Employer Branding and Reputation From A Strategic Human Resource Management Perspective

Abstract

Although reputation management literature has been dominated by marketing and communications-led perspectives, there is anagreementthat corporate reputation and good governance are often built from the internal towards external stakeholders. Lately, balancing the usage of social media as opposed to conventional media has demanded both human resources managementand public relations to become more strategic in addressing the role of brand communication via social media to gain competitiveness and business value. The purpose of the present study is to investigate the role of brand management for engaging employees, while building the reputation of the company. Most research on reputation management and branding focus either on social expectations and trust of external stakeholders and emphasis on internal stakeholders, particularly employees, is quite recent. “Employer branding” has been the application of branding principles for competitive advantage in strategic human resource management. Internal marketing of employer brands need to support external marketing so that organizational reputation is persistent. Employee commitment here refers to the degree to which an employee has positive associations and perceptions towards the organization, its brand values, brand personality and reputation. The researcherhas drawn upon prior research to develop anintegrated model that aims at linking strategic human resources management (SHRM), branding and corporate reputation. By using structured interviews of managers from various companies in different sectors, comparing and contrasting challenges and implications may pave the way for an integrated understanding of employees as the ultimate brand ambassadors/ advocates.