How top global companies build a strong employer brand to attract and keep talent

Earlier this year, Michelle Wolfswinkel was awarded her PhD from Stellenbosch Business School following the successful defense of her PhD dissertation. Her research, at the intersection of branding and human resource strategy, addresses one of today's most urgent challenges in business leadership: attracting and retaining top talent while strengthening the overall corporate brand.

Her dissertation, titled "Employer Brand Positioning to Attract and Retain Talent and Build Brand Coherence: An Exploratory Study in Top Global Employer Brands", investigates how strategic employer brand positioning can give organisations a competitive edge in a world where global talent shortages are at an all-time high.

Recognising the employer brand's dual function - as both a talent attraction tool and a contributor to brand coherence - Wolfswinkel approached the topic through a brand-centric lens, bridging gaps between the fields of human resources and marketing. Her qualitative exploratory study involved two phases: a theoretical framework rooted in brand positioning theory and a practical content analysis of 30 top global employer brands spanning seven continents.

Her findings, distilled into four key themes and ten sub-themes, revealed best practices and strategic insights into how leading organisations position their employer brands through compelling employee value propositions (EVPs), targeted messaging, and brand alignment strategies. 

The result is a robust and actionable Employer Brand Positioning Conceptual Framework, complete with implementation guidelines designed for cross-functional leadership teams.

Wolfswinkel's study contributes significantly to both theory and practice. It defines the employer brand as a brand construct, fills key gaps in employer brand positioning literature, and offers practical guidance to organisations seeking to win the war for talent while building stronger, more coherent corporate brands.

Her dissertation was supervised by Prof Marlize Terblanche-Smit and Dr Carla Enslin.