**1. Introduction**

The market paradigms in existence have suffered a radical change since the 1980s following the changes in the economic paradigm due to the evolution from an industrial economy to a knowledge economy [1]. Consumers have become more demanding, and that rapidly resulted in shorter and shorter product and process life cycles. Markets that were, until that point, part of more or less stable economies suffered the impact of globalisation, and 'turbulence, disorder and unstable balance became the main features of the new competitive landscapes' [2] (p. 17).

This background of fast changes and the global economy leveraged by technological evolution provided an unprecedented focus on the importance of people possessing knowledge within organisations. Attraction and retention of talent by organisations became consequently more and more strategic and vital to organisational success and sustainability. As mentioned by Michaels, Handfield-Jones, and Axelrod, [3] the biggest organisational competitive advantage is the ability of the organisation to develop and maintain (i.e., manage) talent both in turbulent and stable times. The search for tools capable of managing talent has assumed grea<sup>t</sup> relevance over the last decade. EB has emerged as one of the most complete tools based on the culture and reputation of each organisation.

EB provides employer value proposition (EVP) and emerges as a differentiation tool, as well as an identification and employees' commitment mechanism [4] towards each organisation: 'the employers' brand role and impact rise to a new relevance within talent and employees 'careers management' [5]. Therefore, the present research aims to show evidence of the importance of the EB concept to talent management, especially as a tool

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**Citation:** Reis, I.; Sousa, M.J.; Dionísio, A. Employer Branding as a Talent Management Tool: A Systematic Literature Revision. *Sustainability* **2021**, *13*, 10698. https://doi.org/10.3390/su131910698

Academic Editor: Carlos Rodríguez Monroy

Received: 26 August 2021 Accepted: 21 September 2021 Published: 26 September 2021

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**Copyright:** © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

to attract and retain the best employees within the organisations. In order to do so, the research concerning the correlation of these two topics on the last 10 years was systematised, and the EB models identified throughout this revision were listed.

#### *1.1. Talent Management*

The new challenges organisations are facing force them to distinguish themselves from one another to accomplish competitive advantage in the market. This advantage is reached through new work forms and structures, more flexible and more able to achieve agility when addressing markets, human resources practices that improve internal organisational creativity [6], and particularly by investing in 'the right employees' [7]. According to Klein [8], these employees possess traits, skills, values, and experiences that match the intellectual capital, and form the organisational competitive differential, that also contributes to organisational success or failure.

In this view, talent emerges as the central key of organisational strategy—talent is considered a key factor to organisational success and sustainability, and talent managemen<sup>t</sup> assumes the central role becoming an imperative of human resources managemen<sup>t</sup> rather than just a best practice. Organisations must therefore design and apply specific strategies concerning the attraction, retention, and development of their talents [9].

Talent is per se a complex concept, not always consensual amongs<sup>t</sup> the authors addressing it. Michaels et al. [3] (p. 12) define talent as the 'set of skills of a person— gifts, capabilities, intelligence, insight, attitude, character, and innate impulses, as well as the ability to learn and self-improvement'. The authors understand talent as something focused on knowledge, skills, innate and acquired abilities, behaviour, values, and the potential for development.

On the other hand, Câmara, Guerra, and Rodrigues [10] explain that talent consists of good interaction between three dimensions: action, passion, and vision. Action is defined by the authors as the set of competences that enable the employees to execute their tasks. Passion concerns both the enthusiasm revealed by workers when executing their functions, and the commitment and sense of respect towards the organisation. Finally, the vision matches the workers' sense of anticipation, allowing them to perceive the potential they might achieve in the projects they are involved in.

According to Tansley and Tietze [11] (p. 1802), talent managemen<sup>t</sup> encompasses the 'attraction, identification, development, retention, and deployment strategies and protocols' of employees that reveal high levels of potential, adding value to the organisation. According to Henriques [12], however, these authors show a 'transversal functional perspective', meaning they only mention individuals with high levels of potential. Therefore, in order to include all employees, Henriques [12] defines talent managemen<sup>t</sup> as a mechanism to assure that the workers are properly prepared to execute the functions attributed to them while maintaining their development.

A model of talent managemen<sup>t</sup> derived from a macro-contingent approach was introduced in 2019 (see Figure 1). This model provides the macro-contingent vision of organisational talent managemen<sup>t</sup> and is intended to illustrate the dynamic relations between talent systems at both micro and macro levels, therefore enhancing the overview of organisational talent managemen<sup>t</sup> considering the broader landscape of the macro system(s) in which the organisation is integrated [13].

**Figure 1.** Talent managemen<sup>t</sup> macro adaptive approach. Source: King and Vaiman (2019) [13].
