The issue of Internal Branding, relatively new to the scene in the U.S., was the topic of a recent business conference in Singapore. The conference addressed internal branding from two perspectives:

1. the brand used by the organization to attract talent
2. the steps necessary to connect the external to internal brand

“When you want effective productivity and improvement, your internal branding efforts must increase,” notes Dr. Wilson Chew, Group Principal Consultant and CEO for StrategiCom Pte Ltd. “Part of this increment in aligning staff to deliver brand promises is selling, not telling.”

The study surveyed 61,168 bedside nurses and 131,318 patients in more than 1,000 hospitals in 13 countries over the course of three years. It came to the obvious conclusion that hospitals with better work environments and fewer patients in each nurse’s workload provided better outcomes and satisfaction for patients. Researchers found that:

• High nurse burnout and job dissatisfaction were common among hospital nurses in Europe and the U.S.
• On average, only 60% of patients were satisfied with their hospital care.

Patient safety is also a concern in hospitals that have poor work environments and insufficient nurse staffing, says Walter Sermeus, Professor at Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, leader of the European consortium. Nurses in the U.S. expressed a greater likelihood to remain in their current job by a considerable margin over nurses in Europe. The full article can be found at http://www.bmj.com/content/344/bmj.e1717

“We usually don’t respond to those types of RFPs,” Grisamore recalls, “but it seemed like a good opportunity to test the appeal of this approach to presenting our solutions.”

After a lengthy selection process, EGR won the business and has since implemented a fully-integrated engagement program encompassing a web portal, multi-media communications, learning, rewards and recognition, etc.

Besides the satisfaction of winning the business and getting off to a positive start, Grisamore told us he felt an extra sense of satisfaction when, on a recent visit to the client’s headquarters, his hosts introduced him as head of the company’s “Engagement Agency.” Said Jeff: “That’s where we want to be with clients.”

The high-level program attracts chief executives, vice presidents, directors and senior managers from the consumer products, retail, travel and leisure, technology, telecommunications, healthcare and energy industries. This program has expanded to include the integration of customer and employee branding, so maybe some folks involved with internal marketing can benefit.

Current Speakers include management from Yahoo!, Microsoft, Level Three Communications, Hilton Worldwide, Marriott International, Avaya, American General Life Companies, Deluxe Corporation, SimplexGrinnell and Comcast Corporation.

Participants in the EEA pre-event seminar can register separately.  Registration for both programs opens soon.

Stay tuned.

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You can now earn points for doing just about anything: even Microsoft offers points to people who browse the web using its search engine, Bing. A group of casinos, including Caesars, Harrah’s, Bally’s, Flamingo, Showboat and many more, have been running full page ads in the New York Times touting their collective points programs.

As companies shift from mass to one-to-one marketing, points programs have become critical to engaging target audiences. Bloomingdales also runs full page ads touting a new points program at bloomingdales.com/loyalist. Many websites use points programs in myriad ways. As the points business grows, expect new entrants potentially from large players.

American Express created a LoyaltyEdge group two years ago that provides a full-service consultancy to help companies maximize results of loyalty programs; expect to see more big players drawn into the business as all of those points accumulate.

Is this another modern version of the trading stamp fad that will just go away?

In those days, marketers didn’t have the means to take advantage of the numerous targeting opportunities provided by loyalty programs; today, with electronic marketing, it costs almost nothing to communicate with engaged people.

The trick, of course, is the never-ending need to adjust strategies to satisfy and engage customers, of which points-programs are only a part.

As more and more organizations understand the importance of connecting the customer and employee brand, I think we can expect more meetings like the one depicted in a currently running GE television ad we recently featured on the EEA portal home page.

To make sense, these meetings should be more than fodder for an ad campaign, but an invaluable opportunity for organizations to bring together their key audiences to discuss together their experiences.  The learning potential is enormous, not to mention the engagement possibilities, for organizations that understand how to make these meetings work.

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It’s an example of yet another industry understanding the connection between the customer and employee brand.

