Katrina Klier's Blog

Post as seen on The CMO Club site:

With the broad use of social media, prospective customers, employees and suppliers form opinions about your brand and company long before you ever interact with them directly. True, they see all the campaigns and focused PR efforts you put in market, but they also see the sentiment in posts from your employees on social media, see the talent movement in and out of your company and see where people go after they leave you. And, they can see whether your former employees remain fans of your brand long after they are required to. And they see whether former employees continue to engage with your company… or not.

For CMOs that means it’s time to make the VP of HR your branding partner.

The data plays this all out. According to Mercer, 40% of employees aged 25-34 are currently considering  leaving their present company. The same is true for 44% of employees under age 25 and 32% of employees in total. The under 34 workforce is extremely active in social media and social networking – they often will take calls or give opinions on jobs, companies, brands and executives when asked. So if you treat your employees well while they are with you and especially as they leave, you stand a better chance of them being brand advocates and company advocates long term.

This is precisely why companies need to connect their people strategy with their brand strategy. Deepak Chopra was recently interviewed for a Forbes article titled Deepak Chopra on Enlightened Leadership. Dr. Chopra quotes Gallup research which showed that 25% of the US workforce is engaged, meaning they enjoy what they do and 75% are disengaged and do not like what they do. As you can imagine, it is difficult for people to be advocates of a company brand when they dislike their job, company culture, manager, etc. That means the vast majority of people on social media today do not have positive things to say about your company and your brand.  If you’re a business leader, that should make you very  nervous.

Dr. Chopra offers good advice – be a genuine, authentic and human leader.  According to Dr. Chopra’s interview, the statistics speak for themselves:

“If your boss ignores you, your level of disengagement goes up by 45%. If your boss criticizes you, it goes down to 25%, because you’d rather be criticized than ignored. If your boss notices your strengths, your rate of disengagement goes down to less than 1%. How we treat people has huge economic implications and yet it’s totally ignored by leaders in the corporate world.”

So if you acknowledge and leverage your employees strengths, they are 99% engaged which means they are happier and more likely to be an advocate for your brand and company. Connect your people strategy with your brand strategy in an authentic, strength recognition based way and the advocacy effect is all good. That seems like a pretty good deal to me.