What Is Employee Branding, and How to Ensure It’s on Point
Employee branding is a term that is often heard but not always understood. What does it mean, and why should you care? Simply put, it is the process of creating a positive image for your company through your employees. Here is your complete guide to employee branding.
The focus is on making sure that your staff members become advocates for your brand, portraying your organisation in a favourable manner.
When executed properly, it has the potential to improve employee satisfaction, cultivate customer allegiance, and augment revenue.
In this blog post, we will discuss what is employee branding and how to get it right.
The Benefits of Having a Strong Employee Brand
To acquire insight into the significance of an employee brand, we can analyse the benefits it yields. Basically, it involves establishing a distinct and recognisable persona for your staff.
It’s more than simply placing a logo on a t-shirt or giving away branded pens; it generates an emotional connection between your workers and your brand.
When done correctly, it can have a lot of benefits for your business.
First and foremost, it can help you entice top talent. In today’s competitive job market, prospective employees are looking for more than just a paycheck; they’re looking for a place where they can feel like they belong and make a difference.
To distinguish yourself from other employers and demonstrate to potential employees that you’re more than just a symbol, building a robust employee brand is essential.
In addition to attracting top talent, it can also help you improve retention rates. Employees who feel connected to their employer are more likely to stick around, even when times are tough.
And, when employees feel proud to work for your company, they’re more likely to go above and beyond in their roles. Employee branding can also help improve customer satisfaction levels.
Customers who interact with happy, engaged employees are more likely to have a positive experience with your brand.
Building a successful business heavily relies on it, which is why it cannot be overlooked. This means that if you haven’t started investing, it’s high time you do so.
How to Assess Your Current Employee Brand
Naturally, as a business owner, you are continuously searching for innovative methods to enhance the recognition of your brand and expand your customer base.
What about the individuals currently employed by you? They serve as some of the most important supporters of your brand. To ensure that they accurately convey your organisation’s message, it is crucial to evaluate how they perceive and promote your brand identity. The following are steps you can take to achieve this:
1. Evaluate Your Employee Engagement Levels
The first step is to pulse-check your employee engagement levels. Are they high, medium, or low?
There are various methods to evaluate this, but an uncomplicated approach is to examine attendance and turnover rates. If the absenteeism rate is high or there is a considerable number of employees quitting, it indicates that there could be an issue.
To assess the level of engagement, you can directly ask your employees in a survey about their sentiments towards their job at your organisation. This approach will provide you with meaningful observations on the areas that are functioning proficiently and those that require enhancement.
2. Analyse Your Employee Communications
After gaining a thorough understanding of the current situation, it is essential to examine and evaluate the communication methods utilised with employees.
Do you have regular company-wide communications? If so, what do they typically entail? Are they positive and upbeat, or do they tend to be negative and critical? Pay close attention to the language used in these communications, as it can be a telltale sign of the overall tone of your workplace culture.
3. Evaluate Your Employee Training Programs
Furthermore, assess your staff training programs. Do they cover important topics and maintain the attention of participants, or are they uninteresting and obsolete?
If your employees do not have enough knowledge about your company’s products, values, and principles, they will not be capable of effectively advocating your brand to customers and potential clients.
Make sure your training programs are up-to-date and relevant so employees can hit the ground running when representing your company.
4. Assess Your Employee Perks and Benefits
Lastly, it is crucial to evaluate the perks and benefits offered to employees. Are the salaries and benefits packages being delivered competitive enough?
Do you provide opportunities for professional development? What about work-life balance initiatives like flexible hours or remote work options? All of these factors play a part in enticing and keeping top talent, which is essential for maintaining a strong employee brand.
How to Create Employee Branding
Once the definition and importance have been discussed, it is appropriate to devise principles for carrying out your employee branding.
These guidelines will help ensure that your employees are on brand and representing your company in the best possible light.
Here are a few things to keep in mind as you create your guidelines:
1. Define Your Employee Brand
To establish a powerful employee brand, the initial stage is to determine the essence of its representation. Identifying the fundamental principles and unique traits that make an organisation an awesome working place are vital components. This approach aids in articulating precise and steady communication of your employee brand.
2. Communicate Your Employee Brand Internally
Once you’ve defined your employee brand, it’s important to communicate it internally to all employees. This includes everything from the way you talk about your company to the way you treat employees. Consistency is key when communicating your employee brand internally.
3. Promote Your Employee Brand Externally
Apart from conveying your employer’s image to your staff, you also have to publicise it outside the company. You can achieve this by utilising various avenues like social media, advertising job vacancies, and implementing public relations campaigns.
The primary objective is to make sure that potential candidates recognise your organisation as an excellent place to work.
4. Evaluate and Adjust as Needed
Continuously developing your employee brand is crucial and not a one-time endeavour. Therefore, it is vital to regularly assess your advancement and alter your approach accordingly. This could entail modifying your communication or tactics based on input from staff members or potential recruits outside the organisation.
5. Get Started Today
To provide long-term benefits, it is recommended to start developing a robust employee brand as soon as possible. Begin by using these suggestions to construct an inclusive branding approach tailored to your organisation.
Case Studies of Companies with Strong Employee Brands
Creating a strong employee brand can seem like a daunting task. Never fear!
We’ve put together three case studies of companies that have built strong employee brands. Each company took a different approach, but all three share one common thread: they put their employees first.
Company One: Amazon
When it comes to positioning employees first, no company does it quite like Amazon. In addition to offering competitive salaries and benefits, Amazon provides its employees with ample opportunities for growth and development.
One way Amazon does this is through its Career Choice program, which prepays 95% of tuition for courses related to in-demand fields, regardless of whether those fields are related to Amazon’s business. Since the program’s launch in 2012, over 16,000 employees have participated.
Amazon provides its employees with vast opportunities for growth by allowing them to transfer within different departments of the company. Amazon observes the practice of promoting their personnel every two years, irrespective of whether vacancies exist in particular positions. This approach keeps the workers motivated and engaged, guaranteeing that they are consistently striving towards new objectives.
Company Two: Google
Unlike Amazon, Google prioritises its employees by emphasising the creation of an exceptional and motivating workplace rather than concentrating on monetary and other external incentives.
One way Google does this is by giving employees what they call a “20% Project”. This is time that employees can use to work on “Whatever Projects They Want.” Yes, you read that correctly, as long as those projects are aligned with Google’s overall mission. This policy allows employees to pursue their passions and develop innovative new ideas that can benefit the company as a whole. Talk about a win-win!
Company Three: Patagonia
Patagonia demonstrates that establishing robust worker branding does not need one to be a tech behemoth; all one needs is a genuine concern for both their employees and the environment.
Environmental initiatives like Switchback Travel Grants give employees $750 each quarter to put toward environmental causes they’re passionate about. The company also gives all full-time employees three paid days off each year to volunteer with an environmental organisation of their choice.
And if that wasn’t enough, Patagonia supports the costs associated with adoption, surrogacy, and fertility treatments so that its employees can start or grow their families without financial stress. Talk about family-friendly.
Final Words
Remember that your employees reflect your business. Since they interact with clients and customers frequently, it’s crucial that their personal branding presents a favourable image of your company.
If you invest the necessary effort to ensure that your employee branding is accurate, you can establish a reputable and reliable company image. Have you formulated a policy? If not, it’s a good idea to make one so that your employees maintain consistency with your brand and present a positive impression of your enterprise.
If you require assistance with commencing your program, do not hesitate to reach out to us. We would be delighted to converse with you about how our group can help in developing an exceptional program that enhances revenue and leaves a memorable impact on clients. Discover how Sanders Design’s branding packages can take your business to the next level and beyond.
