Branding Yields Better Harvest: Explaining The Mediating Role of Employee Engagement in Employer Branding and Organizational Outcomes

Employer branding is an intriguing junction of marketing and human resource management, where the positive intangible perception of the employer makes the organization a valuable. It is antecedents and outcomes have been tried and tested. However, there is a need to empirically test how employer branding lures the employees to perform well and to remain loyal to the employer. This study aimed to find the mediating impact of employee engagement between the relationships of employer branding and performance of the employees and their intention to stay in the companies. By using the structural equation model (SEM), the results revealed the full mediation role of employee engagement in between employer branding and employee performance and their intention to stay. This study implies that the bank needs to induce employees to remain engaged, as, with this, the performance and talent retention will yield.


Introduction
Brand concerns identity, image, and reputation. In the consumer's mind, a brand is a collection of perceptions (Aldousari et al., 2017;Kapoor, 2010). There are various natures of brands, for example, the product and the corporate brand, and the latest one, the employer brand. The job of the brand is not to persuade buyers to purchase a specific item; it additionally impacts customers' concept of themselves (Pratt & Foreman, 2000). In the market, the competition among employers has increased because of the shortage of skilled and quality human resource, to resolve the issues, the idea of employer branding has forward as an employment methodology in the 1990s (Verma & Ahmad, 2016). Moreover, being informed of it or not, all organizations have employees, and at the same time, they have an employer brand. Nevertheless, the idea of "employer branding" was instituted in 1996. From that point forward, organizations working in all industry parts have left on the improvement and critical performance of their image to make it all the more engaging existing and future employees (Carrington, 2007). Employer branding concerns an organization's reputation for being an employer and its worth to its employees. (Barrow & Mosley, 2011;Dabirian et al., 2011). The term recommends that a firm benefits from employer branding when it observes as an excellent work workplace in the perceptions of current employees and critical shareholders outside the market. The excellent working environment for the organization can define as "one where employees trust the individuals they work for, have pride in work they do and appreciate the organization of individuals they work with" (Kashyap & Verma, 2018). "Employer Brand" as a thought rose out of two distinct roots. The first as the intensity of a 'corporate brand' whose development connects to the 'recruitment communication' and the second as word related brain science that provides growth to the possibility of 'psychological contract.' The two roots are presently clubbed together as 'Employer Brand' into the focal point of consideration (Rosethorn, 2009).
The function of the employer brand has turned out to be most crucial to managing the changing desires for the 21st-century workforce entering the workplace. The Word "Employer Branding" is characterized as "the bundle of practical, financial, and psychological advantages given by the employment and is related to the employing organizations (Ambler & Barrow, 1996). The organizations are adopting a few systems in such a manner. One such system is turning into the 'employer-of-choice' and focusing on the advancement of employer branding policies. The term employer branding is for best employers, employer of choice, and a great place to work for (Ahmad & Daud, 2016;Joo & Mclean, 2006). The incident does not develop great workplaces instead of result from intentional and necessary activities intended for attracting, connecting, and retaining employers. Therefore, employer branding is the outcome of the ''entirety of an organization's tries to convey to existing and planned staff that it is a demandable place to work'' (Lloyd, 2002). Employer brand cannot constrain by the firm alone; its excellence lies and depends on each person's preferences. In such a manner, how much a firm's expected employer brand coordinates its employers' previous actions with the organization's culture and qualities decides the employer brand's effect in the market (Dabirian et al., 2017). Employer branding is quickly developing as an essential human resource approach that adjusts both inner practices and outer images to Etikonomi Volume 19 (1), 2020: 77 -94 achieve positive employee engagement and employee satisfaction (Mosley, 2007;Tanwar & Prasad, 2016).
Employer branding helps an organization in recognizing the significant characteristics that are covered by potential and existing workers. These characteristics name as a 'bundle of advantages.' These bundles are promoting either inside and remotely to gain the mark of the most appealing employee. In this way, employer branding offers one of the different employment experiences to existing and potential employees (Edwards, 2009). Human resource development experts are progressively being called upon to encourage the advancement of a system that encourages employee engagement in the working environment (Macey & Schneider, 2008;Shuck et al., 2011). Employee engagement has been defined as 'an individual worker's intellectual, enthusiastic, and social state coordinated toward required organizational consequences' (Shuck & Wollard, 2010). The condition of employee engagement is believed to be comprehensive of long-lived emotional engagement and is a forerunner to progressively impermanent sweeping statements of employee supposition, for example, works fulfillment and responsibility (Kahn, 1990).
