Just found an interesting report published in February by European Management Journal on a pretty hot topic nowadays: Employer Branding.

One increasingly important claim for contributing to sustained corporate success is to build bridges between the HR and the marketing function and to draw from its literature and practice on branding. Thus building, or just as often defending, a brand has become a major concern of organizations in all industries in the private sector. In addition to the for-profit sector, increasingly public sector and voluntary sector organizations are coming to realise the importance of branding, investing significant resources in building brands and trust relations with their clients and customers.

Despite the historically weak links between the marketing and HR functions, there is a growing realisation by companies and by HR professional bodies that aligning the external, corporate image of organizations with internal employee identity or engagement provides a key opportunity for HR to earn greater voice in business. This is especially so given the importance to many international companies of global branding and the role that branding and branding communications plays in strategic decision-making and such functional alignment can be viewed as part of the globalisation process.

The study concludes that advancement of the HR occupation’s status by linking it with the brand management or corporate reputation process has to demonstrate positive and objectively verifiable links between the particular expertise they bring to the ‘party’, in terms of their specialist and unique understanding of the employee identification process, employer branding and how it can be aligned with external image building. It is within such a context that HR may have to redefine its role in an increasingly globalized marketplace. The logic for doing so lies in the ability to create a corporate brand image and internal identity that cuts through national boundaries and resonates with local cultures.