SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE HRM & EMPLOYEE RESPONSES – DOES EMPLOYER BRANDING HAS A ROLE TO PLAY?

Abstract

Today organizations are expected to not just focus on earning the profit but to also embrace the challenge of meeting the social and economic demands of different stakeholders. This has resulted in a phenomenon where organizations and organizational research are demonstrating an increasing focus on the notion of corporate social responsibility. Organizations seek to meet the expectations of theirstakeholders by building an improved work environment and by nurturing positive perceptions among the internal and external stakeholders. Organizational researchers, on the other hand, seek to legitimize the strategic importance of socially responsible conduct by focusing on its role in achieving positive responses from internal and external stakeholders. This study was initiated with the objective to study the mediating role of employer branding in the relationship between SR-HRM constructs and employee responses assessed in the form of employee engagement, turnover intention, and job satisfaction. Using cross-sectional research design and survey technique, data was collected from 436 employees of telecom sector companies operating in Pakistan. Hierarchical regression analysis was used to analyse linear hypotheses while PROCESS macro v. 3.0 was used for mediating hypothesis. The findings of this research prove that SR-HRM constructs have a significant positive relationship with employer branding, employee engagement, and job satisfaction. A significant negative relationship was found between SR-HRM constructs and turnover intention. Additionally, the findings of this research also proved that employer branding plays a mediating role in these linkages. The findings of this study reveal the importance of responsible conduct by presenting SR-HRM as a source of winning favourable responses from the employees. Furthermore, these findings not only support the notion of embracing the idea of CSR and to further extend this concept to different organizational functions but also signifies that organizations, by shaping up their HRM practices responsibly can overcome some of the issues that organizations experience while managing their employees.