Crafting a paying-it-forward mindset in business: Five principles for a competitive employer branding advantage

Kindness can strengthen your employer brand. The business environment is changing, and the value of kindness in the corporate world is garnering increased attention. Paying it forward is a way to pass acts of kindness on to others. This allows employees and business partners to go above and beyond formal expectations that not only benefit the individuals involved but also the businesses they represent. Paying it forward can potentially create competitive advantage for firms from an employer branding perspective (to attract and retain talent) and in the broader market sense. This behavior can strengthen the employer brand in numerous and effective ways, and managers must understand, engage in, and encourage such conduct. In this article, we discuss different examples, benefits, and risks of paying kindness forward on a micro-, meso-, and macro-level. After providing this foundation, we introduce practical guidelines for managers on how to foster a paying-it-forward mindset among employees and the broader organization. The guidelines were created using insights from interviews we conducted with stakeholders in a business ecosystem in northern Sweden.