Unpacking Employer Branding in the Information Technology Industry

Attracting and retaining the best talent is a concern, particularly for knowledge-based firms in high-turnover industries, which rely on a limited supply of highly qualified individuals (Ewing, Pitt, De Bussy, & Berthon, 2002). In 2014, 36% of global employers criticized talent shortages, and in a 2015 study, 73% of CEOs reported being concerned about the availability of workers with key skills (Mosley, 2015). Employer branding is a key human resource and marketing strategy that contributes to the company’s brand, enhances the firm’s reputation as a great place for employees to work, and attracts a new workforce (Ahmad & Daud, 2016). An employer brand’s and its employer branding value propositions’ (EBV) ability to attract new employees and increase retention will provide benefits for the entire organization. EBV defines the employer’s attractiveness (Berthon et al., 2005), is a key aspect of the employer branding process, and provides differentiation for the firm (Alnıaçık & Alnıaçık, 2012; Backhaus & Tikoo, 2004; Berthon et al., 2005; Leekha Chhabra & Sharma, 2014; Moroko & Uncles, 2008) to attract and retain employees. Existing research viewed employer branding and its EBV from one or two views—employee or employer—and lacked multiview approaches to employer branding and employer attractiveness. This research focused on a holistic approach and addressed the question: “How do different EBVs affect the perceptions of employer attractiveness? To answer this question holistically, the following research subquestions emerged: RQ1: How do employees perceive the EBV of employer attractiveness? RQ2: How do current and former employees perceive the EBV of employer attractiveness? RQ3: How do potential employees perceive the EBV of employer attractiveness? RQ4: How do employers manage how employees perceive EBV? This research consisted of four empirical papers and focused on the information technology (IT) industry context. The first study focused on employee views from all industries, whereas the second study concentrated on the IT industry and compared current and former employees. Study 3 considered potential employees in the IT industry and operationalized the employee attractiveness construct and EBVs. The final study explored EBVs from the employer’s view in an IT firm and compared its employees’ views regarding the psychological contract. The design of this research is a mixed approach with descriptive and exploratory methodolog