Employee engagement has characterized in human resource development writing as the subjective, passionate, and behavioral strength an employee coordinates toward positive outcomes (Alagaraja & Shuck, 2015). Operationalized as a positive, psychological condition of inspiration (Parker & Griffin, 2011), engagement is accepted to work inside the three interconnected psychological aspects inborn (Alagaraja & Shuck, 2015;Shuck & Wollard, 2010), intellectual energies, passionate energies, and conduct energies and encouraged by the more extensive field of the management (Rich et al., 2010). Engaged employers go exceeding the call of duty to play out their job in brilliance. Khan (1990) define engagement as the "outfitting of hierarchical individuals' selves to their work jobs." He included that in engagement, "individuals utilize and convey what needs be physically, subjectively, and emotionally throughout job performances.". Most distal to a comprehension of engagement is the experience of the individual employee, hence situating engagement as an individuallevel variable that impacts (Alagaraja & Shuck, 2015). Individuals are likely to hold positive perspectives on their execution (Fox & Dinur, 1988;Rego & Cunha, 2008). The more an individual recognizes oneself with the gathering, the more the individual acts according to the gathering's standards and qualities (Ashforth & Mael, 1989;Van Dick et al., 2004). One of the central objectives and standards in associations and one of the principal human resources management responsibilities is staff retention (Davies, 2001;Van Dick et al., 2004). Individual Work Performances (IWP) was characterized by "practices or activities that are significant to the objectives of the organization" (Campbell, 1990;Koopmans et al., 2013). Thus, IWP focuses on practices or activities of employees, as opposed to the consequences of these activities.
Moreover, the behavior should under the control of the individual; in this manner eliminating behaviors that are forced by the environment (Rotundo & Sackett, 2002). It is necessary to decide its fundamental structure to estimate IWP. Customarily, the fundamental focal point of the IWP build has been on errand execution, which can characterize as the capability with individuals to perform the center substantive or specialized undertakings integral to his or her activity (Campbell, 1990). Inside this circumstance, individual performance can be characterized as "practices that are perceived by formal reward frameworks and are a piece of the prerequisites specified in JD" (Camps et al., 2016;Williams & Anderson, 1991).
It broadly recognized that there is high employee turnover in the cordiality sector and that it is critical for accommodation organizations to make proactive moves to decidedly influence employee retention (Hughes & Rog, 2008;Milliman et al., 2018). Intention to stay is conceptualized as a person's goal to stay with his or her present manager on a long time premise and is viewed as the inverse of intention to leave (Johari et al., 2012;Milliman et al., 2018). Intention to stay view as a primary determinant of real turnover conduct (Tett & Meyer, 1993) also, is influence by various employee work orientations, including organization responsibility and employee satisfaction, which have been connected to employee engagement and work environment spirituality (Saks, 2011).
Through social trades, employees gain information from companions, thereby expanding their learning capacities. Likewise, when employees see that their organization's center of attention is on information sharing, they feel persuaded to adopt, at last building up their capabilities. They feel connected and engaged with the organization creating intention to stay ahead. At the end of the day, when employees predict their career development and employability aptitude improvement, they build up a feeling of affective commitment with the organization, which thus, interprets intention to stay (Naim & Lenkla, 2016). In a similar vein, (Ashforth & Mael, 1989;Van Dick et al., 2004) have contended that organizational recognition ought to relate with more grounded help for the organization and in-aggregate individuals. Once more, this should result in a more grounded intention to stay with the organization. Despite the increasing trend of the concept of employer branding and its importance for the organization, there is a need to explore it further (Backhaus & Tikoo, 2004). This study aims to find out the impact of employer branding on individual performance and intention to stay with the mediating role of employee engagement.
In organizations, individuals are business bloodstream-individual performance regard as what an individual is doing and what he is not doing. Individual performance includes the quantity and quality of output, work presence, accommodating, valuable nature, and reliability of the output. Employer branding activities are essential for individual performance development (Al Salman & Hassan, 2016). The company's achievement or disaster depends on the performance of its employees. In an international market, developed competencies, skills, and knowledge of talented employees have proven to be the primary source of modest benefits. A strong employer branding is required to build the ideal information, abilities, and skills of the individuals to perform better and achieve success. At the point when individuals perceive their company's interest for them through training and motivational programs, in return, the individuals work hard to accomplish organizational goals and demonstrate high performance at work (Elnaga & Imran, 2013). The interest in individuals yields high returns. Individuals are committed to the most significant employers; therefore, the result of the organization is incredible due to the performance.
