Employer Branding

Author(s)

Dr Shikha Sharma

Affiliations

Senior Project Manager, Olam Solutions Pvt. Ltd; and Resource Person, Department of Public Administration, Panjab University, Chandigarh

Abstract

Human resources lay the very foundation in growth of SMEs’ that has emerged as a vibrant and dynamic sector of the Indian economy. In this era of cut-throat competition, the quest to win the talent war and to attract and retain the best and assertive employees in an organization has turned out to be a biggest challenge before the organizations. In order to distinguish themselves from other large organizations and be celebrated with unique characteristics from the job seeker’s perspective, SMEs need the organizational attributes that allows them to stand out of their counterparts. Focused employer branding can help SMEs in coming out of this talent crunch and can act as a key factor in giving a competitive edge to the organizations. Acknowledging the significance of employer branding in SME arena, this research aims at analyzing the impact of employer branding on employee retention and competitive advantage of the firm.

Sample of 149 employees from various hierarchies were selected by taking eighteen small and medium IT firms situated in select states of Northern India. Findings reveal that the small and medium firms perceive employee retention to be strongly linked with employer ability to present them as a great place to work among the existing and potential employees. Both small and medium firms perceive that they can pull the lever of competitive advantage through their strong employer branding campaign. The results signify that IT organizations under study retain their potential employees by edifice their organization’s reputation as an employer in order to achieve the competitive advantage. The study divulges the perceived dimensions of employer attractiveness, i.e. interest value, development value, social value and application value as important factors over the economic value that organizations should focus while devising the employer branding campaigns. Study concluded by recommending small and medium employers to introduce employer branding in their core strategic and marketing effort to make organization an appealing place to work.

Keywords

Employer Branding, Employer Attractiveness, Small and Medium Firms, Information Technology Industry, Employer Value Proposition (EVP)

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