Gregg Lederman's Blog - Internal Branding: The Reason to Brand for Employees

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Internal Branding: The Reason to Brand for Employees

The reason for focusing your brand-building efforts on employees is quite simple --- employees have choices. Just like customers, they are attracted to companies with strong brands --- companies that stand for something meaningful.

The best companies realize employees have four choices with respect to achieving desired business results for your company:

Join: "I choose to join your company, do great work, and help achieve goals and objectives."
Stay: "I choose to stay with your company, becoming a valuable employee over time."
Grow: "I choose to develop my skills and capabilities, becoming more valuable to your company over time."
Contribute: "I choose to consistently deliver and make a positive impact on bottom-line success."

Don't believe me, a few years back Southwest Airlines had 225,000 applications for 1200 job positions. Keep in mind this was while the other airlines were declaring bankruptcy and couldn't get people to show up to work. Same industry, same company function - getting people from one location to another - yet, one is driving profits and the rest are almost out of business.

Another great example is the turnover of Wegmans' Food Markets part-time workers versus the supermarket industry average. Industry average is 76%, Wegmans' 26%. This 50% difference is worth millions upon millions of dollars to Wegmans' bottom-line every year.

You may be tempted in this down economy to lose focus on building and sustaining your culture because no one is hiring and employees don't have anywhere to go. But, be forewarned, your best employees WILL leave if they aren't engaged or even worse, they will retire on the job draining productivity and profits. No matter what the economy is doing, there is always opportunity out there for your best employees to find a job where they are valued and can make an impact every day.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009 04:36:20 PM
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