Brands and businesses are inextricable. Every strategic decision, campaign, sales, social media post, etc., helps firms to sabotage or strengthen the brand. According to research, more than ninety percent of organizations said it is censorious to secure brand image uniformity across consumer touchpoints, and that’s because there is a quantifiable advantage to effective branding. On average, organizations estimated a twenty-three percent uplift to revenue when their brand engendered consistent engagement and recognition.
There is more to it; almost seventy percent of companies recognize the potential for consumer confusion if branding doesn’t align with the stated target or if a presentation doesn’t fulfill the corporate expectations. With all the focus on adequate brand delivery and after-effects measurements, many organizations disregard a vital component: internal branding.
How branding impacts organizational culture
One of the significant obstacles for many businesses this year has been preserving and maintaining the internal company culture. With a workforce sitting in their dining room, kitchen, or bedroom, communication became a task. In this situation, it is essential to understand how the brand impacts the organization’s internal culture.
A company’s culture can be interpreted as a set of rules, attitude, goals, and practices that define a business. In other words, company culture is the shared ethos of an organization. It’s the way employees feel about their work, the values they believe, where they see the business going in the next few years, and most importantly, their contribution to the company’s success. All these traits collectively represent the traits of an organization.
Every business has its individual “culture,” and it is created once the business expands. Company culture is determined by the staff you work with, the internal process, how employees are getting paid, and how employees talk to each other. These questions are often overlooked; organizations forget that employees create brand value for consumers and shape the external value proposition. But shifting the workforce may also change the employee expectations.
Employees are now consumers of internal brand identity. We all know that consistent external branding increases overall sales, but what we don’t know is, consistent internal policies can lead to employee satisfaction.
The impact of covid-19
The lockdown in spring 2020 forced more than 50% of the working population to work from their homes. This pandemic brought operational challenges and put a strain on maintaining the internal culture. the natural flow of information and comfort of the office was lost. The ongoing processes were redundant. Communication within brands has been replaced with virtual team meetings such as Whatsapp chat groups, zoom calls, and much more.
The disturbance in friendly working practices has placed prodigious pressure on internal culture. In this pandemic, it’s essential to know that your business is just as important in retaining the right employee as it is attracting the right consumers. In an HR era, the values and purpose that define your business have a significant impact on internal culture.
More than 90% of world entrepreneurs believe that updating corporate culture will improve the business value. Depending upon the revenue and size of the brand, your priority may not be the return to stakeholders or company valuation. However, it is no harm remembering that factors that drive victory are profit, turnover, and sales.
Brand equity and HR value theory
The ultimate objective of internal branding and external branding is the same. Brand equity is considered impalpable for customers, while benefits are quantifiable. According to research, customers have more attached value to the products manufactured by the business with high brand equity. These tangible advantages take the form of improved productivity, retention, and engagement.
The recent research throws light on the value of successful internal branding across the following areas-
- Retention: Establishing a constant internal brand has a positive influence on brand recognition among staff which, in return, increases the overall employee retention rate. It is also said that retention also gives the benefit of cost-saving. On average, employee turnover costs businesses 20 percent of the lost salary as they train and incorporate new employees.
- Engagement: Internal branding improves staff loyalty and job satisfaction which results in greater productivity and sales. An engaged staff is 15 more dedicated and generates 25 percent increased revenue.
- Corporate identity: effective and well-planned internal branding can help improve resistance to corporate scale efforts, using an inside-out identity evolution plan to align employee culture with long-term branding targets.
The importance of culture for staff members
For your company’s staff members, internal culture plays a crucial role in their stability and job satisfaction. More than seventy-eight percent of workers agree that internal company culture keeps them active and productive throughout the day. It is seen on many global digital job platforms that people pay extra attention to internal culture, and it is one of the significant factors in workplace satisfaction.
The pressure of covid-19 has left internal cultures looking weak. Sixty-nine percent of workers admitted that they would like to quit their job because of their senior’s treatment during the pandemic. Organizations that want to retain their employees have to understand the factors that lead to internal business culture and influence that worker is experiencing.
An organization has to understand that covid-19 will somehow impact the company culture, and you have to be aware of the changes and address them. In a recession period, company culture is even more crucial and fragile. It creates a layout for the response to the challenge of directing your staff members through the turmoil. Whether that is creating a healthy working environment for the employees, leading some of them through a redundancy process, or supporting them emotionally as they work from home. The organization’s behavior to their staff will provide the continuity you need to get the best out of your staff members. Appropriate behavior will not only increase productivity but also drive your brand success through the pandemic.
Coming up short
The bitter truth is that not all organizations have great internal branding. According to Forbes, only thirty percent of workers have confidence that their organization follows through internal branding structure; this means seventy percent of workers are less engaged and therefore less productive to fulfill their duties.
To ensure the desired impact of internal branding, organizations can begin with a simple question: how do staff members describe the brand and service offering?
If one of your employees describes the brand as socially conscious while another suggests that the brand focus on cost-cutting, chances are, you have got disconnected. This disconnection affects internal culture, making it harder for workers to communicate and articulate key brand messaging clearly. As the Forbes piece notes, this limits the capability of employees to deliver brand value to the consumers, in turn reducing customer satisfaction and brand engagement.
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