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Employer Brand for Talent

Acquisition: An Exploration towards
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Jyotsna Bhatnagar, pallavi Srivastava

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Айсель Сулейманова
 EMPLOYER BRAND FOR TALENT ACQUISITION:
AN EXPLORATION TOWARDS ITS MEASUREMENT
Pallavi Srivastava and Jyotsna Bhatnagar

Dr. Pallavi Srivastava

Fellow of Management Development Institute, Gurgaon, India
Management Development Institute, Gurgaon, India

&

Dr. Jyotsna Bhatnagar

Associate Professor (HRD) & Chairperson, Post Graduate Programme in HR

Management Development Institute, India

Management Development Institute

Mehrauli Road, Sukhrali, Gurgaon 122 001, INDIA

Phone: +91-124-4560179; Fax: +91-124-2341189

E-Mail: jyotsnab@mdi.ac.in

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Vision, vol 14, no. 1, page, 25-34

 EMPLOYER BRAND FOR TALENT ACQUISITION :
AN EXPLORATION TOWARDS ITS MEASUREMENT

Abstract

This paper addresses the concerns associated with talent acquisition and how employer

brand can overcome some of them. Based on the literature review and supported with the

first stage sequential mixed method exploratory research, the paper summarises and

aggregates the results of a pilot study conducted on a section of prospective employees of

India. The study contributes to the sparse academic and empirical work on employer

branding. The empirical results are initial steps towards the development of a scale for

measuring employer brand in a later stage. The current study will further facilitate

development of the unique employee value proposition based on the person-need fit of talent.

The research is based in an Indian setting which makes it all the more relevant in current

economic scenario. The paper concludes with theoretical and practical implications followed

by directions for the future research.

Key Words : Employer Brand, Staffing, Talent Acquisition, India

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

INTRODUCTION

The current business environment is marked with challenges of intense global competition,

rapid technological changes, growth of the knowledge economy, and the need for flexibility

and expertise in the workplace (Catteeuw et al., 2007; Wickham and O'Donohue, 2009). This

has resulted in the changing skills and competency requirements. Concomitantly, due to the

pressures of a changing demographic base, the demand for intellectual capital– a cadre of

highly skilled, independent, internationally marketable and mobile individuals–is exceeding

the

1
available supply (Ewing et al., 2002; Ployhart, 2006). The tight labour market gives

highly competent employees many choices (Srivastava and Bhatnagar, 2008) especially in

professional, information / knowledge based, technical and service driven organisations

(Ewing et al., 2002). Prospective employees are as particular about choosing the right

organisation as about choosing the right job (Rynes and Cable, 2003). Hence, organisations

are increasingly trying to assess and enhance their attractiveness to prospective applicants

(Highhouse et al., 1999). This has critical consequences for the recruiting organisations

(Rynes, 1991) as it leads to the most pressing problem of talent acquisition- of attracting

people with the right skill set and competencies who also fit the need and the culture of the

organisation (Bhatnagar and Srivastava, 2008). Organisations that attract a larger applicant

pool and more qualified applicants obtain greater utility in their selection systems (Boudreau

and Rynes, 1985) and a potential competitive advantage (Lado and Wilson, 1994) .

India, one of the world’s largest economies, has made giant leap in its economic and

social development in the past two decades and has proven itself to be a major economic and

intellectual power (Kapur and Ramamurti, 2001). It is the major source of the world’s largest

English speaking low cost workforce, with a high level technical and managerial talent

fuelled by world -class institutes in India like Indian Institute of Technology (IITs) and Indian

Institute of Management (IIMs). Being industrious, hard working and focused on merit based

and education dependent advance, Indian human skills are in great demand (Nath, 2008).

Indian workforce is most sought after by the multinational giants because of the global

recognition of its people, their management capabilities and innovativeness. This has resulted

in a large number of Indians finding place in the payrolls of different multinationals. The

availability of new jobs for the Indian talent resulting in a higher turnover (Budhwar et al.,

2006), has made the organisations to sit back and revamp their recruitment strategy to attract

and retain the top talent.

