Abstract
Markets without boundaries, a fast-paced global economic business environment,
technological advances and demographic shifts due to population growth or decline
mark a new era of disruptive change. These factors are changing the behaviours and
the way relationships between people and companies are formed. While people think
that running an organisation is about growth, innovation and salesmanship, the
reality is that an organisation’s ultimate success stems from attracting, recruiting,
engaging and retaining passionate and skilled people. Employees are the most
important asset and build the foundation of a company’s success. The concept of
employer branding represents a company’s reputation as an employer and embodies
a company’s effort to promote a unique, distinctive and desirable employment
offering, both within the company to existing employees and outside the company to
potential prospective candidates. Employer brand management takes a more holistic
approach to shape the culture of a company and employees everyday experience of
the brand by aligning the brand ethos with every employee’s touch-point. Nowadays,
employers worldwide recognise the huge impact employees have on a customer’s
service experience and satisfaction, which in turn leads to business growth. This
thesis aims to identify and discuss the impact of employer branding on an
employee’s perception in regard to the organisational attractiveness, the corporate
brand and on productivity.
The literature reviewed provides a concise outline to the concept of employer
branding including branding, the corporate brand and the internal brand, corporate
culture, organisational attractiveness and reputation as well as service quality. The
thesis is descriptive and uses a qualitative, inductive approach. The strategy chosen
for this thesis was a single case study that uses the Hotel Palais Hansen Kempinski
as its object of study. A mono-method of semi-structured interviews was undertaken
for the purpose of collecting the primary data. The interviews were conducted from
different levels of the company, from the Director of People Services to the Chef de
Bar in order to provide a clearer perspective on the impact of employer branding on
the employee’s perception. The findings indicate that a distinctive and unique
employer brand positively influences an employee’s perception of the organisational
attractiveness, the corporate brand and the productivity.
Author keywords: Employer branding, Employee's perception, Corporate brand, Internal brand, Organisation attractiveness
