How can you use brand strategy to boost employee engagement in a hybrid work environment?

Your brand purpose is like the heartbeat of your organization. It's the reason you're in the game beyond making a quick buck. Think of it as the North Star guiding your brand's journey. To share this purpose effectively, craft a brand statement that packs in your vision, mission, and values. Show, don't just tell, how your purpose influences your products, services, and the good deeds you do. Keep your team in the loop by sprinkling your brand purpose in newsletters, videos, or any channel where they hang out. It's about making your brand's heartbeat resonate with your team.

Every person wants to feel like their 8h a day isn't wasted. People want purpose, they want to feel like they're working on something important, something that matters. If you establish a vision for your business, a brand purpose, that feels authentic and inspiring, you will in turn get much more engaged employees. Back when Steve Jobs dropped out of college and started Apple, he convinced Wozniak and a small team to work tirelessly to get their first circuit boards out on time. He did this by selling them on a long-term vision for Apple, revolutionizing the personal computer, which they later achieved. Without this purpose, people would not be as motivated to put in extra effort to achieve certain goals.

To elevate employee engagement in a hybrid work setting, craft a brand strategy aligned with company values. Communicate it effectively, emphasizing purpose, and prioritize open communication, flexibility, and well-being to enhance engagement.

You've got it! Your brand identity is the face of your brand – the visual and verbal style that makes you recognizable. Make sure it's the same everywhere, so everyone, inside and out, knows it's you. When shaping this identity, involve your team. Use surveys, interviews, or workshops to hear what they think. Give them simple guidelines, so they use your brand identity confidently. It's not just about understanding; it's about your team feeling a connection to your brand identity.

Ideally your brand identity should be a natural extension of your brand strategy/purpose. Additionally, it should be obvious for people what is the meaning behind it. For example, if your purpose is to eliminate barriers to knowledge how would you communicate this through the elements of your brand identity, typography and imagery? For one of our clients (money transfer service) the offered brand strategy was built around the care for the loved ones and the logo that was made based on it was showing the shape of human hug. Your customers should be able to read the meaning non-verbally by just seeing your identity touchpoints. Strive for clarity, consistency and alignment.

At AgileHRO, we see building a vibrant brand community as key to thriving in a remote/hybrid world. Instead of just talking about the "what" of employee engagement, we focus on the "how" by: - Empowering employees as voices: We encourage them to contribute and develop their profiles through content creation platforms. - Sharing expertise: We provide training for crafting posts that showcase their professional knowledge, beyond just AgileHRO topics. - Making it playful: We gamify the process with competitions and rewards, making it fun and fostering healthy competition. It's more than branding - it's unleashing potential and powering innovation.

This is a very important topic. Brand experience is something that many people simply ignore or don't recognize as something worth paying attention to. Do a map of all touchpoints between your business (read brand) and customers\partners and try to evaluate what is their experience at each and every single one of them. What you're looking for is to create consistency of experience and perception of meaning across all touchpoints. After identifying the situation "as is" your next step is to identify high and low points, make a new "to be" map and gradually work your way to fix misalignment and negative emotions. Pay additional attention to points where your brand promise goes against the real situation and fix them

Think: is your brand reflected in your physical space of your premises? If your brand's purpose is "To eliminate barriers to communication" how many closed doors do you have in your office? Don't just put posters on the wall with your values. Your goal is to make sure that people can interact with your brand in physical world by navigating in your premises. That way they will connect with business on emotional level. If one of your brand values is being easy going how does that reflect in the furniture choice or entire floor plan? Maybe it is time to make sure that you align it all and build the emotional connection.