2
 A consequence of the anticipated permanent shortage of competent workforce

referred above is the need for a strong recruitment strategy after finding out what

differentiates the organisations from the competitors and then market the unique employment

propos ition it can offer (Ewing et al., 2002; Keefe, 2007) . Employer branding (Ambler and

Barrow, 1996) is one such relevant HR strategy in the context of employment, especially in a

knowledge based and service economy where competent employees are often in short supply.

Where traditional recruitment strategies are short-term, reactive and subject to job openings,

employment branding is a long-term strategy designed to maintain a steady flow of skills in

the organisation.

India, a hierarchical society, is considered to be high in power distance and

collectivism (Deshpande and Farley, 1999). Earlier studies on similar studies on employer

brand have been conducted on Belgian army (Lievens, 2007), university students in the U.K.

(Knox and Freeman, 2006) and Australia (Berthon et al., 2005) etc. which differ from India

on the cultural dimensions (Hofstede and Hofstede, 2005). We propose that in India, the

factors that build up a strong employer brand, attractive enough for its talent pool are

different from the other parts of the world as they differ in their cultural and managerial

environments. It is precisely these differences that raise the issue of whether earlier research

on this subject is generalisable to India. Since the Indian talent is in great demand globally,

the multinational organisations need to understand the perspective of an Indian talent to

develop their employee value proposition accordingly. It is necessary to understand the

dimensions of employer brand in the Indian setting in order to help the global organisations

to model their recruitment strategies for India.

EMPLOYER BRAND: A LITERATURE REVIEW

Employer branding has emerged from applying marketing principles to the field of personnel

recruitment (Maurer et al., 1992). Ambler and Barrow (1996) were among the first ones to

3
bring together the domains of Human Resources Management and Brand Marketing into a

single conceptual area by coining the term employer brand. Employer branding is a specific

form of managing corporate identities. It does so by creating both, within and outside the

firm, an image of the organisation in two forms – first, as a distinct and desirable employer

(Ambler and Barrow, 1996; Backhaus and Tikoo, 2004) and second, as a good place to work

(Bergeron, 2001). The various defin itions of employer brand as given in literature are

summarised in T able 1.

Table 1: Some Definitions of Employer Brand as Found in Literature

Ambler and Barrow “The package of functional, economic and psychological benefits
(1996: p. 187) provided by employment, and identified with the employing
company.”

Ewing et al., (2002: “Building an image in the minds of the potential labour market,
p.12) that the company above all others, is a great place to work.”

Lloyd (2002) as cited in “The sum of a company’s efforts to communicate to existing and
Berthon et al., (2001: prospective staff that it is a desirable place to work.”
p.152)

Backaus and Tikoo “Process of building an identifiable and unique employer identity...
(2004: p.502) concept of the firm that differentiates it from its competitors.”

Knox and Freeman “Image associated with an organisation, uniquely in its role as an
(2006: p.697) employer.”

Kimpakorn and “An organisation’s image as seen through the eyes of its actual and
Tocquer (2009: p.534) potential employees.”

To sum it up, we can say that an employer brand is about giving an identity, image

and distinctiveness to the organisation as an employer in order to attract the its prospective

employees and to motivate, engage and retain its current employees.

4
Importance of Employer Brand
As in the initial stage of the decision making process the information about the organisation

is limited. Therefore initial application decisions are heavily based on the general impression

of the attractiveness of the organisation (Rynes, 1991). Any information that job seekers view

builds their impressions of the employer organisation and can become cues for what it would

be like to work for it (Turban et al., 1998). Therefore organisations have to make extra efforts

to maintain their image before the prospective applicants as an attractive employer (Bergeron,

2001). When a firm reaches a higher level of external recognition by developing an employer

brand, it becomes much easier for it to attract new talent (Bouchikhi and Kimberly, 2008). It

is an effective tool for effective recruitment, employee engagement and retention (Barrow

and Mosley, 2005) .

