Benefits of brand engagement

When employees are engaged with the brand values and vision, many follow-on benefits can be achieved for the company.

Increased retention & loyalty. A common brand vision creates a reason for working here beyond collecting a pay cheque. Employees that relate to the values of the company and have an emotional connection with it stay longer.

Attracting new talent and the right talent. New recruits often prefer to work for well known brands consistent with their own values and image of themselves.

Creating a better work environment. Employees that understand how norms and values connect to their work can together shape a more desirable work environment. Once staff are connected to the brand vision, the momentum of the group takes over and propels them towards the vision. Management has less need to police rules and regulations.

Consistency in brand experience. Employees can reinforce the same messages as communicated in expensive advertising campaigns; thereby creating a coherent customer experience.

Related experience

Created a bridge between the new strategy of ‘being the house bank’ and every-day employee actions across Dutch operations.

Embedded greater empathy into the cultural norms of the organisation in response to a new positioning and customer research insights.

Identifed greater meaning behind the new brand strategy for cross functional staff across 12 European countries.

Reduced unnecessary complexity in the culture and engendered a more customer-centric approach across all levels of staff.

Typical steps

Step 1: Brand strategy check
Before we connect all employees to your vision, we want to be sure that the vision reflects management ambitions and the current culture. This may involve a simple conversation with senior management to ensure you have what you need or it may involve crafting something entirely new.

Step 2: Planning objectives
Next, we will look at areas of disconnect from the brand vision, find out why and find out who and how we involve the right people across the organisation to better achieve the vision. We will ask questions like: What do we want employee engagement to achieve for us? What do we want to see done differently? How will we know when things have changed?

Step 3: Infrastructure mapping
The next step involves the mapping of interdependent activities that are shaping the organisation. These activities can include ongoing change programmes, IT structural changes, sales and marketing initiatives and product pipeline developments. We will map out which programmes can be used to influence wider change of the culture and customer experience and plot out natural milestones in the delivery of these programmes that will guide the schedule of the engagement programme. Finally, we will determine how the brand relates to these operational and strategic directions and find the areas where the brand is being used well and where it is not.

Step 4: Developing insights into cultural patterns
We will uncover the usual ways of working in the organisation, the cultural patterns that will help and hinder our progress to achieve the brand vision. We will ask questions such as: What it is like to work here? What works well? What needs to be different to achieve our objectives? Where do we want to take this brand in the future? We will summarise these patterns and determine the right way to surface them with the right levels of management.

Step 5: Engagement plan
Next, we will identify the priority areas we should target for engaging employees. Together, we will set the actions that will begin the process of culture development to bring the brand vision and culture in sync and set priorities for the operational areas to work on.

Step 6: Cascade
Implementation looks entirely different from company to company. We will begin the cascading process by setting up the culture development workshops and training sessions on the brand. During workshops, we will engage employees in their roles and responsibilities towards helping the organisation achieve the brand vision. We usually continue working with senior management throughout the cascading process to surface new ideas, to create new feedback loops between the organisation and management and to support decision making during this complex and fluid period.

Step 7: Follow-up
New plans are integrated into the usual structures. When obstacles arise, we will help you address and work through them, focusing on the learning and successes along the way.