Two of the professions that are the most difficult to find are social education workers and nursing professionals. Employer Branding is a well-established tool in literature and Human Resource practice to help organizations attract and retain employees. Thus, the research question of this paper was the following: How can the Salvation Army (SA) Switzerland use Employer Branding to attract and retain qualified social education workers and nursing professionals in its social institutions in the German-speaking part of Switzerland?

In the literature review, relevant papers about Employer Branding were compiled. Moreover, particularities of the non-profit sector in relation to Employer Branding were looked at. Finally, the current state of Employer Branding in the SA was analyzed. To provide recommendations for the SA on target group-specific Employer Branding messages for social education workers and nursing professionals, a quantitative survey has been conducted with mostly students studying one of those professions. The answers were evaluated using descriptive statistics and recommendations were derived from them.

One key finding was the higher importance of attributes related to intrinsic motivation than to extrinsic motivation. However, salaries, benefits, and career development opportunities still seemed to be relevant to the target group. This may be explained by Herzberg’s two factor motivation theory, highlighting that attributes related to extrinsic motivation can be described as hygiene factors, whereas attributes related to intrinsic motivation can be seen as motivators. For the SA Switzerland, the main recommendations were to emphasize the employer attributes where the difference between the importance for the target group and their current perception of them in the SA Switzerland is the highest. Furthermore, while their affiliation to the non-profit sector and the meaningfulness of their work are important for their general Employer Value Proposition, less emphasis should be placed on them for the target group. Finally, staff-word-of-mouth emerged as a key concept from the literature on how the SA Switzerland could effectively communicate their Employer Branding to the target group.