The power of the employer brand has been rightly summed up by Fernon (2008: p.50)

as “its ability to deliver organisa tional success by attracting and retaining the right people,

providing an environment in which employees live the brand, improving organisational

performance in key business areas of recruitment, retention, engagement and the bottom line

and differentiating employers from each other, creating competitive advantage.”2

It is considered to benefit both individuals as well as organisation (Bergeron, 2001) . It

provides a coherent framework for management to simplify and focus priorities, increase

productivity and improve recruitment, retention and commitment (Keefe, 2007; Ambler and

Barrow, 1996; Backhaus and Tikoo, 2004). From the employees’ point of view, being a

member of an organisation having a strong employer brand enhances their self -esteem and

strengthens their organisational identification (Lievens et al., 2007). Constant delivery of the

brand promise leads to trust and loyalty ensuring a steady supply of applicants (Holliday,

1997) and maintains high commitment and high performance among employees and

ultimately organisational effectiveness by promoting the organisation's credibility with

5
employees (Burack et al., 1994). It attracts the right kind of candidates with the culture fit

and at the same time gives the prospective employees an assurance of the work experience as

expected by them (Bhatnagar and Srivastava, 2008).

Employer branding communicates the unique employment proposition of the

organisation to prospective hires, current employees and society at large by creating, both

within and outside the organisation, an image of the organisation as a distinct and desirable

employer (Ambler and Barrow, 1996; Backhaus and Tikoo, 2004; Balmer and Greyser, 2002)

and as a good place to work (Bergeron, 2001). It requires an employer to identify what is

unique and distinct about the organisation relative to the competitors, marketing it to the

target population and ensuring that the applicants have a clear idea of the employment value

proposition (Bergeron, 2001a). This helps differentiate organisations from their competitors

by creating a distinct image of the total employment relationship and employee life cycle

management which the organisation offers to its prospective and current employees, even

when they cannot compete in terms of location or wages (Ployha rt, 2006).

There are two views on the development of an Employment Value Proposition (EVP).

While Rynes and Barber (1990) suggested that organisations can proactively mould selected

organisational characteristics as strategy to attract those considered mos t desirable , other

researchers say that the purpose of the employer brand is not to generate an entirely new set

of values to suit the expectations of the prospective employees but to help ensure that the

existing values are translated into something consistent with the values the organisation

wishes to project externally (Ambler and Barrow, 1996; Bergeron, 2001). It is about

understanding what the organisation has to offer and then conveying it to its target applicants

in such a way that it looks appealing and differentiating from its competitors.

6
Process of Employer branding
Backhau and Tikoo (2004) identify three aspects of employer branding process. First, an

organisation develops a clear, consistent and honest “value proposition” based on research for

their existing and prospective staff (Heger, 2007) embodying the organisation culture, the

management style, qualities of current employees, current employment image, and

impressions of products or service quality manager (Sullivan, 2002), that clearly esta blishes

who they are, what they expect from employees and what they offer (Lawler, 2005: p.13).

For this, the organisation should understand the expectations of the prospective applicants

that the organisation needs and the specific attributes it has which are found appealing by the

applicants. It is also important to find out what the competitors are offering to the same pool

of applicants. The EVP should be built around this common theme which is yet different

from that of the competitors.

Then, the orga nisation uses it to attract the prospective employees and thirdly lives up

to the brand promise made to the recruits (Lawler, 2005) for their engagement and retention.

The EVP must be in accordance with the business strategy of the organis ation, so that the

employer brand acts as a filter for only those people who have the motivation, skills,

knowledge, competencies and personality to perform the required job (ibid).

Constituents of Employer Brand

The employer brand is said to consist of many attributes wit h each one strengthening the

brand (Bergeron, 2001). Researchers have examined the factors that determine an

organisation’s employment image (Highhouse et al., 1999; Cable and Turban, 2001). Using

the instrumental-symbolic framework, Lievens et al., (2007) examined the factors which

attract and connect employees (company insiders) as well as applicants (company outsiders)

to a given organisation as an employer. Slaughter et al., (2008) confirmed that symbolic

attributes were related to organisational attractiveness. While Lievens et al., (2005) found the

incremental variance of symbolic image dimensions over and above instrumental image

7
components in explaining students' attraction to the Army, Collins and Stevens (2002)

established that company-based attributes had greater impact on job seekers than role-specific

attributes.

