Alexandra Levits Water Cooler Wisdom Whose Responsibility is Employer Branding

Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom Whose Responsibility is Employer Branding A recent article from my friends at Recruiter.com asks an intriguing question: who exactly owns the employer brand? In 2015,employer brandingfirmUniversumreleased a four-part study,“2020 Outlook: the Future of Employer Branding.”Based on asurvey of more than2000 HR professionals and CEOs from around the world, the study examined where employer branding is today andhow employer branding may evolve over the next five years. Interestingly, the results illustrate that HR and the C-suite can’t seem to agree on whoshouldown employer branding, with 60 percent of CEOs saying it’s their job and 58 percent of HR executives saying it’s theirs.Uh oh. This situation rather reminds me of the bystander effect â€" a social psychological phenomenon that refers to cases in which individuals do not offer any means of help to a victim when other people are present. That’s because every individual assumes that someone else will call for help. The researchers believe that employer branding efforts are stalemated at many organizations precisely because no one is sure who should be issuing calls to action. “Since there seems to be a misalignment on who is accountable on both a strategic and operative level, no one has a good answer on how to increase internal engagement on the employer branding topic,” says Jonna Sjövall, vice president of talent strategy and employer branding for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa atUniversum. For more insights, check out the SilkRoad blog.