Employer Branding and Employee Loyalty in Hotel Industry

The increasing competition for hiring and retaining the best employees has led the organizations to strategize on building a strong brand name as an employer. Research evidences have shown that a strong brand can be a company's most valuable asset, by increasing employee loyalty leading to lowering turnover and helping employers to stand effectively in the increasingly competitive job market. Externally, the employer brand functions to attract employees and create positive associations and enhance corporate image whereas, internally the employer brand generates value by creating a unifying and strong culture as well as increased employee satisfaction and commitment finally leading to employee loyalty (Edwards, 2010). In fact, the employer brand is embedded within theory of psychological contract; it impacts employee organizational relationship and also job motivation and satisfaction (Backhaus and Tikoo 2004). Therefore, the correlation between employer branding and the loyalty is found to be positive based on the commitment of the employees towards employer. This assumption has led the researcher to conduct a research on the relationship between the employer branding and employee loyalty in one of its most relevant service sector i.e. hospitality industry representing Ashok Group of Hotels and Taj Group Hotels from Northern India. The present study has adopted employer branding as multidimensional construct and in context of hospitality sector, the research has explored six dimensions of employer branding, which is found to be efficiently practiced by the hotels under reference. The research also points out that employer branding impacts employee loyalty positively. The study also generates a scope for another comprehensive exploratory study for the identification of variables other than employer branding that influence the employee loyalty.