Brand Representation

In the last several years, companies in every industry sector have begun recognizing the importance of employees and the role they play in branding.  How does a company build a relationship with the client when the relationship and brand representation is so heavily driven by the employee?

1. Provide employees with brand information and tools
2. Attain employee “buy-in”

Company Branding

Company branding is the practice of establishing the character or reputation of an organization as a place to work, primarily by aligning recruiting and external HR practices with the identity that the organization wants to have. The idea is that you create a sense of ‘what it’s like to work here’ as a way to attract not only potential employees, but more specifically the kind of employees who will fit well within the organization.

When an organization attracts the right kind of employees, the cost of recruiting, socializing and training these new employees is reduced.

Employee Branding

Employee branding is a different practice altogether. It is all about influencing the behaviour of organization members. Employee branding is the practice of ‘aligning’ an employee’s behaviour and often the employee’s point of view with the image that the organization wants to project to its customers and external stakeholders.

Employee branding attempts to influence the interactions between employees within the organization as well as between employees and external stakeholders.

Employee branding programs include regular job training, training in customer service or customer interaction, corporate orientation, and education in the corporate brand. Well-developed employee branding programs also include ongoing training, performance evaluation and rewards systems that support the employees’ display of “brand behaviours”.