A debate is raging on how best to protect your brand best. Some believe it is more important to protect it from competitors and other external sources, while many believe you must protect it from employees first. This article describes why we believe it is important to begin with an internal look first.
#1 – Protect the brand from internal attacks first.
External attackers get their information from your internal sources. This can come from customer interfacing employees, leadership’s interaction with the marketplace, or your suppliers. That is why it is important that all of these sources understand how they contribute to maintaining a strong brand and how easily they can undermine it.
#2 – Employees can be loyal – and still hurt you.
Many internal attacks are the result of individuals who don’t fully consider the consequences of their words and actions. It’s important to make sure all employees, including senior leaders, are well informed and well trained when it comes to brand risks.
#3 – Non-engaged employees can sabotage your brand.
Employees who do not know what to do, or those who wouldn’t undertake the appropriate activities even if they knew what they are, will have a detrimental impact on your customers. This represents a significant brand risk.
#4 – Competitors capitalize on an organization’s missteps so pay attention to what’s happening inside your organization.
Monitoring is important. Find ways to identify internal threats before they become a problem that your competitors can attack.
#5 – The internal people issues affecting your brand are much bigger than just HR problems.
This is not just about hiring and training the people with the right backgrounds. Practically every corporate decision can help strengthen or weaken the brand – from safety standards to pricing decisions to supplier selection. It is important to have an HR strategy that is aligned with your brand strategy to reduce brand threats for the entire enterprise.
Employer branding is the new rage. Yet, I’m amazed at what most professionals think it means to create an employer brand. Engaging in this mistake doesn’t just hamstring your ability to become an employer of choice; it will diminish employee morale, loyalty, and engagement.
Let me give you an analogy for what I see as a common and ill-advised approach to employer branding. Several years ago, a friend told me how much he loved his new Mercedes, but then immediately said how he would never buy another one. This was puzzling until he told me what a unpleasant buying experience he had, followed by frustrating service experiences. Because he bought it from a nearby Mercedes dealer, his service options required a long commute. Even though this was his all-time favorite car, he would never buy another.
About a week later, I heard a clever radio commercial for this dealership. After it ended, I contrasted the “we’re so amazing” commercial with the story my friend told me.
“Isn’t this typical,” I thought. “They spend all this money and creativity on getting people to come through the door, only to drive them back out by the experience they deliver. Wouldn’t it make sense to invest some of that money on upgrading the customer experience they actually deliver?”
This is exactly what I see most companies doing when it comes to employer branding, which is used primarily for recruiting. They invest lots of money for clever ads and recruiting campaigns, but next to nothing on making sure they actually deliver a great work experience that makes a great employer brand possible.
The Illusion of Employer Branding
HR professionals and ad-agency reps who believe they are involved in employer branding always talk about updating logos, updating collateral material, and developing the perfect tag line. Some may even go on to creating an “internal branding campaign” (i.e., trying to convince their employees this is who they are as an employer). Those things could be great, but in this scenario they are putting the cart before the horse.
Just like the car dealership, these approaches help get people in through the door, but when the employer doesn’t actually deliver a great work experience, these employees will soon be leaving.
Before You Tell the Labor Market Who You Want to Be (Or Would Like Them to Think You Are)
Before you invest time and money to “spread the word,” make sure what you’re saying is true. This means, you want to first:
1. Ask your employees what they think about you as an employer.
2. Find out what they see as your strengths and your weaknesses.
3. Ask them how you compare to other employers.
4. Find out what new hires heard about you and why they chose you over other potential employers.
5. Ask your new hires if you’ve been delivering what they expected.
6. Ask employees representing different demographics and professions what you can do to become more of an employer of choice.
7. Make sure you do something with this input.
Most organizations are confused about their identities. Is this true of your workplace? Take the Sleekstone Organizational Befuddled Exam (SOB) and find out. Every time you say “Yep, we do that,” give your company one point.
1. Has your company created an image (or brand) for recruiting that is different from what employees experience when they come to work? Employer brands can have value. However, when new or existing employees do not experience what they were promised, productivity is reduced significantly.
Bonus: In a related area, does your company continue to strive for a spiffier tagline, updated logos, or better collateral material explaining the employer brand? This just adds to Befuddled when there is no perceived affect on the work environment.
2. Executives believe almost every employee knows the company’s mission, values, and culture since these statements are posted in most locations. This statement is befuddling for two reasons: (1) it assumes that everybody interprets the written word the same way, and (2) it is typically an indicator that managers and supervisors have not been formally trained on how to put the statements into practice uniformly. (BTW training only managers so they can talk to employees about vision, mission, and culture doesn’t work … or count. This technique is interpreted by employees as “my company doesn’t care enough about these things to train me.”)
