Employer branding is a strategic activity that has grown in popularity over the past two decades. Much progress has been made in investigating aspects of employer branding; however, many facets of the process, as it has been conceptualised in the research literature, remain empirically unexplored. The aim of this thesis is to get a deeper, more grounded understanding of employer branding based on an investigation of employer branding processes in practice. Four papers are presented, each providing a new perspective. In the first paper, industry experts??? perceptions of the characteristics of successful and unsuccessful employer brands are used to arrive at a typology of employer branding success. The typology is managerially relevant, providing a means by which firms may assess their employer branding success qualitatively and quantitatively (based on metrics commonly used in practice). Further, theoretical contributions are made by establishing employer branding as a context distinct from corporate and consumer branding, and by providing a basis for assessing variance between employer brands. In the second and third papers, the mechanisms that shape and perpetuate employer brands are explored. Individual (employee) and firm-related mechanisms drawn from the literature are empirically validated in the second paper using qualitative within-case analysis of four employer brands. The firms are from a broad range of industries and are characteristically successful (a pharmaceuticals and a financial services firm) and unsuccessful (a transport firm and a semi-government public utility). The case analysis results in the discovery of additional mechanisms relating to industry-level factors, not previously documented. These findings are built on in the third paper, where cross-case analysis of the same firms is used to establish a set of conditions that support or erode employer branding success. Importantly, theory perspectives outside the traditional domain of marketing (i.e., human resources, organisational behaviour and strategy) are shown to be critical for understanding the process in practice. A taxonomy of generic market segmentation types is used in the fourth paper to investigate the application of market segmentation to employer branding. Market segmentation is shown to provide a useful link between employer branding and broader strategic planning.

Swedish elderly care stands before vast employee related challenges in a future with an aging population that will require welfare. By studying what makes working in elder care attractive and what can be done to strengthen its’ attractiveness, tools can be made to attract employees to the occupation and thereby secure the future needs. This qualitative study has investigated employees' experiences of attractive work in a municipal home care service. Through two focus groups based on a model for attractive work, six employees' experiences of what makes their work attractive in a municipal home care organization have been identified. The results show these are social contact and relationships with colleagues, helping others, having varied tasks and care recipients, present and understanding leadership, and problem-solving in work. Improvement points such as increased salaries, more flexible schedules, raising the status of the home care profession, improving employees' ability to show appreciation for each other, and expanding employees' autonomy in their work have also been identified as ways to enhance the attractiveness of the work according to respondents. The study was inspired by hermeneutic-oriented empirical phenomenology, where respondents' experiences of the phenomenon of attractive work are central, but pre-understanding is used to gain a deeper understanding of these experiences and put them in a broader context. Using the model for attractive work, respondents' experiences have been compared to the model and previous research in the field, where similarities and differences have been identified and discussed. / Svensk äldreomsorg står inför stora personalrelaterade utmaningar i en framtid med en åldrande befolkning som kommer behöva välfärd. Genom att undersöka vad som gör hemtjänstarbetet attraktivt och vad som kan göra arbetet attraktivare kan verktyg skapas för att locka fler medarbetare till hemtjänsten och därigenom säkra framtidens behov. Denna kvalitativa studie har undersökt medarbetares upplevelser av attraktivt arbete i en kommunal hemtjänstverksamhet. Genom två fokusgrupper som kommer ifrån en modell för attraktivt arbete har vad sex medarbetarna upplever som attraktivt med sitt arbete hos en kommunal hemtjänstorganisation identifierats. Resultatet visar att dessa är den sociala kontakten och relationen till kollegorna, att hjälpa andra, ha varierande arbetsuppgifter och brukare, veta vad som ska göras, ett närvarande och förstående ledarskap samt att få lösa problem i arbetet. Förbättringsområden som höjda löner, luftigare scheman, att höja hemtjänstyrkets status, att medarbetarna blir bättre på att visa varandra uppskattning samt en utökad handlingsfrihet i arbetet för medarbetarna har också identifierats som respondenterna menade kan stärka arbetets attraktivitet. Studien har inspirerats av en hermeneutisk orienterad empirisk fenomenologi där respondenternas upplevelser av fenomenet attraktivt arbete står i centrum men förförståelse används för att få en djupare förståelse för dessa upplevelser och sätta dem i en större kontext. Med hjälp av modellen för attraktivt arbete har respondenternas upplevelser jämförts med nämnda modell samt tidigare forskning inom fältet för att identifiera och diskutera likheter och skillnader.