Presenter Darci Riesenhuber, director of brand culture and internal communications for Hilton Worldwide’s Embassy Suites brand, reported that the No. 1 reason customers don’t come back to a hotel is because employees don’t care (68%).  Price was a distant second at 14%, followed by product quality at 9 percent.

According to the article, Riesenhuber said the most engaged employees understand how their roles and responsibilities relate to a larger meaning. Room attendants aren’t just cleaning rooms; they are creating a home away from home; janitors don’t just clean hallways, they stop the spread of germs.

Room attendants, for example, shouldn’t just view their role as cleaning rooms. Rather, they are creating a tidy place of comfort—a home away from home—for travelers. Likewise, janitors aren’t just cleaning hallways; they’re stopping the spread of germs and are contributing to a healthy environment for guests.

“Our job is to help connect and give meaning to our employees’ jobs,” Riesenhuber said. “… If you can do that, you will have a truly engaged workforce.”

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“The future belongs to those who build it.”

The text reads:

“Whirlpool is proud to be opening the largest premium cooking facility in the world at is new state-of-the-art plant in Cleveland, Tenn.  Home to the dedicated employees whose efforts make our products the best in the business…Whirlpool is investing in America. Eighty-two percent of our products are engineered, designed, and assembled in the U.S. The future belongs to us.”

GE is running a similar campaign containing extolling its employees.

More and more advertisers will be promoting their investments in America, because the depression, sentiments touched upon by the Occupy Wall Street movement, combined with the power of social networking will favor organizations that refocus on their human assets.

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I have no way of knowing Carbonite’s employee engagement strategy, but I witnessed first hand how an employee made the company’s advertising more effective. The follow recent experience shows the reasons why more companies are focusing on their employee’s not as a human resource issue, but as a marketing issue.

Carbonite is the online backup service that automatically backs up your computer’s files while you work, so that you never have to worry about losing your files. I had learned about it through its radio advertising and a review I heard, so downloaded it. It worked fine until a few months ago. My initial efforts to get the system fixed—using the customer service link on the utility installed on my computer—yielded a highly technical response that did not help. I responded back that it still didn’t work, and was directed to a support technician. That, too, yielded no solution, although the person who handled the call had a pleasant manner and proudly informed me his job was the result of the company’s decision to move customer service back to the U.S. from some country in Asia . After making an unsuccessful attempt to solve my problem, he routed me to a more advanced technician, who also could not solve my problem.

Finally, I was sent to Robert. He e-mailed me to set up an appointment and he tried to make it work. It turned out it still was not working, so I e-mailed him again. He responded by suggesting a time for another appointment. Like everyone else, I’m busy, and while I knew I needed to get this solved, it was easy to procrastinate, and I failed to reply to his e-mail promptly. Within a day, he contacted me again to remind me, and in the final call, he came up with a solution. It would require me to back up the computer again, which can take weeks, but appeared to solve the problem.

At that point, I could have just bailed and started over with someone else. But Robert had stayed on top of my case, so I felt I owed him a shot. Besides, I was set up and my files were already backing up before my eyes. All told, he probably spent an hour with me. If the service continues to work, I’ll probably remain a customer for the next 20 years or so, because why should I change if it works. At their current rate of $50 or so a year, that’s about $1,000, not to mention other business they could get because of referrals I might make to friends. So, for the next 20 years, with a little luck, they will spend almost nothing on me, and as a result, have one less customer they have to acquire to meet their objectives.

All because of Robert.

When organization’s shift just 50% of the money and attention they pay on the process of getting customers to the process of keeping them, it will become much more pleasant to be a customer and companies will have to spend a lot less on advertising. The economics are just too compelling for businesses to ignore forever.

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The Enterprise Engagement Alliance has created a useful tool to help organizations benchmark their engagement strategies. It takes under 10 minutes to complete, and results are instant and confidential. You do not have to register or reveal your company name. The tool enables you to see how your company’s strategies measure up against best practices.  Go to http://www.eewidget.com/eebenchmark/

For personal insights on the emerging Engagement field from EEA and its contributors, go to http://www.enterpriseengagement.org/blog

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