3. Did your company avoid asking employees how they perceive the organization before creating an employer brand? Befuddled starts with not knowing where you are so you can plan on what steps you need to go through to get where you want to be.
Bonus: Frequently, companies ask employees how they perceive the organization and then avoid doing anything about the perceptions in favor of creating a fictional image. This reduces the effectiveness of using employees to find other outstanding employees.
4. The employer brand is not consistent with the external brand. Just think about the implications of having an empowering external tagline that says “just do it” to your customers and then creating an internal brand that is based on a command-and-control culture.
5. The workplace image was created by either marketing or human resources without much input from the other departments. Marketing, whether internal or external, frequently tangles with human resources over who should have the responsibility to determine how and what the organization will communicate to employees and potential new hires. This battle detracts from having a complete and accurate message.
Bonus: The management systems do not jive with the picture that is created in the messaging. This includes such things as:
- Pay systems that are not aligned with the type of organizational values the company wants to possess (e.g., having a meritocracy and paying for group performance)
- Cultures that are not aligned with communication systems (e.g., wanting to be collegial, but not having an effective mechanism for employee input)
- Performance review systems that only measure traits when the company is focused on performance.
Scoring:
Organizational confusion is not just content for Dilbert cartoons. It is a key reason our country is lagging in competitiveness and creativity. If your company scored 4 or more, the place you work is part of the problem.
Coming Next – How to Create an Effective and Compelling Workplace Brand
Do you completely understand what an internal brand positioning statement does? Do you know how it is used and why it’s critical for your brand? Has your company adopted a well thought out internal brand positioning statement?
Since most companies have not developed internal brand positioning statements, you most likely answered at least one of the questions with a “no”, you should definitely keep reading. Even if you listed three yeses, there are more than likely some key takeaways from the insights below.
First, it’s best to explain the philosophy, interpretation, and practicality of using such a critical strategic tool. Simply stated, an internal brand position statement should provide the underlying platform for all communications with your employees and other stakeholders. It should distinguish and differentiate the company’s workplace by constantly articulating its points of differentiation, culture, and unique values.
An internal brand positioning statement is crucial to the success of a company that is labor intensive. The messaging consistently reinforces how the company expects its employees to interact with one another and their customers across a broad spectrum of topics and geographic areas. Thus, how the company positions its internal brand has a dramatic impact on their customers’ decision buying process.
So what exactly is an internal brand positioning statement? It is a simple, concise written statement of the concept and parameters behind an internal brand meant to communicate its workplace culture’s supported points of distinction, aligned management practices, and external brand image.
The main components of a well-crafted internal brand positioning statement include:
- Definition: How does the company define itself as an employer and a place to work?
- Differentiation: What makes the company’s workplace special?
- Deliverable: What value does the company provide its employees so they can deliver the product/service uniformly to all customers?
Following this cadence and structure really forces a company to examine its internal brand strategy. Our experience shows the most successfully designed internal brands, have powerful positioning statements that control the brand’s workplace destiny, drive internal and stakeholder communication, and are aligned with management practices.
As you ponder an existing internal brand positioning statement or the creation of a new one, consider the following points to ensure it is truly unique and differentiating.
1. Credible: Will employees believe it?
2. Relevant: Will employees care?
3. Unique: Can potential employees see it as a believable claim?
4. Durable: Is it aligned with your management style and HR policies/programs?
5. Inspiring: Will it engage your workforce?
If you follow this thinking, you can be assured the internal brand positioning statement will not only be effective but also stand the test of time.
So, now what do you think about an internal brand positioning statement? Can a successful company live without it?
Please send us your comments and experiences. Let’s hear some more ideas on ways to create a winning internal brand positioning statement.
Why are many brands unintentionally hijacked by their own people and strategies?
There have been many papers and books written on the importance of brand alignment, employee engagement, brand adoption, call it what you may. So, why do so many companies still suffer from poor employee morale, low retention, misalignment, performance fatigue and the inability to make good on their brand promise?
To answer the question, all you need to do is look at the typical business eco-system— its structure, interactions, systems and most importantly its accountability and philosophy. For the most part, business in America is built in a departmental fashion, and the larger the company becomes, the more susceptible it is to falling into a “Silo” mentality. Obviously the “Silo” effect works against the principle of being aligned, collaborative and fully informed. When the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing, they are left to their own interpretation and often work against the brand’s best intentions.
