Companies Need An Employee Brand Engagement Reality Check
If you expect your employees to do what they can to build your brand, then you better make sure they’re equipped with the knowledge, skills, and resources to do so. This makes sense, but according to my employee brand engagement assessment research, most business leaders approach employee brand engagement with little more wishful thinking.
In my new book, FUSION: How Integrating Brand and Culture Powers the World’s Greatest Companies, I explain that employee brand engagement is the extent to which employees are aligned and engaged with their company’s brand. And, while general employee engagement is important to combat the general lack of engagement that most employees feel today, only when you engage your employees with your brand will they think and act in the specific ways that produce the specific results you’re looking for.
Results from the free online Brand-Culture Fusion Assessment that I introduced with FUSION indicates that companies need a reality check when it comes to employee brand engagement. When asked “How well do each of the following statements describe your company today,” 54% of the assessment takers agreed that “Our company leaders expect everyone, not just the marketing department, to do what they can to build our brand.”
That figure alone gives cause for pause because it suggests that at nearly half of companies (46%), the leaders don’t expect all employees to build their brand. But of even greater concern are the following findings:
- Only 17% of respondents agreed, “Our people have appropriate access to tools and data about how our brand is perceived in the marketplace relative to our competitors.”
- Only 35% agreed, “Most employees understand what makes our brand different and special from a customer perspective.”
- And only 38% agreed, “Most employees have the skills and resources they need to ensure they deliver on the brand promise.”
This chart reports more dismal findings about the state of employee brand engagement:
Leaders who want to unleash the power of employees who actively and deeply engaged with their brand should check out my Harvard Business Review article, Engaging Employees Starts with Remembering What Your Company Stands For. In it, I explain the three dimensions of employee brand engagement and describe how MGM Resorts used it to accomplish a successful transformation of its brand and achieve financial gains from its efforts, including increased revenues, REVPAR (a hospitality industry key metric), and net income.
And take the Brand-Culture Fusion Assessment here to get a personalized report on the state of employee brand engagement at your company. I’ve recently developed a Group Assessment Report, which allows all members of a group to take the assessment individually and receive a group report that combines all results into a single report. Contact me if you’re interested in participating in the Beta test of this new offering.
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