Employer Branding : An empirical study on the important attributes that make an employer attractive to employees in the health care sector

Abstract Sweden and the Western World are facing large retirements in the near future. This will lead to a shortage of people with expertise in specific areas, where the shortage will become the largest in the healthcare sector. Employer branding can help an organization to attract and retain employees if it provides employees with valuable benefits. However, limited research has been done in how an organization’s brand can attract employees, and every organization will most likely have its own set of attributes. The purpose of this study is to examine the attributes that are important to make an organization’s employer brand attractive to employees. The method used in the research was a quantitative study where 160 respondents answered a survey in six different units in a health care organization in Sweden. The results from the empirical study showed that the attributes; Strategic Vision, Organizational Culture, Stakeholders’ Images, Internal Branding, Functional Benefits, Symbolic Benefits, Organizational Successes, Work Environment, Type of Work and Services’ Attributes all were important to make the organization’s employer brand attractive to its employees. However, some of the attributes varied in importance among some of the units in the organization. This research provides managers with a guideline for what attributes they can start working with in their own organizations’ employer brands