Hållbar och attraktiv? - En kvalitativ studie om hållbarhet i platsannonser

Abstract

This study examines how five of the largest, swedish companies work with corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability. The current study investigates how the companies present their work with sustainability in their annual sustainability reports. From an employer branding perspective, this study also look into if the aspects presented in the sustainability reports also could be found in the job advertisements of the company. To narrow the focus down, the study focuses on the social- and environmental aspects and not on the economic part of sustainability/CSR (Presley, Presley & Blum, 2018). Prior research in this area has focused on how companies work with sustainability connected to employer branding and concludes that job seekers values a company that works with sustainability - for many different reasons. Most research has investigated job advertisements in an international context, but there is a research gap regarding the swedish based context why this study therefore contributes to research in this area. To seek understanding for the communication process, an important theoretical model in this study is the signaling theory. The signaling theory also facilitates the in process of how companies can help to reduce information cost for the job seeker depending on how much information they communicate (Connelly et al., 2011). The method used in this study is called qualitative content analysis (Bryman, 2016). The data consists of five sustainability reports, one from each company from the year of 2018. The data also consists of 50 most recent full time job advertisements from one specific date, 10 from each company. First, we analyzed the sustainability reports company wise with an open coding process. Second, we analyzed the job advertisements in each company based on categories found in the first coding process using focused coding. Last, we sorted our identified categories under two main categories; social and environmental in company wise matrixes. The result of this study shows that the companies mostly highlight the social aspects of sustainability/CSR, both in the sustainability reports and in the job advertisements. From a theoretical, employer branding perspective this can be seen as they mostly signal social aspects. The information costs therefore reduces for the job seekers since the organization has communicated its sustainability engagement in the job advertisements. Diversity and inclusion is the most frequent found category according to the social aspect. Some environmental aspects is also found, for example using sustainable materials and innovation. The conclusion of this study is that the five swedish companies have signaled a great part of their sustainability-work in their job advertisements although depending on which company studied. From a theoretical perspective, this might be seen as that the information costs reduces for the job seeker. According to this, one important conclusion is that there needs to be a developed communication between HR and the marketing department. It’s of great importance that companies also can perform what they’ve communicated in their job advertisements to not break the psychological contract.