The significance of the Employer Brand in the ground handling business

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate how employees in the ground handling business at Helsinki-Vantaa airport perceives the employer brand and what aspects can support the ear-ly recruitment process. The main research question was to examine if a different employer brand strategy was needed for different departments to create an employer brand model for company X. Also the employer value proposition (EVP) was studied to see if it affects an applicant’s first choice of employer in the early recruitment process. Ambler and Barrow introduced the psychological agreement between employee and employer as a first step in creating the employer brand. Backhaus & Tikoo presented a visual theory where they dis-tinguished between internal and external factors in attracting employees and employee re-tention. Today employer brand is considered extremely important for successful business’ and is much more complex. The study was conducted in January 2020 and a quantitative research method was used. The author used an already validated employer brand measure-ment instrument designed by Berthon et. al (2005) to conduct the study. The main result of the study indicated that no differences were found between groups and therefore, there is no need to create separate employer brand strategy for the departments. In general soft val-ues such as interest and social values were considered very important for the employees. To conclude an employer brand model was created for company X where internal and external communication plays a key role in building the employer brand in order to create employee loyalty and employer attraction. This study was limited to one company, industry and geo-graphical location and should therefore not be generalized to other business’ and industries as such.