An exploration of the literature revealed little research on theory development, scale

development in Employer Branding (Joo and Mclean, 2006; Moroko and Uncles, 2008).

There is also a scope for empirical research on employer brand (Ewing, et al., 2002; Berthon

et al., 2001) and its dimensions and establishing the impact of an Employer brand on the

attractiveness of an organisation as an employer (Berthon et al., 2001). This calls for another

rigorous study on the subject adding to the existing knowledge.

EMPLOYER BRAND IN AN INDIAN SETTING: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY

An exploratory study was conducted among the prospective employees of India meant for

managerial positions in different organisations , to find out the factors of employer brand. The

sample was taken from final year postgraduate management students in the flagship

programme and working managers enrolled in the executive management programme

students of two premiere Business schools located in the National Capital Region of India.

These business schools were among the top ten management institutes of India according to

various B -school survey rankings.

Purpose of the Study

Most of the emphasis from the recruiting literature has focused solely on organisations

attracting prospective employees (Rynes, 1993). However, it is also important to understand

how applicants view the hiring organisation from the first impressions during the recruitment

process. The objective of this exploratory research was to understand the underlying structure

of employer brand by identifying factors that represent an employer brand by capturing the

perspectives of prospective employees of India.

8
Research Methodology

This study was conducted in two phases. A se quential mixed-method approach was taken

where qualitative data analysis was followed by a quantitative approach. Phase one consisted

of item generation based on literature review and an exploratory qualitative study. The

qualitative study comprised of several methods namely open-ended questionnaire, semi-

structured interviews, focus groups discussions and content analysis of the main page and

career section of official websites of different organisations, to identify the key variables that

represent the construct of employer brand. The second phase comprised of scale development

in the form of survey. This paper focuses on the second phase of the research work, and is

only exploratory in nature which would help in developing scale on employer brand to be

tested later. It attempts to establish the constituents of the employer branding scale, which

may be used for talent management by the organisations. This research does not ha ve any

explanatory features as it does not aim to test any causal relationships.

Item Generation

The initial set of scale items was generated based on insights from existing literature and

from information gained through qualitative study. Since employer brand is a

multidimensional construct (Bergeron, 2001a) it was not possible to study each and every

aspect of it. Hence we depended on the findings of our qualitative research to narrow down

on variables to be included in our study. The content analysis of the qualitative data resulted

in thirty-nine variables out of which eleven variables were chosen based on their prominence

in the study. It was found that some of the job attributes given by Posner (1981), namely

opportunity to learn, “freedom to do the job my own way,” opportunity for rapid

advancement, fringe benefits, salary, reputation of company, training programmes are

common to our variables.

9
 Based on the variables identified in the qualitative study, items were generated for

each of them. Some were adopted / modified from established scales (as given in Table 2).

Two academic experts and two research scholars assessed the content and face validity of the

survey measures and the items. Thus, a questionnaire was constructed and pre-tested before a

group of 30 respondents. Thereafter, sampling procedure, methods of data collection and

analysis were determined.

Table 2: Scales Identified from Literature for the Purpose of Our Study

VARIABLE SOURCE OF ITEMS A SAMPLE OF ITEM

Financial Chun (2001) (It) looks like a company with
Performance strong prospects for future growth
Product / Service Chun (2001) , Fombrun It invests heavily in R &D.
Brand (1998) , Cable and (Fombrun, 1998)
Graham (2000)
Good Corporate Chun (2001), Cable and It talks about integrity which is
Citizen Graham (2000) high on my list. I don't want to
work for a company that doesn't
value integrity and morals. (Cable
and Graham, 2000)
Word of Mouth Cable and Graham I have heard good things about
(2000) , Highhouse et al., working here (Highhouse et al.,
(1999) , Lievens et al., 1999)
(2005)
Industry / Sector No relevant scale could (Items developed were based on the
Image be found qualitative study)
Autonomy Lievens et al., (2005) It is a good organisation to work if
you like getting orders. (Lievens et
a l., 2005)
People - Highhouse et al., (1999) I would imagine they have flexible
orientedness hours. (Highhouse et al., 1999)
Fun at Work Karl et al., (2007), This is fun place to work (Karl et
Lievens et al., (2005) a l., 2007)
Learning and Fulmer et al., (2003), Employees are offered training and
Development Highhouse et al., (1999), development to further themselves
Lievens et al., (2005) professionally. (Fulmer et al., 2003)
Career Growth Cable and Graham A job at this company may be a
(2000) , Highhouse et al., dead-end job (Cable and Graham,
(1999) , Lievens et al., 2000)
(2005)