Structure is the next problem. The biggest problem here is, who is really in charge of pulling the entire picture together and reporting on its effectiveness. HR deals with internal issues, marketing controls brand, operations tries to deliver the goods and sales. So the problem is not only that “Silos” are not conducive to collaboration, but that structures typically are not built to orchestrate a bigger picture mentality and understanding of the customer experience, the internal experience and how it’s being perceived and delivered.
In addition, companies often fail to develop well thought out interactive/collaborative processes to foster “informative decision making” internally and externally. Yes, most companies have some loosely defined collaborative meeting structure but most don’t monitor the internal brand working relationship to the external delivery. Again, people and departments are left to make decisions without confirmation of alignment to the overall strategies.
One of the biggest disconnects we often experience is the division and disconnect of Marketing and HR. So often these departments work on their own strategies without coming together to fully agree and embrace how the communication content is generated and distributed. We find that successful companies and brands that co-develop strategies and shared systems experience greater unity and brand performance.
So, if you’re looking to increase the morale of your organization, improve retention, or better deliver on your customer experience and brand, here’s a few things to think about:
1. Have a holistic view. Don’t develop brand strategies as it relates to your brand experience strictly in a departmental fashion. Bring department leaders together to truly understand the internal/external workings of the brand. Develop a brand council comprised of your department leaders, to guide, instruct and monitor the internal and external brand experience.
2. Say NO to “Silos”. If this is an issue, break it down now, it will only get worse. Especially make sure Marketing and HR are collaborating in strategy and the development of monitoring metrics (and don’t leave out operations).
3. Continual innovative communication. I know it sounds obvious but people need to hear strategy over and over to get it. You must reinforce the importance of the organization to nurture and foster brilliant internal communication and to have external proof that the brand is performing to its intended standards.
If you follow these simple rules, you’ll reduce the chances of your brand being hijacked by its own people. But that’s my opinion, what’s yours?
- Customer complaints that his or her experience with your employees does not meet your company’s external brand expectation
- Sales and profits are declining
- Increase in defective products and or service
- High rate of employee absenteeism
- Unionization activity or labor strife
- Turnover is higher than the industry norm
- Difficulty in recruiting qualified employees and few, if any of your competitors’ employees apply for open positions
- Lower productivity than expected
- High incidence of breakdown of internal communication
10. Employee legal actions against the company and negative blog and social media postings
Any one of the above is an early warning indicator of a developing or terminal cancer between your external and internal brands. Fortunately, in the case of Workplace Branding organizations there is a cure. You need to first analyze the cancer symptoms and identify where the critical components of your management system have moved out of alignment, then you need to engage your management and employees in developing the cure. Once your management and employees have ownership in the cure, then reversing the cancer is quick and relatively painless.
What indicators are important to you?
If you started a new job with a company whose recruiting tagline was ‘Just do it” and found you could not make any decisions, what would you do? If you are like one-half of the population starting a new job, you would quit within three years. Think that is high – 70% of Gen Yers quit within two years. This level of turnover and the dissatisfaction that causes it severely reduces the ability of a company’s customers to experience its products and services as intended.
Too many companies wrongly think or act as if the answer to having a productive and engaged workforce is accomplished by using great branding and marketing tools for recruiting or communicating. To accomplish their desired success and business results, organizations must create a workplace environment that allows their employees to “live” the promised employer/internal brand experience.
Fulfilling the internal brand promise requires an alignment of all of the human resource systems, policies, and procedures with the brand, as well as the company’s operating style. Once accomplished, the workplace environment negatives encountered by employees will be removed, productivity will soar, and profits will increase dramatically.
A few companies (e.g., Google and Cisco) have achieved this workplace brand nirvana. Another small group of companies is trying to increase results through a limited approach of either creating an internal recruiting brand or aligning their operating styles with their employee related management systems. The limited approach will not optimize their results.
Here are three things your company can do to begin earning its share of the $300 billion annual savings Gallup estimates is available to US companies through increased productivity and engagement.
- Determine if your current employees are “living” the brand experience you promise to new recruits. This is critical as approximately one-half of newly hired employees quit within three years, which is extremely costly to an organization.
- Find out if your human resource policies are aligned with the internal brand. Employees who are told they will be rewarded for their individual merit will not react well when their incentive is reduced based on a workgroup’s performance.
- Monitor how employees are reacting to workplace initiatives. Having timely information can allow management to take the actions necessary to head off lack of engagement due to perceptions regarding the initiatives.