Employer brand is quite often mentioned in the same sentence with human resources and recruitment. Especially large corporations make a clear difference between the company or product brand and the employer brand.

When I was writing this article, I started to think why should we treat these brands separately? In my point of view everything that shows outside is part of the employer brand by default. Every product, service, piece of content or even third party opinions are part of the employer brand. I dare to claim that there is only ONE BIG BRAND for the company that is for every employee to cherish. YES, EVERY EMPLOYEE! Of course there are more efforts done by human resources and recruitment, but the point is that everyone should care.

Here you find some points how to approach this one big brand:

• Everything starts with the company culture! It has to be open, allow 360 feedback and support the business objectives
  • Transparency, collaboration, freedom, and trust; just to name a few cornerstones
  • Everyone in the organization should know why they work for the brand – why they wake up 5 days a week – make them proud of what they do!

 

• Everyone is a customer – whether outside or inside your company – make the brand experience count!
  • If the company treats employees well → employees treat each other well → happiness shows to customers, friends and everyone else
  • When the overall experience created by your employees is great on every level, positive buzz will surround your brand

 

• Let your employees do the talk and create the positive buzz for your BIG BRAND
  • Why use just your marketing and hr departments to tell about your awesome brand? You should use your whole personnel as brand ambassadors!
  • When employees are engaged with the company they will be proud to share the content and experience if you just let them
  • Employee Advocacy is listed as one of the most important things in marketing for 2016 in Eventbrite article: “A Roundup of 15 Expert Marketing Predictions for 2016” 

“Leading brands are investing resources to create a workforce of engaged brand ambassadors. The result is a win/win. The company benefits from more authentic communication, and employees build personal brands. At the core of this approach is trust, authenticity, and transparency—the cultural pillars essential for activating the workforce around social business best practices. The net result:  Branding from the inside out.”

— Mark Burgess, President of Blue Focus Marketing

You can follow the progress and insights about employee advocacy from an interesting blog. This is Smarp company blog featuring a lot of guest content and case stories.