Your Competitive Advantage 2. Employee Brand

There are 7 key elements to optimising your business’s competitive advantage. 

1. Talent Retention
2. Employee Brand. 
3. Company Culture
4. Hiring Strategies
5. Onboarding/Training Practices
6. Leadership
7. Career Pathways. 

Employee Brand is the reason top talent wants to work for your business and continues to want to work for your business.  It reflects the sense of value your employees experience as internal stake holders motivating them to become positive brand ambassadors, highly productive and contributing team members, and potential customers all of which give you the competitive edge over your industry opponents. 

One popular myth is that if management has not designed and defined an employee brand there is no employee brand.  This is false, every business that employs people has an employee brand, but management may not be in control of it.  Instead, disgruntled job applicants and previous employees may be its narrators.  Job applicants who have been mistreated are less likely to become your customers and if they were already a customer it is probable, they will be looking for a new provider.  A disgruntled employee is highly likely to unashamedly broadcast their stories of discontent.  Unfortunately, both messages are components of your employee brand but the good news is now that your employee brand is on your radar you can take control of it.   

When your prospective and existing employees feel valued by your business, they become invested in your brand and are organically driven to become brand ambassadors for you.  They are willing to share the good news about you far and wide including on social media and with 41% of customers valuing a review from an employee as more credible than a review from almost any other source this is great news for you.  Employees also tend to have 10 times more social media followers than a company so your business instantly gains greater market reach than you could generate independently. 

A great employee brand also motivates employees to be more productive.  If they enjoy where they work and the people, they work for and with they’re tendency is to work more effectively and efficiently often being more willing to work extra hours and go the extra mile.  These actions of course raise productivity and profitability. 

Finally, people love to support a brand they believe in, a brand that makes them feel good and a brand that represents all that is good about humanity, so a great employee brand converts employees into customers and motivates existing customers to remain loyal. 

Creating a great employee brand starts with its design and definition and all stakeholders in the business have a valuable contribution to make.