which is one of the
primary reasons many organisations have turned from the short term engagement focus of
internal branding initiatives to more long term focus of employer brand management.[34]
[edit] References
1. ^ Barrow, S. and Mosley, R. The Employer Brand, Bringing the Best of Brand Management to
People at Work, John Wiley & Sons, Chichester.
2. ^ Minchington, B (2010) Employer Brand Leadership – A Global Perspective, Collective
Learning Australia.
3. ^ Martin, G (2009) Employer Branding and corporate reputation management, The Peak
Performing Organisation, Chapter 13, pp 252, Routledge, London.
4. ^ Edwards, M. R., (2010), An integrative review of employer branding and OB theory, Personnel
Review Vol.39, No.1, pp.5-23
5. ^ Minchington, B (2010) Employer Brand Leadership – A Global Perspective, Collective
Learning Australia.
6. ^ Barrow, S. (1990), ‘Turning recruitment advertising into a competitive weapon’, Paper
delivered at the CIPD Annual Conference, Harrogate, UK.
7. ^ Ambler, T and Barrow, S. (1996), The employer brand, The Journal of Brand Management,
Vol. 4, pp185-206.
8. ^ Dell, D and Ainspan, N (2001), Engaging employees through your brand, Conference Board
Report No. R-1288-01-RR, April, Conference Board, Washington, D.C.
9. ^ The Economist (2003), Employer Branding Survey.
10.^ Barrow, S. and Mosley, R. The Employer Brand, Bringing the Best of Brand Management to
People at Work, John Wiley & Sons, Chichester.
11.^ Minchington, B (2006) Your Employer Brand – attract, engage, retain, Collective Learning
Australia.
12.^ 8
13.^ Sartain, L and Schumann, M. (2006), Brand from the Inside, John Wiley & Sons, San
Francisco.
14.^ Minchington, B (2006) Your Employer Brand – attract, engage, retain, Collective Learning
Australia.
15.^ Baid, P and Rao, A.R. (2006) Employer Branding, Concepts and Cases, ICFAI University
Press, Hyderbad.
16.^ Budhwar, P.S. and Bhatnagar, J. (2008) Employer Branding as a differentiator,The changing
face of people management in India, Routledge.
17.^ Zhang, Liu & Zhao (2008) 张学良 / 刘长春, 赵杰 [Employer Branding], Beijing.
18.^ Schuhmacher, F and Geschwill, R. (2008) Employer Branding – Human Resources
Management für die Unternehmensführung’ Berlin.
19.^ Petrovic, M (2008) Employer Branding, Rainer Hampp Verlag, Munich.
20.^ Engelund, H and Buchhave, B. (2009), Employer Branding Som Discipline, Samfunds
Litteratur, Copenhagen.
21.^ Rosethorn, H (2009) The Employer Brand – Keeping Faith with the Deal, Gower, Farnham.
22.^ Lloyd, S (2002), ‘Branding from the inside out’, Business Review Weekly, Vol 24 No 10,
pp64-66.
23.^ Martin, G. and Beaumont, P. (2003), Branding and People Management, CIPD Research
Report, CIPD, London.
24.^ Barrow, S. and Mosley, R. The Employer Brand, Bringing the Best of Brand Management to
People at Work, John Wiley & Sons, Chichester.
25.^ Barrow, S. and Mosley, R. The Employer Brand, Bringing the Best of Brand Management to
People at Work, John Wiley & Sons, Chichester.
26.^ Papasolomou, I and Vrontis, B (2006), ‘Using internal marketing to ignite the corporate brand’,
Journal of Brand Management, Vol 14, Nos 1/2, pp177-195.
27.^ Kotler, P. et al (2005), Principles of Marketing, Fourth European Edition, Pearson, Harlow,
England.
28.^ Mitchell, C. (2002), ‘Selling the brand inside’, Harvard Business Review, Vol.80, No.1, pp99-
105.
29.^ Mosley, R (2007) ‘Customer experience, organisational culture and the employer brand’,
Journal of Brand Management, Vol 15, October Issue pp123-134.
30.^ Collins, J and Porras, J, (1995), Built to Last, Random House, UK.
31.^ Martin, G. and Beaumont, P. (2003), Branding and People Management, CIPD Research
Report, CIPD, London.
 32.^ Machtiger, B. (2004) ‘Beware the pitfalls that kill branding efforts’ Marketing News, Vol.38,
No.4, pp21.
33.^ Smith, S. and Wheeler, J. (2002), ‘A new brand of leadership’, Managing the Customer
Experience, FT Prentice Hall, UK.
34.^ Mosley, R (2007) ‘Customer experience, organisational culture and the employer brand’,
Journal of Brand Management, Vol 15, October Issue pp123-134.

[edit] External links

• Link to useful reference site on employer brand management thinking [1]
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employer_branding"
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