The theory of organizational commitment proposes that if employees accept brand values, they are bound to be genuinely committed to a company (Backhaus & Tikoo, 2004;Cook & Wall, 1980). Employer branding brings the advantage of increasing the number and value of candidates to an organization (Collins & Han, 2004) and individual performance (Fulmer et al., 2003). "In the best case, both organizations and individuals will play a vital role in career management and share significant knowledge on opportunities and acquaintances to be followed for the assistance of both" (Baruch & Peiperl, 2000). A positive attitude to an organization can lead to increased individuals' creativity and innovation, and they participate more in the workshops and conferences, decreased leave of absence, and increased loyalty (Huang & Liu, 2010). Employer branding aims to enhance the link between employee performance and employer brand loyalty. A range of connections has studied between organizational outcomes and individuals, and these give authority to employer branding. First, the performance of satisfied individuals tends to be higher (Iaffaldano & Muchinsky, 1985) and deliver higher individual satisfaction levels (Ryan et al., 2006).
Mostly, positive individual behavior towards work also has a positive impact on consumer satisfaction (Morrison, 1996). The phenomenon is calls the service income chain, suggesting that individual ability, commitment, and job satisfaction are connected to consumers' perception of price and later to revenues (Hart et al., 1990). The experience of sears indicates that the establishment of an employer brand leads to enriched employee performance, which in return, consumer satisfaction and, ultimately, profits. Sears was capable of measuring the struggle of effective employer branding, representing the importance of this exercise (Rucci et al., 1998). Employer branding intends to offer individuals with the knowledge they require to self-survey within the organization, where the existence of brand image offers information and knowledge to executives about work standards, norm, desired behavior, and additional aspects compulsory for an individual's success. In this regard, to promote the significance of individual career development and performance within the organization, the implementation of employer branding is essential (Rosenbaum, 1989).
The employee will have the intention to stay with their present organization (Currivan, 1999;Naim & Lenkla, 2016). It shows the willingness of an individual to continue working with their organization (Lyons, 1971). It can be measured by categorizing positive aspects as an individual factor in the workplace and the work environment (Lee et al., 2001). Employer branding can hold the most excellent individuals by making a domain that empowers workers to experience the brand through various viewpoints, such as employee progression (Gilani & Cunningham, 2017). This condition escalates their gratification and probability of continuing employed with the company (Cable & Graham, 2000;Gilani & Cunningham, 2017;Jain & Bhatt, 2015). Employees tend to analyze the business work environment marking on a passionate dimension because the qualities communicated are those that the individual right now has or wishes to get. The better the match, the more the organization's individual is attracted (Lawler, 2005).
Primarily populace, globalization, and wastefulness in the enlightening foundation of the workforce cause employment scarcities. Besides, enlisting unsuitable labor force and the high turnover rate also cause organizations to lose out. The additional costs due to employee turnover are equal to 50-60% of the employee's yearly salary (Lee et al., 2001). In this alarming situation, it is possible to retain talented workers in an extremely competitive job market by creating a keen perception of the employer brand (Kashyap & Rangnekar, 2016). Strong employer branding also facilitates a reduction in the cost of acquiring employees and augments employees' intention to stay (Bodderas et al., 2011). Internal branding idea refers to employee activities perceived as an internal consumer affecting the intention of employees to stay (Matanda & Ndubisi, 2013).
Employee engagement is the harnessing of business partners' identities to their role in work, individual employment in engagement, and expressing them emotionally, physically, and cognitively in-role performance (Kahn, 1990;Peng et al., 2014). It is a psychosomatic existence of the two perilous mechanisms: attention (intellectual availability and time spent considering a role) and concentration (to be involved in a role and raises to the strength of one's emphasis on a role) (Peng et al., 2014;Rothbard, 2001). As an outcome, employee engagement looks like another trend, or it may call as "old wine in a new bottle" (Sun & Bunchapattanasakda, 2019).
