What drives employees to develop their personal brands at work? Appeal, authenticity, and influence

Purpose Employee personal branding has been linked to such company benefits as improved profits and customer relations. Research has suggested that employees engage in personal branding to increase employability and promote career development. However, there is a lack of research providing evidence on what drives employees to create and develop their personal brands in the workplace. Drawing on impression management theory, this study aims to investigate employee motivation for personal branding in the workplace. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected using semi-structured interviews with 15 employees of a large multinational production company. Criteria and snowball sampling strategies were used to select the study participants. Interpretive phenomenological analysis was used to analyze data. Findings The study proposes a model of three meta-drivers of employee personal branding in the workplace: appeal, authenticity and influence. The meta-drivers of appeal and authenticity provide the foundation for the brand-building process by creating the initial impression and committing the individual to perform consistently with it. This emerging brand influences others to act toward the individual according to what he or she projects. The influence meta-driver is not limited to impression management but is also related to employee proactive behavior. Originality/value This study expands the impression management theory to include the concept of proactive behavior to explain employee motivation to build personal brands. The authors also provide evidence that tangible factors are not the primary motivation for employee personal branding, contrary to previous suggestions.