Employer Branding
Employees generally want to be proud of their employer, but all too often that pride diminishes as initial induction fades into the past. Values statements are no good if they become faded wallpaper.
BUT - who has the most influence over employee perception of the employer?
No - not the Chief Executive.
Not the HR Director.
Not the Comms manager
- Yes! - The Team Leader.
So, if you want to embed a particular 'brand' recognisable wherever people are working for your organisation, you must ensure that their immediate boss is a living, breathing embodiment of whatever it is that you are seeking to achieve.
And that is not easy.
It certainly cannot be achieved by an email from HQ.
Or even weekly emails.
It has to be something those managers actually believe - and those beliefs do not change just because an Important Person has had an idea in the shower. Which means that your brand as an employer cannot change with each variation in the Sales Graph.
But it will change anytime any of the top team fail to walk the talk.
The investment is worthwhile - when you need to change the organisation (which should be pretty frequently), you will find that the ease / difficulty will reflect the level of confidence the staff have in the employer brand. Research consistently shows that employee's cynicism is usually reinforced by inept (crude, blunt, unsubtle) attempts to hammer in organisation change.
Of course you are going to need to change sometime, so start now by building a trusted brand which your managers can actually deliver.