Employer Branding : A faddish way of labeling operations or a valuable contribution to HRM?

Sammanfattning: Employer branding has become an increasingly popular subject among practitioners. In order to gain competitive advantage it is claimed that companies should hold the best employees. However, in this thesis it is argued that the purposes of employer branding and HRM are strikingly alike, since they both aim to attract and retain employees. Earlier research lacks to explain how companies work with employer branding. Therefore, it is reasonable to wonder how employer branding is practiced and whether employer branding contributes something of value to the company, especially to HRM. Thus, the purpose of this study is to investigate whether employer branding contributes to HRM regarding attraction and retention of employees. A qualitative case study was conduced and the findings show that employer branding can contribute to HRM by: (1) giving HRM incentives to approach the whole spectra of employees; potential, current as well as former employees, (2) facilitating the maintenance of the corporate culture and (3) enabling a way for HRM to take a strategic approach.