"Employee Branding in Healthcare: A Strategic Approach to Attracting and Retaining Talent"

Abstract

The stakes for recruiting and retaining talent in today’s fiercely competitive environment of healthcare institutions are essential to organizational effectiveness and service excellence. This research paper seeks to examine employee branding as a strategic management concept in building the employer brand image and culture that attract and retain potential and existing employees respectively. The paper focuses on the extent to which efficient branding of employees ensures that potential candidates appreciate the values, mission and culture of a certain institution to ensure that they can emotionally identify with it.

Based on qualitative interviews with the identified target audience of HR professionals and quantitative cross-sectional surveys of healthcare employees, the present study outlines the major effective components of branding to attract and retain the employee. Consequently the research evidence indicates that first impression management has positive correlation with overall organizational image while enhancing employee engagement, organizational commitment and job satisfaction. The significance of the study for healthcare administrators and a theoretical framework for branding are presented in this paper with reference to the results obtained.

Lastly, this study serves to show the importance of employee branding to healthcare systems as a way of developing loyalty in the workforce, consequently, minimizing turnover rates while asserting organizational performance and, in the end, affect positive patient care results. This paper has demonstrated that the concept of employee branding can help healthcare institutions enhance talent management in a challenging and volatile climate.