Employer branding -Sarasvathi.T.A & Vikram

1. Strengthen Your Employer Brand
Thiruvikraman R
vikramramdoss@gmail.com
Sarasvathi T A
vinu.seedling@gmail.com
I MBA
Christ University Institute of Management
Bangalore

2. Strengthen Your Employer Brand
1. Introduction
“Change is inevitable. Change is constant.” Change is the world order of the day.
There was a time when people entered in an organization to start their career, grew with it
day by day, and came out of the same organization after three and half decades. Gone are
those days. Today employees look for change. The concept of employee loyalty has become
obsolete. How do we buy employee loyalty? This thought of buying employee loyalty
compels us to build a strong employer branding. As many contemporary studies say, we
believe stronger employer brands play a vital role in attracting, retaining and engaging
talents. So it is essential for organizations today to establish a strong employer brand.
2. Purpose of research
This is the starting of our journey to investigate the adoption of employer branding in
our Indian IT industries. The very purpose of this research is to determine what companies
communicate, how external potential employees‟ pool perceives the employer brand and gap
between the both. This is extended to analysis of building an employer branding and re-
engineering the application of employer branding.
3. Unfolds of research
This research enabled us to define employer branding and derive three basics on
which organizations can rely on to strengthen employer branding.

3. 3.1 Employer branding
Employer branding of an organization is “A promise made to the prospective potential
employees and employees of the organization.” It can also be defined as “Marketing jobs to
the targeted potential employees in the employment market.”
3.2 Four action items
o Employer branding is more than Creative communication
o Know your touch points.
o Visit your brand integrity
o Innovate again
How did we arrive at these three action items for strengthening the employer branding
and what do we mean by this is presented in this paper.
4. Scope of the research
Scope of the research includes
o Determining EVPs of certain selected IT organizations.
o Investigating their employer brand communication to the potential employees‟ pool.
o Determining the perceived impact of the employer brand on the Potential employees.
Scope doesn‟t include
o Determining the expectations of employees and potential employees.
o Evaluating the EVPs of the selected IT companies against the standard best practices.

4. 5. Why IT
As already mentioned investigating the adoption of employer branding concept by
India industries was the motive. The first step was to select organizations to be investigated.
After brainstorming it was decided to pick the organizations from IT industry. Because
o IT industry is the major contributor to the Indian economy.
o It is the industry which involves large human capital and employer branding is
considered to be more suitable for large human capital organizations.
o It is a mass recruiting industry and in a need for a model to manage talent.
5.1 Selection of organizations:
Three familiar IT organizations are selected. TCS, Infosys and HCL are the three
companies that have been investigated in this research. Criterions involved in selecting the
organizations were recruiters of majority of premium B-Schools of our nation and number of
present employees. The following was the process followed to identify three organizations
for our research.
o List of premium B-School was shortlisted.
o Recruiters list of those B-Schools were obtained from their website.
o Top three companies which were found in maximum number of B-school‟s
recruitment list were picked up.

5. 6. Finding the Gaps
Inside Company Gap 1 Gap 2 Potential employees’
pool
Employer brand and Communication of
Employee value Employer brand Perceived impact
proposition
Fig. 1
The figure explains three components of our research Company where the brand is
built, Potential employees‟ pool which perceives the built employer brand and
Communication channels that is the medium. Gap 1 is the gap between what is in store of
employer brands and what is actually communicated. Gap 2 is the gap between what is
communicated to the potential employees‟ pool and what is perceived by them from the
communicated employer brand.
7. Designing the tool of analysis
A questionnaire has been designed and circulated to investigate through bottom-up
approach. Questionnaire concentrates on bringing out the essentials to build an EVP and a
employer brand. It has been annexed with the paper.
8. Inferences from responses
The respondents‟ are of two categories fresh engineering students yet to join
companies and people with work experience who are pursuing masters in management at
present. The proportion of experienced and freshers in the respondent is exactly 50/50.
Following are the facts revealed by the survey to the sample population.

6. Employees opinion on significance of career development, Challenging job nature,
Compensation, Brand reputation, Global presence and Location in the jobs are explored
from the sample. The result showed that 98% employees rated career development as
above 4 in a scale of 1 to 5. Rest of the variables were left behind.
50
45
40
35
30
25
20
15
Career…
10
Challenging Job…
5 Compensation
0 Brand Reputation
Global…
Very Unimportant 2 location
3
4
Very Important
Fig. 2
The overall pattern is shown in the skewness plot above. Career development and
challenging job nature were extremely right skewed and rest of the things were more
towards a bell curve. This shows employees are more concerned about what they do and
their growth in career path. Employees today look for a career not just a job.

