Skip to main content

Impact of the employer brand in employee attraction and retention: Evidence from Unilever Sri Lanka Limited



 Employer Brand is ‘.a set of attributes and qualities, often intangible, that makes an organization distinctive, promises a particular kind of employment experience, and appeals to those people who will thrive and perform best in its culture’.’ (CIPD 2009). Ambler and Barrow (1996) highlighted that the main purpose of Employer Brand is to help management whit prioritizing tasks and processes as well as obviously improve recruitment, retention and engagement.

Unilever is an Anglo-Dutch company, which owns a sizable portion of the world’s consumer product brands in food, beverages, cleaning agents and personal care products and it is comprised of 400 powerhouse brands yielding €46.5 billion in annual sales. Unilever Sri Lanka limited, through-out the year, continues to reach out to different educational institutions such as government institution and private institution to interact with the new generation.  Furthermore, they involve the research and development activities used by the students by creating long term impact within the talent group. Product quality, social services activities, continue research and development are also enhancing the Unilever brand among society (Siriniyasan 2012).  As an example, Project Sunlight will target waste management by converting 5000 retail outlets to solar energy by 2020. Partners in the project are the Ministry of Power and Renewable Energy, Unilever Sri Lanka, Commercial Bank, and Aitken Spence (Daily Mirror 17 September 2018, p.18 ).
 By considering the popularity, attraction, retention and welfare activities, LinkedIn ranked the Unilever brand as the most demand employer in the world ( Nisen,2012). However, under the existing higher attraction and retention level, there have recently been a number of recruitment frauds operating in different parts of the world where individuals are contacting job seekers claiming to represent Unilever, offering those roles and then inevitably asking for payments to cover a range of expenses and administration costs. That type of fraud activities and unethical messages such as “carcinogenic contamination with Unilever product” which is spared among the society by social media can be affected by the Employer Brand of Unilever.  


Reference

AMBLER, T., BARROW, S., 1996. The Employer Brand. The Journal of Brand Management, vol.4, no.3, pp.185-206.
CIPD, 2009., The Impact of Mergers and Acquisitions on Employer Brands. [viewed 13th of June] Available from:< http://www.cipd.co.uk/NR/rdonlyres/B18B30DD-A71F-4AAC-9925- 0D9C1EB5EF24/0/Impact_mergers_acquisitions_employer_brands.pdf>.
Nissen,M., What the world’s 5th most-in-Demand Employer Is Looking For. Available from:< https://www.businessinsider.com/unilever-recruiting-strategy-2012-10>.[19 October 2012].

Srinivasan,L 2012, Secrets of Employer Branding Leaders: Unilever.21 August 2012.LinkedIn Talent Blog. Available from :< https://business.linkedin.com/talent-solutions/blog/2012/08/employer-branding-unilever>.[21 August 2012].

Comments

  1. Razi JalaldeenApril 19, 2019 at 4:15 AM

    Good review. However, need reference or evidence to some of your claims such as annual sales value, recruitment fraud etc.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Naz Journals April 19, 2019 at 5:52 AM

    Dr Razi,thanks for your comments the recruitment fraud. taken from the unilever website https://www.unilever.com.lk/careers/ therefore I didn't mention in the reference. and annual sales value taken from below link
    https://business.linkedin.com/talent-solutions/blog/2012/08/employer-branding-unilever>.[21 August 2012].
    which is included in the article in references.





    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Human Resource Function and ongoing labour shortage of Sri Lankan construction industry

Human Resources are fundamental to all industries, including the construction industry. However, the workforce in the construction industry is extremely diverse with, skilled and unskilled workers, craftsman, managerial and administrative workers. Therefore the use of correct human resource functions in recruitment, remuneration, conditions of employment, performance management, training and development is essential for the long term survival of the construction industries (Spooner and Kaine, 2010). Generally, the performance of the construction industry is often considered as an indicator of economic development. The construction industry in Sri Lanka contributes about 9% to the GDP with around 600,000 employees. During 2018, the total annual construction turnover was about Rs. 800 billion. As per data in appendix A, the construction costs for middle-class housing clearly indicates that the unit cost of construction in Sri Lanka is the highest in the region, second only to Singa...
3 comments
Read more

Job satisfaction of employees in Banks; evidence from Sri Lankan Banks

Devi and Nagini (2013) explained Job satisfaction as a pleasant feeling experienced by the employee when there is a fit between what he expects and what he actually derives from his job. According to the nature of human beings, identifying job satisfaction factors is very difficult due to the variation of their needs and expectations. Every organization faces difficulties in filling the gap between reality and expectation of employees while many of the employees are not satisfied with this gap, which may lead to job dissatisfaction and turnover of employees. When considering the organizational aspect, it is not good for long term success as well as the organization's reputation. (Grover and Wahee, 2013). The banking sector in Sri Lanka composed of Licensed Commercial Banks (LCBs) and Licensed Specialized banks (LSBs), dominates the financial system and accounts for the highest share of the total assets in the financial system. According to statistic, there are around 5000 emp...
3 comments
Read more

Organizational culture and its effects on organizational performance; evidence from the Edirisinghe Trust Investment (Pvt) Ltd

Culture of an organization can be identified as the embodiment of its joint systems, beliefs, norms, ideologies, myths and rituals. Furthermore, those factors can motivate employees to become valuable sources of efficiency and effectiveness (Sudarsanam, 2010). Generally, organizational leadership is directly associated with the organizational culture and due to same, it is very difficult to change it even under good leadership (Denison, 1990). According to Kotter and Heskett (1992), corporate culture is included with a significant positive impact on the organizational long-term economic performance while highlighting all the key managerial constituencies such as customers, stockholders, and employees and leadership. Edirisinghe Trust Investment (Pvt) Ltd (ETI) was a leading and strong finance companies registered under the Monetary Board of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka under the Finance Companies Act No. 78 of 1988, providing services in the areas of Fixed Deposits, Pawning, Gol...
3 comments
Read more