Employee branding
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[edit] Origin
Employee Branding is an indirect branding effect in which the communication of company employees serves to characterise their company's Employer Brand. The term also refers to the effects that company employees have on their employer and the Employer Brand by publicly voicing their opinion on their place of work. "Employee Branding" may also be understood to include the process of promoting the image of an employer through his or her employees. Of course, the definition of "employee" is very broad, basically referring to all those persons that are (or were) in the employ of a particular company.
The term Employee Branding was created on the basis of the widely known and long-standing term Employer Branding. First reference was reportedly made by Cees van Riel, Professor of Corporate Communications at the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, the Netherlands, and Director of the Masters of Corporate Communication Programme, during a lecture on the subject of Corporate Branding.
An employer brand author and strategist from Australia, Brett Minchington wrote the most comprehensive guide to employer branding ever published titled Your Employer Brand attract-engage-retain. In a world's first in Employer Branding, Brett has provided a detailed insight for companies on how to audit, design, integrate and evaluate their employer brand program using a framework he developed called the Employer Brand Excellence Framework. The book adds credibility to the growing awareness and acceptance of the Employer Brand concept worldwide.
[edit] Differentiation from Personal Branding
Personal Branding is understood as the (self-) promotion of persons with leadership qualities. The person in question is promoted as a brand by lending his/her personal trademarks additional profile. Employee Branding, on the other hand, sees people as “advertising mediums” of their employers, the employee duly representing his/her company, department or the like.
[edit] Objectives of Employee Branding
The objectives are:
- Expansion of Employee Empowerment
- Improvement of Employee Loyalty and Motivation
- Consolidation of the Employee Brand through Aggregation of Employee Brands
[edit] Instruments of Employee Branding
Thanks to the hype surrounding Web 2.0, employee blogs or so-called People Pages are now seen and accepted as possible instruments of Employee Branding. However, corporate trade show presentations, open-house events or interviews in trade journals may well prove to be equally successful as Employee Branding measures. Thanks to Employee Branding, the depiction – and therefore promotion – of the corporate image is no longer a task restricted to a company’s PR department. Employees are becoming “advertisers” in their own right.
[edit] Criticisms of Employee Branding
If employees are to be used as advertising mediums, remember that most of them are, more than likely, new to the task of dealing with the general public. The vast majority have not been professionally trained to that end. This may support the brand’s credibility, nevertheless, it is recommendable to introduce corporate guidelines in order to maintain a certain amount of control.
[edit] Examples of Employee Blogs
- Sun Microsystems: http://blogs.sun.com/
- General Motors: http://fastlane.gmblogs.com/
- Blog, Podcast and Vodcast by Microsoft: http://channel9.msdn.com/
- A Web Diary by FRoSTA Employees: http://www.blog-frosta.de/
