Employer Branding and its Effect on Organizational Attractiveness via the World Wide Web: Results of quantitative and qualitative studies combined

This study is about the concept of employer branding, and the relationship it has with an organizations‘ attractiveness. Currently, organizations fight the ‘war for talents‘. The battle between organizations is getting tougher, especially now it is clear that there will be a labour shortage in the near future. However, instead of fighting over talents, organizations need to become an ‘employer of choice‘ to get the talents they need, by focusing more on their brand and in specific on their employment brand. Shifting from fighting the war to branding different employment conditions gives the organization the advantage, over its competitors, of already being a favourable employer. This study answered the research question ‘what is the relation between employer branding and organizational attractiveness, and what is the moderator effect of corporate websites and social networking sites on this relation? ‘ A mixed-method study is performed to answer this question. Besides that, eight organizations in the industrial environment agreed to participate in this study. First, an employer branding protocol has been developed to measure the level of employer branding of an organization. This measurement consists out of five employer branding elements, related to the identity and image of an organization, and five levels of employer branding, from 1. ‘weak employer branding‘ to 5. ‘strong employer branding‘. Via a semi-structured interview, and the cooperation of two other researchers, each organization has been assigned a level of employer branding. Second, a quantitative research has been performed to measure the effect of employer branding on organizational attractiveness. Based on the organizational attractiveness literature a protocol has been developed, in terms of an experiment, to measure the actual level of attractiveness of the eight organizations. Respondents Business Administration have been asked to participate in the experiment and to rate the level of organizational attractiveness per organization based on the employer branding outcomes. The experiment has been performed in two different classes, of which one class was able to use the World Wide Web. Results showed that there was a direct relationship between employer branding and organizational attractiveness. Organizations that received a higher level of employer branding were rated higher on their organizational attractiveness. Notable was the large effect of the factor familiarity on employer branding, but also on the organizational attractiveness. This effect might also be the reason that organizations scored higher on organizational attractiveness via the control question ‘I feel attracted to the organization‘ than via the computed (overall) organizational attractiveness. Another outcome of this study is that the moderator effect of the World Wide Web remains unclear. The outcomes between the control group (with no interference of corporate websites or social networking sites) and the experimental group (with interference of corporate websites or social networking sites) did not differ significant. Respondents were not affected by the intrusion of corporate websites or social networking sites. However, it is remarkable that the outcomes within the experimental group show significant outcomes; the difference between the corporate websites and LinkedIn is significant, indicating that respondents feel more attraction to an organization when reviewing the corporate website than reviewing their LinkedIn profile. Also remarkable is the significant correlation between employer branding and organizational attractiveness, for both corporate websites and LinkedIn. These outcomes show that employer branding has a relationship with the organizational attractiveness, however, the effect of making use of the World Wide Web is not significant. On the other hand, communication via different sources might play an important role; corporate websites moderate the effect positively, and thus increase the level of attractiveness to the organization. For future research, to become an employer of choice, the focus should be on examining which media source can be used to increase the relationship between employer branding and organizational attractiveness. The possibilities of corporate websites need to be examined more in-depth and the upcoming usage of social networking sites should be explored; how can these sites be developed and used as a communication tool for employer branding. Next to that, future research should examine the value of employees in creating a strong employment brand.