Branding Strategy: Yes, Employee Engagement DOES Matter

Rebranding is the new black:
Sometimes when organizations get into trouble, they rebrand. Employee engagement is rarely on the radar screen at this point. But a new, improved Unique Value Proposition probably is, along with a logo and maybe even a tagline.The organization will educate employees on the brand promise in workshops, memos and maybe even through wallet cards they can carry around with them so they don’t forget.

Sound like employee engagement?
It’s not.

And that’s kind of worrying:
Because a lack of employee engagement was probably a big part of their undoing in the first place.And might well be again soon.

Branding Strategy and Employee Engagement:
Right about now, you might be saying, um, okay, but employee engagement really has nothing to do with branding strategy.

I would say it does.

Your brand is way more than the visual look of your company.

It is how your company is perceived and experienced in the mind of its stakeholders.

It is what they believe your values to be and how they believe your brand lives in the world.

Work from the inside out:
You can’t possibly hope to capture the hearts and minds of customers if you can’t even win over your own employees.

The experience your customers have with your brand is deeply and profoundly determined by your employees experience with the brand, including their ability to contribute to it.

We all seek meaning in our work. And when we find it, it pays off big. And not just for us. For the organization too.

Employee Engagement Profitable but Rare
Brands with engaged employees are more profitable, more productive, have less turnover, fewer accidents and better customer relations.

Employees generally feel more creative because they are empowered to actually be more creative.

Best thing for your brand:
Brands with engaged employees also step outside of the echo chamber that keeps managers and the C-suite hearing what they want to hear at the expense of the bottom line, growth potential and future prospects.And yet, according to Gallop , 70 per cent of the work force is either “not engaged” or are “actively disengaged.

What a tragedy. What a waste.

Millions of people troop off to jobs they find unfulfilling.

And after work and on their own time, many engage in volunteer work, sometimes doing the same thing they do at their day job — but for no pay in charitable and other organizations where they are given more freedom and creativity.

The same freedom and creativity they would also love to be given in their jobs.

So what can you do?

For starters, you can engage them in their own performance review.

Typeform makes that easy with the “Typeform Employee Evaluation Maker.”  it’s design-focused and fully-customizable with images, GIFS, videos & themes to grab people’s attention. What else? Oh yeah, it’s free! Happy days.

But even a great employee evaluation form can only help you so much. Because your employees are shaping your brand’s story out in the real world.

What do they say on their own time?
So what stories do those unfulfilled workers tell about the organizations they work for?

After all, a brand’s employees are often one of its biggest teams of brand storytellers, whether you want them to be or not. Whether you know it or not.

Chances are your disengaged employees do not tell the stories that will win hearts and minds in the communities where your employees live and volunteer.

But they could. They still can.

There is hope:
In fact, storytelling might be your brand’s best hope to move towards employee engagement. Your audience already trusts your employees more than they trust your executive.

You can make that work for you by tapping into your employee base and getting them to help you identify your brand’s best stories (including those of customers, community, etc.) and storytellers.

You can then measure these things against your brand’s values and all of the intelligence you get back from your customers.

And then you have an amazing, robust treasure trove of information around which to create inspired branding. And a much more employee-engaged brand.

People value what they co-create:
They want their work to inspire them. They want it to mean something.

Help them. You’ll be helping yourself at the same time.