The competition in the modern corporate world is on the brink of a precipice. As more rival businesses emerge, organizations that fail to adapt and innovate lose out in the competition and eventually fall into oblivion.

As a business manager, if you want to thrive and build the perfect brand identity in this hostile landscape, you can start by fostering an employee-centric workplace to enhance employee engagement.

Globally, organizations with a highly engaged workforce recorded 22% more profit, 21% more efficiency, and 78% reduction in absenteeism than companies with disengaged employees. Those are staggering numbers! Don’t you think?

Since employees are the face of any organization and an efficient workforce casts a positive impact on your brand reputation, this article is your treasure trove for building a strong brand reputation through employee engagement. Read on to learn more

The link between employee engagement and brand identity

In simple terms, employee engagement describes the extent to which your employees are willing, motivated, and committed to doing their job. Engaged employees tend to work harder individually and collectively to ensure the growth and success of your business.

If we consider your employees as intermediaries, since they are the link between your organization and its clientele, they should understand your brand’s intent – what it should look and sound like.

As such, highly engaged employees will have an in-depth knowledge of your brand image when dealing with clients, shareholders, creditors, etc., so they give their all to represent your brand explicitly in every step of their interaction. 

Best strategies to improve workforce efficiency for better brand identity

Now that you know how having highly engaged employees is a prerequisite for driving customer satisfaction, enhancing brand authenticity, and ultimately improving your company’s reputation. It’s high time you learned what it takes to build a stronger brand identity with a more efficient workforce.

Check out these steps to get started:

1.    Create convenient work schedules

If you want to overcome the complexities of workforce scheduling, an automated solution like the employee scheduling app will be your go-to option. While many businesses still adopt spreadsheets and whiteboards, they have proven less efficient for organizations with high-volume staffing requirements.

Scheduling software operates on AI programs, so it can adapt to any organizational protocol and keep track of your employee activities. When you find it difficult to create accurate schedules that meet business demands, it can identify patterns and make seemingly difficult scheduling decisions easier. This helps you boost work efficiency and lower labor costs.

In addition, manual rescheduling can be problematic. Firms that use this scheduling process often record issues of favoritism, last-minute notifications, shifts scheduled for workers on leave, and lack of work flexibility, all of which cause burnout and employee turnover.

With a scheduling app, your employees can manage and trade their shifts as they see fit. Their jobs become more flexible and they perceive a sense of fairness, leading to better work-life balance, and a highly engaged workforce eager to advocate for your brand.

2.    Partner with top research agencies

If you understand how indispensable data is in the modern workplace, you must realize what benefits you stand to gain from partnering with a research institute. The best research agencies specialize in collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data to gain insights that can benefit your organization.

Research agencies can collect employee feedback on job satisfaction and workplace culture. With that information, you can identify what you’re doing right and what needs improvement to make data-driven decisions that enhance engagement.

Additionally, these agencies can conduct studies on employee wellness to identify the factors that impact their physical and mental health. The factors could be from your work culture or employees’ lifestyles. With such insights, you can easily stage wellness programs that address employee concerns, and enhance their work-life balance and engagement levels. 

That’s not all. A research firm can use data analytics to identify the skill gap and learning styles amongst your employees, allowing you to create a personalized training program relative to your employees’ career aspirations.  

The bottom line is never to underestimate the impact of data and research agencies. When employees work in an atmosphere where they feel their needs are given top priority, they develop a sense of belonging and become enthusiastic ambassadors of your brand.  

3.    Incentivize positive employee involvement

Who doesn’t love recognition and rewards? We all do as it triggers our sense of pride. If you want your employees to advocate for your brand, you can try introducing incentives to appreciate their contributions to the company’s success each time you complete a project or record a new achievement.

The fun part is that incentives do not necessarily have to be monetary bonuses, they could be personalized awards, extra vacation days, business trips, and even public recognitions. These can motivate your entire workforce to compete with themselves to become the best brand ambassador for your business.

Over time, when employees see it as a norm that you incentivize hard work and commitment to the company’s successes, they will reinforce their attitude and efforts towards enhancing customer satisfaction and elevating your brand identity.

4.    Promote good communication

No matter the size of your business, there should be a free communication channel across all strata. When you keep your employees in the loop about company initiatives, goals, and achievements, they find it easier to channel their efforts in the same direction with business demands.

Employees want to feel valued and important. You need to keep the communication line open if you want to earn their trust and loyalty. By promoting free communication, they develop a sense of belonging and understand their opinions are valued in business matters. That boosts their confidence to share ideas and contribute to business growth.  

In addition, having an open communication channel can greatly impact employee-client relationships. When you keep your team aware of values, new projects, and upcoming events like promotions and recognition programs, they find it easy to give up-to-date information to customers. This enhances your brand reputation and fosters transparency in your workplace.

5.    Create opportunities for growth

Your employees are business assets. As such, you must show how much you value and appreciate them. You can invest in training and development programs to help them grow and advance in their career. When they see how much you value them, they become motivated to be a part of your success story.

You can start by offering them insights on how they can pursue their career dreams. This can be in mentorship training, leadership programs, job postings, etc. Once they define their career path, you can offer them continuous learning support presented as webinars, workshops, or e-learning courses to help them gain mastery of their skills.

Over time, you may have identified employees with management potential, a good way to develop their skills is by introducing leadership training programs. With that, they can become experts in making decisions, resolving conflicts, and managing a workforce no matter how big.

Training and development programs can also be as financial support to help employees further their education, cross-training opportunities to broaden their skills and help them become more versatile, or you can establish a learning culture in your workplace where employees have access to online learning platforms.

Once your employees see these clear paths to their professional advancement, they’ll naturally be motivated to advocate for your brand at any point in time.

6.    Provide necessary tools for brand publicity

In this age of technology and social media, it’s relatively easy to amplify your brand’s reach. You can encourage your employees to act as online ambassadors by sharing positive reviews about your brand. This will not only boost your online reputation and authenticity, it will also attract new business prospects.

Once your employees are motivated to advocate for your brand, you need to educate them on social media management. Afterward,  provide them with brand guidelines along with written, audio and video content if need be to aid publicity.

Finally, you can throw in incentives to appreciate employees who took part in the activity. No one knows your business better than employees who are always on the front lines of business operations, so it only makes sense to use their influence to build a strong brand identity.

Build a formidable workforce for better brand reputation

If you have to compete with rival businesses, you must have a strong brand identity and the key to that lies in the efficiency of your workforce.

To build an effective team, embrace an employee-centric work culture. With that, you’ll be able to prioritize employee well-being and growth. When you cater to the needs of your workers, it’s only natural that they’ll be more than willing to contribute to the growth of your business.

You could allocate a budget for training programs, use incentives, celebrate successes, and foster a work culture that supports learning, and what have you, all in a bid to increase job satisfaction and ultimately pivot strong brand identity. 

Rilwan Kazeem is a creative writer and art lover. He has worked in social media, content marketing, and SEO for four years. He has covered topics including digital marketing, HR, emerging technologies, and their intersection with business. At his leisure, he loves to meditate and spend time with his family.