Building a strong brand culture company has never been more important. Employees are the face of your company. A strong external brand is all but useless if employees don’t exude the same ideals.
As noted in this Harvard Business Review article, customers are more likely to experience the company you’ve promised in your external marketing if your employees actually embody the company’s vision. To ensure your employees understand and live up to your company’s brand, you must build a strong brand culture. Here are three tips to do just that.
1. Define the Brand Culture
You can’t build a strong brand culture if you don’t know what it is. A company’s brand culture is how it’s employees and management live out the values and mission of their organization. Now that you know what it is, you must define it for your organization.
David Finkel, co-author of Scale: Seven Proven Principles to Grow Your Business and Get Your Life Back, suggests in Inc. to write out a vision for your culture. Write down an overall vision as well as small actionable steps that could be taken to reach the final vision. Do keep in mind what your current culture is as you prepare your new vision. You’ll need to know how to get from A to B.
2. Exhibit the Brand Culture
Once you’ve defined the culture you want, it’s time to put it in practice. And that starts at the top. At a 4A’s Transformation panel in March of this year, the founding partner of Grace Blue, Jay Haines, said,
“The cultural piece is to my mind now the single most important component of any chief executive role.
The CEO—and the rest of the company’s leadership—must embody the company values in their lives both in and out of the workplace. They should exhibit the behavior they expect of the rest of the company.
3. Encourage the Brand Culture
Now that your employees know what the culture is and have seen leadership exhibit it, continually encouraging the development of your company culture is essential. Employees who exude the company’s brand values should be recognized and rewarded.
But more importantly, tell your employees why brand culture matters. Employees are much more likely to participate and buy in to the new culture if they know why they should. They also want to know how it will affect them. Take the time to explain in as many ways as necessary; it will be worth the time and effort.
Once you’ve built a strong brand culture, you’ll see many benefits, including lower turnover, because you’ll begin to attract the right employees. You’ll see happier customers because they are dealing with happier employees who totally believe in the company. And obviously, that means you’ll have happier employees. A great brand culture is really win-win for everyone.
Are you interested in building a strong culture for your workers? If so, why not submit the form below to find out more about Beekeeper – the communication tool for teams that helps you reach and connect everyone in your organization.
