How to Build a Strong Employee Branding
In the words of experts, Employee branding can be defined as “the process by which employees internalize the desired brand image and are motivated to project the image to customers and other organizational constituents.”
— Miles & Mangold
Now, we often hear a sales funnel strategy of Awareness — Interest — Desire — Action where fewer and fewer people proceed along the funnel of engagement.
However, this article is very much using this thought but thinking of it for our own internal employees. The funnels often engage different parts of our bodies along the way and let’s take a look at this engagement journey.
Heads / Perception
Engagements often start with the heads/minds of individuals. People either heard of your brand or they personally ‘saw’ your brand. Without any emotional connection with you, just like a stranger, they think logically, and the engagement’s mostly towards the brain.
So moving back to our internal employees, some questions we might ask.
- Will they pay attention to the Brand?
- Are they aware of what we are trying to achieve?
Heart / Emotion
After ‘assessing’ the Brand in their minds, the engagement is now towards the heart. They have a personal relationship with the Brand; maybe an experience, or interaction with a salesperson at the counter.
Again, moving back to our internal employees, some questions we might ask.
- Will they accept the Brand Strategy in the broadest sense?
- Will they become advocates?
- Does this personally motivate them?
Hands / Action
If the personal relationship grows strong, the engagement level has now reached the ‘Hands’. They have now become advocates to the brand and will act upon the brand’s ‘Call-To-Action’. They will start buying, sharing and/or talking, about the Brand.
Last few questions to ask ourselves regarding internal employees,
- Do the employees know what kind of actions they need to do, to ‘live’ or ‘perform’ the Brand Behaviour.
- Will these actions become a habit for them?
And there you have it, the 3 parts of engagement. Now if you look at it, the whole journey is actually made up of 6 As.
The 6 A’s of Engagement
Attention (Head / Perception)
Firstly, we must understand that attention is very much about the problem and opportunity. At this level of engagement, it is very much lesser towards the Brand. It is more about the problem and the opportunity the Brand represents.
We often ‘shout’ our announcement through newsletters or distributed emails but we forgot that these methods often do not grab the most attention, or rather, they don’t get the ‘best’ attention if you will.
Employees often throw aside most information irrelevant to them because of various perception of the working culture today.
“The big fat cheques are going to the upper management and not me, why do I care?”
To give an example of how they might think.
One example that we can do to grab their attention better to grab the ‘best’ attention is by having the CEO or Founder of the company personally speaking to everyone, and maybe give a personal journey, of the problem they have faced and how the company is thriving on solving it.
Awareness (Head / Perception)
Awareness is all about what the company is trying to achieve. We often forget this simple fact — Employees are not out to destroy the company; in fact, they are trying to do the exact opposite of growing it. They need better guidelines in the company and a management that directs all their focus in a direction.
These guidelines have got to be really simple.
I think for most cases, and definitely, for this, we first need to be aware of the issue. Only then we can solve it. So, in this case, do the employees know which direction they are going? It is about that clarity of understanding what the company Brand is.
One example we can do is to have internal workshops regarding the Brand. We need to clearly articulate what the brand is, internally, before articulating externally.
Acceptance (Heart / Emotion)
The funny thing about acceptance is that there often is resistance to acceptance. So identifying this issue, how can we best bring our employees to accept what the Brand is?
People are empathetic to familiarity. What I meant is, if we bring out the company’s brand ambassadors, people who genuinely believe in the brand, to answer employee’s questions, they are more likely to feel and understand the company’s brand through the eyes and lives of these brand ambassadors.
These brand ambassadors should come from different departments of the company. They are the leaders and influencers of the company, and they are very impactful when it comes to distributing the message.
And because they are the brand ambassadors, they sincerely believe in the brand. Because they sincerely believe in the brand, they will more likely influence and attract people around them, given their positive energy.
This example is very different from the ‘top-down’ approach that we have mostly used in the past, making our employees have a higher level of acceptance of what the Brand is.
Advocacy (Heart / Emotion)
Traditionally, as employees, we are often asked to use Gallup’s Q12 to test our engagement in the organisation.
We are asked to answer a bunch of generic questions. These questions never apply to a single organisation because they are compared across multiple organisations.
We also have failed to realise that the Advocacies and Antagonist are often in the same pool after doing the test without us knowing. Why? Because both groups have a high level of engagement. The only difference is one of them is moving in the direction of the company, and the other is moving in a completely different direction.
They both care. Except one is convinced it’s the right path, and the other is convinced is not the right path.
Moving away from Gallup’s Q12, when the people inside the organisation know that the company is not trying to do the best for their customers, it is tough and difficult to gain advocacy for the brand.
Understand the customers and the solution you are giving to their problems. Place the customer’s first. Your employees are your customers too.
Oh and remember,
Money does not buy you advocacy.
Action (Hands / Action)
Action is all about knowing how to bring the brand to life. It is the core and the main ‘A’, if you will, amongst the 6 A’s. Everything should lead your employees to the level of ‘Hands’ Engagement.
We need to know that no one can standardize and define every action made in the company. Our employees need to know the brand at a level where they know what it means for their own job.
One example of aligning the actions is by doing a scenario exercise during the workshops —Give the employees a scenario or a day of their life at work and answer a few questions regarding each scenario.
This exercise allows us to understand where they stand to align the company’s employees better together. The workshop can then conclude by sharing the ‘best’ way to get things done etc.
I believe the success of actions is often depicted by the natural tendency of being habitual with those actions. Not particularly doing the same action repeatedly for the same scenario, but even with a different scenario.
There is a theory from Charles Duhigg called the keystone habit. It’s the habit that when you adopt a habit, it spills over. If One is habitual in making their bed, they will eventually clean up their room. Positive habits create more positive outcomes which in return creates more positive habits.
Adherence (Hands / Action)
One of the key aspects of Adherence is the portion of rewarding. But for the company to reward, it needs to have systems in place to gather feedback and data of the ‘Before’ and ‘After’.
“ Is there an increase in positive feedback from the customers because we have done X?”
It is important to build easily achievable goals to celebrate, move on and build upon. It is also important that the company rewards the behaviour, not the outcome.
It is also about changing HR practices — changing the hiring ads to be ‘on-brand’, attracting the right people to the brand.
To conclude, maybe after this, you will see a huge working relationship with your marketing department and your HR department.
Culture is defined as how things are done around here; it is the outcome of many actions. The true adherence at the end comes from the culture, the support we provide. This is mentioned in this Brand Strategy article too.
Watch your thoughts; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.-Lao Tzu
