By M. Isi Eromosele

If you want a great brand on the outside, look within. Employees are the most important overarching asset a company can leverage to transform itself in the market and establish a dynamic relationship with its audience.

Globally, traditional employee engagement and job satisfaction efforts suffer from several fundamental yet addressable flaws:

Organizations interested in an effective business strategy - one that truly harnesses the power of employees as a lever for business growth would do well to redefine their current notions of employee engagement.

The present model is essentially the implementation of activities and communications designed to share the business goals with all employees and explain how job functions support these goals.

The logic is simple and unassailable: If employees know why their job matters they are more likely to strive to perform their jobs better.

While such endeavors indeed begin to connect the workforce to the business, the time is ripe to deepen that connection. Businesses that aspire to market leadership must tap into the full potential of all their employees - their ideas, their passion and their commitment.

This means moving away from simpler models of broadcasting to employees in favor of segmented, brand-focused methods that can truly activate all your staff as agents of transformation. It means moving from understanding to action and from action to initiative. These updated, brand-focused methods comprise true Internal Brand Engagement.

Why is true Internal Brand Engagement a sound investment? Because it fulfills every company’s ultimate goal: To maximize brand value by delivering differentiated experiences to customers, which ultimately increases customer loyalty (a customer’s propensity to buy the brand over competitors), thus increasing profit and value.

Your company’s workforce is the living embodiment of a brand in action. If they are engaged and energized, they bring your brand to life, delivering differentiated experiences in their every interaction with customers; creating a virtuous circle between employees, customers and business performance.

Today, organizations have to do more with less, even with customers tougher to please and more wary of spending. These special challenges demand a change in thinking and behavior if companies are to gain ground in uncertain times. What is required is, in fact, genuine organizational transformation.

In implementing an effective Internal Brand Engagement strategy, companies should have three principal objectives:

First, to better understand the types of employee engagement initiatives, if any, currently being practiced; second, to gauge their effectiveness and third, to identify possible gaps and opportunities in the engagement process that might help companies of all stripes see greater value in the marketplace.

The last objective, linking employee engagement clearly to market value and profitability represents the crucial next step in a journey that has been stalled too long.

An Unfinished Journey

Numerous studies over the past twenty years have shown that engaged employees are more likely to perform better at day-to-day job tasks, exert discretionary effort and are less likely to leave.

Truly engaged employees demonstrate deep pride and attachment to the organization where they are employed. They are more committed, more loyal, more willing to advocate for the company (both as a place to work and its products and services), more likely to exert independent initiative and more willing to go the extra mile on behalf of the company.

Over the years, there’s been a general disconnect between this knowledge base and the actions taken in response. This gap represents both the issue facing business today and the opportunity.

Ninety percent of companies invest in some form of employee engagement activity. But these tend to be unrelated and/or uncoordinated, meaning opportunities are missed to build on prior initiatives and enable engagement to truly take root.

A picture emerges of an unfinished journey, from a simple and antiquated notion of employee job satisfaction to a destination that is essential for success in these remarkably uncertain times: robust, segmented, sophisticated Internal Brand Engagement that would enables employees to deliver the brand to external stakeholders.

Opportunities Abound Moving Forward

The traditional approach to employee engagement is still prevalent in today’s business world. This approach has its roots in the 1960s and is all about broadcast - a command and control model that focuses on instilling efficiency and consistency.

The messaging is one-size-fits-all, going out to all employees in the same manner. Achieving the sort of transformation that will deliver on the promise of the service profit chain model requires that employees become more intrinsic to business strategy.

Companies must move from broadcast communication to instilling belief and behavior in a more targeted, personalized and purposeful way.

Employees would move from being an asset of the organization to being a lever for business growth. They wouldn’t simply understand what the brand stands for (as outlined in a manual dropped down on their desk on relaunch day), but would act to deliver the brand at every touchpoint they encounter.

More than merely rewarding employees for effectively communicating the brand, your organization would make the employee accountable for delivery of the brand to all audiences and stakeholders. And finally, you would not simply tell your employees how to contribute to business goals, you would equip and empower them to deliver business impact.

The following are key practices in the implementation of a strong Internal Brand Engagement Strategy:

Getting to engagement is a process that begins with informing employees: creating general awareness, understanding and excitement around the brand. The goal is for employees to understand the brand and how it links to the business’s goals.

Next comes engaging them, making the brand become personally relevant, believable and most importantly, actionable on a daily basis. Finally comes aligning the organization as a whole so that HR programs, corporate policies and operations help support the brand.

M. Isi Eromosele is the President | Chief Executive Officer | Executive Creative Director of Oseme Group - Oseme Creative | Oseme Consulting | Oseme Finance

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