MightyRecruiterCustomers are the lifeblood of nearly any business, but another just as important group is your employees. Staff members can ruin your business or they can contribute to it and help it grow by being powerful brand ambassadors that embody your value proposition and further your business goals. A company where the latter is successfully accomplished and every employee helps spread the word about your services and products is called a ïbrandful workforce,ï which is a term coined by Julia Gometz. Here are a few ways that you can create this type of workforce.
Craft a Perfect Customer Promise
In Gometz book, The Brandful Workforce: How Employees Can Make, Not Break Your Brand, she talks about the importance of having a ïcustomer promiseï that employees can truly get behind. A customer promise shares your goals and expresses who you are in a way that is easy to digest. If you want your employees to support your promise, you should make sure that it is: – Easy to understand – Possible for employees to carry out – Open to change and feedback Helping your employees align with this message is one of the first steps to creating Gometz’ concept of the brandful workforce.
Help Employees Understand and Embody the Company Message
Once you have created your core promise to customers, it is importance that you stress to employees that they should carry out the duties of their jobs with that promise in mind. If they fully grasp the relationship between their role and the fulfillment of the customer promise, they are much more likely to engage in activities that support and build up your brand.
Encourage Them to Leverage Social Media to Promote Your Brand
Many, if not most, of your employees are active on social media. Like it or not, the way that they conduct themselves in the digital space is a reflection on your company. Encourage employees to use social media for good and for the betterment of the brand. Your employees may have the power to leverage very large groups of people in support of or in opposition to your brand. Gometz calls social media one of several ïbrandful channelsï that can help move you toward your goal of cultivating a brandful workforce.
Give Ample Options for Promotion
Not everyone uses social media or is particularly fit for that type of promotional activity. It is good to make sure that you consider many different channels for your employees to promote your brand. Promotional swag is a popular, effective and tangible way to raise hype around your brand. Event planning and charitable opportunities are still more examples of channels to promote your brand. By giving employees a way to promote your brand that rings true with them, you are making another step toward your brandful workforce.
Engage Your Employees and Treat Them Right
In addition to educating staff on the company promise that extends to all customers, you should find other ways to engage your employees and make them feel like a vital part of the company. Some of your best ideas could originate from your employees. Involving your employees and actively seeking out their input can result in innovation that brings in more revenue, saves money and makes your company a better place to work.
Recruit the Right People With the Right Tactics
When hiring new employees, you are presented with another unique way to promote and show off your brand. Present your company to potential employees as a special, different place to work where they can truly make a difference. The right employees, the one’s that will do your brand the most good, are not as concerned with monetary compensation as they are with the opportunity to work with a company that aligns with their personal goals and values. A few ways you can spot the right employees are finding out how much they know about your product or service and if it is something that they actually like. Brandful employees will also be entrepreneurial and have a sense of ownership about their work. Every employee you hire is, in a sense, an ambassador for your brand, whether they think of themselves as such or not. As an employer, it should be a goal of yours to create an engaged, passionate workforce that understands the reasons your company does what it does. The companies that are most successful at this, according to Gometz’ work, cultivate a brandful workforce full of positive, active supporters and builders of their brands. For more information on creating an amazing team and improving your business, check out the other articles and tools on Mighty Recruiter.