7. They rely on company websites and current employee word of mouth to extract
information about the companies. Rest of the communication channels such as print
media, job fairs, TV media don‟t attract them to the former mentioned two.
54% of total fresher respondents associated employee satisfaction as the first thing
they remember when they think of the companies TCS or Infosys. Rest of the 46%
remembered other six variables such as brand, founder‟s name, revenue they make,
Global presence, Employee satisfaction, Salaries and Culture. Only 9% of respondents
with work experience associated employee satisfaction to these companies.
30% of respondents selected TCS as their Ideal Employee, 66% of respondents
selected Infosys and 5 % selected HCL Technologies.
9. Four action items
9.1 Employer branding is more than creative communication
o Employer Brand is not just a creative communication of value propositions to the
employees and prospective potential candidates. Many employer branding
consultancies practise employer branding starting from employees‟ survey and
ending at designing an employee value proposition to communicate.
Communicating is just a part. There is lot more than designing a value
proposition. Build the value proposition in the current job.
o From the interferences of the responses the fact that majority of freshers‟
associate companies to employee‟s satisfaction shows that potential employees
have perceived the companies as best employers which sets their expectations.

8. o But it is notable that people having work experience don‟t associate the same
companies to employee‟s satisfaction. This shows that their perspective is based
on what they experienced in the work life.
o This difference shows the gap between the potential candidates having high
expectations from how they perceive the brand and what they really experience.
This clearly insists the employers to close the gap 1 in the figure.
o Lessons to the Employer: Communicate what you actually have. Employer
branding is more than communication, a promise to be fulfilled.
9.2 Identify touch points.
o Your Brand image bleeds through unidentified touch points. Employers advertise
their jobs in many Communication Medias. They try to promote their EVPs and
employer brands through these channels.
o Employers consider these formal channels as their touch points. But every point
where potential candidates come in touch with the company is a place that affects
your employer brand.
o Inferences from the survey show employees word of mouth has been preferred by
77% of the respondents. This is a proof that your employee is an important touch
point.
o Lesson to the employer: Identify the touch point. Normalize the communication
through every touch point.
9.3 Visit your Brand Integrity

9. o Next step to identifying touch points is to check what every check point conveys to
the potential candidates.
o It should be ensured that every check point convey the same what others do. This
creates synonymous brand image to the external world. Lack of integrity creates
different perspectives among potential employee pool.
o Lesson to employer: Create integrity in touch points. It means your employees should
convey the same what you covey about yourself.
9.4 Innovate again.
o Creating integrity among touch points include current employees role in integrity.
Current employee communicates what is being experienced by him in the company.
So it means current employees satisfaction matters.
10. Features of employer brand
o Delivers values to the employees.
o Should be aligned with the corporate brand.
o Establishes an emotional contract to the employees and the prospective potential
employees
o Helps in investigating our current job design.
o It is a continuous process
11. Conclusion

10. Applying the action items of this paper may be a way to fix the gaps between the
potential employees‟ perception, current employees experience and the company‟s employer
brand.
References
1. BRAND FROM THE INSIDE by Libby Sartain and Mark Schumann
2. BANDENOCH AND CLARK GUIDE from www.badenochandclark.com
3. HIRING AND FIRING by Paul Falcone
4. ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOUR by Stephen P. Robbins
5. MARKET RESEARCH AN APPLIED ORIENTATION by Naresh K. Malhotra and Satyabhushan
Dash

11. Annexure 1
Questionnaire
Employer Branding Research
Researchers: Thiruvikraman Ramadoss and Sarasvathi T A
We are students of Christ University Institute of management researching on employer branding in India. This
Questionnaire is part of the research work.
This will take only 4 to 5 minutes for you to complete.
ROI (your time invested)
We know time is money. “We value your time invested in it”. Your Return On Investment will be, we will send you
the completed research paper.
This information collected here is used for research purpose only.
Thank You
* Required
Name
Engineering
UG Degree in *
Engineering
PG Degree in * If Any
Y et to s tart the c ount
How many years of work experience *
1 .As job seekers which three alternatives would you prefer among the various channels for job information? * Give
three choices
Company‟s official website
Press releases
Television media advertisements
Job fairs
Advertisement banners
Current Employees Words
Other:
2. How much important is the following parameters that you expect from your employer and job. Rate your opinion in
the scale of 5
Career development *

12. 1 2 3 4 5
Very Unimportant Very Important
Compensations (Pay Packages) *
1 2 3 4 5
Very Unimportant Very Important
Challenging Job nature *
1 2 3 4 5
Very Unimportant Very Important
Brand Reputation *
1 2 3 4 5
Very Unimportant Very Important
Global Oppurtunities *
1 2 3 4 5
Very Unimportant Very Important
Location *
1 2 3 4 5
Very Unimportant Very Important
3. Which among the following do you think as the most „ideal employer‟ for you? *
HCL Technologies
Tata Consultancy Services
Infosys
4. Does the „Ideal employer‟ you chose in the 3rd Question has all the parameters you expected * (as per your highest
rated three in question 2)
Yes
No

13. If no give parameters that your 'Ideal employer' have
5. Mention the first thing that comes to your mind as you hear the name of the 'Ideal employer' you selected here *
Brand
Submit

14. Annexure 2
Answer to question 2.
X-Axis : Importance level
Y-Axis : No of respondents
Fig .3 Career Fig.4 Compensation Fig.5 Challenging Job
Development Nature
Fig.6 Brand Reputaion Fig.7 Global Oppurtunities Fig .8 Location