Billions are spent each year on branding and yet an essential part is often neglected – delivering your brand through your employees. Time and again research studies show that what most influences how customers and external stakeholders think and feel about a company is their interactions with it. Brands are not just a logo or an advertising campaign, they are the very DNA of a company and every touch-point between the customer and the company needs to reinforce what the brand stands for.
Employee engagement is pivotal to building successful businesses and brands. But are business leaders failing when it comes to executing engagement strategies? In the US alone, over a $100 billion is spent annually to boost employee engagement and yet only 14% of employees are actually actively engaged. The result of this is a staggering $550 billion in lost productivity. But it’s more than just lost productivity, it’s your company’s brand reputation that’s losing out too.
Building your brand from the inside out will enable your staff to deliver meaningful on-brand experiences.
Alkamee in Action: Airbnb Employee Brand Engagement
Global super brand Airbnb engaged us to create an installation that would both engage, inspire & motivate staff and help communicate their overarching position of ‘Belong anywhere’ for their new EMEA headquarters in Dublin’s Dockland’s. In consultation with their San Francisco & Dublin teams, we felt that there was a richer way to tell their story to both staff and visitors alike.
Housed in one of the last remaining warehouse buildings, we wanted our solution to be both fitting to their brand yet celebrate the history and heritage of their new address. With former residents such as Raleigh Bikes & an Ice factory we celebrated a sense of belonging by marrying the old with the new. The installation has been such a success and source of pride that it features on the ‘Open House’ circuit every year acting as the perfect conversation starter for both staff and visitors alike.
There’s a big difference between an employee who just go’s about their day to day and an employee who understands the DNA of the brand and goes the extra mile to deliver what the brand promises. Behaviour is key. Every day, in every interaction, employees have a choice in terms of how they behave.
Organisations with successful brands do five things well:
- They have a clear brand, vision and values
- Have employees who enthusiastically deliver what the brand promises
- Make sure that all activities are aligned to the brand including recruitment, induction, training, communication, reward and recognition, processes and culture
- Leaders and managers ‘live the brand’ through their behaviour – it’s not just rhetoric
- They measure brand awareness, understanding and delivery, internally and externally.
The starting point for the organisation is with the customer: what experience do you want them to have at each stage in the journey? What can the employee do to make sure the experience is right? Behaviour is absolutely key.
Your employees need to:
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Understand your brand
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Know how to behave and live your brand
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Feel motivated
Alkamee in Action: Actavo Employee Brand Engagement
Following our successful renaming exercise of Siteserv to Actavo, they engaged with us to create a brand engagement programme that would ignite their brand offering as a multi-national company across 100 locations for over 4,000 employees. The company story, positioning and values were carefully rewritten to be as engaging and impactful as possible. Every staff member received a comprehensive brand book that shared what their new brand stood for and the significance of their coming together as one team with one vision, going beyond.
You can’t just tell employees what to do – to gain their support they need to be involved and reach their own insights about how they can contribute. This needs careful planning, clear goals, hard work, creativity and the support of leaders. Every aspect of your company must inspire, encourage and recognise the desired behaviours. Ultimately, strong brands are all about clarity: clarity about their essence, clarity about how to apply them and how to deliver them.
Are you struggling to really engage with your employees? Would you like to create impact to ignite opportunity & growth? If so, call Alkamee today on 01 960 2637.