The Brandful Workforce: How Employees Can Make, Not Break Your Brand

Without support, tools, and resources, some managers turn to penalizing employees with bad reviews, bad schedules, extra work, no bonus, or other punitive measures. This usually creates even further deterioration of employee sentiment as they can start blaming each other. Every employee matters, especially when running a small business.

A single employee could be responsible for bringing enormous success to your business. Or one employee could bring you down. Why not motivate your employees to work FOR your brand, rather than against it, by cultivating a brandful workforce. The brandful workforce approach was developed as a practical guide to help business leaders better engage employees with the products and services they help deliver every day. It was informed through my own career journey, working for both small and large organizations, private, public and non-profit.

Most recently, I was in charge of employee engagement at JetBlue Airways. My colleagues at other companies used to ask me: It was the result of a successful business. So I took it upon myself to figure it out! Start with your product or service. One common mistake small business owners make with employees is not defining and communicating the consistent delivery of the business. What does it look like? Help them understand the details of your business, your brand and especially your customer promise.

When your employees understand your business, the customer promise and their role in it, they can get to work promoting your brand. In fact, they may even exceed your expectations! The next step in creating employee brand ambassadors is giving them the means to go out and promote your brand. I call these brandful channels.

No customer reviews

These include tools and resources such as social media, swag, celebratory events, and community volunteer efforts that spread awareness of your business. For example, you may have an employee who enjoys the backstage planning of an event. Or another employee may be athletic and can represent your business in a marathon.

• Special offers and product promotions;
• Inveja (Portuguese Edition)!
• Follow the Author.
• Polen Witze für das Kindle (German Edition)?
• The Brandful Workforce by Julia Gometz;
• employee engagement | Brandful Workforce.
• Runaway Virgin (The Edge Series Book 18);

The brandful channels approach provides opportunities for everyone to participate in amplifying your brand in a genuine and authentic way. Some small businesses find it hard to compete for talent with larger organizations. Yet, as a small business, there are a few areas where you can favorably recruit top talent by accentuating your unique brand:. If you have to negotiate hard to get someone to accept, it may not be the right fit for your business.

This is the time of year to focus on amplifying the fourth brandful channel: What better time of year for employees to get behind your brand, than the holidays? Is there a heart-warming story about one of your products or services that can be re-told across your organization as an example of your powerful brand? What accomplishments have the employees made during the year that can be celebrated as part of the holidays?

Comment below if you attended a holiday party that made you more jazzed about the brand. Did you share your enthusiasm on your social network? Did you donate anything on behalf of your organization to help others?

How did your actions impact the brand? To read more about how celebrations can be an effective way for employees to advocate for your brand, please see my book, The Brandful Workforce: For previous blog posts or to share this post, click here. They can share company news, success stories and promotions. Many companies have a social media program to engage consumers such as initiatives that drive the number of Facebook fans or Twitter followers.

Taking it even further, they can track their most engaged fans and followers and get them involved in their promotions. Now, companies are realizing that the employees, beyond the marketing team, can also bring value to their social marketing strategy. It sounds great, right?

• Book | Brandful Workforce.
• DISCUSSION TOPICS:;
• Babylon Sisters.

Now, picture yourself working there as an employee and being told that you now need to participate in an employee advocacy program to promote the products or services. Just think about it. Now, I know this is an extreme example, but I hope it illustrates my point: Not every organization is ready for an employee advocacy program.

The Brandful Workforce

If they build one prematurely, it may backfire. There are also dangers even if the organization is ready for such a program. For example, it may not genuinely connect with how employees want to promote the brand or what they want to promote. Each employee is different and can uniquely contribute to the advocacy program. Does your company have a successful employee advocacy program? For previous posts on The Brandful Workforce, click here. Sure, they are hired to do a job, and getting that job done is first and foremost.

However in this age of customer and employee engagement where success is built on authentic and on-going relationships, every employee can be doing more than getting their work done. But how significant can one employee be to the brand? One employee can make or break the brand for any given customer. And this is where the focus should be. The power of building a brandful workforce is that it simultaneously improves both customer and employee engagement. For more on this topic, follow my blog at www. They have a set of criteria and if the employee lives up to it, he is chosen.

Keep the focus on the ones who deserve it. If this is true, they are more likely to behave in a way that promotes your brand. I believe this simple concept has been left out of most organizational strategies and I do believe that employees are the biggest missed opportunity in branding today. While both communications are meant to inspire participation in the new brand by either taking a survey or learning more via new resources , they both show hints of common pitfalls: This is contrary to the idea of getting employees to become brandful and keep it going.

Introducing the branding process with an employee survey. This is not a way to get genuine support. Failing to clearly connect the employee to the brand. Dan marked it as to-read Dec 16, Haven Gordon marked it as to-read Dec 16, Patricia marked it as to-read Dec 16, Bridgette Ralph marked it as to-read Dec 16, Mysterium marked it as to-read Dec 16, Karen marked it as to-read Dec 17, Cynthia Waterman marked it as to-read Dec 17, Shawna marked it as to-read Dec 17, Katie Harder-schauer marked it as to-read Dec 17, Thomas marked it as to-read Dec 17, Barbara Zitsch marked it as to-read Dec 17, Max marked it as to-read Dec 18, Skylar marked it as to-read Dec 19, Jonathon marked it as to-read Dec 20, Hazel marked it as to-read Dec 20, Becky marked it as to-read Dec 21, Rosanna marked it as to-read Dec 21, Fayfay Cline marked it as to-read Dec 21, Melissa marked it as to-read Dec 21, Faith marked it as to-read Dec 22, Holly marked it as to-read Dec 22, Eileen marked it as to-read Dec 23, Katrina Mcghee marked it as to-read Dec 23, Jen marked it as to-read Dec 23, Nikki Tegtmeyer marked it as to-read Dec 23, Paula Gardner marked it as to-read Dec 23, Katharine Adams marked it as to-read Dec 24, Diane marked it as to-read Dec 24, Get fast, free shipping with Amazon Prime.

Get to Know Us. English Choose a language for shopping.

Brandful Workforce | For every company to brag about their exceptional workforce

Explore the Home Gift Guide. Amazon Music Stream millions of songs. Amazon Advertising Find, attract, and engage customers. Amazon Drive Cloud storage from Amazon. Alexa Actionable Analytics for the Web. AmazonGlobal Ship Orders Internationally.