Employee branding

The definition of employee branding :

When an employee is willing to jump off the window for his company (well not really)

I think employee branding is as important as setting up your business correctly, most major companies forget that no matter how good their brands are, their employees are interacting with the customer, in a recent survey done at best buy in mystery shopping, 90% yes 90% employees did not ask a question when inquired about a product, rest asked just one question,

Q-so how can best buy claim to have superior customer service?

airlines are again another example where procedural training is intensively done but are the employees who are the touch points with the customer ever told

Q-what the mission statement is?

There are millions of examples that can be given , the difference which companies need to realize is that there are 2 sets of training for any employee.

1 The admin and procedural training, equipment handling, data etc

2 The 2nd is the training related with the goals and the mission of the company, this is where things are behind in most organizations,specially if there is a rebrand is going on.

Most companies think they are the champions of customer service if they have people standing at store floors or counters and smiling, well thats the first step!! if randomly any employee is questioned on what do you think is in it for you while you are here helping customers they will be like what?

Employee branding is done in few stages.

I think branding for employees is as important as the product it self, most of the companies who champion them selves as customer service oriented and how good they are fall short of real service, creating great retail spaces is not enough if you have teenagers working at the floor unable to full provide information, guess what which directly affats your brand.

There is a difference between training

1 procedural, use of equipment and admin training which companies provide

2 Brand training, being a brand ambassador, its like being a police, they always act as police officers on duty or off duty, so if police was a brand by lets say PNG, they definitly will have a amazing brand ambassador program.

3 Internal branding should also have more enhanced employee training program, one reason VIRGIN is so successful in all its brand offerings is the interest of its senior managers and top management being involved , giving such a cult like feel to the whole company.

4 Training at different levels and also exchanging employees lets say for a day within different departments can create a further understanding within employees how company functions, finance doing sales and sales sitting in operations.

5 Companies also need to do a more creative employee appreciation plan, like Google does, they have picnic chairs at the meeting room, free lunches, and things which make a employee die for its company. Ok may be not all companies can provide free lunches but they can definitely be a little more creative in terms of employee involvement with the company

6 six monthly internal research...conducted on employees and to understand their needs and how they perceive the brand,

7 The latest brand initiative and strategy which I have seen is companies using social media with employees to create further brand talk. Employees should be given a special incentive to talk about the company and the brand of course in the positive manner, unlike virgin who fired 13 employees for talking crap about its brand on Facebook.

more to follow!