The Best Brands Are Built from the Inside Out

By Priscilla Kohl | HRTools.com Business Writer

 

If you walk the halls on any given company meeting day, at a large Houston-based corporation, you can see employees wearing bright red T-shirts that read, "I am the brand."

This message serves to reinforce that this particular employer (1) values its employees; and (2) understands that the best brands are built from the inside out. This is why some prominent business leaders today say that human resource (HR) leadership is the most important job function of any organization.

How so? The following may illustrate exactly how brands are built from the inside out. During a national sales convention recently, a motivational speaker shared an experience. The speaker started out by explaining that she had taken a commuter van from the airport, and here is what happened:

• During the 20-minute ride, she overhead a passenger discuss to the other van passengers that he was an employee of the very company that booked her to speak.
• Apparently this employee was also singing his praises about the company and his employer. Among other merits, he described how well the leadership treated employees and how proud he was to work for such a company.
• The speaker went on to explain that the other van passengers, including the driver, wanted to learn more about this company and were impressed by this man’s genuine enthusiasm for his employer.
• The speaker summed it all up like this: Because this employee spoke from his heart, these passengers—who could also become potential word-of-mouth advertisers, sales consultants or even clients—walked away from that short van ride from the airport with an unforgettable sense of this company’s values and culture.

Talk about no-cost marketing and advertising!

In an article published on www.fastcompany.com, world-renown business and leadership consulting expert, author and speaker, Tom Peters, describes how employees should stand up and become their own brand. In this article titled, "The Brand Called You," Peters says that, "To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You."

When you take his point and add it to the context of building a brand from the inside out, you can appreciate how employees matter. And the best companies recognize their potential power, and they strive to develop employees as their brand ambassadors. As Peters points out, not only does internal brand marketing have an undeniable multiplying effect, but this type of marketing is also very cost effective.

So how can employers make a personal connection with their employees? 

To help answer that question, you may be interested in what the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) says. In short, they say that employers should serve to consistently strive to earn and maintain employee respect, trust and loyalties, day-in and day-out.

Here are 10 practical steps for doing that:

1. Make sure leadership actions and behaviors reinforce the organizational mission and values.
2. Review your work environment, including the physical setting and make sure that employee safety and health is a number one priority.
3. Conduct employee surveys. Use employee feedback as a way to track disconnects, especially those between stated values and behaviors. If there are gaps, it is important to figure out what needs to change and communicate that with the employees.
4. Conduct job applicant surveys. Some companies even conduct applicant surveys to learn more about the organizational image, as seen throughout the recruiting process. Employers today should also understand, as SHRM research indicates, that business ethics is an area of major concern for today’s applicants. All survey responses ideally should help employer answer this question: Why would anyone want to work for my company?
5. Value cultural diversity and respect individual differences. Not only is this the right and responsible thing to do, it’s important to remember that your consumers and stakeholders are a culturally diverse group, as well. As with employees, not all customers look and think exactly alike.
6. Make sure you deliver on promises: this practice includes employees, stakeholders, customers, vendors and the community. If yours is a service company, your business is about people, and success depends on building and sustaining relationships.
7. Avoid over-promising or under-promising employees and customers. Instead, find that balance so that you are not constantly putting out fires or letting others down. At the same time, you want to raise the bar so that business goals (for increasing revenues, for example) can be met.
8. Recognize and appreciate employees who succeed in helping you reach goals or even achieve small wins.
9. Remember the power of word-of-mouth. Distasteful comments or behaviors can be spread like wildfire these days, especially with the Internet and other digital tools. Missteps like these can put an employer in damage-control mode very quickly.
10. Commit to a long-term process. Earning employee trust, respect and buy-in is an ongoing process and takes a steady commitment. The really good companies do this by regularly communicating to their employees and by supporting their managerial staffs.

It’s not too hard to imagine. Employees who feel valued by their employers are more inclined to reciprocate in kind. They will speak highly of you and they will tell others about you.

If you think about it, treating employees well is really quite the return on investment (ROI)!

Indeed, the best brands are built from the inside out!

<p>When employees speak highly of their employer, and it's from the heart, a company brand earns powerful recognition.</p>

The Best Brands Are Built from the Inside Out

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