10
 Reward Strategy Lievens et al., (2005) Working in ... (this organisation)
provides you with a good salary
(Lievens et al., 2005).

Data Collection
Data for the survey was collected from a mix of 105 final year postgraduate management

students and working managers enrolled in the executive management programme students of

two premiere Business schools located in the National Capital Region of India. These

respondents were a sample representative of the population of interest (Hinkin, 1995). A self

administered questionnaire consisting of 72 items was distributed in the classes of both

fulltime as well as executive management students with permission from the instructor. The

questionnaire was based on a Likert 5-point scale and the demographic variables were tapped

through single items in the questionnaire. Since familiarity with the organisation was a

relevant condition to assess the perception about the employer brand in the questionnaire, the

respondents were asked to think of a familiar organisation where they would like to pursue a

career in immediate future. Then they were asked to rate the various attributes of the

organisation based on their perception.

Among a total of 150 distributed questionnaires, 105 completed, usable questionnaires

were collected and resulted in the effective response rate of 70%. This is a high response rate

as questionnaires were to be filled in the class itself. The demographic profile of the

respondents is given in Table 3.

Table 3: Demographic Profile of Respondents

DEMOGRAPHICS PERCENTAGE
1. TYPE
• Management Students 56.9
• Working Managers 43.1
2. AGE
• 20-25 years 27.6
• 26-30 years 28.6
• 31-35 years 25.5
11.2

11
 • 36-40 years 7.1
• Above 40 years
3. GENDER
• Male 79.6
• Female 80.4
4. QUALIFICATIONS
• Ordinary Graduate 5.5
• Technical Graduate 72.5
• Ordinary Postgraduate 3.3
• Professional P ostgraduate 16.5
• Others 2.2
5. WORK EXPERIENCE
• Nil 15.2
• Less than 1 year 12.4
• Between 1 and 5 years 13.3
• Between 5 and 10 years 37.1
• Above 10 years 21.9
6. FAMILY INCOME
• Less than Rs 5 lakhs p.a 42.1
• Between Rs 5-10 lakhs p.a. 33.7
• Between 10-15 lakhs p.a. 16.8
• Between 15-20 lakhs p.a. 4.2
• More than 20 lakhs p.a. 3.2

Data Analysis

Before applying factor analysis for data reduction, the data corresponding to different

constructs was subjected to a number of evaluative procedures. According to the guidelines

provided by De Vellis (1991) , the data was checked for internal consistency, item-total

correlation, variance, item means before proceeding for factor analysis. A principle

components analysis with varimax rotation and a factor extraction according to the MINI–

EIGEN criterion (all eigen values above 1) with all items in the survey was conducted. Factor

loadings of minimum 0.50 were considered to meet the minimal level for interpretation of

factor structure. In order to construct an employer brand scale with meaningful managerial

implications, only single-component items were included in the scale (Kohli et al., 1993).

12
Thus, an item was allowed to load on only one factor and could not cross-load on any other

factor. Out of a 72 item initial scale, 52 items were eliminated from the initial measurement

which left 20 items for subsequent analysis. To check whether common method variance was

present, we used Harmon’s one factor test (Podsakoff and Organ, 1986).

The result showed a clear eight factor solution. These factors with eigenvalues greater

than one were extracted from all the measures in this study and in total accounted for 71.3%

of the variance. The first factor accounted for 18.6 % of the variance which falls below 50%

level and indicates the lack of common method bias (Podsakoff et al., 2003). Since a single

factor did not emerge and one factor did not account for most of the variance, this suggests

that the results were not due to common method variance. The Cronbach alpha in this case

was 0.73 which satisfied the above 0.70 criterion (Nunnally, 1978) . The factor analysis

results and its reliability are reported in Table 4 given hereafter.

