What Really Matters—Employer Attractiveness in Healthcare

Although the area of employer branding an employer attractiveness is a well-researched field, there is only little information on the healthcare industry in particular. Since this is a professional branch that becomes more and more important with demographic change and, on the other hand, suffers from a lack of skilled labor, answering this question is of high importance to the whole industry. With the present study, we want to contribute to expanding the empirical knowledge on employer attractiveness in healthcare. In particular, we focus on the internal perspective of the employer branding process and posit that it is crucial to examine which attributes and image dimensions organization insiders (employees already working for a healthcare organization) associate with attractive employers. We apply the instrumental–symbolic framework to investigate attributes relating to organizational attractiveness using a sample of 226 employees working for different healthcare SMEs in Germany. Results show that both instrumental and symbolic attributes predict employees’ attraction to healthcare organizations. Conversely, attributes within the symbolic dimension are perceived as important by employees. However, the results of the multivariate analysis show that those attributes are not the ones that best predict an employer’s attractiveness. Rather, attributes that address esteem needs and the need for self-actualization become significantly important in this context. Eventually, implications on the political and managerial level are discussed.