Corporate Branding, Employer Branding and Employee Engagement

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Happy New Year everyone! I hope it is a particularly enjoyable and prosperous one for you all.

Of course to be so means, for most people, that it also has to be a successful and prosperous New Year for your employer organisation. Anything less and life's uncertainties become more onerous and stressful. Yet, I wonder if, like me, you question whether your employers really understand the link between employee engagement, employer branding and corporate branding? 

I started thinking about this after a friend sent me this link this morning. I was particularly struck by the term 'brand engagement' as it is one I had not previously registered. It fuses the concepts of corporate branding and employee engagement rather neatly.

The term 'employer brand' is a relatively new one and seems to have been coined by consultants as a response to the war for talent and intended to keep employers on their toes. I'd be interested to know how successful you think it has been because I certainly don't think "improving our employer brand" figures high as a strategy for many employers.

I'd also be interested to know your thoughts on the correlation between employee engagement and corporate branding, for 2 reasons.

Firstly, the list of the bottom 25 lowest-rated companies included in this survey includes some pretty well known companies. Thus, despite the undoubted link between engaged employees and corporate performance, I have to question the link between employee engagement and corporate branding.

Secondly, the list comprises only companies that have 25 or more people complain about the company they work for. This must:

  • Preclude a large number of companies that might otherwise make the list;
  • Skew the results towards the larger companies with the greatest number of employees and the greatest brand awareness.

Since not everyone works for a great brand this therefore suggests that more people are unhappy in their work than we would like to admit. On the other hand, there are a great number of people, such as hospital workers, firemen or policemen, who provide exemplary service without in any way identifying or being identified as part of a corporate brand. In which case, it is possible the attempt to link corporate brand and employer brand may be tenuous at best. What do you think?

Hopefully you can still have a happy and prosperous New Year even if you don't work for a prestigious corporate brand.

7 thoughts on “Corporate Branding, Employer Branding and Employee Engagement”

  1. Your post is rather thought-provoking. I recently founded a company called FusionPoint, specializing in employer branding. We soft-launched in January and have made changes and tweaks to our model many times. A couple of things that I have learned that may or may not respond to your thoughts above. 1. every organization has 2 brands; a corporate brand and an employer brand whether they know it or not. 2. I consider “employee engagement” the same thing as “employer brand strength” – the degree to which your employees are engaged is a positive correlation to the perceived strength of your employer brand in the eyes of management and employees. 3. There is no positive correlation between corporate brand strength and employer brand strength. As an example, Nike has a very strong corporate brand recognition but horrible employer brand recognition (e.g. child labor in Asia).
    The problem today is that those organizations that are measured and evaluated in the eyes of the public are well known corporate brands, but 90%+ of all businesses are small business in North America, who don’t receive the same exposure and publicity as the giants do.
    What’s my point? Employers will achieve better business results if they have a strong employer brand and corporate brand, in the eyes of management, employees and customer, regardless of how “big” they are.

  2. Jeff
    Thank you very much. Both for responding to the post and for articulating such a valuable contribution to the discussion I am endeavouring to stimulate. I think we are in “violent agreement” as regards our message, just climbing the mountain from a different face!
    I would say that it is going to be increasingly difficult to develop or maintain a good corporate brand without developing the employer brand. One reason for this is that, when it comes to making or breaking a brand, technology has created a power-shift away from corporations to the customers. (A frivilous example of this in the UK was the successful campaign to prevent the winner of the X Factor talent show reaching the #1 slot on the music charts.)
    This requires the organisation to be more aligned around its values, which increases its dependency on its people. This will drive a greater focus on the employer brand than has ever-before been the case, and thus bring the two closer together – regardless of the size of the organisation.
    Hopefully we can help accelerate this paradigm shift.

  3. Nike is a good example of engaged employees and performance, but not so much in the correlation between employee engagement and branding. They don’t appear to have such a positive effect from their brand as they used to 10 – 15 years ago, I struggle to see why I would bother buying a pair of Nike trainers over any other similar priced trainer.
    I think the big Tescos does a good job of retaining a positive company image and employee engagement. There’s plenty of people who work for Tescos but I never hear a bad word about it, which I appreciate must be down to Tesco’s good efforts.

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