Table 4: Factor Loadings and Reliability Analysis

Rotated Component Matrix

Component
Caring Enabling Career Credible Flexible Product Positive Global
Growth and Fair and and Employer Exposure
Ethical Service Image
Brand
Image
Eb12 0.841
Eb10 0.728
Eb39 0.722
Eb53 0.704
Eb47 0.671
Eb58 0.536
Eb66 0.795
Eb70 0.791
Eb18 0.603
Eb67 0.906
Eb61 0.851
Eb30 0.813

13
 Eb21 0.734
Eb48 0.813
Eb42 0.717
Eb24 0.837
Eb49 0.767
Eb37 0.898
Eb34 0.725
Eb56 0.940
Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis
Rotation Method: Varimax with Kaiser Normalisation
Rotation converged in 7 iterations

Reliability Statistics
Cronbach’s Alpha No. of items
0.73 20

Findings and Discussions

Factor number one labelled as “caring organisation” highlights the concern of the

organisation as an employer and the various ways in which it cares about the welfare of its

employees. It had items like “the organisation is known to provide food and drop facility at

no extra cost to its employees working till late hours (eb10).” Factor called “enabling

organisation” refers to the extent the organisation helps an employee to work towards the best

of its abilities. Its highest loading item was “Its management is open to ideas given by its

employees (eb66).” Factor called “career growth” assesses the extent to which joining of that

organisation helps an individual in his career growth. It was best represented by the item

“Joining this organisation would be a beneficial move for my career (eb67).” ”Credible and

fair” is about the credibility of the organisation and the way it is fair in appraisals and

rewarding its employees as was expressed by the items like “this organisation is known for its

credibility (eb30).” The fifth factor “flexible and ethical” reflects that the organisation

provides flexibility to its employees in performing their jobs but not at the cost of ethics. The

item “I have never heard a case of unethical practice by this organisation (eb48)” was one of

14
the items representing this factor. Similarly “products and services brand image” is, as the

name suggests, about the brand value of its products and services as suggested by the item

“the products and services of this organisation are regularly advertised on television /

newspapers (eb24).” The seventh factor “positive employer image ” encapsulates the extent to

which the organisation is preferred by its employees and is known as a good company to

work for. It had items like “I have heard that it is a good company to work for (eb37).”

Lastly, the factor “global exposure” refers to the amount of foreign assignments that an

organisation offers. It was represented by a single item “this organisation offers positions in

foreign assignments (eb58).” We found that not a single item of financial performance,

industry / sector image, word of mouth, career growth was loaded. This shows that these

factors do not make much impact on the employer brand in our study.

We find that these eight factors can be broadly classified into two ways - “what it (the

organization) is as an employer” and “what it (the organisation) has for its employees.”

About 43.4 percent of variance is reflected by those factors concerning “what it has for its

employees” namely “caring organisation,” ”enabling organisation,” ”career growth” and

“global exposure.” Factors which exhibit “what it is as an employer” include “Credible and

fair,” ”flexible and ethical,” ”product and service brand image ” and “positive employer

image” and account for 27.8 percent of the variance. This can be found to be in congruence

with the importance of symbolic attributes over instrumental attributes of an organisation as

studied by Lievens and Highouse (2003). They defined instrumental attributes as objective,

concrete, and factual attributes that the job or organisation either has or does not have (“what

it is as an employer”). While symbolic attributes were described as subjective, abstract, and

intangible attributes that convey symbolic company information in the form of imagery and

trait inferences that applicants assign to organisations (“what it has for its employees ’).

15
CONCLUSION

Employer branding as a concept has come a far way in terms of the interest shown by

various academicians as well as by practitioners. Although the terms was coined by Ambler

and Barrow (1996) by bringing together the domains of marketing and HR, the recent rise in

academic papers on employer brand in the HR literature establishes it as more of an HR need.

Although an emerging body of research is exploring the importance of employer brand on

attraction, far less attention has been devoted to discovering how employer brand perceptions

are formed.

