One of the most tangible—yet most often overlooked—benefits to a company of having a solid brand strategy is that it facilitates the recruitment of qualified employees.
Running a purposefully small brand strategy firm in Portland, Oregon, I admit that employee recruitment is not something that keeps me awake at night. But for many of the companies and associations that we work with, some of whom have hundreds of employees in different geographic locations, employee recruitment is a job that keeps human resource departments very busy.
Hire Better People, Faster
I was reminded of this recently during a discussion with a potential client. As I usually do, I asked the client how he would measure the success of a brand strategy project should he decide to work with our company. Almost immediately, he replied: “We’d be able to hire better people, faster.”
Our prospective client is growing quickly, expanding from Oregon and Washington to California, Colorado and beyond. Work is coming in faster than its current staff can handle, and the company has been paying $20K and more per new employee placement to a local recruiting firm.
Unfortunately, the results have been less than satisfactory. Few applicants whose skills look good on paper have had the necessary traits to succeed in the client’s unique organizational culture. The company admits that it is partly to blame—without a clear and cohesive “brand voice,” it struggles to communicate its defining values both internally and externally.
Clarify Your Brand
Relative to the cost of employee hiring and firing, a solid brand strategy plan is a small investment for any business to make. With a clear idea of what your brand stands for and where it is going, it becomes readily apparent what types of professionals you should hire—and how they should be managed, evaluated and compensated according to their ability to meet business goals and brand goals.
Fortunately, there aren’t too many hiring managers left today who believe that “brand” belongs to the marketing department alone. Brand belongs to everyone within an organization. Every single employee has a chance to reinforce your company’s brand—or take away from it. Define a solid brand strategy and you’ll find it easier to recruit people at every level who embrace what makes your company unique and can help move it forward.