Brand Buying: Why Employee Communications Matter

The essence of the article revolved around one key note, "Love they employee as yourself!" In this one cliche lies a deep truth because in today's dynamic, fast paced and often times rapidly evolving industrial landscape every good card in your hand is a card you can play. In this case, it being the employees. More specifically how get the best out of one's employees by opening up the flood gates of "free communication"! What I gathered from the article was a few important points:

1) Placing the "workforce" before the "brand" is the new mantra. The reason behind this is simple, a happier workforce that has an open channel of communication between themselves and management will directly effect and influence how well a company's product is branded and put out there in the market.

2) Engage employees. Remember when you were a kid and the joy you got with modelling shapes out of play-dough. Well,employees want to "engage", model and influence part of what the brand stands for as well. Think about it, which employee would like to stand back and watch upper level management have "all the fun" while they go about doing their mundane tasks like little worker ants? Not one! However, engaging minds during the formative years of a marketing or branding cycle will also help during a crisis. In that, an employee will do his/her best to pitch in and help resuce the mother ship (company/firm) and raise it to full strength once again.

3) Transparency. Ah yes! The very essence of eliminating unecessary barriers. Let me summarize this with one quick scenario- Mr. Samuel (CMO) has on noise cancellation headphones, his Account Manager Emily walks into the office and has a mind blowing concept for a campaign. However, can Mr. Samuel hear her? No. The exact same situation can occur if management doesn't simplify communications (minus the jargon) to transfer ideas. More importantly, if I were leading a company I wouldn't want my workforce "going to the dark side" and hating me for putting a wall up when they have ideas, suggestions or thoughts. Instead, I want communication and chatter to flow freely. Great ideas always arise out of "brainstorming" and chatter. Without communication we'd just be minimized to mere formalities. Importantly, keeping this communication clear and free of jargon makes everything much more transparent.

4) Employee Brand Ambassadors a.k.a "Off Duty Police": There is a reason I call them that. Often times, we hear of reports on the news when an off-duty cop prevented a robbery or broke-up a high-speed police chase etc. right? While they might not be in uniform at the time, what they are doing is selling the fact that "the law is always there to protect and serve.Period" Consider your employees to be the same. In the office, they are armed to the teeth with ideas,expertise and thoughts to hit the jackpot. So, why limit this expertise to the office when you can spread it outside? An employee talking about your company's communication highway and brand at a get together is doing two things- building brand image for your company and potentially pulling in new talent that wants to work at an open and listening employer like you.

All in all, I felt the article had some good points and it pulled together the importance of promoting and not stiffling communication between employees. It leads to increased productivity, free flow of ideas and development of new products and concepts at mind blowing speeds!

Alexander Mathew