Employer branding: the employee is always right
October 12th, 2009 by Bridgett Gayle
New York-based writer and editor - and previous PR Media Blog guest blogger, Bridgett Gayle - talks about why company branding begins at home.
A brand must deliver on its promises. A product brand that markets itself as being 100% natural is promising that every ingredient is natural. At any time that promise is broken, the brand is damaged and customer loyalty is threatened. Companies are beginning to realize that they need to make promises to their employees as well. Product brand promises are crafted by the marketing team and employee relations are managed by the human resources team. Employer branding is when marketing and human resources collide with the goal to create a work environment that promises to be a great place to work.
Business owners know the adage “the customer is always right.” Satisfy the customer and they’ll become loyal to your product brand. But the more effective way to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty is to first satisfy the employee. A great place to work, the employer brand, has a work environment that engages employees.
For about five years now I’ve been an on-staff freelance writer for several companies. And for those five years I’ve witnessed employees so disengaged that I wonder how the companies managed to stay in business. Engaged employees talk about what they can do for the company. Disengaged employees stick around for what they can get from the company. And I was no different. The paycheck kept me around for another day. Free lunches were nice but that couldn’t ignite engagement. And when my contract was up, I was ready to leave. But worse yet, I wasn’t at all interested in telling anyone about the company’s product.
The marketing-HR mash up takes a different approach to employment: employee engagement becomes a factor. Just as the marketing team devised ways to keep a customer loyal to the product, the new marketing-HR team seeks to keep employees engaged, leading to loyalty to the product brand. Engaged employees are more than happy to become product brand ambassadors. Happy employees create happy customers.
The Container Store, the US-based storage products retail chain, has been successfully using the marketing-HR mash up strategy. Their focus on employer branding has put The Container Store at the top of Fortune magazines “The 100 Best Companies to Work For” list for ten consecutive years. The company believes that their employees are an extension to their product brand.
Employer branding is a growing concept for companies wanting to get and keep top talent. EMC, an information technology company, has developed its employer brand with a 10-step plan to improve employee engagement. Dan Schawbel, who assists with EMC’s branding strategies, revealed what those 10 steps were in “10 Employer Branding Strategies to Become the Employer of Choice.”
So is your work environment building or destroying your product brand?
Tags: 100 best companies, brand ambassadors, employee engagement, employer branding, The Container Store
October 12th, 2009 at 9:17 am
Good article. Anyone who is seeking to grow or change their brand would benefit greatly from taking this to heart. If you don’t have a goal and/or know where you stand in the first place, it’s hard to get anywhere.
October 12th, 2009 at 10:06 am
An interesting read but it fails to touch on the one key fundamental for employee engagement. Great brands deliver an ‘experience’ - whether is it is the beautifully designed mac that is enjoyable to use, or the understated quality of a Merc - and it is the promise of that experience that people buy. It’s no different with an employer brand - it’s all about the experience and that is defined by leaders and managers. They create the culture, the ability to grow and develop and the context for individuals doing meaningful and rewarding work. I’ve seen many examples of well thought out engagement and branding programmes come to no avail. At em(ic)* we advise our clients not to embark on these programmes without first having the conversations with employees (through things like World Cafe) that discover what it is really like to work in an organisation.
October 15th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
You’re right Jonathan Scott. Every product brand goes through a cycle. A smart marketing team will think about creating experiences to anticipate the product cycle. First is the customer buying/enticing experience and then is the customer using experience (to gain loyalty). Same for employer branding. First is the onboarding experience (the first couple of months for a new hire) and then is the employee retaining experience (to gain loyalty). A good brand always asks what experience it wants its customers and employers to have.
July 9th, 2010 at 6:35 am
good employee relations is very important for the success of the company and any business`-;