This exploratory study is our first step towards development of a scale to measure

employer brand strength of an organisation. Since these 20 items were found insufficient to

capture the various dimensions of employer brand, again more items were generated. After a

content validity check by experts, they were again administered to the population of interest.

This was carried out in subsequent part of our research aimed at scale development to

measure employer brand, which is out of the scope of this paper.

Contributions
Contributions of the study are two fold. Firstly there is a “theoretical implication” on the

literature in the staffing domain of HRM, where employer branding is emerging as an

important construct. The current study exemplifies the variables under employer branding

which lead to the building of a robust instrument which will enable researchers in this field to

measure the strength of the employer brand. Though our effort is still in the primary stage but

the development of this scale will imply theoretical contributions which may result in theory

building within the staffing domain. Earlier studies have mainly been carried out on students

only (e.g. Collins and Stevens, 2002; Highhouse et al., 1999; Knox and Freeman, 2006). As

this study also includes working managers as prospective employees, it adds to the

16
generalisability of the results. This work also has implications on emerging fields of “great

places to work” and “fun at work.”

As “practical implications,” practitioners in the world of HR, marketing and

communications will find this research of immense importance as it will help define the

prospective employee expectations and would help the industry in the global arena to build

their human capital strategies of staffing to suit the changing needs of the employable talent

pool. By building a strong employer br and an organisation can easily come into the

consideration set of prospective employees especially the first time job seekers. Resourcing

the best candidates from a bigger talent pool rather than the available applicants would result

in a more efficient ta lent acquisition. This study will also provide important cues for

designing HR policies and HR / OD interventions on embedding fun at work in day to day

environment of the work. This would also present implications making an organisation as

“Great Place to Work” w ith.

Limitations and Directions for Future Research

The scope of our study is limited only to prospective employees in the managerial positions.

Hence the data was collected from the management students and working managers only and

excluded technocrats, academicians etc. Employer brand is relevant in the context of

employee engagement and retention also but our study focuses on the recruitment aspect

only. The results have been derived on the basis of a sample size of 105 respondents which is

adequate to base our findings but needs a bigger sample to further generalisation and

validation. Further studies may refine the scale by increasing the sample frame and using

advanced methods of statistical analysis. This was carried out in the next phase of our study

and is beyond the scope of this paper. It would also be interesting to find out why working

with an employer brand matters to an individual.

17
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4.3, pp.185–206.

Backhaus, K., and Tikoo, S., (2004), “Conceptualising and Researching Employer Branding,”
Career Development International, 9.(5), pp. 501–517.

Balmer, J.M.T., and Greyser, S.A., (2002), “Managing the Multiple Identities of the
Corporation,” California Management Review, 44. .(3), pp.72–86.

Barrow, S., and Mosley, R., (2005), The Employer Brand, Wiley, London.

Bergeron, D.M., (2001), Valuing the Employer Brand: Attracting Talent that Fits,
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Pallavi Srivastava (pallavisrivas@gmail.com) is a Fellow of Management Development Institute, Gurgaon with
specialis ation in HRM. She has a work experience of over three years in industry and teaching and has more
than ten research publications including two cases in national and international journals and conferences of
repute. Her current research interest is in the areas of employer brand, anticipatory psychological contract,
person-organis ation fit and various modes of recruitment.

Jyotsna Bhatnagar (jyotsnab@mdi.ac.in), a PhD from Indian Institute of Technology¸ New Delhi in Strategic
HRM, is Chairperson Post Graduate Programme in Human Resource Management at Management Development
Institute, Gurgaon. She was recently, elected as the Asian Academy of Management Board Member-Asian
representative and Indian Academy of Management-Board member(affiliated to Academy of Management,
USA). She has published over 60 international and national level cutting edge research papers and practitioner
oriented case studies on innovative HRM in India and has co-edited two books (Rutledge publications, UK). She
has also presented her research at International conferences. Her area of expertise as a consultant, trainer and
researcher is in Innovative Talent management and employee engagement ; Strategic HRM ; Innovation
capability at the grass root level; Psychological contract, Empowerment and PO Fit.

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