In my bid to up my knowledge so I can be of more value to my community, I began a research on necessity of internal/employee branding. It s not  a case that I did not know how vital internal branding is to corporate branding before, but the fact remains that knowledge changes and to be relevant you need to upscale what you know today to be relevant tomorrow. In the course of my research, I stumbled on a research paper by Dr. Harquail and his research paper will form part of my discourse today.

Internal branding is the engine room of any corporate brand. Internal branding strengthens a corporate organization’s position in a competitive market place as well as enhance organization’s effectiveness.   Internal branding is highly essential because like every other branding strategy, internal brand is a form of an attempt to gain further control of niche through shaping internal audience identities. The essence of internal branding is to help employee internalize and truly represent the brand identity desired by corporate brand. It is also aimed at adequately projecting the brand to the customers and other corporate brand’s constituency members. Employee branding helps employee to develop and direct self-images that are in congruent with attributes of the brands they work for. The goal of employee branding is to induce internal branding to create a behavioral and psychological connection between themselves and the brand identity. Without proper internalizing of brand’s idea, concept, it will be difficult for employees to become brand ambassadors for any brand. Expectedly a branded employee is deemed to have the ability to truly represents, projects the corporate brand’s identity through his personal behaviors, appearances while relating with any brand constituent. Work environment has been discovered to aid or mar the effectiveness of internal branding. The management style of the executives, the support and kind of attention they receive from management, management attitudes are some of the thing that will project the level at which internal branding efficiency will be. The level of effectiveness of any internal branding efforts can be greatly marred by executives’ personal attitude and commitment to the success of the corporate brand as a whole. A corporate brand gains better visibility and achieve objectives faster when internal brands behaviors strengthen brand identity as well as promise.

To help achieve better internal branding, management needs to teach ,coach employee about the brand’s identity ,promise of value, expectation, make them understand how to represent the brand in their daily attitudes, offer them opportunity to represent the brand and a continual support to be the best they could be for themselves as well as the corporate brand. A corporate brand that frustrates personal innovation may not get the best of internal branding efforts. There is more to offer in terms of processes and management. Hope to write further next time

Is your employee properly branded?

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