Employee engagement and employer branding diligently link with each other. Branding the employer support to entice the best applicants that are suitable for organizations, such individuals love and enjoy working with the organization, and this creates engagement of employees (Tanwar & Prasad, 2016). If the values, customs, and norms of an individual are fit for the standard of an organization, then individuals will engage more in their organization and work that could ultimately raise their intention to remain within the organization. When employees understand meaningful and positive surroundings in return, they tend to show positive attention and concentration (Memon et al., 2018). If individuals find their organizations and work fit well, they would be encouraged to engage with their organization and job. The theory of social exchange explains that in a mutual bond, if an employee finds well with that of their organization between their standard, values, and norms, the individuals become more involved with their organization and employment.
This condition proposes that employees who achieve their duty and perform well in an organization are more engaged and their intention to stay inclined in an organization. It observes that the individuals who highly engage at workplaces are less probably to participate in intended turnover (Juhdi et al., 2013;Peng et al., 2014;Saks, 2006). The employees who are engaged can bring higher performance by focusing their struggle on work-related aims, they are intellectually vigilant, and they are socially and emotionally attached to their job (Kahn, 1990;Truss et al., 2013). Since engaged employees are more enthusiastic than the other, they can perform their job with fewer efforts (Robert & Hockey, 1997;Truss et al., 2013), and engaged employees invest their time and resources to find new ways to carry out their task or to improve and change the environment (Ramamoorthy et al., 2005;Truss et al., 2013). Also, it claims that the differences of individuals play a dynamic role in shaping an individual's possible level of commitment and engagement (Sahin & Robinson, 2002;Sun & Bunchapattanasakda, 2019). The perception process is an essential factor in individual performances. In order to get high participation of individuals at the workplace to be efficient, and its employees must be empowered to have a positive impact Etikonomi Volume 19 (1), 2020: 77 -94 on employee engagement. This condition will result in the ability of employees to make decisions that are significant to their task and performance and the worth of their job life, involving them in their jobs. In general, the employee's intention to leave their job sees as an essential measure of how individuals feel about their organizations. The individuals who are engaged are likely to be more attached to their jobs and organizations (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2004).

Method
This study takes a quantitative approach to have underpinnings in positivism. The data collected through a survey method with a structured questionnaire and adopted instruments. Participants were the employees of Banks. We distributed 350 questionnaires and received 330 maintained responses that we used as a sample for our analysis. To get robust data, we made seven teams of researchers students visit the targeted employees personally in they are given time and get their responses. As the hypothesized model involved multiple regression analysis simultaneously, therefore, we used partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). Moreover, for exact hypotheses testing, we performed bootstrapping with 5000 subsamples to get robust results.
We measured employee branding as a corporate reputation with eleven items (Sivertzen et al., 2013). Intention to stay measured with seven items (Mayfield & Mayfield, 2007). The mediating path of employee engagement measured with twelve items (Vale, 2011). We measured employee performance on the instrument of three items (Bishop, 1987;Shahzadi et al., 2014). All these instruments measured the data on a five-point Likert scale.

Results and Discussion
We diagnosed the data concerning its reliability and validity. Internal consistency tested through Cronbach alpha and composite reliability and values of both the measures of all constructs. Table 1 shows that the value above the standard value, which is 0.7. We tested convergent validity of each construct with Average Variance Extracted (AVE), the values of AVE for every construct is above 0.45, presented in table 1, which suggests good convergent validity of all constructs. We have made sure by testing the variance inflation factors (VIF). Table 2 shows that no indicator is redundant, and there is no issue of multicollinearity. That is to say, all the indicators are substantial on their own, and no indicator is redundant as there is no issue of multicollinearity. Discriminant validity has two fronts. First, whether each indicator has higher loading on its respective construct than on other constructs or not, for this, we tested cross-loading and values all the cross-loadings. Table 3 shows that every indicator of each construct is discriminately valid.   Table 5 displays the total effects of the hypothesized relationships. The results revealed that there is a positive impact of employer branding on employee performance with a beta value of 0.488 and with a significant t-value of 9.043. The results also revealed that there is a positive impact of employer branding on employees' intention to stay with a beta value of 0.387 and a significant t-value of 6.639.  Table 6 presents the results of direct relationships. It revealed that there is no direct impact on employer branding on employees' performance and employees' intention to stay. Almost all the impact is because of the mediating variable, employee engagement. After the data diagnosis, we performed structural equation modeling and bootstrap test at 5000 subsamples, to test the hypotheses. We found that there is a positive impact on employer branding on employee performance (See Table 6). Moreover, Table 6 also shows that there is a positive impact on employer branding on employee intention to stay. We tested the model in the presence of mediator employee engagement, and we found that that direct impact becomes insignificant in the presence of a mediator, presented in Table  7. Employee engagement plays a fully mediating role in between the relationship of employee branding and employee performance, and in between the relationship of employee branding and intention to stay, presented in Table 7. In general, all the relationship is showing in Figure 1.
