CSR Communication as an Employer Branding Strategy

All of the interviewees considered CSR to be useful for internal motivation of employees, but particularly the biotechnology company and the other IT consultancy use CSR communication as an employer branding strategy. This strategy particularly emphasises the importance of expressing high ambitions through a purpose, so CSR becomes the driving force of the company. Thereby, this strategy also emphasises the importance of appealing to emotions, even in a B2B context.

Regarding CSR and branding, one of the interviewees states that CSR is ‘a way in which you create a branding position, both for current employees and future employees, so the total employer branding situation’ (IT Consultancy, appendix D). Employer branding is a complex concept that encompasses the firm’s value system, policies and behaviours toward the objectives of attracting, motivating, and retaining the firm’s current and potential employees’ (the Conference Board, 2001 in Backhaus & Tikoo, 2004: 502).

Thus, this thesis defines employer branding as a strategy that targets both current and potential employees, although some researchers, such as Foster, Punjaisri & Cheng (2010), distinguish between corporate branding, internal branding and employer branding, indicating that employer branding strategies only target potential employees. However, they raise an important point concerning the relationship

P a g e 67 | 133 between employer/internal branding and the corporate brand: ‘because a corporate brand is derived from the organisation’s identity and culture, this paper argues that the corporate brand values should act as a guide for both internal branding and employer branding’ (Foster, Punjaisri & Cheng, 2010: 404). Thus, B2B corporate brand must not only provide value for customers (Herbst & Merz, 2011; Brandz, 2015), but also motivate current and future employees (Backhaus & Tikoo, 2004; Foster, Punjaisri & Cheng, 2010).

Regarding the biotechnology company and the IT consultancy, the interviews revealed significant

differences in the way these companies use CSR communication as an employer branding strategy, but they both appeal strongly to pathos. In the IT consultancy CSR initiatives and CSR communication is a way of humanising their otherwise rational-thinking organisation and industry: ‘We need to recognise that we are also allowed to speak to the heart and not only to the brain. We are a company that speaks a lot to the brain in many different ways and we need to... I mean, we are all human. [..] we need to recognise that what CSR can is to create stories’ (IT consultancy, appendix D). So this company uses strategic CSR partnerships to motivate the employees by letting them use their competencies to address societal challenges, but also to communicate inspiring stories to the employees who are not able to get directly involved in the projects. Thus, CSR is a way to help the employees identify with the company’s corporate brand.

In comparison, the biotechnology company uses CSR communication to express a purpose and a sense of responsibility that, according to the interviewee, has become their driving force: ‘Well, other companies have a mission or vision or something similar. We have a purpose and in some ways it is like a selfie, because it is not something we go out and talk about, but it is very motivational internally [..]. It is a good way for us to articulate that we believe, and I really think we are driven by an idea, that our business has, especially with the technology we possess, a huge potential to create change and with this comes a sort of duty and an obligation’ (biotechnology, appendix E).

Thus, both these communication strategies mainly appeal to pathos by either showing the human-side of the company or by expressing a sense of direction, a purpose. This does not mean that they do not appeal to logos, but that appealing to pathos may be necessary, when employees are the main target audience.

However, it remains to be determined whether or not this CSR communication strategy is an efficient brand differentiation strategy and, thus, able to provide the company with a sustainable competitive advantage.

P a g e 68 | 133 As mentioned, a brand differentiation strategy must provide value for customers (Herbst & Merz, 2011), i.e.

a ‘unique emotional proposition’ (Hooley, Nicoulaud & Pierce, 2012b: 276), be different from competitors (Brandz, 2015) and be future-oriented (Kotler & Pfoertsch, 2006).

Regarding employer branding, Kotler & Pfoertsch (2006) emphasise the importance of living the brand, meaning that employees must be able to identify with brand and live or at least work according to its values. They argue that ‘There is a strong correlation between employee understanding of brand values and productivity, the advocacy of the organization and the standard of customer service they deliver’ (ibid.:

127). According to this argument, employer branding provides value for customers by delivering a better service. Arguably, this is an indirect competitive advantage, because the company cannot communicate about the supposedly superior performance of its employees without making it sound like bragging. Thus, in order for this strategy to provide value for customers, the company must be able to indirectly

communicate how its employees are doing more than expected for customers, thereby ensuring that they are different than competitors. Both the companies seem to do more than expected by engaging in strategic philanthropy, which, according to Porter & Kramer (2002), is a type of philanthropic project through which the company uses it competencies to improve their competitive context, e.g. by developing infrastructures and industries, which will in the long-run increase their demand. The IT consultancy does this by improving the IT skills of the elderly, whereas the biotechnology company does this by establishing strategic partnerships through which they contributing to the development of industries, which they believe in, and by educating relevant stakeholders to increase awareness of and interest in their product.

Interestingly, only the interviewee from the biotechnology company answered ‘I definitely believe [CSR] is’

(biotechnology, appendix E) a competitive advantage, whereas the interviewee from the IT consultancy did not consider it to be a competitive advantage. A likely explanation of this difference is that one of the companies is a service company and the other is a manufacturing company in an industry that is directly associated with CSR. Consequently, it is difficult to determine whether it is the biotechnology company’s employer branding strategy or their environmentally friendly product (or both) which provides them with a competitive advantage. Additionally, there are significant differences between their level of ambition. The interviewee from the IT consultancy even admits that they have a low ambition by stating that ‘Our ambition is not necessarily like it might be for LEGO and Novo, who say we will fight to combat diabetes or however it is they formulate it. We are not that far’ (IT Consultancy, appendix D). In comparison, the

P a g e 69 | 133 interviewee from the biotechnology company states that ‘CSR is a way of saying “well, if we believe [biofuel] is the right fuel” [...] then we will go all in and try to argue for the industry [..] You know, while others sell a technical solution and then they are out the door, then we spend money and resources and all kinds of things to stand by our customers’ (biotechnology, appendix E). In other words, communicating CSR as a purpose with high ambitions might be a way to differentiate the company because it demonstrates that the brand is future-oriented by setting a direction for employees and indicating what they should aim to achieve. Research conducted on the 100 strongest brands globally has found that since the financial crisis in 2008, for current and future brands, ‘Brand purpose, especially a higher purpose, becomes a differentiator’ (Brandz, 2015: 30), so the strongest brands are able to connect their brand with relevant social initiatives, as well as address the wellbeing of their customers and society in general.

Despite this, research also suggests that the strongest employer brands tend to be service companies, for which an ambitious CSR strategy might be difficult to implement. For instance, the employer branding company Universum’s (2015) ranking of the top 50 most attractive employers, based on employer

preferences of students, shows that 22 of these are B2B companies, out of which only 8 are also among the top 100 strongest brands in terms of their financial performance and customer perceptions (Brandz, 2015), and only 5 are among the top 100 companies with the strongest reputation for CSR (Reputation Institute, 2015a). This suggests that it might be difficult to identify a strong correlation between the strongest brands according to potential employees, the strongest brands according to customers and the strongest CSR-related brands according to customers. Consequently, the main challenge of this strategy is that it may be difficult to communicate the value for customers, i.e. demonstrate how employees are performing better than those of competitors. Therefore, in order to ensure that CSR communication as an employer branding strategy will provide value for customers and establish a sustainable competitive advantage, B2B

companies might have to combine it with other strategies, such as strategic philanthropy, which both the biotechnology company and the IT consultancy have done. However, it is important to note that the interviewees from both of these companies mainly referred to the role of CSR communication in their company as an employer branding strategy targeting employees. Therefore, strategic philanthropy is perceived as an element of the employer branding strategy that motivates employees.

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