What is the secret to making your office the place to be? What is the one thing that you can do to ensure that your brand has immense street cred and there are only good things to say about it?
Well, not many know this but we are going to let you in on a secret. The easiest and best way to ensure that your business flourishes and ticks all the boxes is to keep your employees happy.
Yes, the customer is king but your employees make your everyday life possible. The brand for all intents and purposes exists and flourishes because of the people who work every day to make it happen.
Also, a happy employee is a much better brand ambassador and advocate than any celebrity and influencer money can buy.
So when you build a brand, start here. Frame policies and measures that protect your employees and keep them happy. We know you can do it.
We are here to give you an idea of how to delight your employees. Yes, delight them rather than just keeping them happy. That very well may be the difference between good work and excellent work.
Of course, we all want excellence, don’t we? But did you know that employee delight can have a positive impact on your branding too?
The words personal branding and employee branding have been popular for quite some time now. As they should be, being truly significant parts of a business’s brand identity. An employee with a strong personal brand is an advantage nobody should squander away. At the same time, you want your employees to feel strongly enough about your business to include it in their brand.
For that delight is important. Brands are built on social media. You can leverage your employee’s delight in building trust with your customer base. Around 90% of Instagram users follow at least one business on Instagram. Employees from top organizations also see a spike in their follower count because of where they work.
Businesses must go a step ahead in ensuring that employees feel a strong affinity to the company’s brand and are happy to associate in public.
While there are many ways to achieve this, let’s begin with the simplest one. Merchandising. This small help can prove to be extremely beneficial for your organization’s culture and branding in the years to come.
Why?
Let’s explore.
While we agree that there are a lot of ways to ensure that your employees are happy, a great place to start is the merchandise line. If you are a frequent LinkedIn user, then you must have seen the “Started a position” updates. Invariably, they are accompanied by the images of a branded laptop, coffee cups, notebooks, pens, and T-Shirts. This applies to employees that join via remote proceedings as well.
Why do businesses invest in employee merchandise? Quite a few reasons and some of them are listed below :
Everyone wants their brand to be at the tip of everyone’s tongue. The success of many of your subsequent product launches and campaigns relies on your business’s ability to spread brand awareness. Branded merchandise can take the trouble away from you as 84% of customers agree that seeing branded merchandise improves brand awareness in their minds.
The more they see you, the better they remember you. This applies to employee merchandise lines as well. When your employees use your branded merchandise, they automatically act as your brand advocates. They don’t just feel connected to your brand but also help strengthen your brand awareness.
“We are a family here”. Do you want this to be something people say or something that becomes imbibed in your culture itself? We are guessing it is the latter and that is why we recommend you launch an employee merchandise line right now.
It is a cognitive bias maybe but everyone using the coaster that the brand gave them with the branding on it is pretty hard to miss. And with daily usage, they form an attachment to the product and by extension to your brand.
Personalized employee merchandise can make the employee feel seen, part of something bigger, and eventually build an emotional connection with their employer.
When you strengthen emotional connections with your employees, you are nuturing healthy employer-employee relationships. And this matters because, after all, your employees are the people who make it possible for you to execute your brand vision.
Odds are your human capital teams are overrun trying to find a way to keep employees motivated and upbeat during these difficult times. This becomes a bigger challenge when the company has remote and hybrid teams working with them. But employee engagement is important as it directly has an impact on productivity and profitability.
Employee merchandise lines have the potential to show your employee that you are happy to invest in them and invest in products specifically for them. It shows them you care and inspires them to do more for the organization. Something as simple as a branded stationery set can be a great place to start.
The 9 to 5 world can be comforting but challenging too. The everyday is a mundane routine every employee wants to break free of unless something excites them. Awarding them with occasion-appropriate employee merchandise can be the thing that makes them happy to come to work.
Happy employees are more productive. And with this, your chances of improving customer experiences improve too.
In fact, several employees take to social media to talk about their employers. They share stories about positive experiences. And when they do, they are acting as your brand ambassadors. Clients love businesses that treat their employees well! So, happy and well-engaged employees bring in good business as well.
We talk about brand style guides and branding guidelines when it comes to marketing communication. But it is also important to acknowledge your employees are the de facto brand ambassadors in local communities. How they represent your brand goes a long way in brand awareness and recall value.
Providing them with merchandise that details the values, mission, vision, and ethos of the company can help them represent you the way you need them to.
With this, your employees get a better understanding of your brand. So, when they talk about your brand to their network or when they represent your company anywhere, they do so in a more accurate manner.
Remember we spoke about employees talking about your brand on social media? They are presenting your brand in their network when they do so. And you would want this presentation to be in line with your brand identity. That becomes possible when you establish your brand identity through employee merchandise.
You know that your employees are the pillars of your organization. Therefore, rewarding them occasionally is a task you cannot ignore. One way to do this, one way to make them feel like they belong, is through employee merchandise. There are various DIY design tools that let you pick from existing templates to create merchandise designs and view mockups before freezing the design. Or you can also work with graphic design companies to create these branded employee merchandise designs.