We aimed to explain the concept of employer branding and its impact on individual performance and intention to stay with the mediating effect of employee engagement. We found resilient support for our hypotheses that employer branding feeds into employee engagement, which in turn enlightens individual performance and intention to stay. The result of the study revealed that positive employer branding increases the individual performance of employees. Employer branding is positively related to the performance of the employee and negatively related to intentions to leave the organization (Riordan et al., 1997). Employer branding helps to increase the performance of the organization; the most significant entity is that employer branding helps accomplish the engagement of employees and achievement for the organization Etikonomi Volume 19 (1), 2020: 77 -94 (Ambler & Barrow, 1996;Truss et al., 2013). Research indicates that focusing on promoting employer branding is a significant way to improve employee performance. (Sokro, 2012) also proposes that the existence of high levels of employee engagement improves organizational commitment, job performance, and task performance.

Figure 1. The Empirical Result
Moreover, the result reveals that positive employer branding increases the employee's intention to stay and work with a particular organization. Individuals view their workplace and play a significant role in their engagement in the workplace (Holbeche & Springett, 2009). The work atmosphere is likely to build a collective sense of intention with others and to inspire employees to passionately unite with each other to accomplish high levels of engagement. Consequently, employees' perception of their working situation figures and leads how engaged an employee is. In order to have a favorable perception, a supportive working atmosphere, and an excellent location to work are essential (Memon et al., 2018). Besides, the intention of employees to leave noted to decrease the developmental importance owing to the presence and vice versa. The existence of a significant job contributes to the choice of the employee to remain on (Tatar & Ergun, 2018).
However, enlightening why employees stay with a particular organization established that there are definite personal factors and work-related factors that explain the process of employee turnover. Work-related factors like development opportunities are a vague feature that effects in decreasing employees' turnover intentions. This result is reliable with Saks (2006) that recommends the positive behavior, attitude, and intention form the employees that had a good relationship with their employer leader. Highly engaged employees, in other words, have a higher feeling of emotional, cognitive, and physical engagement to their organization and employment. Therefore, the employees who are highly engaged show high dedication, energy, and intention to stay in their organization. When employees sense an excellent employer branding of the organization, discover that their organization meets their desires well, and has the same characteristics of other workers in a similar organization; it will require central employees to engage with an organization profoundly. Such a high degree of engagement and emotional affection is one of the main factors for keeping individuals linked to the organization they work in (Memon et al., 2018).
This research point out that our quantitative study carried out here is an illustration of a positivistic study. Since positivism is just one of many science philosophies, we would like to highlight that it not condemn. Here potential social practical methods can be especially useful in future research as employer brands as prospective employees perceive. Predilections for employer brands develop during a practice of why approaches that are capable of capturing the methods essential decision making, such as protocols, may be useful gears in employer branding for future research.
Furthermore, the limitation of our investigation is that for now, it restricts to only one country. In the future, the related investigation should encompass the analysis to include other countries as well. Despite these limitations, our research delivers valued visions to improve the understanding of employer branding. We found that a strong employer branding is a useful tool for fostering employee consequences linked to performance and intention to stay. As an outcome, organizations may achieve a competitive benefit by firming the employer branding, which enables them to manage their employees' skills, performance, and favorable attitude and their intention to work in a particular organization. Generally, strong employer branding allows organizations to impact present and potential employees. The relation between the employer branding and individual performance and intention to stay is defined empirically.

Conclusion
The research on employer branding is a relatively new phenomenon; however, there is an enhanced need to test this concept with different paths and for different outcomes and in different industries. This study tested the mediating path of employee engagement in between employer branding and performance of the employees and their intention to stay. This fact was limited to the data of the banking sector only, and therefore it is recommended to test the same path and other possible mediating paths in other industries.
Theoretically, we discuss that the employee performance, in turn, aggravates advantageous employer consequences that lead to the formation of the employer branding. Hence, we suggest the employer branding as a provision for organizational outcomes. An organization can efficiently impact the formation of advantageous employee engagement that is diligently related to an organization with a strong employer brand. Our paper investigates the concept of the employer brand by considering employee engagement as a mediator with employee performance and intention to stay.